From the Archives, 16-6-2002

 REFLECTION ON THE THREAT OF NUCLEAR WAR

 ‘Nuclear weapons are meant for deterrence rather than fighting a war.  The two superpowers ie. USSR and US had perfected the language and grammar of nuclear deterrence dialogue.  In view of India, as well as its potential adversaries being nuclear powers, is the threat of a conventional war diminishing?  Do we still need to maintain large standing armies?’

 

The proposition advanced above is that strategic space for conventional wars has constricted in the era of nuclearisation.  The fear of escalation beyond the nuclear threshold is the principal war deterrent factor. Given this the conclusion arrived at is that with the possibility of conventional wars receding, the prospects of mass armies are diminished.

There is however a contrary view, with two divergent offshoots.  The position is that given strategic stability brought on by mutual nuclear deterrence, the scope for sub-nuclear threshold conflict exists.  In its Pakistani variant, the understanding is that nuclear weapons deter not only nuclear weapons but also war itself.  This opens up the sub-conventional portion of the spectrum of conflict whereby ‘proxy war’ can flourish.  Cognizant of this, the Indian variant has an echo of early Cold War theorizing, in which ‘Limited War’ was seen as justifying conventional preparedness.  Therefore, in the Indian view, conventional armies have a continuing relevance in the nuclear age.

The point is that conventional war in its Limited War avatar is seen as enabling continued utility of the military as a political instrument.  It is another matter as to how this military must be configured.  The foremost impact in terms of any reconfiguration from the ‘mass’ characteristic modern armies is not of the nuclear aspect (as given in the proposition), but that of technology.  Therefore, the assumption in the proposition that a nuclear armory implies a leaner army is misplaced.  An example is that both China and the USSR had mass armies coexisting with a massive nuclear arsenal.

This is likely to be the fate of both India and Pakistan.  Pakistan will continue to require a large army to be able to combat an Indian conventional response to its proxy war.  Substituting it with nuclear reliance may not be prudent in face of the declaratory Indian nuclear doctrine of inflicting ‘unacceptable damage’ in retaliation for any nuclear use against it or its forces.  Likewise, India cannot escape the logic of a large conventional army.  It is required not only to fight the proxy war but also to deter it.  Indian military preponderance is the singular factor that keeps Pakistan from raising the intensity of the proxy war beyond the threshold of Indian patience or tolerance.  There is also the threat scenario (a maximalist’s delight) in which India may have to take on a ‘one and half’ to ‘two front’ war.  Thus mass will continue to be a defining characteristic into the middle term.

As mentioned earlier mass can be transformed into muscle with technology.  However, technology infusion into an army is also not enough.  The absorption of the same requires a sociological environment conducive to the same.  This has two dimensions – one is internal to the service and the other is external.  In the case of the Indian Army neither is heartening enough to venture prediction to the contrary.

External to the Army, the fact is that while Corporate India has responded adequately to the demands of the Information Age, `Sarkari’ India has only lately begun to.  The government will be politically imprudent to countenance beginning reform in terms of down sizing with its strongest instrument, the Army.  As long as disinvestment remains taboo there will be little impetus from without for the Army to lose its flab.  The second external factor is the assiduousness with which Pakistan addresses the power asymmetry with India.  By tying down the Indian military power surplus from Kargil to Kashmir, it ensures that budgetry factors also intrude into any consideration of reorientation from a low cost mass to a techno-savvy capital intensive army. 

The prospects of an internal thrust towards the same are also none too convincing.  Certain selective miniscule segments are at a technological frontier.  However operational demands conspire to keep incentives towards expansion of this sector below par. The proxy war battlefield does not compel a departure from the traditionalist approach.  The strengths of the rural peasantry are still the mainstay of the premier fighting arm - the Infantry.  Innovations such as the suppression of 50000 vacancies recently are absorbed by ongoing institutional expansion.  Lastly is the question of inter-regiment, inter-arm and inter-service rivalry. The relative salience of each at the end state of the downsizing exercise will be fought over in the run up to downsizing.  Where institutional expansion is a norm, this will be a veritable Kurukshetra   

Having addressed the dimension of size, the question requires a look at whether ‘standing’ armies are obsolescent.  Here again the Indian concept of `naukri’ will prevent any importation of market place principles.  Whereas it may make economic sense to have smaller armies with members on negotiated tenures, the pension bill is unlikely to go down any time soon.  The Army is already at the lower end of the job popularity ratings scale.  If its mainstay - the fact that its institutional bias caters for ‘teenage to grave’ support systems - is withdrawn, it is likely to attract far fewer recruits than it does.  It would be a misinterpretation were we to believe that the crowds at post–Kargil recruitment rallies were brought on by patriotic fervor rather than for a chance at an assured income.

