https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/defence-strategic-importance-of-rajnath-singh-s-nigeria-visit-1223582.html

Strategic importance of Rajnath Singh’s Nigeria visit

Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh represented India at the swearing in of newly elected President Bola Ahmed Tunubu of Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria. Significantly, he was accompanied by heads of defence public sector undertakings, implying that the major thrust of the visit was defence exports as part of the country’s Make in India initiative.

Recently, India courted Egypt with military exercises, a visit of the Indian Army Chief and had its president over as the Republic Day chief guest. Rightly, it is expanding its scope of engagement with the West African behemoth, Nigeria, with this very first visit of an Indian defence minister to that country.

It is of a piece with India’s foreign policy thrust of late to enhance ties with Africa, a continent with a future rooted in its wealth of strategic minerals, youthful demographic profile and expanding continental integration. India-Africa summits are evidence.

Post Cold War, India's expanding economy has led to a focused engagement with Africa, with India-Africa summits peppering its outreach. This is in recognition of Africa being consequential to India’s aspirations as a global power, best exemplified by its emphasis on multilateralism. African middle powers in themselves and a future more fully integrated Africa are potential poles in the desired world order.

Mindful of its advantages, India is putting its best foot forward in projecting the defence sector. It has an India-Africa Defence Dialogue in place, the second edition of which was on the side-lines of the Defence Expo in Gandhinagar last year.

Defence exports reaching Rs. 16000 crores owe in part to African militaries opting for Indian technology and armaments that are affordable and, being technologically middle range, are user friendly.

Figuring in choices abroad enables India to meet its ambitions to be Atmanirbhar by expanding investment into defence manufacturing and research and development. Economies of scale result from an export market opening up could potentially entice the profit-oriented private sector into this field.

Military engagements take forward India’s training engagements with African countries, ranging from Lesotho to Uganda. At the Africa-India training exercise at the foreign training node at Aundh this March, 25 African nations participated in conduct of humanitarian operations under the United Nations’ (UN) flag. 

Even so, the perspectives of India and Africa on an aspect of peace and security need to be reconciled. While Africa is prescient in drawing a link between climate change and conflict, India wants that the peace and security agenda of the Security Council is not unduly expanded for addressing this.

Since Africa stands for ‘African solution to African problems’, India could up its support from peacekeeping to also include the ambit of peacemaking and peacebuilding. The three together form the three sides of the peace triangle, implying that a holistic Indian contribution requires India to lend a hand in propping up the two sides other than peacekeeping.

Peacemaking will require Indian special envoys to bolster regional and UN initiatives. For peacebuilding presence India must apportion more monies for the periodic global demands for voluntary contributions of the UN agencies, funds and programs. It could even set up an international aid agency of its own. Its strengths in security sector reform, flowing from its apolitical military, can prove attractive for Africa plagued by military coups. 

As defence minister, Rajnath Singh, cannot but be tuned in to the new scramble for Africa between the US, China and Russia, even as the presence of the United Kingdom and France dissipates. This should suggest to him that as an emergent great power, India cannot but also have a strategic approach to Africa.

Given that its major strategic competitor, China, is fairly ahead in light of its deeper pockets, India needs appraising Africa in relation China’s global scheme which sees Africa at one extractive end of its Belt and Road Initiative. China now has a military base in Africa, at Djibouti, even as it prepares two access routes to African trade via Gwadar and through Myanmar. It now also has the largest Navy.

This is anticipatory pre-emption of India’s prospective closure of the Malacca Straits and intended war-time domination of the Indian Ocean. Preparation for the worst case has a deterrent purpose. This strategic context to India’s African outreach must inform India’s military diplomacy.

Finally, India has been a beacon in Africa so far mostly for its progressive socio-political and economic developmental model. India’s Vishwa-Guru aspiration should feed into its current-day politics that otherwise unwittingly undercut its soft power. Its G20 leadership opportunity must be used optimally as voice of the global South to gain African favour.

