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Unappraised Lessons from 1962

Anniversaries serving to focus minds on lessons learnt, the 1962 War’s 60th observance has seen strategists toting up the lessons of India’s defeat by China. The lessons have in the background the current-day circumstance of Chinese intrusions persisting in Ladakh for over two years. 

The bright side of failure is that it catalyses learning as nothing else possibly can. So it is with the 1962 defeat: it perked up India’s military, putting paid to the Nehruvian notion that security can be arrived at through a relegation of the military component.

However, lessons learnt have an underside, particularly those stemming from consequential defeats: overlearning. Arguably, so has been the case with the lessons of the 1962 War. Lessons over-learnt, India is now back at the beginning, at a juncture today at which it might have to relearn a lesson of 1962: on the necessity of balanced civil-military relations.

In the short term, the 1962 defeat steadied India’s civil-military relations. Unsteady civil-military relations in the run up to the war partially led to the defeat. The significant lesson from the War is popularly held to be political interference in military matters. Consequently, the lesson over-learnt was that military matters best be left to the military.

The overlearning contributed to keeping the military confined to a narrow professional till, restricted to doctrinal and operational matters. This kept the military outside the policy loop. While for a period the military had an avatar as an integrated office of the defence ministry, it current-day location is within the bureaucratic structure with a Department, the Department of Military Affairs, to itself. Though the projection today is that the military is no longer tenanting the outhouse as an attached office, this merely flatters to please.

A newly appointed Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) heads that office. Since the one appointed has no obvious distinction to distinguish him from his peers, his recall from retirement is only plausible as nepotism, being from the same ethnic group as his predecessor. Incidentally, both were from the same ethnic group as the national security adviser (NSA) – who has a nontrivial role in the selection of the CDS.

India is back at the beginning, when the run up to the 1962 debacle began with the appointment of an ethnic kin of Prime Minister Jawarharlal Nehru as Chief of General Staff (CGS). Nehru advanced the career of General BM Kaul, a logistics officer who had no place in the general staff leave alone being appointed as CGS. He was later placed in command of a hastily raised Corps to take on the Chinese in the North East Frontier Agency, when 33 Corps was seen as dragging its feet in evicting the Chinese from Thagla Ridge.  

The fallout of favouritism was dissonance in the high command. Competent Generals ‘Timmy’ Thimayya and Thorat were undercut. An inquiry was even set up to target Manekshaw, Kaul’s bête noire. Suitably cowed, the rest of the brass, comprising otherwise competent figures as DK ‘Monty’ Palit – the director military operations - and LP ‘Bogey’ Sen – the head of the Eastern Command – could not put up a credible professional showing at the crunch.

Not only did personalities play a role in all this, but so did perspectives on national security. Nehru – ever the statesman – had to balance development with security. He chose to use alternative means towards national security – hoping to bring China on board diplomatically rather than presiding over an attention and resource-diverting militarisation at the border.

The famous Nehru-Thimayya contretemps illustrates the clash between the two perspectives. While the case in its detail has Thimayya tendering his resignation on the matter of interference in military appointments by Defence Minister Menon, the clash also had an ideational backdrop.

Thimayya, unconvinced that the military kept on a tight budget during the Nehru years could take on the Chinese, was tacitly pushing a policy plank in favour of external balancing involving leaning on the West. Given his socialist background, irascible Defence Minister Krishna Menon, was firmly against forging such relations.

The clash of perspectives went back to Sardar Patel’s famous paper on handling China differently. Patel’s demise left the perspective without a champion, though the military held up its end with General Thorat – in a famous paper of his own - bidding for strengthening of defences in the North East. A like cautionary paper by the Western Command chief, General Daulat Singh, was ignored.

However, that strategy is a two-player game was driven home rather rudely. The Chinese playing hard ball, led Nehru to be assertive on the border. The opposition too set up a clamour. This forced Nehru’s hand in the adoption of an ill-prepared Forward Policy.

Nehru’s dominance in the national security system was such that the military could not carry the day. A cautious policy, in sync with military capabilities, was discontinued. The nepotistic insertion into the higher ranks was to facilitate the military’s adoption of the political perspective on the emerging conflict.

Though Thimayya had also superseded two seniors to the post, he had a war record to back his elevation. He justified his promotion by standing firm on the military’s input into China-related decisions. In the event, his successors proved less forthright. Nehru’s public let down of Thimayya, implying that his resignation was out of pique, rather than on a policy question, had the unintended consequence of making the military – once bitten, twice shy - reticent.

The intelligence arm of the State had Nehru’s ear, articulating a threat perception permissive of a forward policy. The military’s top order, appropriately peopled (VN Thapar having taken over from Thimayya), fell in line. Nehru, as his own foreign minister, set the pace for diplomats. The resulting group-think led to the defeat, in turn casting a shadow on the Nehruvian security perspective.

