https://www.academia.edu/96975832/INDIAS_DOCTRINE_PUZZLE_LIMITING_WAR_IN_SOUTH_ASIA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INDIA’S DOCTRINE PUZZLE: LIMITING WAR IN SOUTH ASIA

 

BY ALI AHMED

10.4324/9781315733968

India’s Doctrine Puzzle

Limiting War in South Asia

 Ali Ahmed

   9781315733968 (ebk)

9781138019706 (hbk)

 Routledge

© 2014 Ali Ahmed

2014

Ali Ahmed

First published 2014

by Routledge

 

 Foreword

 Nuclear weapons generate a voluminous output of books, research papers and estimates of their impact on national, regional and international security. The nuclearisation of India and Pakistan have had a similar impact with strategic analysts the world over trying to assess the future use, misuse or abuse of these strategic assets by the two countries.

India published its Nuclear Doctrine not long after acquiring nuclear weapons. while the doctrine was not specifically directed against Pakistan, it also left no one in doubt about the immediacy of indian planners’ strategic concerns of a future with nuclear weapons. Since China had committed itself to a No First Use (NFU) policy, india’s nuclear doctrine was a clear enough statement on how it would respond to a nuclear weapons exchange on the indian Sub Continent. while nuclear weapons are unambiguously viewed by india as strategic assets, their operational use as war fighting instruments have been ruled out. Their use is predicated on another country using nuclear weapons against india.

The longstanding india–Pakistan confrontation turned into military conflicts after Pakistan linked terrorist attacks in india. The intrusion into Kargil and the attack on indian Parliament created the possibility of a conventional large scale military conflict, which ran the serious risk of turning into a nuclear standoff. indian military planners adapted to this experience to evolved responses in the operational domain, to offset conditions created by the presence of nuclear weapons, albeit as strategic assets.

india and Pakistan have been in a state of confrontation since 1947. On occasions when the confrontation turned into a military conflict, the purpose of operations was more to force a change of outlook amongst Pakistan’s leadership than the destruction of that state. Military operations were thus limited both in the objectives to be attained and the scope and intensity of force to be applied. Nuclear weapons changed the old premise into one of placing further limits on operational thresholds which can and cannot be crossed.

Ali Ahmed has analysed the drivers and consequences of the operational concepts which have evolved — and are still evolving — after the experience of the Kargil conflict. He makes a bold attempt to look into the operational future with his experience of the past and the perspective of the present. The issue of operational choices had not been so specifically addressed earlier. Most western writings have laboured on the risks of India and Pakistan inadvertently getting into a nuclear exchange and of ways to prevent that happening. The book shows up the operational dilemmas which emerge in the wake of nuclear weapons.

Ahmed’s fascinating study will form a useful input for military, strategic and political elites in coming to decisions in future. The book offers a window into the threat perceptions, the organisational culture and politico-military processes, by which conceptual concepts are evolved in the indian context. The book is also proof of the lively discourse that is part of the Indian strategic scene.

 February 2013 Lt. Gen. (Retd.) V. R. Raghavan
 Chennai

 

 

Preface

 The genesis of this book was atop a canal obstacle somewhere in the western sector in 2006. I was then commanding an infantry battalion that was deployed as exercise enemy, or the Nark force, in a corps exercise meant to put to a strike corps through its paces. The exercise ‘enemy’, Swarg’s strike corps, chose that stretch of the canal as site of its break-in battle. It was fore-ordained that they were to break out by first light, for if they were still in their bridgeheads then they would be ideal targets for an enemy air attack or worse, anuclear strike. According to the exercise umpire’s timetable, my unit was to be cut to pieces in a heavy breakthrough within three hours. I did not have much to do thereafter since I was presumed exercise dead or prisoner. I was able to witness the proceedings over the remainder of the exercise as a bystander. The exercise timings were truncated to depict the first week to ten days of the mock war. The strike corps ended up in its ‘projection areas’ across multiple obstacles true to plan. The final touch was capture of an airfield deep in enemy territory by paratroops. Presumably, the strike corps would be provisioned via an air bridge for subsequent operations further in enemy interiors. I wondered as to what a nuclear armed enemy would make of all this. This prompted a question in my mind: Why has India gone in for an offensive conventional doctrine despite nuclearisation?

Ideally, the investment in nuclearisation should have made India ‘feel’ secure, if not ‘secure’ itself. The ‘bomb’ had been much advertised by its votaries as a ‘weapon of peace’. Their argument was that it would enable India to sit down and talk with its adversaries. Instead, Pakistan launched Operation Badr in Kargil within a year of both states, India and Pakistan, going nuclear. Soon thereafter was the Kandahar hijack. Later, the proverbial Indian ‘threshold of tolerance’ was sorely tested with a dastardly terror attack on the Srinagar legislative assembly and soon thereafter on Parliament in 2001. The popular narrative has it that a defensive and reactive India was caught flat footed. Consequently, in the wake of Operation Parakram it was forced to move towards a military doctrine reportedly more ‘proactive’, colloquially dubbed ‘Cold Start’. The exercise that I participated in was intended to practice and perfect the doctrine.

A counter-factual can be hazarded. Had terror attacks continued even as india forged a responsive doctrine, it is well nigh possible that the two states would have been at war sooner than later. it is therefore propitious that 9/11 had intervened at the precise moment that provocative terror attacks culminated. with the superpower, the United States of America (US), in the region, the trajectory towards war subsided. However, the Mumbai attacks of 26/11 demonstrated that the potential for war remains. Since nuclear weapons are around, so is the potential for a nuclear war. in effect, security remains imperilled, despite, and to some extent because of nuclear weapons. why is this so? How much do military doctrines have to do with security and creating conditions of insecurity?

To me the offensive military doctrine embarked on by india was contributing to its insecurity, while indeed the opposite should have been the case. My research focused on what impels doctrines. Are these in response to threat perceptions? Do these originate in the body politic of the state? Or are these due to organisational compulsions? But, first I needed to demonstrate that there has indeed been a change in india’s military doctrine to an offensive one. Second, I was to try and locate where the impetus to this lay — in strategic compulsions, or in strategic culture or in institutional interest?

I set about trying to answer such questions in my doctoral dissertation after retiring prematurely from the army. I was able to listen in to the debates within the Delhi-based strategic community. This book is resonant with thoughts heard and read, expressed by many well-intentioned and knowledgeable experts. Yet, my doubts persist which led me to write this book. My answer has been laid out in the book as follows.

In the first chapter, I trace the movement in india’s strategic posture and in its military doctrine since the 1971 war. I believe that while earlier india settled for defensive deterrence, it has lately moved towards offensive deterrence. I venture further to suggest that this borders on compellence. Military doctrine has broadly kept pace, moving from being a defensive one to one advertised as proactive and offensive. The chapter also carries a description of the Limited War doctrine and discusses the conventional–nuclear interface. Thereafter, the book attempts to answer the questions that I posed earlier, with successive chapters trying to locate the drivers of conventional doctrine at the three levels of analysis — structural, unit (state) and organisational. That leave one last level — the individual level — which while being consequential, I have left out since the Cold Start doctrine appears to have many claimants for ownership. Since military records are subject to a stringent information regime, the study is largely based on information available in the open domain. Fortunately for me, a veritable intellectual cottage industry grew around Cold Start, not only due to increased interest in but also due to increased strategic foreboding over the last decade.

So, was the doctrine a deliberate reaction to the strategic circumstance faced by India over the turn of the century? The well-known ‘realist theory’ provided the theoretical backdrop to examine the doctrine impulse at the structural level. According to realist theory, the anarchical international system prompts self-help on part of the stateswho attempt to create and leverage power against threats in the environment through internal and external balancing. Since military capability is a significant element of national power, it is harnessed by formulating a doctrine. Therefore, doctrine formulation is a form of internal balancing by the states. Since doctrine lends coherence to military power, it is a way to enhance power in general. However, realism looks at the system, noting the threats at the structural level and the responses. But responses are from within the state, making it necessary to look at the ‘unit’ level or at the state.

At the unit level, cultural theory is available as a theoretical lens. While there is imbalance of power between states in a system, how states view this imbalance, threat or otherwise, is dependent on their strategic culture. The interpretation of this imbalance is as significant as the imbalance itself. Domestic politics matters to how a state views its external domain. How states make sense of the world, how the other state’s actions are interpreted and what states wish to do with the military instrument, depends on the events in its domestic sphere. This is at variance with realists who believe that states essentially react likewise to similar circumstance. Cultural theory has it that such response is a product of culture at three levels — political, strategic and organisational; the first being agenda setting. In turn, the impact of strategic or political–military culture on doctrine is mediated by organisational culture.

 A look at organisational culture necessitates ‘looking into the box’ at the next lower level — that of organisations that make up states which in this case is the military. There are three theoretical models dealing with organisational behaviour. The first is the rational actor model involving reasoned responses to external stimuli. The other two are organisational process and the bureaucratic politics models. The organisational process model posits that doctrine, being a mandate of the military, is an output of the military as part of discharging its social obligation of providing security for the state and people. Since the military has this social obligation, it acquires institutional interests to help fulfil these. As often as not, institutional interests acquire a life of their own, ending up as pathologies. The third — the bureaucratic politics model — helps us to understand how organisations behave in relation to each other. Since the military is not a monolith, the doctrinal sphere becomes a battle space for bureaucratic competition while doctrine becomes a service weapon against the institutional interests of other services in the bureaucratic game.

My finding is that the nuclear conundrum has not been coped with adequately. The more insecure nuclear weapons make us, the more secure we apparently are. This understanding is dangerous in the extreme. if there is to be peace, then there has to be a mutually agreed stowing away of nuclear weapons. The book concludes by suggesting a strategic dialogue towards this end. This can result in appreciating that the subcontinent is really a single strategic space crying out for a shared security approach. Deterrence being a false god, this is the only way to preserve us all from its inevitable breakdown.

 Acknowledgements

  India’s Doctrine Puzzle: Limiting War in South Asia is based on my doctoral dissertation entitled ‘india’s Limited War Doctrine: Structural, Political and Organisational Factors’. I take this opportunity to thank the Center for international Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of international Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, for permission to publish the book. I thank the institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (iDSA), New Delhi, for permission to undertake the doctorate alongside my work at the institute and to draw on material in my earlier monographs at the institute for this book.

The book has drawn on the work of members of the strategic community. I thank all those who took the trouble to read through some parts of the work, some of whom being in uniform cannot be named. Foremost, I must acknowledge the deft stewardship of my supervisor, Professor Rajesh Rajagopalan. The strengths of the book owe to him. I must add that the responsibility for the shortcomings in the book is entirely mine. I thank the staff of the libraries at the iDSA and the United Services institution of india, New Delhi. Thanks to Radha Joshi for making the text readable and the editorial team at Routledge india for their perseverance with the manuscript.

