https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/9/strategic-affairs/portentous-india%E2%80%93pakistan-escalation-dynamic.html
The portentuous India-Pakistan escalation dynamic
On his first
official trip to Pakistan as secretary-general the United Nations (UN),
Secretary-General António Guterres, at press stakeout
in Islamabad, said, “I have repeatedly stressed the importance of exercising
maximum restraint and taking steps to de-escalate, both militarily and
verbally,
while reiterating my offer to exercise my good offices, should
both sides ask. Diplomacy and dialogue remain the
only tools that guarantee peace and stability... (Guterres 2020).”
In response, India’s foreign ministry
swiftly reiterated India's position that, “There is no role or scope for third
party mediation (Ministry of External Affairs).”
Such exchanges
evoke a sense of déjà vu, India having similarly rebutted similar offers from the
United States’ (US) President Donald Trump twice earlier. Nevertheless, the
international community does have a stake in the regional security situation
since fallout of it going awry potentially has global consequences. Two recent
studies highlight nuclear dangers. While one talks of climate effects on the
global ecosystem accounting for 125 million
dead (Toon et al. 2019), the second is on implications on the marine
domain (Lovenduski et al. 2020).
The secretary-general’s
foregrounding the delicate state of regional security in exercise of his early
warning and conflict prevention function are borne out in the pre-conference
report of the Munich Security Conference 2020. It expresses the predicament thus:
“In this strained situation, any attack committed by the Kashmiri insurgency
bears the risk of escalation, including into military confrontation between the
two nuclear-armed powers. Increasing ethno-religious nationalism and
anti-Muslim sentiment in India heighten this risk, as they might induce Indian
authorities to respond with particular force (Munich Security Report 2020: 50).”
The international community cannot but take the rhetorical exchanges between
India and Pakistan seriously.
Take the
latest warning
by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who speaking at the annual the National Cadet
Corps’(NCC) Republic Day rally, said, “We know that our neighboring country has
lost three wars. It does not take more than ten days a week for our forces to defeat
it. In such a situation, it has been fighting proxy-war against India for
decades (Modi 2020).”
Aware of the
ruling party’s propensity on display over the past five years to parlay its
decision-making on national security issues for electioneering purposes, Indian
analysts are not be amiss to discount the remarks as political rhetoric, citing
the then-forthcoming Delhi elections as a possible rationale (Joshi 2020).
Even so, the
prime minister’s reference to proxy war amounts to India’s messaging Pakistan that
its continuance could lead up to war, albeit a limited one. Thus the prime
minister’s statement can be taken as signaling with a deterrence rationale.
Conveying a readiness to up-the-ante from surgical strikes to limited war helps
deter Pakistan, firstly, from any terror provocation that can bring on a
crisis, and, significantly, from any subsequent reaction by it to India’s
surgical strikes that could confound a crisis into a war.
The policy of
ending Pakistani impunity through surgical strikes was reiterated by the new
army chief, General MM Naravane, at his first press conference on taking over (Pandit
2020). Pakistan has demonstrated its intent and capability to respond in kind,
hoping to deter Indian surgical strikes.
Against this backdrop, Narendra Modi’s warning of a limited war appears
to be directed at influencing Pakistani against a robust response to future surgical
strikes with an to open up the space for such strikes continuing.
As part of its
deterrence communication and interest in catalyzing external intervention,
Pakistan has taken care to keep fears of escalation alive. Within days after
the Indian prime minister’s statement, it deployed its former long-serving head
of the Strategic Plans Division and currently Adviser in the National Command
Authority, retired Lt Gen Khalid Kidwai, to stoke the fire (Kidwai 2020). In his
keynote address at a joint conference in London of the International Institute
for Strategic Studies and a Pakistani think tank, Kidwai underlined
that, “Pakistan has ensured seamless integration between nuclear strategy and
conventional military strategy (Kidwai 2020: 5).”
To him, this
reminder is, “especially relevant today post-Pulwama and Balakot, because there
are people in important places in India’s strategic circles who have drawn
dangerously wrong conclusions about what they are referring to as Pakistan’s
nuclear bluff (Kidwai 2020: 5).” He seems to be trying to close the door on
India’s advertised intent of limited war by pointing to a “seamless” transition
between conventional and nuclear doctrine in Pakistan.
