From the archives, 20 Nov 2003 

THE THREAT OF WAR

‘Will Pakistan use the Bomb?’ is generally the question dealt with in security literature. Expectedly, a self-serving answer emerges from both India and Pakistan. Pakistan believes that the threat of nuclear weapons will avert war while India subscribes to the notion that war can be pursued without it turning into a nuclear one. Indications from the highest quarters in Pakistan, the latest one being that Pakistan will ensure a ‘no-win’ situation at the end of the next war, are that it does envisage use of nuclear weapons in conflict. India, for its part, prefers to believe in the robustness of its nuclear deterrent based on a ‘strategy of punishment’, for to concede otherwise would be to accept failure of its deterrence, if not the very logic of deterrence itself. 

A more pertinent question would be ‘How will Pakistan use the Bomb?’ A plausible answer to this would imply that the next war could well be nuclear war. Whether such a future is in the offing for South Asia would depend on the threat of war. The examination of the threat of war here reveals that war despite the onset of the nuclear age war is not quite passé.  

 

The foremost utility of nuclear weapons for Pakistan is political, in that the nuclear backdrop helps keep the international community’s attention reverted on the subcontinent during periodic Kashmir related crisis. Under the nuclear umbrella, Pakistan has ventured to promote unrest in Kashmir. Militarily, the message explicit from Pakistani quarters is that it has contemplated a ‘First Use’ doctrine for its nuclear weapons, betraying shades of a ‘strategy of denial’. India for its part has been seeking a way out of this strategic dilemma posed it by Pakistan. It has recently been attempting to reduce the space available to Pakistan for prosecution of its ‘proxy war’ through propagating ‘Limited War’ thinking. Militarily, Indian nuclear doctrine has been fairly consistent about the ‘No First Use’ principle. In a nutshell, while India may not resort to nuclear weapons, the same cannot be expected of Pakistan. While India may like to downplay nuclear weapons and the nuclear backdrop, the reverse would be the case both politically and militarily with Pakistan.

 

The Indian doctrine of infliction of ‘unacceptable damage’ in retaliation is only credible in the circumstance of ‘first strike’ by an adversary. This is however the least likely manner in which Pakistan would use its nuclear weapons given the credibility of Indian deterrence in this case. Pakistan is also not likely to wait till regime or state survival is threatened, even if doing so would make its case for ‘going nuclear’ compelling in light of the ICJ ruling on the legality of use of nuclear weapons. Pakistan when pushed to the wall would be left with the option of a wargasmic ‘first strike’, prompted by crisis generated ‘use it or lose it’ thinking. This would be at a juncture when the staggering regime is least able to conduct such a strike. India is also not likely to provoke Pakistan by pegging its war aims that high. Therefore for nuclear capability to be of any use to Pakistan, it would be only to redress India’s superiority, both in terms of general conventional superiority and in the area of operations. ‘Rational’ use would imply non-escalatory employment to influence a battle-field situation while deriving political level benefits in terms of international war termination pressures on both sides.  Therefore, enquiry as to how Pakistani ‘nuclear use’ will transpire at lower levels of the nuclear threshold is both legitimate and appropriate.

 

It is widely assessed that Pakistan likely imitates the erstwhile NATO philosophy of offsetting an opponent’s conventional superiority, There is however one departure from the NATO model. While with the NATO, conventional forces were to act as ‘tripwire’ for a Tactical Nuclear Weapons based counter, Pakistan probably departs from this knee-jerk nuclear use in attempting first to best India conventionally. This it could attempt to do in the belief that Indian aims, that are likely to be ‘limited’ in keeping with the new ‘Limited War’ thinking in India, may require commitment of only a proportion of India’s conventional forces. With limitation manifesting in terms of force levels, objectives and areas of operations, Pakistan may feel bold enough to be able to meet the challenge conventionally.

 

In so far as ‘nuclear use’ is concerned in such a scenario, it may be prompted by threat to or loss of a city or place of some importance. Even if India attempts to avoid posing such a threat, misperception of Indian aims, very much possible under the proverbial ‘fog of war’, could trigger a nuclear response. Nuclear weapons would be so employed as to influence the tactical situation, defensively and on its own territory, while the breach of the nuclear taboo would be the intended political effect. This would be a feasible option for Pakistan’s Nuclear Command Authority to envisage, since the limited nature of the war, at least in its early stages, would not have affected the capacity for strategic direction of this nature. Pakistan can therefore be expected to resort to a deterrence strategy based on ‘a threat that leaves something to chance’, meaning that though it may not choose to employ nuclear weapons, they cannot be discounted altogether.

