Deterrence messaging, desi-ishtyle
Speaking nearby where bin Laden once holed up, the self-appointed field marshal next door intoned in front cadets at a military academy, “I advise and firmly caution the Indian military leadership that there is no space for war in a nuclearized environment.” His thesis assumes “military and economic losses much beyond imagination.”
This side of the border, the general who led military operations during Operation Sindoor reckoned that this claim by Asif Munir testified to India having ‘for once’ called ‘Pakistan’s bluff.’
With General Ghai going on to call Op Sindoor a ‘limited operation,’ it’s not quite clear how Pakistan’s ‘bluff’ was called.
The ‘bluff’ is shorthand for Pakistan resorting to nuclear use. To Pakistan, it would take a ‘war’ to push it to going nuclear. It has never been Pakistan’s case that it would go nuclear reflexively.
In the 2000s, three of Pakistan’s ‘famous four’ nuclear thresholds were predicated with the word ‘large’; placing the proverbial threshold rather high. Even to war-monger Musharraf nukes were only a last resort.
This permitted India to contemplate limited war. To plug the gap, in the 2010s, Pakistan gave itself the capability to take on ingress by Indian army battle groups with tactical nukes.
Now, in the 2020s, Indian doctrinal, impending structural and technological upgrades appear to have pushed Pakistan to yet again polish up its deterrent messaging.
Munir hints that a conventional war cannot be kept limited. This is of a piece with Indian nuclear doctrine that has it that a nuclear war cannot be kept limited either.
Both are self-serving: Pakistan’s vowing against a limited war and Indian belittling the notion of a limited nuclear war. However, both claims taken together and at face value trash Hermann Kahn’s 44-step ladder.
Sensibly therefore, so far, none of the strikes against Pakistan have come close to calling its bluff.
An air marshal writes that Balakot was an instance of Indian counter-terrorism doctrine at play, a strike so calibrated not to trigger ‘full scale war.’ Op Sindoor was in the same tradition; else, how does one account for the supplication the very first night itself that Pakistan not to mistake it as ‘war.’
In short, Op Sindoor did not call Pakistan’s bluff because it was not designed to. So, does Ghai bluff?
He only echoes the military’s political master, Prime Minister Modi. It’s a prominent ingredient of Modi’s ‘new normal,’ articulated as India’s strategic shift.
Modi’s posturing conveys India will bear the ‘military and economic losses.’ This is counter intuitive, since his pet project of Viksit Bharat could ordinarily do without deflection.
It is touching evidence of Modi’s confidence in India’s nuclear deterrent. However, that India will end up flirting with costs that are ‘much beyond imagination’ must concern.
By all accounts, the in-the-works Op Sindoor 2.0 appears to have proportions of war. Since Op Sindoor had the likeness of chess, what Pakistan will do cannot be legislated on prior.
Munir will have a say in how it goes. Going by Indian triumphalism at the end of Op Sindoor, he might find ending it on a like note as last time rather difficult.
Precedence suggests caution will attend Pakistani response. Though Pakistan ignored the landward surgical strikes, it did hit back after Balakot and Op Sindoor, more to catalyse foreign – read American – peace intervention.
President Trump short-circuited both trajectories, interfacing only with Pakistan in the latter case. From Indian reaction to President Trump’s claims, bailing out next time might not be as easy.
Not only will a crisis turn into a conflict quicker, it will also break out at a higher note. Both sides promising to take the fight to all corners of the other makes it deadlier proposition.
War on the cards, India will finally get what it wishes for: a real opportunity to call Pakistan’s nuclear bluff. Will India then wish it had been more careful in what it wished for?
The answer is ‘blowin’ in the wind.’
The disagreement is over an issue phrased by Munir as, ‘(S)ettle the core issues with Pakistan as per the international norms on the basis of equality and mutual respect.’
While to India, the ‘core issue’ stands settled with its Article 370 manoeuvre, all that is left are talks on ending terrorism and vacation by Pakistan of its long-standing intrusion into Jammu and Kashmir.