Foremost, I must pay homage to former President, Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma; my National Defence Academy teacher, P. R. Patra; and to late Major General S. C. Sinha. I am grateful to Major General D. Banerjee and Professor Kanti Bajpai for the encouragement of my academic pursuits. I thank my former military colleagues, especially my first company commander, then Major C. P. Muthanna, and former commanding officers for developing my interest in the ‘opening narrative’ of the ‘whites’. I am grateful to Lt. Gen. V. R. Raghavan for his Foreword. There are several members of the uniformed fraternity and the strategic and academic communities to whom I owe more than an intellectual debt.

it is at the home of my parents, particularly in Kashmir and in retirement that my fascination for matters at the intersection of politics and the military spheres developed. My family has tolerated my preoccupation, hoping perhaps that some good may come out of it. I hope the book proves a blow for the sake of peace.

 

10.4324/9781315733968-1

Chapter 1       Puzzling Over Doctrine

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the impetus for doctrinal change in conventional doctrine. It deals with Limited War theory beginning with Clausewitz’s understanding of war and necessary nuclear related caveats added by Bernard Brodie followed by a review of the historical development of the Limited War concept in the US and in India. The book then deals with the doctrines in general and ’Cold Start’ in particular. It also deals with India’s regional strategic predicament in order to bring out how land warfare doctrine in particular has adapted to its regional strategic circumstance. The book discusses the political factor in terms of strategic culture at state level. It explores how organisational culture, organisational processes and bureaucratic politics account for change in doctrine. The book explores the relative validity of the three drivers of doctrinal change at the respective levels of analysis: structural, state and organisational.

Much Ado Over Doctrine

There has been a rich doctrinal harvest in India over the past two decades. In 1995, the air doctrine began the trend, no doubt energised by the air campaign by the west during Gulf war i. The doctrines of the largest service, the Army, and of the silent service, the Navy, were published back-to-back just about a decade later in 2004. The Navy’s doctrine, into its second edition, encompasses the ‘maritime’ spectrum, as against restricting itself to merely the naval dimension of the seas. The Navy has additionally spelt out a Vision and a Strategy document. The Army’s first attempt at preparation of a doctrine concluded in the publication of the document in 1998. However, its 2004 doctrine document has attracted much attention and also some controversy. Even as conventional warfare domain witnessed this intellectual effervescence (Oberoi 2006), the nuclear domain was not far behind. The Draft Nuclear Doctrine of 1999 was followed by its adoption with a few changes in the 2003. This book concerns itself with this doctrinal tumult but primarily concentrates on the army’s doctrine, Indian Army Doctrine (ARTRAC 2004), popularly referred to as ‘Cold Start’.

In the wake of the Kargil War, India developed a conventional doctrine. The doctrine sets out to inform thinking and conduct of conventional war. However, embedded are tenets of Limited War and therefore it can be taken as a Limited War doctrine. The understanding is that whether a war is ‘Limited’ or ‘Total’ would depend on political aims set at the outset of the conflict and their strategic and operational translation. Since political aims can reasonably only be limited in the nuclear age, the doctrine can be taken as a Limited war doctrine.

The doctrine has evolved from preceding military developments going back over four decades. India’s earlier doctrine in the post-1971 War period was based on a counter-offensive capability. While unpublished and unselfconscious as a ‘doctrine’, it is widely taken as having been a defensive one. organisational and doctrinal innovations in the eighties served to enhance the offensive content of this doctrine. Initially, changes were prompted by the necessity to pursue conventional operations under conditions of perceived nuclear asymmetry. This took the form of mechanisation, deemed as more suited to a nuclear battlefield. The doctrine was one of conventional deterrence comprising a dissuasive capability (deterrence by denial) along with a counter-offensive capability (deterrence by punishment). In the light of Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear capability by the late 1980s, the counter-offensive capability embodied by strike corps operations became problematic. Pakistan capitalised on this to enhance its sub-conventional provocations. This is referred to in the literature as the ‘stability/instability paradox’, implying that the nuclear dangers that attended conventional war enabled the practice of subconventional war by proxy. Consequently, India was forced, among other reasons, to adapt its offensive capability to bring its conventional edge back into the reckoning. The process was energised by the nuclear break-out by India and Pakistan in 1998. This has resulted in an offensive conventional posture, with the so-called Cold Start doctrine envisaging Limited War in a nuclear backdrop (Kapoor 2010: 3). The idea is to reinforce conventional deterrence, and, in case that is found wanting, then to be in a position to execute coercion or compellence as required. While deterrence is to prevent Pakistan from indulging in and heightening proxy war, coercion would be to force it to stop. Compellence on the other hand would go a step further to push Pakistan into dismantling terror infrastructure, failing which India would proceed to do so by force.

Doctrinal development has also been driven by the military experiences since the mid-1980s. The period witnessed the crises of ‘Brasstacks’ crisis of 1987 and the ‘crisis that was not a crisis’ in 1990 and the peace enforcement operation in Sri Lanka. Internal conflict in Kashmir reached a climax with the Kargil War of 1999. Pakistan’s proxy war culminated in the Parliament attack of 2001 that prompted Indian coercive diplomacy in the form of operation Parakram in 2001–02. Moreover, conflicts in the Gulf in 1991 and 2003 and the post-9/11 Operation Enduring Freedom, which showcased the revolutionary changes in the character of conventional war, influenced strategic thinking within India. organisational changes and equipment acquisitions prompted by the specific Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) have accelerated in this period. Cumulatively, these have led to considerable doctrinal evolution. However, it was overt nuclearisation in the subcontinent that has had the most profound effect and made conflict limitation an overriding imperative which found expression in the Cold Start doctrine.

The Cold Start doctrine, in a nutshell, countenances a quick mobilisation followed by multiple offensives across a wide front. What remains a puzzle is that this change towards the offensive has occurred despite overt nuclearisation in South Asia dating to May 1998. In the light of the new nuclear reality, the expectation is that there should have been an emphasis on war avoidance. This is challenged by the enhanced offensive content in military doctrine. The logic is presumably that a greater readiness to go on the offensive will deter war. Admittedly, the doctrine caters for the changed nuclear reality by envisaging that military advances would be limited. This study examines the nuclear dangers that attend such limitations. Escalatory possibilities give rise to the questioning of the doctrine and consequently the reasoning and process of its arrival.

The Doctrine ‘Puzzle’

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: 76). Kenneth Waltz had stated the implications of the nuclear age as: ‘In the age of hydrogen bombs, no single issue may be worth the risk of full-scale war. Settlement, even on bad grounds, is preferable to self-destruction. The use of reason would seem to require the adoption of a doctrine of ‘non-recourse to force’ (Waltz 1959: 234). That the change in conventional doctrine in India is neglectful of this is contrary to the logical expectation. Secondly, India is a status quoist and the stronger power in the regional India-Pakistan dyad. This should have logically led to a defensive doctrine since India only has a defensive aim, rather than an expansionist one to be delivered by an offensive doctrine. Thus, the offensive posture, as evidenced by Cold Start, appears contrary to the general understanding and on that account could bear investigation. Explanation in terms of rationale for the change and possible impact on security is called for. The book attempts this by a study of the development of military doctrine in India since the 1971 War in general and over the last decade in particular.

An offensive and proactive capability that underscores the new war doctrine suggests a readiness to go to war, and, further, possibly more dangerously, to take the war to the enemy. The conventional doctrine and the nuclear doctrine combined go beyond deterrence, to potentially bordering on compellence. The nuclear doctrine posits ‘massive’ punitive retaliation in its 2003 formulation by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS). This expansive formulation, it would appear, is designed for heightening the deterrent effect and influencing Pakistani nuclear thresholds upwards. This would then enable application of India’s conventional advantages in case of sub-conventional provocations that have increased since overt nuclearisation. This is a departure from the understanding that nuclearisation would help in building greater regional and national security.

Pakistan’s offensive posture at the sub-conventional level and India’s consequent offensive orientation at the conventional level, leads to a heightening of nuclear dangers. The nuclear backdrop serves as a reminder that escalation could occur, either by accident or by design. The logic for going nuclear was that it would be possible to resolve outstanding disputes from a position of strength and parity. This promise has apparently been belied in the events since the back-to-back Pokhran and Chagai nuclear tests of May 1998. Instead, relations with Pakistan have witnessed the Kargil War; one ‘near war’ situation in 2001–02; and a crisis, the Mumbai 26/11 terror attack in late 2008. Under these conditions, to have a war doctrine predicated on quick, proactive offensive operations appears dangerous. This offensive bias therefore needs to be explained. The book attempts to examine the impetus for doctrinal change in conventional doctrine.

Though the official doctrine does not overtly discuss Limited War, limitation has been brought about by the need to avoid triggering the envisaged nuclear thresholds of Pakistan. These thresholds are generally taken 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 a deterrence breakdown, India’s nuclear deterrence is based on Assured Retaliation, with the proviso that such reactions could well be of higher order or at ‘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. This amounts to India adapting the nuclear deterrence concept to its strategic purpose and regional 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 scepticism towards Cold Start indicates that there has finally been an intellectual adaptation to the imperatives of the nuclear age.

Answering the Puzzle

The chief purpose of military establishments in the nuclear era is to avert wars. Given this as ‘common sense’ and India being a status quo power with a relative power advantage, the expectation from India after nuclearisation would have been for continuation of its conventional doctrine of defensive deterrence. The movement has however been towards potentially offensive strategic posture and doctrine. This book tries to answer the key question — What accounts for the change to an offensive conventional doctrine?

The answer can be discerned at three separate ‘levels of analysis’ — systemic level, ‘unit’ or state level and that of the individual decisionmaker (Jackson and Sorensen 2010: 230–40) with the last one substituted in this book by the organisational level. Adopting this approach to strategic analysis, the book attempts to find the impulse for doctrinal change in India at the three levels. The study follows the inductive approach, seeking illumination from pre-existing theories at each of these levels of analysis and their application on the case study of doctrine generation in India. Kenneth Waltz had identified the three levels, terming them ‘images’, as:

One may seek in political philosophy answers to the question: Where are the major causes of war to be found? The answers are bewildering in their variety and in their contradictory qualities. To make this variety manageable, the answers can be ordered under the following three headings: within man, within the structure of the separate states, within the state system … These estimates of cause will subsequently be referred to as images of international relations, numbered in order given, with each image defined according to where one locates the nexus of important causes (Waltz 1959: 12).

At the structural level, the regional security situation has im-pacted India’s strategic posture. At this level, the threat was posed by a revisionist Pakistan. Due to its revisionist aims and its weak power status as compared to India, Pakistan went nuclear covertly by the mid-1980s which accounted for its venturing into prose-cuting proxy war, dating to the early eighties, beginning with its involvement in Punjab. India has responded, in the words of Lt. Gen. V. R. Raghavan, with both ‘resolve and restraint’. The instances of India’s reaction to both the Kargil intrusion and the Parliament attack in the form of operation Parakram illustrate this. However, in partial emulation of Pakistan, which saw space for sub-conventional operations in a nuclearised environment, India has also reworked its doctrine to exploit the space between sub-conventional level and the nuclear threshold, for conduct of conventional operations. This is in accordance with the tenets of Limited War. The expectation is that an offensive posture would reinforce deterrence.

