Download the PhD text from https://www.dropbox.com/s/p3qe0obnat22iac/full%20text.pdf?dl=0

of which the abstract submitted with the PhD is below: 

ABSTRACT: Ph.D. THESIS

 

INDIA’S LIMITED WAR DOCTRINE:

STRUCTURAL, POLITICAL AND ORGANISATIONAL FACTORS

Introduction

 

In the wake of the Kargil War, India developed a Limited War doctrine.  The doctrine has evolved from preceding military developments going back over four decades. The study set out to examine the impetus behind India’s conventional doctrines in light of nuclearisation. The puzzle that this dissertation has set out to address has been: Why has India gone in for a proactive offensive doctrine despite nuclearisation? The understanding prior to nuclearisation was that deterrence in light of the nuclear backdrop would make conventional contest obsolescent. Strategic stability would result in conflict resolution and an outbreak of peace. India’s formidable power indices in the region and its status as a power without any extra-territorial ambitions could have reasonably been expected to have combined to make for a deterrent military doctrine. Instead, there has been a turn to a more offensive conventional doctrine by India, redolent with compellence. This departure of reality from expectations prompted the research question: ‘What accounts for the change to an offensive conventional doctrine?’ Thus, the aim of the dissertation was to understand the impetus behind development of India’s Limited War doctrine

 

In the chronological narrative, inception of the doctrine is at a conference at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in wake of the Kargil War. The Kargil War had brought home to the Indian military that there was a conventional space between the subconventional and nuclear threshold for military exploitation. Even as conceptualisation of the change was underway, the ‘twin peaks’ crisis intervened. The limitations of India’s ‘all or nothing’ approach that had hither to been dependent on strike corps being launched after mobilisation was found wanting. The 2004 document was an outcome of the ‘lessons learnt’. It would appear from such a reading that structural level factors, principally threat perception, were responsible for the change. However, there is a need to go investigate further given that during the period of development of the doctrine certain changes in India’s strategic culture were occurring, informed in the main by the advent of cultural nationalism. The nationalist impulse favoured an assertive India at home in the creation of power and exercise of force. The impact has been in an offensive turn to doctrine when mediated by a military organisational predisposed to the offensive. There is also the need to look ‘into the box’. At the organisational level is the military as part of the wider the national security establishment. Overt nuclearisation of 1998 had transformed the verities of this complex. The doctrinal output in the aftermath of outbreak of the nuclear age in the subcontinent can therefore equally legitimately be explicated as a result of organisational impulse at self-preservation in first place and secondly, of extension in terms role expansion. Given the coincidence of three possible explanations, the dissertation adopted a ‘multi-level and multidimensional approach’ to understand the factors behind change.

 

India’s Limited War doctrine

 

The doctrine, in nutshell, countenances a quick mobilisation followed by multiple offensives across a wide front. The doctrine caters for the changed nuclear reality by envisaging that military advances would be to limited depth in light of possible nuclear thresholds. This study examines the nuclear dangers that attend even such limitation. These escalatory possibilities give rise to the questioning of the doctrine and consequently as to how and why it has been arrived at. Limitation has been brought about by the need to avoid triggering the envisaged nuclear thresholds of Pakistan. These are taken to be along four dimensions: military attrition, territorial losses, economic viability and internal stability. Concerted offensive action by the Indian military would simultaneously nudge all four thresholds directly and indirectly. The cumulative physical and psychological impact could unhinge and lower the nuclear retaliation threshold. To obviate such breakdown in nuclear deterrence, India’s nuclear deterrence is based on ‘assured retaliation’, with the proviso that such reaction could well be of higher order or ‘massive’ levels. It would appear that the promise of ‘unacceptable damage’ is to heighten the adversary’s nuclear threshold in order to provide space for the offensive posture of Cold Start. This explains India’s adaptation of the nuclear deterrence concept to its purpose and circumstance. India believes nuclear weapons deter nuclear weapons and not war. Thus, there appears scope for war, albeit a Limited War. Nevertheless, learning and reflection have contributed to a move away from Limited War towards the end of the last decade. This recent distancing from Cold Start indicates that there has finally been an intellectual adaptation to the imperatives of the nuclear age.  