What does this
peacetime doctrinal tussle between the two sides spell for the next crisis?
In the last
crisis, escalation was sensibly avoided by both sides. This is in keeping with
what appears to be a new turn in military escalation dynamics encompassed by
the phrase: ‘escalate to de-escalate’. Its inception was in the alleged Russian
intention to resort to nuclear weapons in case of a western attack since its
conventional preparedness was relatively low (Krepon 2018). Conceptually, this
amounts to a step-up the proverbial escalation ladder by a side not so much in
order to prevail as much as to trigger uncertainty associated with escalation so
as to mutually de-escalate a conflict.
The example is
the recent US-Iran face-off. A preceding spiral witnessed a US drone strike on
an active-duty Iranian general, the popular Qasem Soleimani. The Iranians, left
with little option than perforce to shoot themselves out of the corner boxed
into by the unexpected US strike, responded with missile strikes on two US
bases. They apparently took care to tacitly warn the Americans targeted. Though
Trump later claimed that there were no casualties, some 150 US soldiers
suffered brain concussion. Even as the escalatory step was taken, the intent to
limit the exchange was broadcast to evoke reciprocity in the other side.
Both India and
Pakistan through their rhetoric are signaling intent to ‘escalate to
de-escalate’: India with its surgical strikes and Pakistan with its
determination to counter India tooth-for-tooth. Credibility of deterrence rests
on capability and its communication to the other side. Rhetoric is
communication of sorts. Both sides seek
to leverage the delicacy of deterrence - in that it can break down - with an
aim to reinforce it – so the other side does not test it.
In case of
India, on the very day the prime minister alluded to India’s ten-day war
preparedness, General MM Naravane revealed
that earlier shortages of ammunition for a ten-day war at intensive rates of
ammunition expenditure had been redressed (India
Today 2020). In the aftermath of the surgical strikes by land in
retaliation to the Uri terror attack of late 2016 had been replenished by
thirty contracts amounting to Rs. 30000 crore. This explains the prime
minister’s timeline of seven to ten days to bring Pakistan to its knees.
For its part,
Pakistan, through Kidwai’s speech warns that, “Pakistan’s nuclear capability
operationalised under the well-articulated policy of Full Spectrum Deterrence
(FSD) comprises of a large variety of strategic, operational and tactical
nuclear weapons, on land, air and sea, which are designed to comprehensively
deter large-scale aggression against
mainland Pakistan (Kidwai 2020: 5-6) (italics added).” The use of the term
“large-scale” implies that short of a “large-scale” attack Pakistan may not
resort to nuclear first use even under conditions of “relative conventional
asymmetry (Kidwai 2020: 5)”.
Its confidence
of taking on India conventionally appears emboldened by Indian defence budget
figures. In wake of the prime minister’s threat of a short, sharp war, Shekhar
Gupta pointed out that, “India had to have a decisive, deterrent conventional
edge over Pakistan. If that is built in the years to come, it might even be
possible to defeat Pakistan in less than a week (Gupta 2020).” Other analysts
have referred to the defence budget, criticized over successive years as the
lowest since the 1962 War in terms of a proportion of the gross national
product, as insufficient to cover the modernization necessary to defeat
Pakistan (Panag 2019).
From their
deterrence pitch, it appears both sides believe that each has called the other
side’s bluff: India thinking it has called Pakistan’s nuclear bluff (Unnithan
2020) and Pakistan believing that it has told India off. This posture of
nonchalance in face of the other’s deterrence messaging is liable to be further
complicated by the danger in India taking Khalid Kidwai literally: that an
attack short of a “large-scale” attack would not trigger Pakistan’s Full Scale
Deterrence (FSD). FSD is Pakistan’s drawing of a nuclear awning over its
conventional forces to compensate for their comparative weakness.