The second level of analysis is the unit level or that of the state. At the state level, there has been a change towards an assertive strategic culture in India. Political developments, particularly the advent of ‘cultural nationalism’, have been responsible for this change. Concurrent developments in terms of growing power capabilities through economic liberalisation, 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 political developments at the national level and changes in doctrine is provided by the intervening organisational culture. The culture permeating the military organisation is a professional one that values ‘military ethic’, privileges conventional war fighting and preparedness. Together, the changes within national strategic culture and a pre-existing offensive organisational culture in the military account for the proactive offensive doctrine.

At the organisational level, nuclearisation rendered conventional operations problematic due to prospects of escalation. The general understanding is that conventional force is threatened by obsolescence in a nuclear age. Yet, 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 a respectable self-image, retaining salience in the nuclearised context and ensuring autonomy from intrusive civilian control. This perspective looks inside the box, at the interaction between Service culture, inter-Service rivalry and organisational processes to give rise to the new doctrine.

Therefore there exists an impetus to doctrine at each of the three levels of analysis. At the structural level, pitched at the ‘regional security complex’ in South Asia, it can be hypothesised that change in India’s military doctrine has been due to continuing external security threats. At the state level, change in India’s military doctrine can be attributed to evolution of India’s strategic culture and at the organisational level, change in India’s military doctrine has been to preserve the military’s institutional interest.

What to Expect

The conceptual layout is reflected in the chapterisation of the book. This introductory chapter dwells on the manner in which the book tackles the puzzle in question as to why India had an offensive turn to its conventional posture in the wake of nuclearisation. In Chapter 2, the first section undertakes a definitional exercise for the Limited War concept. The subsequent sections deal with Limited War theory beginning with Clausewitz’s understanding of war and the necessary nuclear related caveats added by Bernard Brodie followed by a review of the historical development of the Limited War concept in the US and in India. Chapter 3 deals with the doctrines in general and ‘Cold Start’ in particular. It traces doctrinal change and evolution of Indian conventional and nuclear doctrine over the past four decades. It seeks to establish the reasons for a 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 doctrine, setting the stage for a subsequent explanatory chapters discussing the shift described in this chapter.

 Chapter 4 deals with India’s regional strategic predicament in order to bring out how land warfare doctrine in particular has adapted to its regional strategic circumstance. The change in threat perceptions over time, brought on largely due to Pakistan’s proxy war, is also discussed. The effect of nuclearisation in emboldening Pakistan and its impact on Indian doctrine is studied at two levels — strategic and military. It emerges that given the need to undercut Pakistan’s proclivities at the sub-conventional and nuclear level, India has had to fall back on its conventional advantages. This has been done by refurbishing its earlier doctrine of large-scale counter-offensives, in the backdrop of lower nuclear thresholds. The chapter, therefore, argues that the structural factor, interpreted in terms of changes to the threat environment prompted doctrinal change.

 Chapter 5 discusses the ‘political factor’ in terms of strategic culture at the state level. It draws on cultural theory to argue that strategic culture has evolved under the influence of the regional security environment and internal political developments. The chapter identifies three cultural sub-levels — political culture, strategic culture and organisational culture. The argument it makes is that the rise of realist thinking in India dating to the Indira-era has impacted the Nehruvian inflection in Indian strategic thinking. Further, subsequent political mainstreaming of cultural nationalism in politics has enabled a more assertive strategic culture. This change has taken place at a time of India’s rise as a power, signified by economic changes, deepening association with the leading superpower, the US, and nuclearisation. Since it is difficult to trace the impact of strategic culture on doctrine directly, it is necessary to take a closer look at the intervening variable of organisational culture. An organisational culture that privileges an offensive military ethic lends itself towards strategic assertion, which is further supported by changes in political culture. This is reflected in the more offensive doctrines the military has formulated over the past decade.

 Chapter 6 explores how organisational culture, organisational processes and bureaucratic politics account for change in doctrine. According to organisation theory, organisations have general interests and specificities that influence their output. Institutional interests include a desire for salience, budgets, expansion in role and resources, autonomy, etc. Given that nuclearisation may have dampened the prospects of use of conventional military means, the military at the institutional or organisational level is seeking to retain its relevance in the nuclear age. This explains why the military may have resorted to ‘enabling’ doctrine to make conventional capabilities usable, despite nuclearisation. Doctrine has also been impacted by inter-Service rivalries and intense bureaucratic politics with the respective doctrines of the Services being used as a weapon in the armoury during these ‘fights’. The chapter discusses these issues and brings out the relevance of the organisational level — organisational — on doctrine making, which is otherwise prone to neglect in strategic studies.

The concluding chapter assesses the relative validity of the three drivers of doctrinal change at the respective levels of analysis — structural, state and organisational. The chapter seeks to ascertain the primary impetus behind doctrinal change in India. In doing so, it attempts to bring out issues of policy and theoretical relevance in affect, striking a blow for peace.

While war is prosecuted at the three levels of tactical, operational and strategic (ARTRAC 2004: 26–28), the spectrum of conflict for use of military force could involve sub-conventional, conventional or nuclear warfare. The interaction between the three spectrums in the conflict dyad in South Asia — between India and Pakistan — lends a certain complexity to the regional security environment. Specifically, Pakistan’s offensive posture at the sub-conventional level has prompted the adoption of an offensive posture by India at the conventional level. Both states have gone in for an offensive posture at the nuclear level. This is discerned from Pakistan’s refraining from subscribing to ‘no first use’ and India’s nuclear doctrine positing ‘massive’ nuclear retaliation.

India has doctrines for guiding its force creation, sustenance and application at all three levels. There is the Doctrine for Sub Conventional Operations (ARTRAC 2006), the Indian Army Doctrine (ARTRAC 2004) for the conventional level, along with similar doctrines for the Indian Navy and Indian Air Force, and the nuclear doctrine (CCS 2003). The doctrines at the two levels — nuclear and conventional — when viewed together suggest an offensive strategic posture. While the nuclear doctrine of massive retaliation seeks to heighten scope for leveraging India’s conventional advantage, the conventional doctrine is geared to enable force application proactively. This shift, from defensive deterrence of an earlier era to offensive deterrence, places India’s doctrine mid-way between a deterrent and a compellent doctrine.

The scope of the book is firstly that it is restricted to the India-Pakistan equation. The Cold Start doctrine is not applicable to

 China, though the Limited War concept has equal applicability on that front. It is inconceivable that either India or China would engage in a wider conflict since wider war would derail their promising economic trajectories. Second, brief discussions on airpower doctrine, naval doctrine and sub-conventional doctrine are included since land warfare doctrine is not in isolation. The Army doctrine, Cold Start, serves to anchor the discussion. Finally, the time period for the study covers the period from the 1971 War, so as to bring out the doctrinal changes from a defensive doctrine of the seventies to a deterrent doctrine in the eighties. The quasi-compellent doctrine developed over the last decade, is thus placed in the context of this evolution.

A significant constraint of this study has been access to the individual level. It is for this reason that the individual level — the lowest level of analysis — has not been touched in this book. Doctrines are the work of key individuals, who not only conceptualise these but take it upon themselves to ‘sell’ the idea to their peers and across organisational boundaries. Access to this vital level was possible through interviews but confidentiality precluded this route for data gathering. It is possible only when memoirs are published. There are many former practitioners ready to discuss their contribution to doctrine-making. This is in part due to internet-related glasnost, expansion and greater volubility of the strategic community, the service of advertising the Service position that such public advocacy enables and, often, the ideological commitment of some in the retired fraternity in favour of a more ‘resolute’ India. Additionally, no individual has been as closely associated with Service doctrines developed over the last decade to the extent that General Sundarji has come to be identified with the mechanised doctrine that preceded it. This makes the organisational level more pertinent than the individual level.

Even though doctrine formulation has historically been shrouded in secrecy, there has been a doctrinal spate lately. This owes to the growing transparency in a democratic society, expansion of the media, the public’s post-Kargil interest in military affairs and, the need to communicate India’s changed strategic posture to the adversary, if only to help deter its provocations. In nuclear matters there is the additional requirement of communication for credibility of the doctrine. There has also been a proliferation of think tanks and publications and expansion of the retired fraternity, which has further contributed to the discourse on India’s military doctrine.

On Others’ Shoulders

In South Asia, the doctrines at the two levels, nuclear and conventional, are usually reflected on separately. This owes to the nuclear aspect being seen so far as largely in the civilian — political, scientific and bureaucratic — domain. There are very few works on the military utility of nuclear weapons, given their status as ‘political’ weapons. Conventional doctrine, on the other hand, is seen as the professional concern of the military (ARTRAC 1998; 2004). Therefore, there is a dearth of thinking on military doctrine, taking into account the nuclear and conventional dimensions jointly (Kanwal 2008).

There has been considerably more written on nuclear doctrine (Karnad 2002; Perkovich 1999; Tellis 2001). The main focus though has continuously shifted. At the forefront earlier was the status of the ‘nuclear option’ (Mattoo and Cortright 1996). In the mid-nineties, the impact of the international non-proliferation agenda 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 Ashley Tellis’ ‘force-in-being’ concept (2001). There was a plethora of writing on the manner in which India went nuclear, particularly its historical narrative (Chengappa 2000) and the strategic compulsions that led to it (Perkovich 1999). The doctrinal development in wake of the tests, in particular, the draft nuclear doctrine was discussed critically (Chari 2000) including anti-nuclear authors (Vanaik and Bidwai 1999). The nature of the deterrent has been reflected on in great detail by Bharat Karnad (2002) and Tellis (2001). Karnad in his book, Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security (2002), advocates that India move beyond to a tous azimutshs capability to include a strategic triad, thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Tellis in India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture (2001) examines India’s strategic choices in the future 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’.

Limited War thinking was developed to offset Pakistan’s strategy of taking advantage of nuclear deterrence prevailing at the nuclear level to prosecute ‘asymmetric war’. The book does not touch upon the various crises in the nuclear period since 1984. These have been covered elsewhere in detail and most recently in Ganguly and Kapur (2010). The limited war thinking was envisaged to break out the No War-No Peace cycle. The repeated crises culminating in the Parliament attack in 2001 revealed a strategic problem that overt nuclearisation had not quite vacated (Singh 2000). India’s Cold Start doctrine can be taken as the operationalisation of the Limited War concept (Ladwig 2008b; Tarapore 2005). This helped shift the focus from the sub-conventional and nuclear levels that dominated the nineties, to the conventional level over the last decade.

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. This is the gap in literature that the contents of this book hope to fill. Conventional doctrine has been an understudied area in India. While nuclear doctrine and counter insurgency doctrine, that have an understandable aura of urgency have had due attention, conventional doctrine has remained elusive. The study has military history relevance in its tracing of the formulation and eclipse of India’s Cold Start doctrine over the century’s first decade.