This incompatibility leaves scope for Pakistan to meddle at the subconventional level. India’s recent unambiguous conflation of terrorists with their sponsors is intended to deter Pakistan at this level.
In their ongoing rhetorical indulgence, the two sides hope to bolster deterrence at the other two levels of the spectrum of war: for Pakistan at the conventional level and for India at the nuclear level.
Aiming to prevent provocation at the subconventional level, India is bidding to impress Pakistan that it will administer it a beating at the conventional level, notwithstanding Pakistan’s nuclear posturing.
Pakistan, for its part, wishes to deter conventional conflict by flashing its nuclear card, in order to build-in some play into the subconventional level.
Conflict outbreak requires India failing to deter Pakistan on the subconventional level and Pakistan similarly failing at the conventional level. Whether the eventual outcome proceeds to costs ‘much beyond imagination’ rests largely on both failing at the nuclear level.
From Op Sindoor continuing, India betrays hesitance in deterring at the subconventional level. For its part, Pakistan’s nuclear references are meant to tamp down the magnitude of any Indian reprisal.
A resulting non-contact bout can only be with greater lethality and more visible effects, though not necessarily amounting to ‘war.’
Ideally, the two sides settling thereafter on information war to determine the victor – as in the Op Sindoor aftermath - would leave both paying an ‘imaginable cost.’
The more a prospective Op Bunyan e Marsoos 2.0 draws blood, the more India will be provoked to attempt prevail. Its political posturing has manufactured it a commitment trap of sorts. Walking back on the talk with Bihar elections at hand, and Bengal elections looming, might be taken as political suicide.
Under pressure, Pakistani response will capitalise on its comparative strengths in ground forces; by then suitably repositioned from their current preoccupation on the wrong border. Resulting uncertainty will defy the verities of any pre-existing escalation matrix.
As contact war heightens, both sides will pre/re-position their nuclear forces, intending to deter the other. Even if with abundant caution, such actions at the very least entail calling together the nuclear office bearers – as happened in Pakistan side during Op Sindoor. Behind the scene, nuclear forces moving out of hides will be visible to national surveillance assets.
While for Pakistan, signalling will be to keep the conventional level from boiling over, for India it will be to keep Pakistan’s nuclear finger from getting restive.
Munir’s nuclear caveat is in his saying, ‘if we think we are going down…’ Its not a position India need push Pakistan into. There are several exit points that it could step off the escalator.
Since Pakistan has taken care to put the world on notice, promising it’s taking India down with it might take half the world down too, such an offramp will be available. Even if India is cool towards President Trump’s claims, that it has cozied up to China lately, allows China a foot in the door as peacemaker.
At such juncture, India shouldn’t end up regretting its bombast on ‘nuclear blackmail.’
On this, it’s getting in the last punch in Op Sindoor does not encourage. Its dithering in taking the call of the Pakistani operations head is indicator of a compulsion to prevail.
India’s definition of victory, understandably informed by its self-conscious status as the stronger power, impels a need to visibly come out on top. This sets up a power dialectic in which all it requires Pakistan to win is to not lose.
Internal politics dictate as much too. Modi believes the Indian military forced Pakistan’s ‘surrender’ and might just hold out yet again for such a delusional denouement.
For its part, the military, as in Op Sindoor, will require deferring inter-Service fights. It must not borrow loaded phrases as ‘dharma yuddha,’ redolent in catchphrases from Modi’s diwali missive to citizens, in which he writes: ‘During Operation Sindoor, Bharat not only upheld righteousness but also avenged injustice.’
From the deterrence messaging between the two, it appears almost as if tectonic plates are on collision course. The earlier rather sanguine appreciation of space for limited war (conventional, only to begin with) stands disrupted, leaving space only for more of the same, surgical strikes amounting to strategically sweet nothings.
Unfortunately, the only sensible thing to do – “(S)ettle … issues …’ – cannot be taken up just yet, and only because the field marshal says so.