 

 

 

https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/key-takeaways-from-g20-meet-in-srinagar-1221841.html 

The key take away from the G20 fixture in Srinagar

By Ali Ahmed

Exercising its rights as a host state on the meetings in the run up to the G20 Leaders’ Summit, India settled on Srinagar to host the Third Tourism Working Group meeting, the earlier two being non-controversially held at the Rann of Kutch and Siliguri/Darjeeling respectively.

The criteria of selecting scenic venues apt for showcasing India’s tourism potential makes Srinagar a logical choice. Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is a major tourist and pilgrimage destination, notwithstanding the security situation.

However, since its long-standing security problem has international connotations, India’s alighting on it as a choice was liable to be taken as politically loaded and elicited a politicised response.

Consequently, as expected, some countries chose to absent themselves, the most prominent one being China.

In the event, though 29 delegations were represented, along with China, absent were G20 member states, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and ‘guest countries’, Oman and Egypt. Indonesia sent an embassy representative.

India’s relations with the latter four countries being cordial, it begs the question if India’s choice – though legal and legitimate – proved good for it or otherwise. Afterall, even Egypt, whose president was guest at this year’s Republic Day parade, skipped the event.

India’s determination to proceed even in the face of a possible terror threat shows that it believed that the benefits of showcasing Srinagar would outweigh any cons.

Implicit in its choice of venue was a reassertion of Indian sovereignty. India was determined not to allow anyone veto its sovereign right or allow itself to be self-deterred from exercising it.

India rightly assessed China would stay away, which China reflexively did, claiming it was against holding such multilateral meetings in a ‘disputed territory’. In this it echoed its ally, Pakistan, which is not a G20 member.

That the argument resonated with more countries than India possibly expected shows that India has been unable to fully persuade even states assumed to be close to India on its case on J&K.

On the security front, Pakistan exploited the opportunity with having its proxy groups conduct damaging terror attacks where the security grid is relatively sparse south of the Pir Panjals. However, closer to the event, hoping to stave off allegations of terrorism, it was careful to target the military and used local groups as fronts. 

In the Valley, that two out-of-Srinagar trips – to Gulmarg and Dachigam sanctuary respectively - were cancelled for the delegates indicates that instability persists, a feature that could not have escaped attention of delegates.

Though India might have wished to present a picture of relative quietude, the abiding impression left on visitors is likely that problems continue in J&K.

India’s extensive security arrangements serve to betray that the seeming normality that results is only superficial.

This implies that India’s completion of integration of J&K through reworking of Article 370 remains a work-in-progress.

India would require working harder or doing things differently. Working harder can only be ‘more of the same’, at most packaged differently. Doing things differently is preferable.

That India ran the risk of holding the G20 meeting in Srinagar shows that India has the best interest of Kashmiris at heart. Kashmir was presented as a tourist destination, with Srinagar all dressed up as a Smart City.

This sense of empathy must be taken to its logical conclusion in heeding the truism that insurgency is best tackled politically.

India is already on course to holding elections to the assembly. If it is wary of the elections being undermined by parties insisting that the elections be for a state assembly and not to a legislature of a Union Territory (UT), it could be more forthright with its statehood promises.

Diplomatically, Pakistan, that has been holding out ever since its umbrage at the Article 370 dilution, would likely use the opportunity to reengage with India.  

Chinese positioning on the issue, largely forged in reference to its relationship with Pakistan, would have to acknowledge the changed facts on ground in Pakistani reconciliation with the change.

Though the Ladakh factor remains consequential in relation to China, it could potentially stand separated from the J&K issue.

Since all the pieces are already in place, including delimitation of constituencies and an internally beset Pakistan, elections can be held over summer.

This is the best way to neutralise reservations expressed by the UN Rapporteur on Minority Issues when he opined that India sought to ‘instrumentalise’ the meeting to present a ‘façade of normality’.

A return to rule by elected representatives in J&K by the time of the G20 Summit in early September would clinch India’s image as the Mother of Democracy.