Rightly, accountability for the debacle rested at the political level, on Nehru’s broad shoulders, taking a toll on his heart. While the take away for politicians was not to interfere with the military, the take away for the military is the von Moltkean idea that the military’s is an autonomous turf and once the military has been given its marching orders, it must be left free to get on with delivering on this without the political and bureaucratic class looking over its shoulder, or, worse, tying its hands.

The problem with the von Moltke’s idea of military autonomy came to fore when the German General Staff operating under the military duo von Hindenberg and Ludendorff lost Germany World War I. Trotting out the ‘stab in the back’ theory, they blamed the civilian side. The blame game had a consequential outcome in post-War German politics, undercutting the successor Weimar Republic and thereby setting the stage for Hitler’s accession and, in turn, World War II.

As a consequence of the Sino-Indian War, India caught a dose of Molkaen thinking. The politician was unwilling to shoulder the burden of accountability. By default, the bureaucratic layer – that did not suffer the ignominy of the 1962 War – gained a buffer role between the two. As popularly depicted, the politician, notionally having the authority but little understanding, and the bureaucrats, usurping the authority but with no accountability, occupied the defence policy space. The military chafed at the bit.

Early in wake of the war, a new equation settled. A military historian informs of the Army taking its own time to retrieve to territories that the Chinese had by then unilaterally withdrawn from, though the government bid for an immediate return. In the 1965 War, though war termination is a political call, the critical input was left to the Army. Later the canard was put out by a scholar-bureaucrat that the Army bid for a ceasefire fearing that it was running out of artillery ammunition.

The political level had a month earlier okayed the Army’s war plan operationalised in September, including opening up the Punjab front. That it played little oversight role is evident in the Air Force learning of the War’s outbreak in scrambling battlefield air interdiction sorties, that in the haste and owing to lack of coordination took a fratricidal opening toll alongside.

More importantly, absent political ownership of favourable war termination decision making, the 1965 War - though fought over Kashmir - turned out strategically inconsequential. Post-War diplomatic-military moves were not thought through to arrive at a sustainable peace in Kashmir, leaving the Army carping thereafter at the loss of Haji Pir. This had telling consequence a quarter century on.  

Another India-Pakistan War soon followed. There is dispute over the apocryphal story of the military’s reluctance on military operations in East Pakistan in the summer of 1971. Apparently, there is no record of a meeting that April in which General Manekshaw is supposed to have colourfully registered a preference of campaign season.

At any rate, India gained time for preparation for the invasion as also a locus standi in a humanitarian intervention. In the interim, India’s instigation of the civil war led up to the genocide, making it culpable to an extent and, to that extent, afoul of international law. No wonder India cited self-defence as its casus belli, though it was into Pakistani territory - as revealed in the recent 50 year observances of the War - some two weeks prior.

Even in the invasion itself, the political expectation - for gaining a proportion of territory in order to emplace a government of national liberation - appears to have deferred to a bottom-up impetus within the military. The plans delivering a political outcome eventuated into a more ambitious one: dismembering neighbour. To lap up the credit, the political leadership latched on to the change once the invasion panned out as it did.

As with the 1965 War termination, though six months elapsed between the war and the peace agreement, there was no plan in place to profit from the neighbour’s dismemberment. Though fought to address the situation in the East, the 1971 War had at its core India’s concern with West Pakistan and Kashmir.

As it turned out, the ‘secret’ clauses of the Simla Agreement in relation to Kashmir failed not only because Pakistan reneged. (Benazir Bhutto, eyewitness at Simla, denied that there were any such secret clauses.) Events in Kashmir two decades on indicate the high long-term cost.

India, in a bid to transcend Pakistan as the undisputed regional power in wake of 1971, upped the military imbalance by conducting the nuclear test and going in for mechanisation. Pakistan, decided to trip India up by its proxy wars, imitative of India of 1971.

The military action in Siachen was another military-instigated operation, serving little political or strategic purpose. It, yet again, set the conditions for another war a decade and half down the line, at Kargil. How much was it influenced by ambition of generals out to get the political principal’s attention is for military sociology to look at. The controversial supersession of General SK Sinha had sent tacit signals from the political class to generals receptive to the same.

The Sri Lankan adventure end-decade needs little elucidation as a case testifying to the civil-military divide in India, wherein the military is left autonomously in its sphere of expertise, while the civilians managed the strategic level with little reference to the military. The two ministers with diplomat background in the current cabinet know more than most on this disjuncture, both having served in Sri Lanka even as the peacekeeping force went about its thankless task at the cost of over 4000 casualties, not counting Sri Lankan Tamils.

A stark illustration of the military’s distinct space is the approach to counter insurgency. The doctrine persuasively reflects on the place of kinetic operations in securing conditions for political activity and governance. Even so, the political prong seldom delivers on the peace processes timely, squandering windows of opportunity to advance political solutions.