The most prominent contribution to nuclear thinking was of General Sundarji. As Commandant, College of Combat, he had organised a postal seminar on the question of impact of nuclear asymmetry on conventional deterrence (College of Combat 1981). His major contribution is, however, in advocating a flexible response nuclear doctrine envisaging a quid pro quo and quid pro quo plus option for India (Sundarji 1992a; 1992b).

The writings on Limited War doctrine that emerged in wake of the Kargil War addressed issues such as the availability of a ‘window’ or ‘space’ between war outbreak and the nuclear threshold which could be exploited for conventional operations (Malik 2004). These writings built a rationale to undercut the otherwise persuasive position that nuclearisation should lead to greater caution, if not a ‘peace dividend’, an argument that proved stillborn, with the Lahore peace process being aborted by the Kargil conflict. Pakistan, 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 Union Minister of Defence George Fernandes (PIB 2000) under the logic that nuclear weapons deter nuclear weapons and not war itself. This shift in focus was recognised by Sanjay Badri-Maharaj (2000). He was among 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 through the famed ‘Rahim Yar Khan’ conventional option.

operation Parakram generated the next round of thinking (Kalyanaraman 2002). The major lessons learnt from Parakram were that, first, the strike corps mobilised slowly, and, second, it could breach the nuclear threshold of Pakistan if employed. This was best brought out in a book by Lieutenant General V. K. Sood and Pravin Swahney on Operation Parakram, The War Unfinished (2003). They describe a situation when, after the Kalu Chak terror strike, India’s three strike corps were poised for offensive in the desert. Unleashing military might of such an order could have brought the Pakistani nuclear card into play. The drawbacks of the conventional option led to the formulation of the Cold Start doctrine that was then tested in military exercises (Ladwig 2008). Recent writings on conventional options, such as a paper by a serving officer (Singh 2010) have reinforced the centrality of Cold Start in India’s land warfare doctrine. G. D. Bakshi, a retired general, recommends articulation of a Limited War doctrine by India in his book, Limited Wars in South Asia (2010: 159, 163). He holds that, ‘Cold Start is essentially a subset of the “Limited War Doctrine”’ (Bakshi 2010: 44).

A comprehensive analysis of the extent of operationalisation of these tenets has been done by Walter C. Ladwig III in his landmark article, ‘A Cold Start for Hot Wars? The Indian Army’s new Limited War Doctrine’, in International Security (2008b). He takes the promulgation of the new doctrine as a ‘marked break from the fundamentally defensive orientation that the Indian military has employed since independence in 1947’ (Ladwig 2008: 158). His thesis is that, ‘Limited War on the subcontinent poses a serious risk of escalation based on a number of factors that are not necessarily under the control of the policy makers or military leaders who would initiate the conflict’ (ibid.). His critique is based on his understanding of the role of ‘misperception, poor intelligence and India’s awkward national security decision making system’ (ibid.). Ladwig’s signal contribution is in tracing the military progress made in imbibing the doctrines through training. He does this by assessing the media reports from India’s large scale joint military exercises such as Divya Astra, Vajra Shakti, Sanghe Shakti Ashwamedh and Desert Strike (Ladwig 2008a: 178–81).

It is evident that India, to get out of the strategic cul de sac of subconventional proxy war, has attempted to leverage its conventional strength (Bakshi 2010: 44). In doing this it has to contend with an uncertain Pakistani nuclear threshold (Cotta-Ramusino and Martellini 2002). Even if high, the response to the same has to be worked through in advance. Nuclear doctrine cannot be taken in isolation but has to be clubbed with conventional doctrine. Karnad (2005) has discussed the implications of a proactive conventional doctrine in his ‘Sialkot grab’ scenario. 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 Indian counter value targets. This would be an impossible choice that could check Pakistan’s ‘first use’ option. Karnad, who had the advantage that his book was released after the crisis in 2002, unlike Tellis, has influenced subsequent thinking in favour of ‘proactive’ conventional operations and a ‘flexible’ nuclear doctrine in respect of Pakistan.

The nuclear dangers that arise in the India-Pakistan context have been dealt with by many authors on both sides of the border (Mazar 2002,2004; Raghavan 2001). India’s nuclear power is seen in geo-strategic terms of the balance of power with China. With respect to Pakistan, writers such as Kanwal (2008) and Rajagopalan (2005) believe that 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 2020 (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 Nuclear Defence: Shaping the Arsenal (2001), 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 in case of any form of nuclear ‘first use’ by it.

India’s nuclear doctrine has been authenticated by the press release from the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) on 4 January

2003.The brief press release contained a ‘summary’ of the nuclear doctrine adopted and confirmed its ‘operationalisation’ (CCS 2003).This doctrine has a more offensive content than the Draft Nuclear Doctrine that had been prepared by the first National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) (NSAB 1999). In particular, it has diluted the no first use (NFU) clause by countenancing nuclear first use against a ‘major attack’ using the other two weapons of mass destruction — chemical and biological weapons. Second, 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’ was used. There is even an impetus to a move away from NFU in the strategic debate. Scott Sagan (2009) and Rajesh Basrur (2008) observe the offensive bias in the nuclear doctrine. The offensive bias in the nuclear doctrine complements the offensive intent in the conventional doctrine. Taken together, both doctrines could be taken as countenancing compellence, even though they may have been designed to bolster deterrence.

Nuclearisation and its doctrinal effects are also intimately linked to changes in the Indian strategic culture. Landmark works in this cultural genre are of George Tanham (1992), Stephen Cohen (2001) and Stephen Rosen (1996). Tanham’s work kick-started the debate with his essay figuring subsequently in a book, Securing India: Strategic Thought and Practice (Mattoo and Bajpai 1996), alongside counterpoints by others. The collection of Subrahmanyam and Monteiro’s writings,  Shedding Shibboleths (2005), also begins with a discussion of the Tanham thesis. Pratap Bhanu Mehta feels that George Tanham’s book, Indian Strategic Thought (1992), best reflects the ‘striking consensus in the literature on strategic thinking in India’ (Mehta 2009: 210). The genre has been taken forward by Shekhar Gupta (1995), Tellis (1997, 2000), Mattoo et al. (1996), Jaswant Singh (1999), and Karnad (2002). The mainstream view that emerges is captured by Jaswant Singh, who devotes a chapter in his book  Defending India (1999) to dilating on India’s post-Independence strategic culture (Singh 1999: 1–60). Among the attributes of strategic culture of yore, he lists pacifism as co-existing with valour (ibid.: 14); absence of a sense of military history; a belief that the civilisation would outlast conquerors; absence of a sense of territoriality and, consequently, absence of a need to defend the land (ibid.: 16); and, lastly, preoccupation with internal order leading to neglect of defence against invasions (ibid.: 17).

Among the foremost internal political developments since the mid-1980s has been the rise of right wing politics, in the form of the conservative Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP). This change in political arena has impacted strategic culture, especially since the BJP headed the coalition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government for six years (1998–2004) at the turn of the century. This, along with, growing Indian economic power and consequent reinvigoration of military strength has led to an increasingly confident India, seeking a power position going beyond regional player status to becoming an Asian power. The trend has been set by the nuclear tests, followed eventually by the break-through Indo-US nuclear deal. This journey of a regional power enroute to ‘great power’ status can be traced in works by Sunil Khilnani (1997), Stephen Cohen (2001), C. Raja Mohan (2003), and Sumit Ganguly (2003).

There is some discussion in the book on the bureaucratic politics within each Service and between the Services, indicating the lack of development of military sociology as a discipline in India. The Army-Air Force standoff on the issue of integrated commands and Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) is an example of the internal dynamics impacting doctrine in the military. This has been covered as an embedded case study in the last chapter of the book. The logic is that the difficulty over the appointment of a CDS is not so much a ‘turf’ issue but one of serious doctrinal divergence. Evidence of competition between the Services on this count is easily gleaned from the fact that their respective doctrines have been released autonomously by each Service (Kapoor 2010: 3). A logical way would have been to begin jointly and then arrive at individual Service doctrines as an outflow of the joint doctrine. Instead the reverse has occurred. This proves that there is scope for a gainful study of the institutional element in doctrine generation. In other words, a ‘gap’ exists that the last chapter on the organisational level can attempt to ‘fill’.

What’s ‘Doctrine’?

At the outset, arriving at definitional clarity is necessary. Terms such as policy, strategy and doctrine often used interchangeably are liable to be mistaken as synonyms. Policy is the overarching set of aims and parameters, for example, whether and when India should exercise the nuclear option. Doctrine is a set of guidelines for action such as ‘retaliation only’ and ‘assured retaliation’, as articulated in the nuclear doctrine. Strategy is an ends-means choice within the terms of reference of policy, in consonance with and not necessarily confined by doctrine. Strategy could cover issues such as the optimum targeting sets for nuclear retaliation — i.e., counter-force, counter-value or a mix — in case of a break-down of deterrence.

The distinction between the conventional and nuclear doctrine is easy to make, since the first deals with conventional force employment and the other with nuclear forces. This does not imply that they can be considered in isolation of each other. Indeed, there is a significant interaction between the two. The Indian nuclear policy position, that nuclear weapons are political weapons and meant for deterrence alone, is questionable. The problem with such an argument is that it makes the two levels, conventional and nuclear, seem distinct. However, since Pakistan does not subscribe to NFU, there is no guarantee that nuclear weapons would not be used during conflict. In effect, India’s nuclear weapons may come into the equation due to its conventional actions. Therefore, the interaction between the two needs to be well understood.

Doctrine is not a term that lends itself to easy definition. It closely abuts ‘strategy’, ‘policy’ and ‘concept’ in its meaning and is, therefore, liable to be misinterpreted (ARTRAC 2004: 10–12). The Army’s capstone publication,  Indian Army Doctrine (2004), defines doctrine as, ‘a framework for a better understanding of the approach to warfare and provides the foundation for its practical application.’ In simple words, military doctrine is a particular policy taught or advocated; a set of principles by which military forces guide their actions in support of national objectives. Military doctrine can be defined as ‘a formal expression of military knowledge and thought, that an army accepts as being relevant at a given time, which covers the nature of current and future conflicts, the preparation of the army for such conflicts and the methods of engaging in them to achieve success’ (ibid.: 5, 10). Air Commodore Jasjit Singh defines doctrine as ‘principles and precepts that would guide the way military power would be employed, the critical foundation for capacity building and operational actions in war’. To him, ‘it is obvious that defence doctrines must flow from national political goals and objectives’ (Singh 2004: 7).

The difference between offensive and defensive doctrines lies in intent and content. Defensive would imply awaiting and absorbing enemy action prior to retaliating. offensive doctrine implies seizing the initiative by acting first. Defensive doctrines can also have an offensive component, while offensive doctrines are also concerned with ‘the shield as much as the sword’ (ARTRAC 2004: 47–56). In the Indian case, allowing Pakistan to strike prior to responding with counter-offensives, as was the case earlier, amounts to a deterrent doctrine with a defensive bias. Instead, the Cold Start formulation relies on an early start, taking the offensive proactively to the enemy. This is, therefore, an offensive doctrine. It has been taken as a deterrent doctrine with an offensive bias, but as will be seen in Chapter 3, it also facilitates compellence. This book argues that there has been a movement from the defensive to the offensive and attempts to explain why this has been so.