 

Research question and hypothesis

 

The answer to the key question (‘What accounts for the change to an offensive conventional doctrine?’) can be discerned at the separate ‘levels of analysis’. These are systemic level, state level, of the organisation and that of the individual decision maker. Adopting this approach to strategic analysis, the dissertation attempts to find the impulse for doctrinal change in India at three levels, the individual level being excluded. The study follows the inductive approach.

 

At the structural level, the regional security situation has impacted India’s strategic posture. At this level, primarily was the threat posed by Pakistan, India’s revisionist neighbour. Given its revisionist aims and weak power status, Pakistan went nuclear covertly. This has accounted for its venturesome in prosecuting proxy war. India was consequently forced to respond with restraint, both at Kargil and during Operation Parakram. Emulating Pakistan, it reworked its doctrine to exploit the space between sub-conventional level and the nuclear threshold for conventional operations. This was in accord with the tenets of Limited War concept. The expectation is that an offensive posture would reinforce deterrence.

 

The second level of analysis is the ‘unit’ level. At the national level, there has been a change towards an assertive strategic culture in India. Political developments, particularly advent of ‘cultural nationalism’ more sensitive to national security, has been consequential for this change. Concurrent developments in terms of growing power capabilities through economic liberalization, acquisition of nuclear capability and positioning of India as an Asian power and potential global player, have led to evolution in strategic culture. The link between the national level political developments and changes in doctrine is provided by the intervening organisational culture. The culture permeating the organisation is a professional one, valuing the warrior ethic. It privileges conventional war fighting and preparedness. Together, the change in strategic culture and a pre-existing offensive organisational culture account for the proactive offensive doctrine. 

 

At the next lower level, that of the organisation, nuclearisation rendered conventional operations problematic due to prospects of escalation. The general understanding is that utility of conventional force is threatened by obsolescence in a nuclear age. Limited War thinking has helped keep the armed forces relevant into the nuclear age. It has enabled all three Services to seek a fresh mandate in light of the nuclearised backdrop. This has benefits for institutional interest such as maintaining respective self-image, relative salience in the nuclearised context and autonomy from intrusive civilian control. This perspective looks ‘inside the box’, at the interaction between Service culture, inter-Service rivalry and organisational processes giving rise to the new doctrine.

 

The hypotheses that emerge at the three levels of analysis are:

 

• The structural level: The change in India’s military doctrine has been due to continuing external security threats.

 

• The unit level: The change in India’s military doctrine owes to evolution of Indian strategic culture. 

 

• The organisational level: The change in India’s military doctrine has been to preserve the military’s institutional interest.

 

Layout of the study

 

The conceptual layout of the dissertation is as per the levels of analysis. This has dictated its chapterisation. Chapter 2 is analytical in dealing with the doctrines in question, the Cold Start doctrine in particular. It is descriptive in tracing doctrinal change over the past four decades in a historical look at the evolution of Indian conventional and nuclear doctrine. It seeks to establish the shift from a defensive strategic doctrine to a proactive one. It also discusses processes of doctrine formulation and change in the Services. It reflects on the conventional-nuclear interface that is at the heart of Limited War concept and doctrine. In Chapter 3 on the ‘Structural Factor’, India’s regional strategic predicament is dealt with to bring out how land warfare doctrine in particular has adapted. The change in threat perceptions over time, brought on largely due to Pakistan’s proxy war, is discussed. The effects of the nuclearisation in emboldening Pakistan are studied in their impact on Indian doctrine, both strategic and military. Chapter 4 is on the ‘political factor’ at the unit level. It draws on cultural theory to argue that strategic culture has evolved under influence of changes in the regional security environment and internal political developments in India. Since it is difficult to trace impact of strategic culture on doctrine directly, the intervening variable of organisational culture has been incorporated. An organisational culture that privileges an offensive warrior ethic lends itself to strategic assertion. This is found reflected in the more expansive doctrines the military has engaged with over the past decade.  The fifth chapter on the organisational factor draws on organisational process and bureaucratic politics models to account for the change in doctrine. The concluding chapter carries an assessment of the relative validity of the three hypotheses based on the three drivers of doctrine at differing levels – structural, unit and organisational. The chapter seeks the primary impetus behind doctrinal change in India.