The most significant theatre to study the disconnect is Kashmir. The intelligence-led core national security elite is in the lead on peace processes. The military is reduced to bystander. Compensating for loss of salience, in Kashmir, it has taken to demonstrating its relevance by periodic bouts of cheerleading, sometimes with its commanding generals - with a self-styled yen for information operations - in the lead. 

A political solution of sorts is being implemented that requires continuing suppression of Kashmiris. As in Nagaland, the regime’s ideological aversion to a separate flag and Constitution, rightly genuflecting to India’s diversity, holds up solution.

With the Chinese intrusion in Ladakh, a full circle has been completed in the return to 1962. The regime’s game-plan for self-perpetuation in office was to inflate its image as being strong-on-defence. It did this through over-hyping its liberal use of the military instrument in its first tenure.

The military for its part rose to the occasion, whether it was in killing Kashmiri youth (there were at least two years in which there were negligible surrendered and captured militants), trading ordnance on the Line of Control (LC), two surgical strikes each (which, to cynics, were anything but) across the LC and into Myanmar, or competing in transgressions with the Chinese on the Line of Actual Control.

With its ‘propaganda by deed’ and nationalist credentials to back it, it went about reducing the defence budget. Successive years witnessed commentators carping that the defence budget was the ‘lowest as a proportion of the gross domestic product since the 1962 War’. The raising of the Mountain Strike Corps that India could have based its conventional deterrence of China stood aborted.

Mindful more of Kashmir to its electoral calculations based on polarisation in the heartland, it appointed an army chief over the heads of two capable seniors. It went on to successively appoint regime favourites as ‘first among equals’ in the Chiefs of Staff Committee. It is not clear if the brass-hats so favoured chimed in its favour, even on hitherto political questions, either unwarily, on being manipulated or as believers.

There is no record that its China policy received any significant military input. The military was vociferous in the previous administration’s time, when it unilaterally pivoted to China by autonomous adoption of the Two Front War idea. But with the new regime, the military largely continued its Pakistan-centricity.

The Air Force touted its Balakot strikes, with little evidence of any efficacy. It Navy even put a nuclear submarine to sea to pressure Pakistan during that crisis. The Army immersed itself in creating the conditions in Kashmir for the Article 370 parliamentary caper of the home minister to play out. In the event, the home minister’s posturing triggered off the Chinese intrusion.

Even so, the regime allowed the military a continued upping of its game on the China front by transgressions of its own, brought about by better infrastructure. However, the civil-military cleavage kept the military out of the China policy. As with the Forward Policy adoption, there appears to have been no contingency planning as to what to do in case China gets its gander up.

It cannot be that the NSA – known as a Pakistan hawk from his days as a spook there – has the reins of India’s China policy. By implication, it appears that the diplomat with China expertise who caught Narendra Modi’s eye for organising his outreach to the upper caste diaspora in the United States - Dr. S Jaishankar – has corralled the China policy space.

An ‘informal’ summit diplomacy resulted after the Doklam incident. Aware of the intricacies of the Doklam confrontation – and sensibly not self-deluded by its own propaganda that it was an Indian ‘victory’ - the regime has taken to appeasing China.

Seeing a weak Indian hand perhaps in its up-close deconstruction of India’s chief interlocutor, Narendra Modi, China went about ambushing India in Ladakh. Appeasement continues, with calm on the LAC being paid for by Indian claimed land vacated as buffer spaces after military talks.

It emerges then that the lesson of 1962 is that neither placing the military at a distance nor holding it to the breast is any good. Firstly, clear from the two confrontations with China is that an apex military chosen for any yardstick other than professional credibility cannot prove useful.

More importantly, India needs to find its own answer to civil-military relations wherein the military tenders the advice on its area of expertise and mandate forthrightly. At the apex level, the contrived divide between policy and strategy at a higher level and the operational one is untenable. As seen here the military camel is better accommodated in the tent than outside it.

 

 

 PhD. Synopsis

India’s Limited War Doctrine: Structural, Political and Organisational Factors

Background

In the wake of Kargil War India has developed a Limited War doctrine. It is posited that the Indian posture with respect to Pakistan has witnessed a shift from the earlier posture of defensive bias in conventional deterrence to an offensive bias. While India’s earlier doctrine in the post 1971 War period had been a defensive one, organisational and doctrinal innovations in the mid Eighties served to enhance the offensive content of the land warfare doctrine. This was prompted by the necessity to pursue conventional operations under conditions of perceived nuclear asymmetry. This doctrine of conventional deterrence comprising a dissuasive capability along with a counter offensive capability has now moved to an offensive conventional posture in the form of the Cold Start doctrine envisaging Limited War. This thesis examines the impetus to doctrinal change in conventional doctrine to Limited War doctrine brought about by the advent of the nuclear era in the India-Pakistan context.