Examples of doctrine in history are Blitzkrieg, ‘Maginot line’ doctrine, the offensive doctrines of the First World War that were adopted by both France and Germany, AirLand Battle, etc. In the nuclear field, inter alia, are the doctrines of ‘massive retaliation’ and ‘flexible response’. Doctrines are also necessary for armies to grapple with the operations at various levels of war such as sub-conventional, conventional and nuclear. Special doctrines are formulated for joint operations, amphibious operations, ‘out of area’ operations, peacekeeping and stabilisation operations, Special Forces and terrain-specific operations such as desert and mountain warfare. This is done to distil military thinking on a particular type of operation and place the organisation on the same grid. It also facilitates communication, establishes a shared culture and approach to operations, and serves as basis for training curriculum (US Army Field Manual [FM] 100–5 1994: 1–1). Doctrines are based on history, technology, threats, inter-Service relations and political decisions relating to allocation of resources, missions and roles (ibid.). Tactics, techniques, procedures, organisations, equipment and training are all derived from doctrine (ibid. 1991: 6).

It is important to understand that while doctrine is generic, strategy is more specific in nature. The Indian Navy’s maritime strategy document brings this out and states that ‘Doctrine is evolved from government’s policies. Strategy is derived from doctrine’ (IHQ of MoD [Navy] 2007: 3). Identifying its origin in national policies, the document defines doctrine as, ‘a body of thought, and a knowledgebase which underpins the development of strategy’ (ibid.: 4). It is meant to assist strategists in making decisions by providing a point of reference. The output of strategists is strategy or ‘the overall plan to move from the present situation to a desired goal in a given scenario (ibid.: 4). In the naval heuristic (ibid.: 2) national interests determine national security objectives. These are affected by the domestic and the global environment. The result is a national security policy as a first step. This can be likened to the strategic doctrine of the state. Following from this is the series of steps of grand strategy, joint military strategy, and the Service strategies for land, air and maritime dimensions. For instance, maritime strategy is defined as, ‘the overall approach of a nation to the oceans around it, with the aim of synergizing all aspects related to maritime activities, to maximize national gains’ (IHQ of MoD [Navy] 2007: 2).

The critical point, iterated several times elsewhere in military publications, is that doctrine is anchored in the wider socio-political context as defined by the government. It is the strategic doctrine of the state (dwelt on in Chapter 3) that is the foundation of military doctrine. Thereafter is the military doctrine, which includes maritime doctrine for the Navy, airpower doctrine for the Air Force and land warfare doctrine for the Army. Nuclear doctrine ensures deterrence. At the nuclear level, however, operational doctrine could well be different. Nuclear employment strategy would be informed by but not necessarily limited to the declaratory nuclear doctrine.

Further, while the Indian Army has a doctrine for mountain warfare, its strategy with respect to mountain warfare in different areas ranging from the Line of Control (LoC), Siachen and the different theatres with respect to the China sector, would be different. Doctrine informs strategy by providing strategic thinking with the conceptual framework to approach military problems. It encompasses the essence of the military’s experience and outlines the fundamental principles and guidelines. It facilitates a shared understanding of the application of the military’s resources in conflict. It is, therefore, not meant to substitute strategy or war plans. It is not meant to be binding, but facilitative of informed judgement. The American definition makes this distinction clear, stating, ‘[a]s an authoritative statement, doctrine must be definitive enough to guide specific operations, yet remain adaptable enough to address diverse and varied situations’ (FM 100–5 1994: 1).

Strategy on the other hand is meant to be context specific and situation dependent. It establishes goals, assigns forces and imposes conditions on theatres of operation. It broadly draws on doctrine without being bound down by it. The Indian Army defines strategy as, ‘the art and science of developing and using elements of national power including political, economic, psychological, technological capabilities and military forces, as necessary, during peace and war to achieve national objectives. Military strategy is derived from the overall national or “grand” strategy’ (ARTRAC 2004: 4). It follows Liddell Hart in its definition, ‘Military strategy has been defined as the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfil ends of national policy’ (ARTRAC 2004: 27). In drawing on the American doctrine, it admits that ‘a more modern definition could be ‘the art and science of employing the armed forces of a nation to secure policy objectives by the application of force or threat of use of force’ (FM 100–5 1991: 9).

Doctrine is influenced by political, social and cultural factors. Its origin is in the overall national aim, which is self-evidently a determinant of the political plane. The factors affecting military doctrine are internal and external relations, geography, interests of neighbours and affordability (Nayyar and Suri 2005: 10). Consideration of these factors at the political level helps formulate military doctrine. Jasjit Singh, reflecting on the Indian case, states that the aim of durable peace and war avoidance must inform strategic doctrine, with conventional and nuclear deterrence being the corresponding defence doctrine. Offensive use of military power would be in circumstances when deterrence has failed or in response to proxy war. He highlights that the ‘single factor that has the most profound impact on our defence policy and hence the employment of our military power is the existence of nuclear weapons … This imposes significant limitations on the conduct of war’ (Singh 2004: 7). Following from this, he recommends a strategy that, ‘should be able to apply punitive (conventional military) force without inviting an excessive response like a credible nuclear threat or use’ (ibid.). Given this, the options India has, ‘would be either apply military power spaced out in time and concentrated in space, or stretched out in space and concentrated in time … Thus, short swift small operations would have to be kept limited in time and space’ (ibid.). Jasjit Singh succeeds in tracing the doctrinal process beginning with its origin in politically determined national aims and through formulation of a deterrence doctrine and finally strategy, i.e., the two options he presents. This indicates the problems when Service doctrines are written in a conceptual vacuum due to lack of strategic doctrine. The consequence is that the military ends up interpreting national aims and objectives arbitrarily and, likewise, its role in achieving these is self-determined.

 Looking for Answers

This introductory chapter has dwelt on the layout of the argument and of the book. The hypotheses are the possible causal factors at the three levels of analysis — security threats at the structural level; strategic culture as the political factor at the unit (state) level; and institutional interest at the organisational level. The chapter also covers methodological issues and identifies gaps in literature that the book outlines and hopes to fill, in particular, the absence of work on the nuclear-conventional interface and the lesser attention given to the two lower levels of analysis — state and organisational. The final section on doctrine and strategy situates the study in the relevant background for analysis of the concept of Limited War, discussed in the next chapter.

In a nutshell, the argument is that impetus to doctrine exists at various levels of analysis. However, each is by itself insufficient to effect a change in doctrine. There has to be confluence of the factors at the three levels to bring about doctrinal change. The case study of the Indian military doctrine is of the move from a doctrine that contemplated wider conventional war in the World War tradition to one informed by the Limited War concept. The study locates the factors impelling this change at the three levels by employing three significant theories in international relations and strategic studies — realism at the structural level; cultural theory at the unit level; and organisational theory at the sub-unit level. The three drivers of the doctrine were hypothesised as being: threat from Pakistan at the structural level; shift in India’s strategic culture to a more assertive one at the state level; and, at the organisational level, the institutional interest of the Services to maintain their relevance in face of obsolescence brought on by the nuclear age. It is apparent that India’s doctrinal change has been multi-causal, making the case study one of ‘equi-finality’.

 

10.4324/9781315733968-7

Chapter 7         The Puzzle Resolved?

Prior to nuclearisation it was believed that deterrence in light of the nuclear backdrop would make conventional contest obsolescent. To tide over the interim an ’Nuclear Risk Reduction Centre’ plus (NRRC) serving as an ’enhanced nuclear risk reduction measure’ (NRRM) needs to be in place, with its tasks appropriately framed for covering peace, crisis and conflict. Robert Osgood was the foremost theorist of the concept in the Cold War period. The chronological narrative has it that inception of the doctrine took place at a conference at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in the wake of the Kargil War. The civil-military divide, absence of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and lack of articulation of strategic doctrine make the defence of self-conceived doctrine compelling. An echo across centuries is in Nitin Pai’s talk at the Army War College. At the organisational level, three models are operational: Rational Actor, Organisational Process and Bureaucratic Politics.

Weighing the Drivers

 Prior to nuclearisation it was believed that deterrence in light of the nuclear backdrop would make conventional contest obsolescent. Strategic stability would result in conflict resolution and restoration of peace. India’s formidable power indices in the region and its status as a power without any extra-territorial ambitions could have combined for a defensive deterrent strategic doctrine. Instead, there was a turn to a more offensive conventional doctrine by India, redolent with compellence. This prompted the question: What accounts for the change to an offensive conventional doctrine? Answering this enables an understanding of the impetus behind development of India’s Limited War doctrine.

The answer was sought through the ‘levels of analysis’ approach. The understanding is that phenomena in social sciences are multi-causal. At the structural level it was posited that change in India’s military doctrine has been due to continuing external security threats. At the statelevel, the changeowes to evolution of Indian strategic culture. At the organisational level, the military doctrine preserves the military’s institutional interestinto the nuclear age.

The chronological narrative has it that inception of the doctrine took place at a conference at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in the wake of the Kargil War. The Kargil War brought home to the Indian military that there was space between the sub-conventional 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 hitherto been dependent on strike corps being launched after mobilisation was found wanting. The 2004 document, Indian Army Doctrine, 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 investigate further because the period of the doctrine’s development witnessed certain changes in India’s strategic culture and observed the advent of cultural nationalism. The nationalist impulse favoured an assertive India in the creation of power resources and felicitated the exercise of force. The impact has been in an offensive turn to doctrine when mediated by a military organisation predisposed to the offensive.

There is also the need to look ‘into the box’. The military is part of the wider national security establishment. overt nuclearisation of 1998 had transformed the verities of this complex. The doctrinal output in the subcontinent in the nuclear age can, therefore, be explicated first, as a result of organisational impulse at self-preservation and second, as extension in terms of role expansion. Given the coincidence of three possible explanations, the book has adopted a ‘multi-level and multi-dimensional approach’ to understand the factors behind the change (Jackson and Sorensen 2010: 229).

This concluding chapter is laid out in two parts. Part I carries a brief recapitulation of Limited War in its concept and applicability in India. Part II reiterates the arguments made in the three chapters of the book operationalising the variables at the structural, political and organisational level. Part II also highlights the implications, findings and conclusions for theory and policy.

PART I           Limited War Theory Revisited

The Indian Army’s definition of doctrine is: ‘A framework for a better understanding of the approach to warfare and provides the foundation for its practical application … a set of principles by which military forces guide their actions in support of national objectives’ (ARTRAC 2004: 3). This makes it distinct from strategy with which the term is sometimes confused. The latter has been famously defined by Liddell Hart as ‘[t]he art of distributing and applying military means to fulfil ends of national policy’. The military is but one instrument of national policy. It is orchestrated to fulfil the ends of national policy along with other instruments of national power through the medium of grand strategy. The overarching strategic orientation that is thereby imparted to the state is termed strategic doctrine. This varies along a continuum accommodating defensive, deterrent, offensive, coercive and compel-lent strategic doctrines.