Such an
interpretation of Kidwai’s remarks is incentivized by his second reference to “large-scale”
in his downplaying India’s conventional doctrinal make-over with its turn to proactive
strategy or Cold Start. He claimed “Pakistan took corresponding operational,
doctrinal and force developmental measures both in the conventional as well as
nuclear fields, including the establishment of a Full Spectrum Deterrence
regime…. As a consequence, the Cold Start Doctrine stayed neutralised, nuclear
deterrence holds, and informed strategists consider large-scale wars (italics added) on the international borders as a
thing of the past (Kidwai 2020: 7).”
What Kidwai
misses is that Cold Start does not envisage a “large scale” conventional show-down.
Limited war therefore remains possible even in Kidwai’s logic. India’s Cold
Start doctrine, that guides the employment of IBGs for punishing Pakistani
military for terror provocations, is predicated on not crossing Pakistani
nuclear thresholds. India has readied two integrated battle groups (IBG) on the
western front after test-bed exercises last year.
Kidwai’s useful
visualization of an India-Pakistan escalation ladder is as follows:, “while it
may be easy to climb thefirst rung on the escalatory ladder (surgical strikes),
the second rung would always belong to Pakistan (its response), and that
India’s choice to move to the third rung would invariablybe dangerously
problematic in anticipation of the fourth rung response by Pakistan (Kidwai
2020: 7) (parenthesis added).” The rub is in Kidwai’s revelation of Pakistani
policy of going “quid pro quo plus” (Kidwai 2020: 8) at the second rung. Both
sides appear to be relying on escalation control to compensate for respective
‘escalate to de-escalate’ choices at diverse rungs of a proverbial escalation
ladder: India at the first and third rungs and Pakistan at the second rung.
On the threat
of escalation, the prime minister’s NCC rally speech has a clue. He claims
that, “Today there is young thinking, the country is moving forward with a
young mind, so it performs surgical strikes, air strikes and teaches the lesson
to the terrorists in their home (Modi 2020).” This implies political
responsiveness to pressures from the street, pressures that such speeh-making
only serves to engender.
A crisis can
turn into conflict if India ventures on to the third rung. Its limited war strategy
has the disadvantage of being checked by Pakistan’s conventional counter since,
by definition of limited war, India would not be throwing its full weight
behind it. In order to prevail owing to pressures in domestic politics may
force India to up the ante, forcing Pakistan to bring FSD into play.
Kidwai takes
fear mongering further, saying, “that the escalatory rung climbing could not be
so neatly choreographed, but could quickly get out of hand and morph into a
major war which perhaps nobody wanted but whose outcomes would be disastrous
for the region and the globe (Kidwai 2020: 7-8).” Candidness lets Kidwai’s real
intent out of the bag as he goes on to state: “(it is) the Full Spectrum
Deterrence capability of Pakistan (that) brings the international community rushing
into South Asia to prevent a wider conflagration (Kidwai 2020: 6).” Even as
Pakistan seeks to draw the international community in – such as urging
intercession by President Trump - India persists in fobbing it off - as the UN
secretary-general’s offer of his good-offices. This can be taken as part of messaging
to Pakistan that India will not countenance a third party scrambling to save
Pakistan from defeat.
Under a
circumstance, the two sides are unwarrantedly sanguine. India thinks that there
would be no further terror provocation to prompt its stepping on the first rung;
that its limited war preparedness will deter a Pakistani “quid pro quo plus”
counter at the second rung; and that its operationalisation of Cold Start will limit
the war to the third rung. For its part, Pakistan appears to believe that its
promise of “quid pro quo plus” at the second rung will prevent Indian surgical
strikes at the first rung; and its FSD at the fourth rung will prevent India’s
operations at the third rung from going “large-scale” onto the fourth rung.
Both want to
escalate to de-escalate, knowing how to do the former better than the latter.
Both can do with being bailed out by the international community stepping up
when the conflict transitions between third and fourth rungs. However, staying
apart till the crunch would be to leave it to the next crisis to test
deterrence. Instead, the international community must follow through with its
good offices’ initiative, under the logic that if the two sides do not
negotiate, it behooves on the international community – that stands to suffer
the consequences - to attempt conciliate the two (Bondevik 2020).
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(2020): “How Indian armed forces can
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