 

Parameters

 

The study restricts the scope to the India-Pakistan equation. The ‘Cold Start’ doctrine is not applicable to China, even though the Limited War concept has applicability to that front. It is inconceivable that either state would engage in a wider conflict in light of potential of war to derail their very promising economic trajectories. Discussions on airpower doctrine, naval doctrine and sub-conventional doctrine are included to make this a study one of military doctrine, as against more narrowly focussed on land warfare doctrine. ‘Cold Start’, though an Army doctrine, serves as a peg for the discussion. The period covered is from 1971 War to bring out the doctrinal changes from a defensive doctrine of the seventies to a deterrent doctrine in the eighties. The quasi compellent doctrine of developed over the last decade is thus placed in the context of its evolution.

 

The case study method has been adopted so as to provide scope for an elaborate - ‘thick’ - description of doctrinal change. A multi-disciplinary approach straddling strategic studies, international relations, domestic politics and military sociology is inescapable. This entails studying strategic literature, particularly in-service publications for thinking on Limited War and its justification, and corresponding commentary output of the strategic community. The Cold Start doctrine is traced elliptically through well-publicised exercises with troops and the plethora of commentaries on it since. Illuminating thinking within the Services has been done through access to dissertations of officers on courses at the Army War College (AWC), Mhow, and National Defence College (NDC), New Delhi. The War College Journal (earlier Combat Journal) and the USI Journal have also served to access Service opinion. The interview technique for data collection has not been used since the thesis is concerned with doctrine that is currently operational in the Services. It is for this reason that the individual level that is taken as the lowest level of analysis, has not been touched on in this dissertation.

 

Reviewing the drivers

 

The structural factor

 

In realist theory, the world order is taken anarchic and power balancing is the manner states ensure their survival and security. This is in the form of internal balancing, in which the internal potential of the state is leveraged, and external balancing, in which alignments amounting at times to alliances are forged to offset threats. Military power is consequential in such balancing. Strategic doctrine lends the power orientation to a state by determining its external posture. This places the state along a defensive-compellence continuum. The location of the state on this shapes the creation, deployment and employment of military power. The function of military doctrine is to lend coherence to the military instrument of power. In effect, strategic doctrine of a state determines its military doctrine, with strategic doctrine being the political level approach to power and its instrumentality. The independent variable is at the structural level in terms of the prevalent power equations and corresponding threat perception. Strategic doctrine is the intervening variable and military doctrine is the dependent variable.

 

The threat posed by Pakistan has been manifest at the subconventional level over the last three decades.  In the eighties there was also the apprehension that Pakistan could follow up its subconventional proxy war with conventional war. In response, India’s strategic doctrine moved from defensive in the seventies to deterrence in the eighties with mechanisation. India’s military doctrine was increasingly in favour of the offensive to the extent by the first edition of the written doctrine in 1998, it discoursed on an intention to fight the war on enemy territory. By the end of the eighties recessed deterrence was in place. This made India’s mechanised advantage recede, though military doctrine did not move correspondingly. This lack of movement in military doctrine owed to the military being out of the nuclear loop, the assumption that nuclear deterrence based on counter value targeting would hold and an internal fixation with counter insurgency over the nineties. It was only with over nuclearisation and the Kargil War that the military was forced to contend with an obsolescent military doctrine. This was impelled by a movement in strategic posture from deterrence to coercion and quasi-compellence as demonstrated by Operation Parakram. It was only in wake of Operation Parakram that the military formulated the Limited War doctrine, discerning a window below the nuclear threshold to bring conventional advantages to bear. The current strategic doctrine goes by the term strategy of deterrence. This implies a reversion to deterrence, but one refurbished by heightening defence budgets over the decade. The direction of the future is a movement away from Limited War doctrine, since this is seen as potentially disruptive of the national economic trajectory. The military is therefore contemplating contingency operations, with Limited War as a possibility brought on by Pakistani reaction.