Doctrinal development in the Army was driven by the military experience since the mid Eighties, that comprised the crisis of 1987 and 1990, internal conflict in Kashmir, the Kargil War of 1999 and the exercise in coercive diplomacy of Operation Parakram in 2001-02. It was also informed by conflicts in the Gulf and Operation Enduring Freedom. Organisational changes and equipment acquisitions prompted by the revolution in military affairs have also occurred in the period. These have led to considerable doctrinal evolution. However, overt nuclearisation has made conflict limitation an overriding imperative. This has led to a doctrine called ‘Cold Start’. This countenances a quick mobilisation followed by conventional advances across a wide front in multiple offensives, advances that are likely of limited depth in light of the nuclear factor.

Limitation has been brought about by the need to avoid triggering the envisaged nuclear thresholds of Pakistan. These are along four dimensions: levels of military attrition, territorial losses, economic viability and internal stability. Concerted offensive action by the Indian military would nudge these thresholds directly and indirectly. The resulting cumulative physical and psychological impact could lower the nuclear retaliation threshold for Pakistan from the perceived high level. To obviate breakdown in nuclear deterrence, India has nuclear deterrence based on ‘assured retaliation’ and ‘assured destruction’ through a massive response. Thus the offensive posture of Cold Start is dovetails neatly into India’s nuclear doctrine.

The change in conventional doctrine is contrary to the logical expectation. In the nuclear age, the popular understanding is that the principal purpose of the military is no longer to win wars but to avert them (Brodie, 1946, p. 76). Thus the offensive posture as evidenced by Cold Start is contrary to the general understanding. This owes in part to India’s adaptation of Brodie’s concept to its purpose and circumstance. India believes nuclear weapons deter nuclear weapons and not war. Therefore there is scope for Limited War despite the nuclearisation of the subcontinent. This follows the Cold War sequence in which Limited War theorising appeared only after the Korean War. Secondly, India is a status quo and stronger power in the regional India-Pakistan dyad.  This should have logically led to a defensive doctrine. That this logic has not been borne out, calls for an explanation in terms of its origin and impact. This, the thesis hopes to achieve through a case study on the change in defence doctrine noted.

What accounts for the change to an offensive conventional doctrine? The origins can be discerned at the three separate levels of analysis. At the structural level the security situation impacted India’s strategic posture. A perspective has it that acquisition of a nuclear capability emboldened Pakistan to launch a proxy war in Kashmir and thereafter provoke a border war in Kargil. India was also forced to respond with restraint both at Kargil and during Operation Parakram. So as to exploit the space between sub-conventional level and the nuclear threshold, it posited Limited War in the form of Cold Start doctrine. The other dimension of the origin of Limited War doctrine lies in developments at the ‘unit level’. At the national level, there was a change towards a more ‘proactive’ strategic culture in India. Political developments particularly of aggressive nationalism required matching developments in projection of growing Indian power capabilities. This eventuated in the Cold Start doctrine. Another prominent perspective is that nuclearisation has indeed rendered conventional operations problematic owing to the prospect of escalation. This has resulted in the largest service seeking a fresh doctrine to maintain its premier self-image and standing in the nuclearised context. This perspective looks ‘inside the box’ at the interaction between service culture, inter-service rivalry and organisational processes that has resulted in the new doctrine. In assessing the primary motivation, the thesis would be able to validate strategic and organisational theory in their relative merits.

Review of Literature

There are two bodies of literature of interest. One is theoretical and the other South Asia specific. The theoretical body of literature of interest can be divided into three types – deterrence related strategic theory; theories on national strategic culture; and  organisation theory dealing with organisational culture and process and the bureaucratic politics model.

The strategic literature of relevance reflects on types of nuclear deterrence (Freedman, 1981); distinction between the various types of nuclear use as first strike, decapitating and second strike (Freedman, 2003); and the relationship between deterrence and compellence (Schelling, 1967), and has largely been produced in the context of the Cold War (Paret, 1986). Nuclear and strategic theory covers ‘deterrence by punishment’ and ‘deterrence by denial’ (Snyder, 1958), strategic coercion (Freedman, 1998), and Limited War (Osgood, 1957). Theory relevant to the second level of analysis – at the unit level – focuses on the aspect of national strategic culture. With respect to India the landmark works are of George Tanham, Cohen and Rosen. Their work has been taken forward by Shekhar Gupta (1995), Tellis (1997, 2000), Mattoo et al. (1996), Jaswant Singh (1999) and Karnad (2002). The third and last strand of the thesis, focusing on the organisational level, is within the superpower context, in terms of bureaucratic politics over budget and nuclear weapons between the armed services and the defence and state bureaucracies (Halperin, 1974, Allison, 1971), and outside the Cold War context (Legro, 1995; Kier, 1997). The second stream is South Asia specific that approaches regional strategic developments either through the prism of theory (Sridharan, 2007; Rajagopalan, 2004) and a policy relevant prism (Kanwal, 2001).