The Book Review https://thebookreviewindia.org/
July edition

TP Sreenivasan, Modiplomacy: Through a Shakespearean Prism, New Delhi: Konark Publishers, 2020; pp. 242; Rs. 800; ISBN 978-8193555446.

The book’s title intrigues. The author early on in the book explains it, thus, “I began to see the pattern of a Shakespearean play, consisting of early successes, some complications, a climax, the emergence of a major event or character which changes the course of events, leaving the hero to disentangle the situation and emerge victorious as in this case , or fall victim to forces at work (p. xviii).” At the end of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term, the author – an English postgraduate – neatly organized his foreign policy into five acts of a play, on which is based the layout of book.

The book enjoyed a good reception, with diplomats of the author’s generation cheering it not only in advance praise of the book carried on its dust jacket but also in reviews elsewhere. They noted that while the author is appreciative of the prime minister’s foreign policy pitch, it is not over enthusiastic – as have been many similar works that the cottage industry of publications on the net and in print brought out by the self-confessed troll brigade and closet Hindutva keyboard warriors.

As with most Indians and voters, the author believes that Modi is in “the mould of a Shakespearean hero, who overcomes his problems by sheer dint of his wisdom and courage and emerges victorious in the end (p. xviii).” Since the book closes at the start of Modi 2.0, it is not an unreasonable conclusion in light of Modi’s election victory. Even so, the author notices ‘tragic flaws’ (p. xviii) in the first term that potentially bring suspense into how the rest of Modi’s tenure at the foreign policy helm turns out. The book does not explicate what Modi’s Achilles heel is, but inadvertently the author does provide a clue.

To the author, Modi’s air dashing around the globe in his initial years “had the flavour of the ‘Aswasmedha Yagna’ of yore (p. xvii).” While the author credits Modi with “being his own playwright, choreographer, scriptwriter, director and actor (p. 3),” instead, this is indeed how the choreographers of the prime minister’s projections on the national media might have visualized it. The information management exercise that accompanies the prime minister’s activity is by now self-evident. The extensive perception manipulation surrounding Modi, amounting to an intelligence-led information warfare operation, obscures both reality and intention. In effect, be it foreign or security policy, the reins are with the quintessential intelligence man, Ajit Doval, in his capacity as national security adviser, overseeing the domains of foreign, external and internal national security policies. That Doval does not figure in the book at all is the fatal drawback of the book.

The backseat foreign policy has taken in the Hindu nationalist defined national security agenda is the principle facet of the Modi government and has not been captured by the author in his book. The author prefers to skim the surface rather than diving deep into the wellsprings of Modi’s foreign policy. The book therefore covers the usual ground, without breaking the crust for the core. A diplomat of 37 years standing, he expectedly dwells on moves on the foreign policy front. It covers the visits and the about turns, characterized elsewhere more forthrightly by a fellow traveler on the diplomatic circuit as foreign policy ‘pirouettes’ by the Modi regime. The author is rather careful in his analysis, drawing back from calling a spade a spade. This is unexceptionable since there has been a noticeable degree of self-censorship in India’s intellectual circles in the Modi era.

The author fails to record the body blow dealt by the centralizing tendencies in the Modi government to institutional health. The tenure of late Sushma Swaraj during Modi’s first term, who was sick for most part through it, was eminently forgettable. As with the rest of the cabinet system, a one-time prime ministerial contender against Modi, she was reduced to acting in response to tweets by Indians stranded across the globe. The foreign secretary, who presumably had the prime minister’s ear then, is now foreign minister. Usurpation of foreign policy by the prime minister’s office, a significant feature of Modiplomacy, does not figure in the book. An old foreign policy hand could have been expected to throw light on this and lament it, but the author passes up the opportunity in favour of merely an insubstantial recording the happenings in the years.  