 

The political factor

 

The next lower level of analysis is the unit level. Cultural theory has it that there are three cultures to be contended with at this level: political culture, strategic culture and organisational culture. Political culture is a site of ideological and intellectual competition between strategic elites. It determines control over the levers of the state. 
This considerably involved concept has not been gone into in this dissertation from point of view of retention of focus.  Instead, strategic culture has been taken as the independent variable, organisational culture the intervening variable and military doctrine as the dependent variable.

 

The George Tanham thesis (1992, 1996) had it that India lacked a strategic culture and to the extent it did have one it was defensive. Kanti Bajpai (2002) characterizes Indian strategic culture as collage-like in subsuming multiple strategic subcultures: Nehruvian, neoliberal and hyper-nationalist. India’s early post-independence period was of ascendance of the Nehruvian paradigm that relied on internationalism and diplomacy rather than self-interest narrowly defined and military power. It was followed by a turn to a more assertive and pragmatic strategic culture in the form of the Indira doctrine. The strategic culture privileged self-interest defined in terms of power. Changes in India’s political culture can be traced to the early eighties with the advent of cultural nationalism. The political ascendance of the conservative nationalist forces enabled India’s overt nuclearisation. A cultural theoretical interpretation would have it that this has less to do with strategic appreciation but equally if not more to do with a sense of identity, concept of the national self and prestige. Even as political culture has witnessed the shift in centre of gravity of politics from the left to the right in the transition from the socialist to the liberalization era, the strategic culture too has been under change. There has been a movement to greater assertion of power. This was clearly visible in the eighties and accounted for India’s seeming overreach. In the nineties, the assertiveness of strategic culture was less externally directed and more internally directed in India’s military predominant tackling of internal problems. Nuclearisation was a result in part of an assertive strategic culture, unwilling to subordinate itself to imposition of a global non-proliferation regime. Persistence of the Pakistani challenge in face of this assertive turn to strategic culture resulted in an offensive strategic culture. This explains the strategic doctrine of quasi compellence to cope with the Pakistan challenge over the turn of the century.

 

Organisational culture in the Indian case has all along been receptive to an assertive strategic culture. This can be seen in the civil-military tensions surrounding the Nehruvian doctrine even as it unfolded prior to the 1962 War. The loss in the war only deepened organisational cultural proclivities in favour of use of force purposefully and forcefully. The 1971 War was the climax and its validation. An offensive bias has therefore been a cultural trait of the military, even in face of the static, defensive mindset brought on by the notion that no loss of territory was politically acceptable. Therefore, when political level changes impacted strategic culture, the military made the conventional option usable despite nuclearisation since there was a congruence between strategic culture and organisational culture. It helped end the impunity enjoyed by Pakistan’s recourse to the stability/instability paradox. This resulted in the Limited War doctrine countenancing proactive offensives. Therefore it can be said that change in strategic culture towards a more assertive one over the past three decades, mediated by an amenable organisational culture, has led to the offensive doctrine. This has validated the hypothesis, limited to noting the correspondence.

 

The Organisational factor

 

The independent variable in the case study has been taken as organisational interest with the dependent variable being doctrine. Organisational or institutional interests include survival, autonomy, scope of role, budgets, prestige, relative salience, control of environment etc. Organisational process is geared to facilitating these for the organisation. The processes and the internal disharmony have been reflected on in detail to draw up a more accurate picture of the internal reality of the military. This has been a necessary filling of the gap in literature. The fact that the military has professional autonomy in the doctrinal function is evident from the deficiencies in higher defence organisation as also the ministry’s traditionally hands-off policy. This means that the organisation sets its own terms. That organisational interests would then have wider play is axiomatic, even if the rationale is taken as fulfilment as an organisationally defined national obligation.