Nuclear doctrinal thinking in the context of the Cold War evolved with developments in the strategic sphere, particularly of nuclear weapons by the two super powers (Freedman, 1989). The shift from ‘massive retaliation’ of the fifties to ‘flexible response’ of the Sixties has been discussed widely (Friedberg, 1980). The impact of the Korean War was in development of Limited War theorising (Osgood, 1979). Works discussing doctrine in the pre-nuclear (Kier, 1997) and nuclear age (Allison and Halperin, 1972) approached it from both strategic (Posen, 1984) and organisational theory perspectives (Pfaltzgarffer and Raanan, 1984). Thus there is a pre-existing theoretical backdrop to the study.

With respect to South Asia, in general the two doctrines – nuclear and conventional – have been dealt with separately in strategic literature, perhaps on account of the nuclear aspect being deemed in the civilian - political and scientific - domain, while conventional doctrine has been seen to be the professional concern of the military (Army Training Command, 1998; 2004). There is thus limited thinking on defence doctrine taking the nuclear and conventional doctrines conjointly (Kanwal, 2008). Also there is little on the bureaucratic politics that has accompanied these changes. The Army-Air Force standoff on the issue of integrated commands and Chief of Defence Staff is an example of the internal dynamics impacting doctrine in the military. There is evidence of doctrinal competition between the services from the fact that these have been released in an autonomous fashion and independently by each service. A logical way would have been to begin jointly and then arrive at service doctrines as an outflow of the joint doctrine. Instead the contrary has occurred and it is only now that the Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff is working towards integrating the three doctrines. This proves that there is scope for a gainful study of the institutional element in doctrine generation as proposed in this thesis.

There is considerably more writing on nuclear doctrine (Tellis 2001; Karnad 2002; Perkovich, 1999). These generally reflect not so much on the aspect of the military utility of nuclear weapons as much as on deterrence aspects dealing with ensuring these are not used. In such writings on the nuclear issue, the main focus has continually shifted as connected questions have been encountered over time. At the forefront earlier was the status of the ‘nuclear option’ (Mattoo and Cortwright, 1996). In the mid-Nineties, the impact of the anti-proliferation agenda in the form of the CTBT on India’s open nuclear option was the concern. After Pokhran II, the focus shifted to the type of nuclear deterrence for India such as ‘force-in-being’ (Tellis, 2001). Also there was a surfeit of writing on the manner India had got to the stage of nuclearisation, particularly in the form of a narrative history of the process and the strategic compulsions that informed it at various stages. The Draft was discussed thread bear critically (Chari, 2000) and also in spirited anti-nuclear polemics (Vanaik and Bidwai, 1999). Discussion on conventional doctrine was largely along the lines of how conventional doctrine has declined due to budget constraints in a liberalising India, thereby enabling Pakistani sub-conventional war in Kashmir.

The thesis would not require following the well-tread route of narrating the developments leading up to the Indian deterrent. This ground has been covered comprehensively by Perkovich (1999) and Raj Chengappa (2000). While the former has a wider historical canvas, the latter brings the focus on the immediate picture through interviews of several key players. Prekovich’s book India’s Nuclear Bomb has concentrated on the manner India arrived at and kept the nuclear option open. It provides a wealth of information and brought out for the first time Indian armed forces engagement and input in the nuclear question. His important contribution is in highlighting that security considerations alone did not determine India’s nuclear path.

The nature of the deterrent has been reflected on in greatest of detail by Karnad (2002) and Tellis (2001) owing to Indian glasnost after the nuclear tests and the high level access of the two authors. Both adopt divergent approaches. Karnad in his book Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security prefers India to move beyond to a tous azimuts capability to include a strategic triad, thermonuclear weapons and ICBMs. He rightly discerns the effect of disproportionality as necessitating a ‘flexible response’ doctrine. Tellis in India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture examines India’s strategic choices in the future strategic environment in Asia and places India’s nuclear arsenal somewhere between ‘recessed deterrent’ of the Nineties and a ‘ready arsenal’ through a process of ‘creeping weaponisation’. Other works of lesser length and significance of this genre, discussing the nature of the nuclear deterrent in term of numbers of warheads required, command and control arrangements etc. are the earlier one by Brigadier Nair’s Nuclear India (1992) and Rear Admiral Menon’s A Nuclear Strategy for India (2000).  

Limited War thinking was developed to offset Pakistan taking advantage of the recessed deterrence prevailing at the nuclear level. It was energised by Pakistani military action in Kargil and sponsored terrorism that breached Indian tolerance threshold in the parliament attack case; revealing it as a strategic problem that overt nuclearisation had not quite vacated (Singh, 2000). Lastly, has been reflection on India’s Cold Start doctrine that can be taken as operationalisation of the Limited War concept (Tarapore, 2005).   