A lean army that expands in contingencies is possible given the surfeit of recruitable manpower in India.  However, our extended commitments and periodic moblisations in face of continuing threats dispel possibility of adopting this option.  This second disadvantage is that the manpower will be harder to train in the short time frames granted by impending threats, and therefore, will be less combat worthy on employment. Variants of the conscription model mooted from time to time may not prove attractive enough.  A potential short service candidate will weigh the nature of duties required against the skills he will miss out on in committing a portion of his youth to military service.  The military effectiveness of such short tenured troops in politically sensitive assignments as internal security is debatable.  They will import civilian value systems that will contaminate the military ethic already under strain.

Having addressed the questions posed, it is time to sum up the argument thus far.  The threat of war has not receded owing to nuclearisation. A ‘large’ ‘standing’ army is not obsolescent on account of nuclearisation either.  Having said that, we now turn to two elements of the proposition, namely, that nuclear weapons are not meant for war fighting, and, secondly, that the Cold War protagonists had ‘perfected the language and grammar’ of nuclear deterrence.  The proposition is in favor of the theology of deterrence.  It buttresses its claim through a reading of cold war history.  Neither is sustainable individually and fare no better together.

There are alternate readings in Cold War historiography.  A powerful critique has it that the Cold War was `cold’ less by design than by sheer good luck.  The accidents and misperceptions are now more generally known.  Of greater importance is the fact that the Cold War warriors were satisfied powers having conceded to each other primacy in respective spheres of influence.  Where the boundaries were hazy, such as in the Third World, the rivalry played itself out.  Since these areas were outside the central strategic balance that prevailed in Europe, there was the incidence of the Long Peace.  Millions in the Third World were victims to the neo-colonial presence of extra territorial powers and their wars by proxy.  In other words, war has been a prevalent phenomenon in the nuclear age. That it did not involve the super powers in direct confrontation is better explained by factors other than nuclear weapons.

The mutual accommodation that existed between the superpowers over core issue areas (as Europe) is marked by its absence in the subcontinent.  Here two nuclear powers jostle for strategic space.  An unresolved territorial dispute with ideological dimensions incites political rhetoric and military action – the raw material for doomsday scenario writers.  Rightist agendas, political demagoguery, and street power complicate the strategic calculus.  In this equation, Pakistan is a revisionist power, the weaker state and is ruled by the military.  India is also a power manifestly in search of a place on the high table. In effect, ambition can prove to be the Achilles heel of strategic rationality. Therefore, the belief that deterrence worked in the Cold War and can be replicated closer home is untenable.

Given that inadvertent and pre-meditated war is a possibility, there is no guarantee it will remain non-nuclear.   Kargil as an example of Limited War can be explained by the strategically inconsequentiality of the theatre it was fought in.  The fact is that notable impetus existed for the expansion of war through the agency of a bellicose public, adventurist politician and opportunist media.  Even the normally reserved Indian Army expressed its position in favor of expansion of the theatre of war.  The point is that even Kargil war fortuitously limited - the role of Clinton and Sharif being central to it having remained so.

What emerges is that war will recur.  The problem is that nuclear weapons are available and have legitimising doctrines, target laundry lists and a growing institutional superstructure.  With miniaturisation, their tactical use is also envisaged.  The pre-disposition of this cumulatively to escalation is notable.  The contention here is that not only is war a possibility but that it shall be a nuclear one is a distinct probability. In a nutshell, war as an extension of politics, and the military as an instrument of politics, is unthinkable.

If that is so, the logic of the proposition needs to be turned on its head. The understanding of the inapplicability of power as a conflict resolution mechanism must now supercede the belief that power is the ultimate arbiter of disputes. Conventional modes of thought wherein the quest is for identifying renewed utility for military force through its reconfiguration cannot cope with the changed paradigm brought on by the nuclear factor. The need is to re-energise the political strand of conflict management means and mechanisms wherein an obsolescent military instrument is justly confined to the periphery. In the military sphere, this translates as an imperative towards mutual and balanced force reductions, conflict avoidance and confidence building measures.