The book has been put together in part from opinion pieces of the author at various places in print and on the web. It is a catalogue of the times, with little depth. It carries summaries prepared by an intern from the publishing house of analytical pieces published in the mainstream media in the period by several intellectual lights, who also appear to have been too careful to spill the beans on the manner foreign policy was being stewarded. It appears that the book is yet another one to hit the stands in anticipation last elections, in this instance at the publisher’s behest who the author informs was putting out a four-book series on the Modi’s showing in his first term. This is another clue of the manipulation of the discourse, obscuring what should otherwise stare the strategic community in the face.

The author restricts himself to the theatrics onstage, rather than digging for the roots of Modiplomacy. Take for instance Modi’s blitz across some fifty capitals in his initial years. It was to make the new turn to India, of authoritarian majoritarianism, acceptable. With India’s market serving as incentive to buy the silence of other nations, Modi could launch India down a new path. The driver of India’s foreign policy is therefore not out there in the constellation of external factors reviewed by the author but is internal. The myth in international politics is that there is such a thing as international politics. All politics is internally driven. India’s case it is the creation of a Hindu India. Foreign policy in Modi’s first term has been to shroud this in a curtain. He has eminently succeeded in this, with pundits unable and unwilling to call it out.

The Diplomatic Dimension af a ‘Swift And Sharp’ War

http://www.claws.in/1453/the-diplomatic-dimension-af-a-%E2%80%98swift-and-sharp-war-ali-ahmed.html