The relative lack of writings on the impact on conventional operations of nuclearisation can be attributed to the military being out of the nuclear policy loop for most part, as also secrecy surrounding military matters in general. The most prominent contributor to nuclear thinking was General Sundarji. In 1980, he had organised a postal seminar as Commandant of the College of Combat on the question of impact of nuclear asymmetry on conventional deterrence (College of Combat, 1981). His major contribution is however in holding forth on the quid pro quo and the quid pro quo plus option (Sundarji, 1992). These responses not amounting to ‘massive retaliation’ have apparently been acceded to by India, as can be inferred from the succinct doctrine that emerged in 2003. Sundarji’s forward looking thinking on the changed political and conventional operations context of nuclearisation has not been accepted. Sanjay Badri-Maharaj (2000) was the first to identify a shift in India’s conventional doctrine away from the Sundarji era’s conventional doctrine of bisecting Pakistan at its midriff.

The writings on Limited War doctrine that emerged in wake of Kargil War were on the availability of a window between war outbreak and the nuclear threshold which could be exploited for conventional operations (Malik, 2004). Such writing was in the form of a building of a rationale to undercut the otherwise logical and theoretically justified position that nuclearisation should lead to greater caution if not a peace dividend. The latter was denied as a possibility with the failure of the Lahore peace process to avert the Kargil conflict. Thus it came to fore that in the India-Pakistan equation, Pakistan, though a weaker power, believed that nuclearisation had given it greater room to work its revisionist aims. To ‘call Pakistan’s bluff’, Limited War theorising was initiated by the then Defence Minister George Fernandes (Fernandes, 2000) with the logic that nuclear weapons deter nuclear weapons and not war itself.

Operation Parakram generated the next round of thinking (Kalyanaraman, 2002). The major lesson learnt was that strike corps were very slow in mobilising and were likely to breach the likely nuclear threshold of Pakistan. This was best brought out in a book on the operation, The War Unfinished by Lt Gen VK Sood and Pravin Swahney (2003). The drawbacks of the operation and subsequent military exercises informed the formulation of the Cold Start doctrine. Subsequent writing has dwelt on the problem areas not only from the Indian point of view but also from Pakistan’s. The focus has now shifted onto the conventional field (Ladwig, 2008).

India, to get out of the strategic cul de sac of subconventional proxy war launched against it, has attempted to bring its conventional strength back into the reckoning. In doing this it has to contend with an uncertain Pakistani nuclear threshold. Even if high, the response to the same has to be worked through in advance. Nuclear doctrine therefore cannot be taken in isolation but has to be clubbed with conventional doctrine. Karnad has discussed the implications of a proactive conventional doctrine in his ‘Sialkot grab’ scenario (2005). He advocates placing Pakistan, through successful proactive conventional operations, in such a position that any resort to nuclear ‘first use’ would only be on its own people or against India counter value targets. This would be an impossible choice that could stay Pakistan’s ‘first use’ option. Karnad - having the advantage over Tellis of seeing his book being released after the crisis in 2002 - has influenced subsequent thinking in favour of ‘proactive’ conventional operations.

The dangers have been dealt with by many authors on both sides of the border (Raghavan, 2001; Mazari, 2002 and 2004; Khan, 2004; Lodhi, 2001). India’s nuclear power is seen in geo-strategic terms with respect to the balance of power with China. With respect to Pakistan, writers as Kanwal (2008) and Rajagopalan (2005) believe that, with the nuclear threshold being high, resort to nuclear weapons is less likely. India’s nuclear weapons are to be used in a retaliatory strike promising unacceptable damage on break down of deterrence.  Kanwal, in his Indian Army Vision 20:20 (2008) advocates a massive nuclear response even if Pakistan goes in for nuclear first use in a defensive mode in its own territory. In his Shaping the Arsenal (2000) he has attributed this to the pressure of Indian public opinion which he sees as unwilling to be placated with anything but dismemberment of Pakistan on any form of nuclear ‘first use’ by it.

This is in keeping with the popular understanding of India’s nuclear doctrine as being one of ‘assured retaliation’ and ‘assured destruction’; authenticated by the press release from the Cabinet Committee on Security on 04 Jan 2003 confirming operationalisation of the nuclear doctrine. This doctrine has a more offensive content than the Draft Nuclear Doctrine (1999) that informed it. In particular it has diluted the No First Use clause through countenancing nuclear first use against a ‘major attack’ by either of the other two weapons of mass destruction – chemical and biological weapons. The second is that the punitive retaliation has been promised to be ‘massive’. This is a change from the Draft Nuclear Doctrine in which the term ‘massive’ was not mentioned, but the term ‘sufficient’ had been used.  There is even an impetus to a move away from No First Use with a National Security Advisory Board recommending it. This offensive bias in the nuclear doctrine complements the offensive intent of the conventional doctrine. This is apparently designed to bolster deterrence.   

The thesis shall trace the origin of the offensive bias in the doctrine with respect to the conventional doctrine at three levels of analysis – structural, political and organisational.  While the strategic motivation has been discussed above in some detail, the impetus at the unit level anchored in changes in internal politics and internal to the organisation remains.