If the Cold War is at all to be drawn on for precedent then such thinking approximates the Helsinki Accords and détente – only the need is that much more relevant in the subcontinental context of a half-century of strained relations. It will help foster movement on the strategic cul-de-sac - it being that India needs a large standing army to address the proxy war and to deter its escalation; and that Pakistan needs the proxy war and the nuclear deterrent to offset Indian military superiority. Clearly, this has brought us no closer to resolution – if resolution is indeed considered a value in itself. The limits of strategic thinking having thus been reached, exploring other fields for answers is pertinent. Doing so will involve straining the limits set for the discussion. However, not to do so will leave the idea advanced here merely a theoretical one.

Whereas India would prefer its preponderance to be accepted as such by Pakistan, the fact is that Pakistan is a state of considerable size.  Besides the historical factor, this also complicates Pakistan’s willing acquiescence of the same. Thus the power struggle ensues with Pakistan straining to undercut India and India attempting to prevail. This is at grievous cost to its citizenry – Pakistan has lost half of its country, while India has been a victim of terrorism.  It is a status quo that cannot be militarily shaken.  The power imbalance is thus the crux issue.

Conventional strategic thinking in India seeks answers in terms of deepening the asymmetry, while in Pakistan it is to negate the same.  However, strategy has to be mindful of politics  - its goals being politically determined. the high profile nuclear route to gate crashing on the P5 having proved futile.  Given that the dividend from the high profile nuclear route to a global player status has proved less than anticipated, economic betterment of the masses may be found to be the road to strategic empowerment. Secondly, as long as Pakistan remains recalcitrant, India is unlikely to break out of its regional embrace.  Thirdly, there may be unpalatable costs in terms of a rightist swing in domestic politics of both countries.  Enlightened national interest, articulated by the political class, would therefore point towards innovative strategic thinking - wherein the answer to the Indian conundrum is not in power maximisation but power balancing, or to coin a term – power symmetrisation.

This cannot be done in isolation.  It has to be arrived at mutually.  It requires an effort to get Pakistan on board.  It is to retrieve the future from strategic determinism.  Since Pakistan’s immediate concern is India’s conventional superiority, and India’s ultimate concern is Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent, both tracks will have to be tackled simultaneously.  Indian downsizing of its forces will dispel Pakistan’s need for a nuclear deterrent. This scenario is predicated on political will.  As of now ‘political will’ is referred to only in the bemoaning of its absence by hard-liners in pursuit of a ‘proactive’ ‘ruthless’ response. To them political ‘will’ can only be demonstrated in being more uncompromising than the adversary. ‘Political will’ as understood here is the perspicacity to recognize the national interest in holistic terms and courage to pursue the same in face of the voluble and inevitable body of nay-sayers.

This may be more forthcoming when the renewal of strategic thinking in this direction gains currency in strategic circles.  The plain fact is that no self-respecting representative government can hold its citizenry hostage to a nuclear damocles sword.  Since that stage has arrived, a break through from the straitjacket of conventional strategic mode of thought requires enlightened political initiative.  For that to come about there needs to be a concentric expansion of adherents and proponents of this `new’ thinking to include intellectuals, public persons and institutions.  In the latter category is included the Indian Army.  It requires a paradigm shift, the beginnings of which must be made now – lest it be too late.  In so far as the Army, and indeed the Indian military, is concerned, let not institutional self-interest becloud its perception of service to the country and its people.

Having said that, a revisit to the original proposition is warranted.  The proposition has it that conventional wars are passe merely on account of the nuclear factor.  This is a dangerous fallacy - for conventional wars are very much on the cards, so long as prevalent strategic thinking remains in the conventional groove and institutional inertia persists into the twenty first century. This is particularly so within the Indian strategic community. Our position, adhered to by the Army too, is that nuclear war will be deterred by mutual possession of nuclear weapons, but not war itself. What is required is a change of conceptual edifice altogether.  Since nothing daunts more than a new idea, the effort involved in changing mental gears makes nonsense of the idea, implicit in the proposition, that the very threat of nuclear war outlaws conventional war.  Persistence of the conventional power oriented discourse, and the other retarding factors discussed in the early part of this essay, are what will ensure that it does not. Therefore the effort outlined here will be arduous in the extreme. The only incentive to embark on the same is to avoid the just desserts of intellectual sloth, a nuclear catastrophe.