Doctrine is cognisant of the present strategic circumstances of the state. It also heeds the likely direction of future conflict. A collation of knowledge and understanding from previous wars, doctrine, therefore, is an intellectual bridge between the past and future, without neglecting the present. Doctrine places the vast and internally variegated military organisation on the same page. In doing so it helps overcome the fog and friction intrinsic to war and makes the military sensitive to other factors that characterise war, the foremost being the subordination of the military dimension to the political. The downstream benefits are in enabling consensus on organisation and force structures, equipment, infrastructure and training, deployment and employment.

The critical change in the conflict environment has been nuclearisation. Doctrine has to contend with its effects. Towards this end, the Limited War concept, initiated and developed during the Cold War under the conditions of nuclear parity, is handy. Robert Osgood was the foremost theorist of the concept in the Cold War period. His initial definition was, ‘[a] limited war is one in which the belligerents restrict the purposes for which they fight to concrete, well-defined objectives that do not demand the utmost in military effort of which the belligerents are capable and that can be accommodated in a negotiated settlement’ (Osgood 1957). By the time of revision of his work, in light of the Vietnam War experience, where the concept was employed and it failed to deliver, his fresh thinking was that ‘[l]imited wars were to be fought for ends far short of the complete subordination of one state’s will to another’s, using means that involve far less than the total military resources of the belligerents and leave the civilian life and the armed forces of the belligerents largely intact’ (Osgood 1979).

Limited Wars are neither new to history nor a product of the nuclear revolution. Most wars have been limited, prompting the leading theorist of war, Clausewitz, to observe that ‘[w]ar can be of two kinds, in the sense that either the objective is to over throw the enemy …; or merely to occupy some of his frontier-districts so that we can annex them or use them for bargaining at the peace negotiations’ (Clausewitz 2008: 7). It is the nuclear context that made Limited War a special category since it called for, in the words of Bernard Brodie, ‘deliberate hobbling of a tremendous power that is already mobilized’ (Brodie 1959: 311). Categories of potential limitation as visualised by osgood were along the lines of geographical area, weapons, targets, manpower, number of belligerents, duration and, intensity. Thinking on limitation was not restricted to the conventional level. Kissinger, among others as Herman Kahn, evolved the concept to Limited Nuclear War that later informed the flexible response strategy. Thomas Schelling, an economist by training, built in the concept of bargaining into the understanding of Limited War with his input that the threat of violence in reserve is more important than the commitment of force in the field.

India’s Adaptation

With such a body of work preceding India’s conscious tryst with the concept, it is remarkable that reference to Limited War was absent from Indian strategic thinking. The assumption was that India, in any case, had only fought Limited Wars. All its five wars since Independence were limited in nature in all the parameters. The Kargil War was an epitome of Limited War and understandably so since both states had gone nuclear a year earlier. The concept of Limited War as an intellectual construct arrived in India in the wake of the Kargil War.

The Limited War concept was preceded by a doctrinal movement away from the defensive mentality. This provided the fertile intellectual space required for its development. India, in the eighties, had moved away from the practice of deterrence by denial or ‘defensive defence’ to the practice of deterrence based on counter-offensive capability with the ability to inflict punishment. The military mindset, therefore, was receptive to the turn of the doctrine towards being ‘proactive’ and offensive. The strategic predicament posed by Pakistan at the structural level, the churning in strategic culture by infusion of political culture with cultural nationalism at the state level, and the need for the military to adapt to the nuclearised conflict circumstance were the compelling drivers for change in the doctrine.

The aims that Limited War helped furnish in the India-Pakistan context were to help deter Pakistan, to coerce it if necessary to reverse provocation to ensure that provocation remains below India’s level of tolerance and if it fails to prosecute war to compel it to reverse its policy of provocations. Such a war was envisaged as comprising proactive joint offensive operations across a broad front and involving multiple offensives. These were to advance to shallow depths so as not to trigger the adversary’s nuclear reaction threshold. Speed of mobilisation and manoeuvre warfare-inspired operations were to ensure speedy end to the conflict in terms of time. The assumption was that the political go-ahead at the outset would set off the chain of events. This was necessary to overcome the mobilisation differential in Pakistan’s favour due to its cantonments being closer to the border and its operation on interior lines of communication. Speed in mobilising ensured that assaulting troops would find defences under-prepared due to the defender having less time to organise himself in defence.

This did not, therefore, require complete mobilisation of defence potential of the country. The gains made were to be traded off for future good behaviour and to punish the Pakistan Army, in particular, through attrition with the aid of air power and fire power. Strike corps were to ‘posture’ in the background, either for exploiting success or to keep the adversary’s reaction non-escalatory, depending on whether the war aim was self-effacing or expansive, respectively. Naval operations, intelligence and covert operations, diplomatic and political action would form the additional prongs operating to suitably influence the mind of the Pakistani decision-maker, in effect its military apex.

The full implications of the nuclear context to the conflict have come into the reckoning only in response to the criticism the doctrine has received. For instance, the Indian Army Doctrine states: ‘Offensive operations are a decisive form of winning a war. Their purpose is to attain the desired end state and achieve decisive victory’ (ARTRAC 2004: 7).

The term decisive victory should not ideally figure at all, given that just a page later the doctrine has it that ‘[f]uture operations will be conducted against a nuclear backdrop; all planning should take this important factor into account’ (ibid.: 8). The term ‘decisive victory’ had figured in the 1998 document, written in a period of recessed deterrence. It is testimony of the cultural factor, studied at the ‘unit’ level. The fact that the military continues to maintain the strike corps implies that factors at the structural level, such as the critical one of nuclearisation, are important but not the sole ingredients of doctrine formulation.

 The military envisages employment of strike corps thus:

Strike corps should be capable of being inserted into operational level battle, either as battle groups or as a whole, to capture or threaten strategic and operational objective(s) with a view to cause destruction of the enemy’s reserves and capture sizeable portions of territory (ARTRAC 2004: 9).

This blind spot indicates that doctrine formulation has to contend with lobbies, in this case the cavalier lobby that cannot concede the dismantlement of armoured might. This is suggestive that doctrine is not only an output in the face of strategic circumstance, but there are organisational compulsions that determine the way it turns out. The fact that the Army doctrine has been contested by the Air Force and lacks political imprimatur, further weighs in on the side of the organisational factor. Examination of the three factors in respective chapters is reflected in brief in the subsequent section.

PART II          The Structural Factor

In realist theory, the world order is taken as anarchic and power balancing is used by states to 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 the former being the political level approach to power and its instrumentality.

The threat posed by Pakistan was manifested at the sub-conventional level over the last three decades. In the eighties, there was also the apprehension that Pakistan could follow up its sub-conventional proxy war with a more conventional one. 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 that the first edition of the written doctrine in 1998 discoursed on an intention to fight the war on enemy territory. By the end of the eighties, recessed deterrence or non-weaponised 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 the massive military mobililsationthat 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 brief recount of movement in the strategic and military doctrines, respectively, since 1971, indicates a link between the two. The Indira-Rajiv period was one of operation of the ‘Indira doctrine’ with India wishing to be a regional power. India, therefore, acquired a higher military profile in the eighties. In the second part of the period, characterised by liberalisation, the straitened economic circumstance led to an introspective India. Military doctrine remained stagnant in the period which led to atrophy in the conventional deterrent, with Pakistan upping the ante in its proxy war, taking advantage of the stability/instability paradox. The threat culminated in the Kargil War and the terror attack on Parliament. The strategic doctrine in response was to coerce Pakistan to revise its anti-India posture. Military doctrine furnished this by making the military instrument relevant to the new strategic circumstance of nuclearisation.

However, there is an anomaly in the period of Indira doctrine. While the counter-offensive reliant doctrine that accompanied mechanisation was in sync with strategic doctrine of deterrence, the Indira doctrine itself was not a response to a threat as such, since India had acquired regional pre-eminence after the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971. India could have continued with a defensive strategic doctrine. Instead, India moved to deterrence based on a promise of conventional punishment, eventually acquiring three strike corps. This means that the explanation at the structural level is important but insufficient.

The strategic doctrine of quasi-compellence in the early part of the 2000s was reflected in the proactive military doctrine. Likewise in the later part of the decade, there has been a correspondence between the strategic doctrine of restraint and the one step back from Cold Start in military doctrine. This proves the link between strategic and military doctrine. It does not prove adequately that the strategic doctrine itself is a response to threat at the structural level. The nuclear threat brought about by nuclearisation and Pakistan’s abjuring of ‘No First Use’ (NFU) amounted to greater threat. This partially led to a changed strategic doctrine to one of restraint. This means that the earlier doctrine of quasi-compellence has more to it than it being taken merely as a response to threat at the structural level. This renders the link backward from military doctrine to threat as problematic. Strategic doctrine, in other words, has more impelling it than threat perception. The structural level explanation can therefore only be a partial one.

It can be concluded that there is a degree of correspondence at the structural level between military doctrine and strategic doctrine. The link between strategic doctrine and threats emanating at the structural level are less easy to draw. The hypothesis is therefore validated only partially, since threat does inform doctrine but not to the extent generally believed.

The Political Factor

Cultural theory posits three ‘cultures’ — political, strategic and organisational. Political culture is a site of ideological and intellectual competition between strategic elites. It determines control over the levers of the state. The concept of political culture has not been discussed in any detail here. Instead, the focus has been on strategic culture with organisational culture seen as mediating between culture and doctrine.

 Jack Snyder, the originator of the term strategic culture, defined it as ‘[s]um total of ideals, conditional emotional responses, and patterns of habitual behaviour that members of the national strategic community have acquired through instruction or imitation and share with each other with regard to national strategy’ (quoted in Johnston 1995a: 36). Organisational culture can be defined as a collective understanding about the nature of work and conduct of the mission, shared across an organisation. It is plugged into strategic culture, but can also be distinct, depending on the cohesion of the organisation and levels of integration with the polity.

Strategic culture is rooted in physical, political and socio-cultural factors. It has ‘keepers’ in the form of strategic elites, security bureaucracies, strategic community, and the attentive public. While continuity is usually taken as its hallmark, change is ongoing. Multiple strategic sub-cultures can exist alongside a dominant strategic culture and their relative salience depends on the ideological tryst within political culture. Strategic culture has symbolic and operational sets where in the former provides a rationale, while the latter accounts for the extent of reliance on force. Organisational culture of the military is of two types. The first is universal to militaries depending on their role of provision of security for the state. This has been typified by the military sociologist, Samuel Huntington, as ‘[t]he military ethic is thus pessimistic, nationalistic, militaristic, pacifist, and instrumentalist in its view of the military profession. It is, in brief, realistic and conservative’ (Huntington 1957: 79). The second culture is specific to the particular military, being a product of its unique historical evolution, strategic circumstance and sociological milieu.