The foremost internal political development since the early Nineties has been in the rise of right wing politics in India in the form of Hindutva philosophy. This has led to an assertive nationalism. Growing Indian economic power brought about by liberalisation and military strength has led to an increasingly confident India seeking a power position going beyond being a regional player to a global power. The culmination of this trend has been in the nuclear tests, followed eventually by the break through Indo-US nuclear deal. This journey has been traced in works by Cohen (2001), Sunil Khilnani (1997), C Raja Mohan (2003) and Sumit Ganguly (2003).

Posen (1984, p. 33) has characterised doctrines as differing in their offensive-defensive-deterrent bias, degree of innovation and their level of integration with the political objectives of grand strategy. By this characterisation Cold Start would be an offensive doctrine with the change indicating innovativeness in the military. It can be questioned with respect to integration for it has not received political imprimatur nor support from sister services.

Posen has sought explanation for doctrine in ‘balance of power’ theory, being covered with respect to Cold Start under the discussion on strategic circumstance that has prompted it, and ‘organization theory’. Organisation theory has it that the military seeks autonomy, reduction of uncertainty and innovates when confronted with failure. Cold Start appears to substantiate the theory in that it is an attempt to impose order on a crisis by seizing the initiative. It favours autonomy for the military by restricting the choices of the political head to the offensive and, lastly, the innovation has redress to perceived shortcomings in coping with the earlier two crises. Kier (1997, p. 5) says that the choice between offensive and defensive doctrines is a product of the interaction between constraints in the domestic political arena and the military’s organisational culture. She question whether doctrine is responsive to the security environment as inaccurate and favours a cultural approach instead. There is thus a theoretical basis for approaching Cold Start doctrine through the organisational theory perspective. The organisational theory lens has been adopted by Rajagopalan (2007) in his study of Indian Army’s counter insurgency doctrine. The same can serve to understand changes in its conventional war doctrine too. In doing so the thesis shall be filling in the existing gap in literature looking ‘into the box’.

Definition, Rationale and Scope of Study

Policy, strategy and doctrine are liable to mistaken interchangeable use. Barry Posen (1984) and Rajagopalan (2007) have discussed the differences. Policy is the overarching set of aims and parameters such as on India’s nuclear status - whether and when should India exercise the nuclear option. Doctrine is a set of guidelines for action such as ‘retaliation only’ and ‘assured retaliation’ with respect to nuclear doctrine. Strategy is an ends-means choice within the terms of reference of policy, in consonance with and not necessarily confined by doctrine: such as the optimum targeting sets for nuclear retaliation – counter value or mix - on breakdown of deterrence. The distinction between the conventional and nuclear doctrine is well understood and so is the distinction between deterrence by punishment and by denial. The difference between offensive doctrines and defensive doctrines would require to be treated separately.  

In the Indian case, with respect to conventional doctrine, an offensive posture has been adopted, which bespeaks of strengthening deterrence in so far it is to dissuade the adversary from continuation of the proxy war. The two doctrines - nuclear doctrine in conjunction with conventional forces launched aggressively under the tenets of Cold Start doctrine - lend themselves to interpretation as an offensive posture adopted by India. At the structural level, this has been necessitated to compel Pakistan from desisting from its sub-conventional proxy war.  At the next level, the impetus can be attributed to the advent of cultural nationalism in internal politics.  This has led to an assertive Indian foreign and security policy at the unit level. The other possible explanation at the organisational level is that perceived inability of the Army to bring its conventional power to bear in the Kargil conflict and the Operation Parakram crisis has prompted an institutional rethink on doctrine.  The rationale of the study is to highlight the change and understand the impetus behind it at the three levels of analysis – structural, political and organisational.  

Of theoretical interest, to be pursued in the case study, is the manner of the change, its intellectual antecedents, the processes involved, drivers and logic. How a doctrine acquires political imprimatur in democratic dispensation would be traced, perhaps for the first time. This would be done in the examination of the impetus to doctrinal change at the unit level in terms of impact of internal political change on national strategic culture. It has been averred that though the preceding Limited War conceptualisation had the benefit of political direction, its operationalisation in the form of the Cold Start doctrine has not yet been politically approved. The change to a more permissive nuclear doctrine has been approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security. That this has not been done with respect to the conventional doctrine indicates a belief that conventional operations are the military’s ambit. This may not be accurate in the nuclear age with the escalatory ladder being tightly coupled. The possible move towards compellence would be the arena for future direction of study suggested by the thesis.

The study restricts itself to the India-Pakistan equation as the Cold Start doctrine is not applicable to China. Airpower doctrine, naval doctrine and sub-conventional doctrine would find mention in the consideration in so far as these impacted Cold Start formulation. The period covered is post Kargil when Limited War doctrine was formally formulated. In so far as other wars engaged in by India have been limited, their limitation was fortuitous or due to lack of employable capability. The Kargil conflict, the first in the nuclear age, was kept consciously limited and therefore gave rise to deliberations on Limited War. The Cold Start doctrine and well publicised exercises with troops since then provide material for focusing the study.