The Army Chief, speaking at the 1965 War’s fiftieth anniversary commemorative tri-service seminar, highlighted the army’s operational preparedness for a ‘swift and short’ war. Neither the terms he used nor the concept of Limited War, that the terms signify, are new to strategy. In the Indian context a similar description was given to the Kargil War with the Kargil Review Committee calling it, ‘not a minor skirmish, but a short, sharp war’. Indeed, the 1965 War was a Limited War too, if somewhat on a wider scale, with the eastern front and the maritime dimension not figuring in the action, except for a foray or two, and the two states agreeing to a ceasefire in three weeks of the outbreak of undeclared conventional hostilities. Limited War, for the purposes here and in the context of the nuclear era, can be defined as a war that at its outset is intended to remain non-nuclear. There appear to be two models of Limited War: a relatively wider 1965 War and the more restricted Kargil War. Whereas the latter can more readily be seen as being below the proverbial nuclear threshold, the former appears to possibly flirt with lowered nuclear thresholds. Whereas Pakistan would like to believe that its nuclear posturing has ruled out an offensive by India in the 1965 War model, India for its part would like to project that such a model continues in play.  Two possible models of ‘swift and sharp’ war therefore suggest themselves: a ‘reverse Kargil’ and an adaptation of 1965. Whereas the military dimension of these doubtless informs closed-door deliberations within the military that need not detain the discussion here, such deliberations need to be alive to the diplomatic prong of strategy in Limited War. In both wars –Kargil and 1965 –the diplomatic dimension was arguably as salient as the military, in the former more so than the latter. In the Kargil War, the terms of reference to the military over crossing of the Line of Control for retaliation was primarily informed by the diplomatic prong of strategy. It paid off in the end, with Nawaz Sharif rushing to Washington for a bailout and receiving no succour there. In the 1965 War, the diplomatic strategy played out in bringing the conflict to a close, with, as revisionists today would have it, India on top. Today, the nuclear dimension to conflict suggests that between the two models, visualized as two ends of a continuum, India may incline in the initial phases towards the Kargil model end, even while projecting its capability for following through with the 1965 model, notwithstanding Pakistani nuclear redlines. In doing so it would gain the diplomatic high-ground in its display of restraint in going in for a Cold Start lite and the threat of worse in store up India’s sleeve – projected diplomatically - would keep international pressure on Pakistan from escalation. There appear therefore to be three diplomatic strategy options. One is in gaining the political high ground by diplomatic action highlighting Pakistani provocation leading to the conflict and India’s self-imposed restraint. Precedence for this exists in the Kargil War and the Op Parakram crisis. In the latter, the mobilization was part of coercive diplomacy; implying diplomacy was the dominant prong. Second, is in the projection of India’s ability for escalation dominance. Whereas suitable military positioning will suggest as much in Pakistani operations rooms, that  may not be enough from dissuading escalation on their part. They may require being shown the writing on the wall by the international community, corralled to this by the diplomatic prong of strategy. An example is in General Zinni, CentCom chief, rushing to Islamabad and Musharraf’s turnabout on 12 January 2002. In case of conflict extension in terms of widening and/or deepening, diplomacy would require synchronizing with military strategy for creating and exploiting suitable saliencies for an exit strategy. Finally, in case India chooses to ab initio go the 1965 model way, the diplomatic prong would have a greater job of work on its hands. Presumably this would be made easier by India’s choice being dictated by the level of instant provocation or cumulative provocation over a period of time. The diplomatic prong may require borrowing a leaf from the US and Israeli jus in bello rationales that on occasion have included anticipatory self defence too. Since this would be a wider, if still limited, war, the bit about exit strategies in the last para remains relevant in this option. In all three options, the diplomatic prong would have to be seized of the nuclear dimension. The international community would justifiably be concerned and it would be India’s endeavour to reassure all of India’s continuing exercise of responsibility. While in doing so there may be a tactical temptation to place Pakistan as a villain most likely to break the nuclear taboo, it may be prudent to examine if instead Pakistani strategic good sense is alongside propped up, ensuring that state acknowledges the political and diplomatic fruits of like restraint. Not discussed in any detail here are the exponential demands on the diplomatic prong in case the nuclear balloon nevertheless goes up, since the war would then no longer remain Limited War. However, briefly, the diplomatic prong would require being alert to and part of the deterrence-reassurance nuclear strategy, even as the operational nuclear strategy dealing with nuclear weapons employment unfolds. In-conflict nuclear deterrence in terms of nuclear escalation dominance and reassurance for creating exit points will require diplomatic exertion. The latter will target Pakistani decision makers, directly and through the international community auspices. The conditions for creation of exit points cannot be done unilaterally, as much as bilaterally, and therefore a thought must be spared in peacetime for the mechanisms and measures by way of which the two sides will step off the nuclear ladder together. This can be by way of NSA level talks, a back channel or the talks plank on nuclear confidence building that has already gone through five iterations last decade. This can also be a secret agenda point in respective talks by both governments with international interlocutors, such as the US, so as to have good offices available at a crunch. This survey of the demands on the diplomatic prong of strategy resulting from the ‘swift and short’ war doctrine is necessarily preliminary since the open domain strategic debate has been sketchy. What needs doing is a discussion of such issues in the open domain so that nuances and edges are aired and the attentive public tuned in. This does not mean that an ‘all of government’ approach is absent. The structures are in place in the form of the National Security Council Secretariat and common training is in hand at the National Defence College. However, in case not already in place,this article would have served a purpose in pushing on the structural front,inclusion of diplomats in the ‘strategy programs staff’ of the NSCS, and,on the training front, in the Combined Operational Review program

- See more at: http://www.claws.in/1453/the-diplomatic-dimension-af-a-%E2%80%98swift-and-sharp-war-ali-ahmed.html#sthash.eWMzqIe1.dpuf

India-Pakistan: With NSA Talks Aborted, What Next?

http://thediplomat.com/2015/08/india-pakistan-with-nsa-talks-aborted-what-next/

Referring to a “whole history of unproductive dialogues with Pakistan,” Kanwal Sibal, a former Indian foreign secretary, reflects negatively on whether a “more resolute government as that of Modi (should) get into the rut of sterile dialogues with Pakistan.” Sibal need not worry. Talks between the two countries’ respective national security advisers were aborted just a day prior to their scheduled start.

The talks were first mooted in the joint press statement of the two foreign secretaries at the Ufa meeting of the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers. The two NSAs were to meet in Delhi, potentially clearing the way for the Indian prime minister to travel to Pakistan for the SAARC summit next year.