The George Tanham thesis (1992) states that India lacked a strategic culture and to the extent it did have one, it was defensive. Kanti Bajpai (2002) characterises Indian strategic culture as collage-like in subsuming multiple strategic sub-cultures — Nehruvian, neo-liberal 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 political ascendance of the conservative-nationalist forces. Their tenure in power enabled India’s overt nuclearisation.

A cultural theoretical interpretation would state that this has less to do with strategic appreciation and 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 liberalisation era, the strategic culture too has undergone 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. Nuclearisationwasin part a result of an assertive strategic culture, unwilling to subordinate itself to imposition of a global non-proliferation regime. An offensive turn to strategic culture was an outcome of Pakistan’s continuing challenge to strategic self-assertion by India. 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 the validation of the theory. 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. The very fact that this understanding of an absent political directive has been continually challenged is itself evidence of the offensive bias. Mechanisation can be seen as a break-out of this political strait-jacket since it necessarily implies a manoeuvre war approach.

There is also a cultural explanation for the offensive approach to the strategic predicament. It is sensitive to the power asymmetry between India and Pakistan. The reference to power asymmetry brings up structural level explanations. This is not necessarily so when asymmetry is viewed from the perspective of the stronger power, in this case, India. The sub-conventional challenge posed by Pakistan was taken as amounting to an affront, requiring military exertion on India’s part in the military. A proportion of the angst has gone in innovatively coping with the Pakistani challenge on site in Kashmir. However, making the conventional option usable in the light of nuclearisation helps end the impunity enjoyed by Pakistan’s recourse to the stability/instability paradox which resulted in the Limited War doctrine countenancing proactive offensives. Therefore, 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.

Elizabeth Kier’s understanding of political elites’ consciousness of the military factor in internal politics implies that the conservative National Democratic Alliance (NDA) regime used military muscle flexing to depict its stronger stand on national defence. The Limited War doctrine formulation during its tenure is an instance among others. Likewise, the centre-right successor, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, while cognisant of the political value of being strong on defence or rather the political cost of appearing neglectful of defence, nevertheless have had prudence dictate military considerations. This explains in part the lack of military response to 26/11. Johnston’s theory of cultural realism seems to suggest an answer on such effects of political culture. He writes that:

construction of group identities involves creation of in-group-out-group tensions … Thus, as in-group identification intensifies, it should be easier to denigrate out-groups and identify them as potential threats … the greater the intensity and exclusiveness of state identity, the closer a state will be to the high extreme … States sharing these levels of in-group identification will tend to share strategic cultures which exhibit hard realpolitik characteristics. Conversely, states with weak in-group identification, or states which perceive other states as sharing values characteristic of the in-group, are more likely to be influenced by idealpolitik strategic cultures (Johnston 1995b: 60).

By this yardstick, the Hindutva philosophy, for bringing about a unifying, harmonising identity for the denominational majority, has had strategic cultural effects. Bharat Karnad refers to the ‘brutish quality’ of the environment dating to the Vedic age that produced India’s texts on ‘pragmatic realism’ (2002: 3–4). The compilation of the wisdom of the ages gone by was done in Kautilya’s  Arthashastra (ibid.: 10). Hemaintains that ‘ancient Hindu outlook was bleak and the remedies were stark. Intrusive policing within the realm was considered de rigueur’ (ibid.). He alludes to the Brahmin — ‘the highest of the four castes’ (ibid.) — as performing an integrating function between the secular and temporal. They ‘herded the growingly diverse peoples under one socio-cultural roof’ (ibid.: 11). By the time of the Arthashastra, internecine warfare had led to ‘fatigue and attrition all round’. Karnad believes that this led to a felt need ‘to close ranks, maintain ethnic solidarity and to forge a united front against extra-regional and extra-ethnic foe’ (ibid.). The fear was of ‘adversaries exploiting disunity’ (ibid.). Karnad opines ‘[t]o achieve the twin objectives of tranquillity at home and hegemony abroad, Kautilya, not unlike the old Vedic masters, scrupled at nothing’ (ibid.). This concern with internal unity explains psychological projection and displacement, resulting in external power projection.

An echo across centuries is in Nitin Pai’s talk at the Army War College (2011). To him,

[u]niting and keeping the country united has been the grand strategy of India’s rulers … The pursuit of the same grand strategy by different types of governments over two millennia suggests that the roots of India’s strategic culture are far deeper than we realise. India’s strategic culture … concerns itself with maintaining national unity (Pai 2011: 7).

His conclusion is: ‘The upshot is that India must project power abroad to stay united at home’ (ibid.). This is an intellectual justification of power projection, going beyond mere offensive deterrence.

Consequently, not only does India have a record in keeping with Johnston’s cross cultural expectation that states have an operational set strategic culture amenable to use of force, but this has been accentuated by the need for in-group identity formation. Military doctrine has been one of the arenas of the process. The structural level threat posed by Pakistan is, in part, a creation of India’s power shadow over Pakistan. This shadow has internal drivers, as against being responsive solely to the Pakistan threat, as the structural explanation would have it. The long-standing critique of Indian reticence and infelicity in the use of force is largely inaccurate, and that count is in effect a deliberate, and at times motivated, exaggeration. This tempering of the dominant understanding that India lacks a strategic culture or is overly defensive is necessary to cope with the nuclearised strategic environment. Acknowledging this has the advantage of preventing the state from overcompensation in favour of the use of force.

The Organisational Factor

At the organisational level, three models are operational: Rational Actor, Organisational Process and Bureaucratic Politics. The rational actor model posits a rational, unitary state responding with appropriate actions and due deliberateness. This has been covered earlier in the discussion on the structural factor and India’s reasoned response. The latter two models were therefore tackled in the previous chapter. In the organisational process model, doctrines are the ‘output’ of organisations enacting routines and standard operating procedures. Since doctrine formulation is what bureaucracies assigned the role ‘do’, these are undertaken by the military responsive to its internal differentiation and resulting diverse sensitivities within. Professionalism, defined by Huntington as a sense of responsibility for security, fulfilment of the associated advisory function and corporate cohesion, should determine doctrine. However, organisational theory has it that militaries seek autonomy, uncertainty reduction and institutional interest. Innovation is usually the result of failure in light of the need to move beyond the setback. These impact in making doctrinal output incline towards the offensive. The bureaucratic politics model has it that inter-Service and intra-Service ‘fights’ over salience, prestige, budgets, roles, etc., are consequential in buffeting doctrinal output in a certain self-serving direction.

Organisational process is geared to facilitate organisational ‘needs’ 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, since writings on the Services in general are inclined to treat the Services with a less critical eye. The fact that the military has professional autonomy in the doctrinal function is evident from the deficiencies in higher defence organisations as also in the Ministry of Defence’s traditional hands-off policy. This means that the organisation sets its own terms. In such a case, organisational interests end up having wider play, even as the rationale given out as fulfilment of a national obligation.

Bureaucratic disagreements that result from organisational pursuit of institutional interests with other organisations 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 the 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 defence of self-conceived doctrine compelling. This results in bureaucratic fights since each organisation is not necessarily pursuing ‘parochial’ interests. Rather, each organisation 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.

Sundarji’s 1981 postal seminar at the College of Combat is evidence of the military’s thinking on the impact of nuclearisation. Mechanisation then underway was to anticipate the soon-to-be nuclear reality. Exercise Brasstacks was possibly designed to bring about a favourable strategic reality prior to the nuclear reality firming in. Despite onset of recessed deterrence India went in for the third strike corps. This pursuit of ‘combat superiority’ is a long standing tendency (Singh 2010: 14). The logic that votaries argued for nuclearisation was that the deterrence logic would work to help resolve outstanding issues between the two states. This has not been borne out. This can be partially attributed to Pakistan’s proxy war proclivities, which are a result of their perception of power asymmetry. The structural argument is that this requires a refurbished conventional deterrent. Not entirely unwittingly or incidentally, the very creation of this asymmetry owes to organisational initiatives towards expansion. The ‘security dilemma’ at the bottom of proxy war is therefore attributable in some measure to organisational level factors of institutional expansion.

Pakistan has tried to pin down India’s military might in insurgency operations. India has created a separate force, the Rashtriya Rifles (RR) to undertake counter-insurgency operations to hone its conventional deterrence, whose effectiveness is apparently declining with incidences of proxy war. The opportunity detected in nuclearisation by Pakistan was borrowed and the military likewise saw the window for launch of conventional counter. This kept its institutional interest alive into the nuclear age, as incidentally it did for the Pakistani military to greater effect in terms of extending the tenure of that military atop the state apparatus. A study by a serving officer argues for numerical expansion along with qualitative upgrades, even as he argues that large scale offensive action at defeating the enemy is scaled down (Singh 2010: 12). This implies that nuclearisation is just another factor; bureaucratic wheels roll on inexorably. The bureaucratic politics surrounding this lends the process a sense of urgency since, as mentioned earlier, the rationale is the unexceptional fulfilment of a social obligation.

The finding here 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. Greater focus on this can be achieved once the discipline of military sociology acquires momentum, under tutelage of the National Defence University, over a period of time.

PART III         Prioritisation of Drivers

The foregoing section brings out that there is reasonable and sufficient evidence for respective factors at the three levels to be considered as drivers of doctrine. Given the incidence of realist perspective in security literature, it is refreshing to discover that the bias is in favour of the other two factors, namely political and organisational, over the structural factor. The findings of this case study are that at the structural level, doctrine has been a response to India’s ‘Pakistan predicament’. At the state level, the political factor, involving a shift in strategic culture, accounts for the Limited War doctrine. Lastly, at the organisational level, institutional implications of degrading of conventional deterrence capabilities, evidenced by the Kargil War and Operation Parakram episodes, led to doctrinal evolution. This was further prompted by existing inter-Service doctrinal competition to determine India’s military doctrine in 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. Yet, it remains to determine, if possible, whether there any one driver is more prominent and dominant.

 Judging Drivers

The growth of doctrine since the 1971 War has been traced in this monograph. For the purpose of study, this time period can be further sub-divided into its constituent periods — the period of operation of the Indira doctrine that can be dated to end of eighties to include the regimes of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi; the succeeding period of introspection resulting from onset of liberalisation in the nineties; the culmination of cultural nationalism in the reign of the conservative political party at the centre in the NDA period; and the subsequent UPA period. The periods can be contrasted in respect of innovation/stagnation of doctrinal thinking in the conventional sphere.

The Indira period was characterised as one of doctrinal innovation with mechanisation. The subsequent period witnessed India being bogged down in counter insurgency operations. The NDA period was one of innovation leading up to the Limited War doctrine. The UPA period has seen partial innovation in recourse to the strategic doctrine of restraint and the corresponding draw down from Limited War doctrine as a default military response option. In the periods of doctrinal innovation, it is seen that the three factors — structural, political and organisational — are in operation. During the Indira-Rajiv period, the structural level ‘threat’ from Pakistan at the nuclear and sub-conventional level, led to India leveraging its conventional advantage through doctrinal innovation. The Indira doctrine, dating to the 1971 War, was responsible for change in strategic culture from Nehruvianism of the preceding era. organisational impetus in the form of dynamism of Sundarji and the turn to manoeuvre warfare was taking place. Likewise, in the NDA period of innovation, all three drivers were at work. The threat from Pakistan peaked during the Kargil War and and grave terrorist provocation under nuclear conditions in the attacks on the legislative assembly in Srinagar and the attack on the Parliament at New Delhi in 2001. Strategic culture was more assertive under the changes in political culture brought on in part by mainstreaming of cultural nationalism. The organisational factor was much in evidence in terms of coping with the new nuclear reality and the stepped up inter-Service competition over the changes in the character of war brought on by the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and demonstrated elsewhere in the post-Cold War era.