 

Bureaucratic fights that result of organisational pursuit of institutional interests with other organisations similarly engaged, is explained by bureaucratic politics. This is amply brought out in India’s case in terms of turf war between the military and the civilian bureaucracy and the intra-military, between the Army and Air Force. This has been attributed here to essentially being a face-off over doctrine. The civil-military divide, absence of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and lack of articulation of strategic doctrine make the organisational defence of self-conceived doctrine more compelling. This results in bureaucratic fights of greater severity since each organisation is not necessarily pursuing ‘parochial’ interests, but is engaged in persuading the environment of the efficacy of its doctrinal position and its follow on implications such as for higher defence organisation, war strategy etc. 

 

 

The finding is that the explanation at this level has greater salience than is generally attributed to it in strategic literature. In effect the neglect of this factor and level of analysis is unjustified. Given the lack of focus on this in literature, it has been possible only to reveal a correspondence rather than arrive at a causal link. But future research in terms of accessing the individual level on availability later of memoirs of those who have participated in doctrine generation will be able to uncover more significant links.

 

Prioritisation of drivers

 

The foregoing brings out that there is reasonable and sufficient evidence for the three factors to be considered as drivers. The impetus to Indian doctrine is at all three levels. In this case study on the Limited War doctrine, the finding is that at the structural level, doctrine has been a response to India’s Pakistan predicament. At the unit level, the political factor involving a shift in strategic culture accounts for the Limited War doctrine. Lastly, at the organisational level, as expected from theory, perceived failure of conventional deterrence in the outbreak of Kargil War and an inability to react appropriately to the parliament attack, led to doctrinal evolution. This was further prompted by existing inter-Service doctrinal competition to determine India’s military doctrine for the nuclear age. Overall, it can be said that the primary impetus from among the three is difficult to discern. Instead, all three are complementary factors responsible for doctrine.

 

Major findings

 

Policy relevance:  The foremost policy relevant conclusion is that India needs to arrive at an explicit Limited War doctrine. This must be cognizant of the nuclear-conventional interface. It needs as a prerequisite to first make the structural changes necessary, in particular the creation of the CDS. Even so, it must be mindful that Limited War has its limitations and the nascent impulse distancing the military from a default resort to Limited War, as the term ‘Cold Start’ suggests, should be taken to its logical conclusion.

 

Case study relevance: Objectively, it is difficult to determine, which of the three drivers was most prominent. However, it can be said that crediting the structural factor is, as is the wont in Indian strategic writings, is not sustainable. The explanation in cultural theory has been found to be more consequential than is admitted to.

 

Theory relevance: From a single case study, it is not possible to generalise as to which of the three theories, namely, ‘balance of power’, cultural theory and organisational theory, has comparative merit. The research design has not catered for judging this. Suffice it to maintain that all are relevant and cannot be discounted. This makes doctrine generation multi-causal. Given that realism remains the dominant paradigm, development of the latter two theories helps as their comparative relevance stands demonstrated in this case study. In particular, the comparative weight of cultural theory and realism appears in favour of the former in this case.

 

Conclusion

 

The study has focused on what drives military doctrine development in India. It has looked at the three levels of analysis – structural, unit and organisational - for answers. The three theories – realism, cultural theory and organisational theory - have been employed to arrive at the drivers. The finding has been that all three have explanatory value and that the drivers exist at the three levels, making doctrine making a case of equi-finality. Its examination of conventional doctrine has been of an under-studied area in India. While nuclear doctrine and counter insurgency doctrine, that have aura of urgency, have had attention, conventional doctrine has remained elusive. The study has historical significance in tracing the formulation and eclipse of India’s Cold Start doctrine over the century’s first decade. The doctrine was conceptualized as brought out in January 2000 and the military is currently in the process of moving away from the doctrine towards one that is more adapted to the defining reality of the periods – the nuclear dimension. The study has engaged with a problem of contemporary relevance in its being pitched at the conventional-nuclear interface. The limitation parameters have therefore been highlighted with the policy relevant finding being that limitation needs to attend both the conventional and nuclear realms of military application. India needs therefore to reset its strategic doctrine to defensive realism.  An implication of reliance on defensive realism is for a return to deterrence with a defensive bias on the Pakistan front. Military doctrine would move further into making military power less usable. This would be in keeping with the principal dictate of the nuclear age.