 

Pakistan could also preemptively employ the nuclear weapon as a ‘green field’ option on its own territory, particularly in its sparsely inhabited desert region, in areas of likely advance by Indian armored forces prior to their attack. Locally this would make the area unsuitable for speedy armor operations and thereby canalize the Indian attack to where Pakistan could cope with the attack. At the political level it would focus international opinion in such a manner as to make the intended Indian offensive a non-starter. India’s nuclear doctrine itself rules out an Indian nuclear response since it contemplates nuclear use only in case of threat of use or use of WMD against it or its forces. Thus India’s preference in such an instance could be to continue sitting on the blocks in keeping the precedence of Operation Parakram rather than begin fighting conventionally under terms dictated by Pakistan. Attempting to prevail elsewhere in built up, thickly inhabited areas further north would be to fight against a defender’s advantages.

 

That India has partially thought through this conundrum posed by Pakistan can be discerned from the ongoing developments in the security field. India is attempting to recreate its conventional superiority by having new CRPF units release its BSF from policing duties in urban Kashmir, who would in turn substitute the Army’s defensive units elsewhere for offensive use. A massive influx of equipment and weaponry into all three services through deals with Israel, Russia, UK and USA points towards movement of Indian strategy from ‘compellence’ implicit in the ‘coercive diplomacy’ practiced in Operation Parakram to ‘dominance’ by force of arms if necessary in future. In the nuclear field, visible progress in the form of raisings of missile units is no doubt being matched by computer simulation based progress in warhead design and miniaturisation. India’s movement towards structures enabling nuclear war fighting presently lacks only the creation of a Chief of Defense Staff. The aim of India appears to be to attain ‘escalation dominance’ across the conflict spectrum in order to ensure that it can prevails at any level. With Pakistan suitably impressed, it can then be compelled to fight at the level chosen by India, rather than escalate - for even at any higher level the outcome would not be materially different and at a greater cost. India’s propounding of the twin doctrines of ‘Limited War’ and ‘No First Use’ are designed to deflate any Pakistani impetus to escalation to the nuclear level.

 

An economically weaker Pakistan cannot hope to match India’s trajectory militarily. India’s modernization initiatives, based on a series of enhanced defense budgets post-Kargil, will bear fruit over the near term. Thereafter India will have the option to employ its superiority of a higher order than hither to fore for enforcing a military end to Pakistan’s ‘proxy war’. The interim is therefore a rapidly closing window of opportunity for Pakistan. Pakistan may be tempted to refocus world attention on Kashmir in an unambiguous manner before India becomes unchallengeable. From the manner the Diwali Peace proposals were offered by India and greeted in Pakistan, the Indian peace initiative of last summer can be deemed to have run its course. A military adventure may therefore appear to Pakistan’s military regime as not only the best suited but also the only choice to concentrate minds on the K word. While in doing this Pakistan would stay clear of offensive use of nuclear weapons, these will enter the picture, as discussed, once India’s ‘befitting’ reply gains momentum.

 

Since it takes ‘two to tango’, even the best-intended ‘Limited War’ is likely as not turn into a nuclear war sooner than later, albeit becoming only a ‘Limited Nuclear War’. It can thus be hazarded here that the foreseeable future up until at least the middle term is fraught. The near term danger emanates from Pakistan following the precedence of its 1965 War launched in fear of India’s recovery from its 1962 defeat placing Kashmir forever out of its reach. Over the middle term the danger originates from India in case Pakistan has by then not shriveled up and fallen off by the way side as per the expectations of Indian strategists in emulating Reagan’s strategy of early Eighties in exhausting the USSR.

 

The concluding observation here is that the threat of war has been accentuated by the convergence of two factors, namely the two diverse nuclear doctrines and the diverging levels of war preparedness. With increasing strength of religious radicalism in both polities this threat can only accentuate. War will continue to remain a threat, waiting to spring on an unsuspecting populace with the provocation being as low key as the report of a Kalashnikov. While respective security establishments are aware of this and are preparing accordingly in the only way they know how, civil society’s complacent belief that Indo-Pak relations are but a series of crisis may be rudely shaken. It is time therefore to dwell on the logical implications of India’s military trajectory, Pakistan’s persistence with its folly in Kashmir and the illogic of nuclear deterrence.