Skeptical reports in the run-up had hinted that the Pakistan army was bearing down on Nawaz Sharif, pressuring him to halt the meeting. This gave a window for Indian skeptics to snipe at the idea. This positioning prior to the talks had more or less ensured that they would have been, at best, as the Pakistani NSA Sartaj Aziz put it, “ice-breaking.”

That the naysayers on both sides managed to scuttle the talks underscores their hold over their respective security establishments. This mirroring is unlikely to go away any time soon.

This answers the question “Why were the talks called off?” The more important question remains: “What next?” It is here that Kanwal Sibal’s policy recommendation comes to fore.

Sibal, miffed by the two attacks by Pakistani proxies – one in Indian Punjab bordering Jammu and Kashmir and the other within Jammu and Kashmir itself – in the run-up to the talks, argues that India should first develop “levers to modulate Pakistan’s conduct” and “then agree to a dialogue should Pakistan seek it.”

With the talks called off, this is the only option India is left with. For that reason, it bears scrutiny.

The problem with Kanwal’s thesis – and he speaks for India’s Pakistan skeptics – is that it is without an end date or exit strategy.

Even had the exploratory talks at NSA level gone on to reopen the dialogue, India would have developed the levers to modulate Pakistan’s conduct. This would have been done both as a measure to keep up the pressure on Pakistan to stick to the table, as well as an insurance should the talks have failed to moderate Pakistan.

These levers are military, intelligence and diplomatic.

Militarily, India has been at it, ramping up its defense budget. A statistic from Modi’s first year in office was that India fast tracked 40 defense projects worth over Rs. 1 trillion ($15.1 billion), intended in part to increase the gap in conventional armaments with Pakistan’s army.

Over the past year, it has given the army liberty to give a “befitting reply” to provocations along the Line of Control and International Border. Pakistan has over the last month made two references to the firing along what it considers the “working border” to the UNMOGIP, the UN mission overseeing the ceasefire since 1949. Both countries have used embassy channels to record their displeasure at the other side’s aggressive firing.

On the intelligence front, India’s defense minister has hinted at proactive intelligence operations in Pakistan. Understandably, the NSA subsequently watered down the defense minister’s remarks and India has denied any proxy action. However, a rare complaint at the Pakistani corps commanders’ conference suggests otherwise – although proof is obviously hard to come by. In preparing for the NSA talks, Pakistan had compiled a dossier with its complaints of Indian “interference.”

Diplomatically, the visits of Obama and Jiang Zemin to New Delhi, though intended by India to suitably isolate Pakistan over the latter’s support for terrorism, can only have limited effect. Pakistan’s strategic location buttresses its indispensability to the eventual outcome in Afghanistan. Pakistan is looking to play the Russian card if necessary.

The call in India will be more of the same and for longer. But this is not without underside.

Militarily, the “two front” problem has already kicked in, with reports of India diluting its Mountain Strike Corps due to lack of finances.

Doctrinally, there is dissonance. While at the conventional level India intends to be on the offensive, its nuclear doctrine has not been able to come to terms with the problem posed by Pakistani nuclear first use in the form of tactical nuclear weapons. The devastating response that the current nuclear doctrine posits can hardly be risked in the face of Pakistan’s vertical proliferation of nuclear warhead numbers into the three digits.

On the subconventional front, Jammu and Kashmir, which has been relatively stable for more than a decade, could slide back into turmoil, offering a fertile ground for penetration of more radical ideologies, such as those of the ISIS. Indian responses and Pakistani reactions would then flirt with the nuclear threshold. Under the circumstances, it would not do to up the military ante.

The intelligence game of using proxies has an unremarked downside, in its impact on the domestic politics of both countries. Using Pakistani extremists against their own state – as Pakistan accuses India of doing – can only strengthen their hand.

The more significant effect is in India’s domestic politics. India’s Muslim minority will come under pressure as a potential conduit through which Pakistan could be expected to strike back. India’s majoritarian extremists, arguably already rampant, will use the canard of a Muslim fifth column to further raise their profile.