Research Problem/Question and Hypothesis

The chief purpose of military establishments in the nuclear era is to avert wars. Given this as ‘commonsense’ and in light of India being a status quo power with a relative power advantages, the expectation of India after nuclearisation would have been for continuation of a defensive deterrent doctrine. The movement has however been towards potentially offensive doctrines. The critical question therefore is: Why has India gone in for an offensive land warfare doctrine despite nuclearisation? Potential explanations are at the structural, the unit and the organisational levels.

At the structural level, continuing security threats emanating from a military dominated Pakistan negate the possibility of exclusion of a military response. There is therefore a continuing perceived utility of military force into the nuclear age. This was conceptually arrived at in the post Kargil period as Limited War concept. However, operationalisation of the Limited War doctrine awaited the formulation of the Cold Start doctrine in the post Operation Parakram period. The expectation is that an offensive posture would reinforce deterrence. The hypothesis at the structural level is: The change in India’s land warfare doctrine has been to reinforce conventional deterrence in face of continuing external security threats.

At the next level of analysis, the unit level, the change in national strategic culture has been to a more assertive, power oriented national security and foreign policy. This owes to strategic developments, to include steady accretion in India’s economic might, acquisition of nuclear capability, relative advantages in conventional power and to the changed complexion of internal politics. Following from this the hypothesis at this level is: The change in India’s land warfare doctrine owes to evolution of Indian strategic culture.  

The general understanding is that utility of conventional force is threatened by obsolescence in a nuclear age. In giving itself an offensive conventional doctrine, the Army has retained its institutional interests into the nuclear age and its self image as premier service. It is also an assertion of autonomy from civilian control in an area in which the Army considers it can exercise its professional prerogative. The hypothesis arising in the organisational level is: The change in India’s land warfare doctrine has been to preserve the Army’s institutional interest into the nuclear age.

The hypothesis at the three levels of analysis are restated below:

Hypothesis 1: The change in India’s land warfare doctrine has been to reinforce conventional deterrence in face of continuing external security threats.

Hypothesis 2: The change in India’s land warfare doctrine owes to evolution of Indian strategic culture.  

Hypothesis 3: The change in India’s land warfare doctrine has been to preserve the Army’s institutional interest into the nuclear age.

 

Research Methods

The study seeks to explain the shift from deterrence based on dissuasion to an offensive posture as signified by the change in the land warfare doctrine of India. It would first require to prove there has indeed been a movement in the doctrine and to identify the nature of the same. This can be done through a historical survey of doctrinal development in Indian Army. The earlier position and the fresh position would have to be contrasted to highlight the change. Next it would require seeking a theoretically informed explanation for change in the dependent variable - doctrine – in manipulating independent variables at the structural and organisational levels – security threat and institutional interest respectively.

The case study method has been adopted so as to provide scope for an elaborate description of doctrinal change. This would entail studying strategic literature, particularly in-service publications, on the issue and its justification. Most illuminating would be access to dissertations of the officers on courses at the Defence Services Staff College, Army War College and National Defence College for the purpose. 

Doctrine is a historically shrouded issue. However, there has been a doctrinal effervescence lately to meet the requirement of transparency in a democratic society, the expansion of the media and its post Kargil interest in military affairs, and information war requirements. In nuclear matters there is the additional requirement of communication to the adversary of the doctrine to avert misperception and bolster credibility. There has also been a proliferation of think tanks and publications and expansion of the retired fraternity. There is thus an opening up that could be advantageously used in data collection for the case study.

Primary sources comprise annual reports of the Ministries, press releases, speeches and statements by personages holding high office and official publications of the services. Media reports on the exercises conducted by army formations; commentaries of Pakistani strategists; strategic commentaries by noted defence watchers and retired officers; and internet available strategic literature from think tanks are additional secondary sources.

Tentative Chapterisation

Chapter 1 – Introduction. This would cover the background, project the broad issue and need for the study, conduct a literature review to bring out the gaps, present the hypothesis, elaborate on the methodology, definitions and scope of the study.

Chapter 2 –Accounting for Doctrinal Change. It will take a historical look at the evolution of Indian conventional and nuclear doctrines and bring out the changes in conventional doctrine. It will discuss processes of doctrine formulation and change.

Chapter 3 – Structural Factors. This will look at India’s strategic predicament and how the land warfare doctrine has adapted to deal with it.

Chapter 4 – Political Factors. The chapter will discuss the rise of India and the impact of this and changes in internal political thought on Indian strategic culture.

Chapter 5 – Organisational Factors. This will draw on organisational process and bureaucratic politics models to account for the change in doctrine.

Chapter 6 – Conclusion. An assessment will be done of the relative validity of the three hypotheses based on the three different drivers of doctrine. This will help highlight primary motivations and possible directions for further study.

Bibliography - Deleted. 

Full text of PhD is at - https://www.dropbox.com/s/p3qe0obnat22iac/full%20text.pdf?dl=0