Conversely, relative stagnation in the other two periods (the coalition era of the nineties and the UPA period) can be attributed to least one factor not being available to the required degree. In the nineties, strategic culture and the organisational factor were static, accounting for lack of movement in doctrine. The era of coalition governments in the nineties led to forceful articulation of the critique of India’s lack of strategic culture, although such a critique was unmindful of the preceding overstretch in the eighties and the developments in the seventies following the great political-military-intelligence-diplomatic triumph of 1971. In fact, this stasis enabled the political-cultural changes in the backdrop that later accounted for an inflection in strategic culture towards a more offensive orientation. At the organisational level, India’s leading Service, the Army, was caught up in counter-insurgency duty and its naval force was facing a budgetary crunch after the premature high in maritime advocacy of the eighties. Only the Air Force was doctrinally active in light of the eye opening air campaign of the preceding First Gulf War.

Considering the same for the UPA period of relative stagnation, it can be seen that the structural factor has been dormant. This owes to the limitations of the military option in face of the unfolding war on terror in ‘AfPak’, the period of ‘back channel’ engagement during the Musharraf years and the privileging of neo-liberal economic reforms. Even though Mumbai 26/11 transpired during this period, it did not lead to a forceful military-led reaction. This is an indication of a nuanced return to a strategic culture of restraint. At the organisational level, Cold Start was being firmed in. The movement away from the Cold Start doctrine can be explained as a recognition finally of the transition to the nuclear age. It appears that a revision in the previous assumptions that under-grid use of conventional forces is underway.

This survey suggests that in case any one or more of the three drivers is deficient, it results in stagnation in the military’s doctrinal function. Since the three were in evidence during the period of formulation of the Limited War doctrine, the conjunction can be attributed the development of doctrine. Objectively, it is difficult to determine, which of the three drivers was most prominent. However, it can be said that crediting the structural factor, as is the wont, is not sustainable. This can be refuted by reference to both the formulation of the Indira doctrine in the earlier period and to the cultural nationalism-induced change in the later period. The Indira doctrine was enunciated in a period when India was a pre-eminent power in the region and faced no existential threat. In the later period, the threat at the structural level was in part a function of security dilemma induced in Pakistan by change in India’s strategic culture. Therefore, the explanation in cultural theory is consequential.

In fact, as the threat at the structural level heightened in the period prior to the conceptualisation and formulation of the Limited War doctrine, it owed to a more assertive strategic culture. In effect, India’s changed strategic culture stimulated Pakistani actions that were in turn seen as ‘threats’ and thereby served to justify the change in strategic culture. This reasoning negates the argument that strategic culture changed in response to threats. In fact, threats at the structural level helped accelerate change in strategic culture. Insofar as external environment has figured in both, it is for justification and rationalisation.

In relation to the organisational level, the cultural explanation appears to dominate since the changed strategic culture enabled the military to preserve its institutional interests. The military could not have done so without the enabling environment of an assertive turn to strategic culture, given the military’s subordination to the civilian domain in India. This analysis, therefore, suggests that the cultural factor can arguably be privileged as the ‘principal’ driver behind India’s Limited War doctrine.

Policy Relevance

The foremost policy relevant conclusion is that India needs to arrive at an explicit Limited War doctrine. This must be cognisant of the nuclear-conventional interface. As a pre-requisite, it needs to first make the structural changes necessary, in particular the creation of the CDS, by whatever designation and scope of duties. 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 by military professionals in the light of nuclear dangers.

The dangers are an offshoot of the conventional-nuclear interface, that has been rendered awry by India’s declaratory nuclear doctrine introduction of the term ‘massive’ to indicate the levels of nuclear retaliation on receipt of any kind of enemy first use. At a minimum, the term ‘massive’ needs excision. The term ‘massive’ in the doctrine needs excision at a minimum. Instead, building in limitation into nuclear doctrine is warranted since the onus of moving to the nuclear level is on Pakistan, over which India has only indirect influence. Therefore, instead of a counter-city strategy, a graduated counter-military and counter-force would help avoid spasmic nuclear release. The damage that Pakistan can do in countering India’s ‘wiping it off the map’ is considerable in light of its arsenal reaching triple digits. The expectation that a broken-backed scattered retaliation can be catered for by the emplacement of missile defences over two of India’s most significant assets, presumably Delhi along with the nuclear command post and Mumbai, India’s financial capital, is delusional. Even if the technologist claim is conceded, the problem of nuclear attack on the rest of the country can result in a Partition-like internal blood-letting in the short term and a balkanised India over the long haul. The former cannot be risked due to the internal-external linkage that has been sought by right wing forces to be established between India’s largest minority and Pakistan. Self-deterrence therefore has its overriding virtues over the compulsions of deterrence theology (Ahmed 2012b).

A ‘flexible retaliation doctrine’ (as against ‘flexible response’) could be considered for escalation control. Since the ‘assured destruction’ threat carries suicidal and genocidal proportions, with a ‘MAD’ (Mutual Assured Destruction) circumstance lately beginning to obtain in South Asia, the periodic review of doctrine, due at least every decade if not more frequently, needs to be carried out. The 10th anniversary of the official doctrine’s unveiling can be productively used to review the doctrine.

War avoidance is much more important, as Bernard Brodie (1946) reminded right at the beginning of the nuclear age. This implies taking the promise in nuclear weapons acquisition seriously, that of the weapons providing a cover under which to resolve outstanding disputes. This means a meaningful working towards, first, a detente in the near term and, subsequently, an entente is imperative. To tide over the interim an ‘Nuclear Risk Reduction Centre’ plus (NRRC) serving as an ‘enhanced nuclear risk reduction measure’ (NRRM) needs to be in place, with its tasks appropriately framed for covering peace, crisis and conflict.

India needs to reset its strategic doctrine. Currently, fear of a realist backlash precludes the articulation of a strategic doctrine. As a result, the cardinals of military doctrine are not clearly articulated or at best remain nebulous. It is felt that the strategic doctrine apposite to India’s internal political and strategic circumstance is best informed by defensive realism. This would involve a shift from the current tendency towards a strategic doctrine of offensive realism, visible from the direction of India’s defence budgets, acquisitions programme and geopolitical posturing.

one of the implications of a doctrine of defensive realism will be a return to a policy of deterrence with a defensive bias on the Pakistan front. This would alleviate Pakistan’s security dilemma making a meaningful reaching out to Pakistan possible. Currently, the numerous dialogue initiatives go unreciprocated since they appear incongruous with India’s strategic posture, as interpreted by the Pakistan Army which is in charge across the border. Given that a ‘carrot and stick’ policy is unfolding, the stick end overshadows the benign one, not only in what India proffers but in what a military-dominant Pakistan wishes to see. Strategic doctrine needs reworking the balance between the two in accordance with the revised national endeavour. As the study brings out, instruments of power have institutional interests that need factoring. Compellence furnishes these more comprehensively and therefore the institutional bias would require to be overridden by exercise of political control. Since strategic doctrine is a political function and grand strategy orchestration a political prerogative, exercise of political control is desirable to this end.

A replacement strategic doctrine could ideally be one informed by defensive realism and tend towards defensive deterrence. The consequences of this for military doctrine are stark, with, for instance, proactive offensives on a short fuse in the Cold Start mould being reconsidered. The right starting point is current direction of moving a step away from Cold Start. However, as seen, the ‘Cold Start’ doctrine has also served as an information war battlefield of smoke and mirrors. This has been through exaggerating India’s capability to follow through with its doctrine despite its deficit in equipment, training and cultural reorientation. This has led to Indian reticence in articulating a Limited War doctrine. The fear is that doing so would lessen conventional deterrence by emboldening the Pakistani military into believing that retribution will not be as swift and complete as a full scale conventional war would wraught. To make this case more convincing, the military has chosen to relocate some formations closer to the border to make them quicker off the blocks. Cumulatively this will have an escalatory impact that would be less amenable to political control when and if tested by crisis or conflict. While the military may not be averse to this, for the tail to wag a nuclear dog is not the wisest defence policy.

Therefore, intermeshing the doctrinal sphere into the dialogue process with Pakistan is necessary. For India’s Pakistan strategy to succeed, the latter is required to reconcile with a status quo that is in India’s interests. Compellence as a strategic doctrine has limitations on this score. Instead, incentivising Pakistan may be the route. The term appeasement is much dreaded and derided by strategic thinkers, particularly post-Munich. However, it cannot be neglected as a strategic choice. In other words, the security challenge is to arrive at mutual and balanced security, a win-win situation that would require taking Pakistani and Indian concerns on board together. Institutionalisation of a strategic dialogue will help move from mere confidence to security-building measures. While doctrinal interplay could figure in the talks at the start, mutual and balanced forces reduction may be broached, eventually (Ahmed 2010c). This extensive agenda is seemingly far-fetched. Having counter-intuitively seen in the study how power play unduly risks national security, the inference is along constructivist lines: that a changed strategic doctrine can beget a more secure future. Military doctrine would move further into making military power less counter-productive. This would be in keeping with the principal dictate of the nuclear age.

All Three and Together

The wider lesson is that India’s military exertions have not led to expected levels of security. In short, security is not necessarily a result of realism inspired understanding of power or felicity in the application of power. The problem is accentuated in India’s case since not only are challenges in external security not mitigated but also get interlinked with its vulnerability in internal security. The experience over the past three decades has led to the impulse that India needs to ‘do more’ in respect of security. The route it is taking is ‘more of the same’ in terms of bolstering the military instrument and its nuclear dimension. The understanding is that India has acquired a strategic culture, resolved organisational shortcomings substantially and has sustainable finances towards this end. The incentive is there in terms of joining the ‘great power’ club. Its strategic doctrine is one of escalation dominance, geared to overawing a ‘failing’ Pakistan, thereby attaining Tsun Tsu’s pinnacle of strategy — winning without fighting. This direction, having proved wanting over the past, remains questionable for the future.

The political factor drives India’s exertions for status equivalent to its potential power and size. This is suggestive of an external focus dominating strategic considerations. This is not very useful for a state that remains a nation-in-the-making. India needs to re-orient its yardstick of prestige, critical to strategic cultural change, away from power to indices in the social sphere such as gender equality, social equity, education, poverty removal, and development. A clarification of national values and recalibration of aims needs to be done. The strategic doctrine that emerges will then take India down a path which more in keeping with its true contours as a ‘subcontinent state’ in terms of size and ‘civilisation state’ in terms of nationhood.