Diplomatically, it would be difficult for India to sell a zero-tolerance for terrorism strategy with India letting off “saffron terrorists,” even as it takes Pakistan to the UN sanctions committee. India’s inability to isolate Pakistan will make it more reliant on its military and intelligence cards, accentuating the risks.

Finally, eventually, as Sibal says, these levers will need to be exercised to bring Pakistan round. This will down the line be at an even higher level of risk and cost. Indeed, the NSAs would then have much to discuss but no forum in which to do so, the first ever NSA talks having been aborted at their very inception

diplomacy in a post nuclear use environment

Diplomatic engagement in a post nuclear use environment

ByAli Ahmed

IssueNet Edition| Date : 27 May , 2014

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/spotlights/diplomatic-engagement-in-a-post-nuclear-use-environment/

Strike corps exercises are usually well covered by the media. Inevitably mentioned in write ups from reporters over the past decade since Exercise Poorna Vijay has been the nuclear backdrop. The subtext is that the military is ready to fight through in a nuclear environment. The intent is to reinforce deterrence by messaging that nuclear first use is not going to stop the army in its tracks, but that it would pursue military aims as dictated by political goals set, and political goals as modified by the nuclear foregrounding, with the necessary military means.

It is clear that a post nuclear use environment is quite distinct from what precedes it. While the military is prepared to face the nuclear aftermath, a post nuclear use environment would make demands on all institutions and agencies of the state. In particular, intelligence and diplomacy will be on test. Intelligence resources and strategic forces will be twinned in their employment as part of unfolding nuclear retaliatory strategy. In this circumstance, diplomacy will surely not sit by idly. This article attempts to outline what would busy diplomats at this juncture.

Indian diplomacy would be advantaged by starting off at the moral and political high ground. This has been eminently facilitated by India’s nuclear posture of restraint, best exemplified by the No First Use pillar of its doctrine. Even if this pillar was withdrawn as consequence of a forthcoming review, it does not necessarily imply India would ‘go first’ with nuclear weapons. Given its conventional forces are capable of handling Pakistan in hostilities, nuclear moves will most likely be for serving deterrence, not employment.

In the pre-nuclear phase, as the conventional war progresses Indian diplomacy would be engaged with ‘selling’ India’s casus belli. It would also be reassuring not only the international community but also the adversary of India’s limited political aims and strategic objectives. This would be necessary reinforcement of the impression forming in the minds of Pakistani decision makers from the emerging military facts on ground. Since India’s limited war doctrine reportedly is cognizant of nuclear dangers, the same will be communicated to the adversary directly through all formal and informal channels available, including the media, and indirectly through pressure from the international community to stay its nuclear hand. Diplomacy may also be used for nuclear signaling assuring Pakistan of retaliation, the onus for which would it’s to bear.

Assuming deterrence failure does occur then diplomacy would require working along three lines. One would be to explain Indian compulsions of retaliation; second would be to act in concert with other elements of nuclear strategy for escalation control; and last would be to ensure exertion towards the political goals as modified for and by the nuclear environment.

In light of Pakistani first use, superficially it would appear that diplomacy may have it easy. However, this is unlikely to be so, even though India would be on a strong wicket. Diplomacy would require facing up to untold pressures for India to continue down the route of nuclear maturity and sobriety. The international community would galvanise in the UNSC to clamp down on South Asia, fearful of an environmental catastrophe not only for South Asia but the world in case of escalation spiral. Countering Pakistan and its supporters in the UNSC will be challenging. Therefore, diplomacy would require gaining Indian decision makers time and attention spans necessary to undertake nuclear strategy moves duly informed by declaratory and operational nuclear doctrines.

Alongside, diplomats will require creating the rationale for the retaliatory strike(s) India chooses from its options. In case the declaratory nuclear doctrine informs nuclear conflict strategy, then diplomats will likely have a prohibitive task on hand, especially in case nuclear first use by Pakistan is of lower opprobrium quotient. The international community would be alert to the issue of proportionate retaliation since they would stand to be affected by a regional nuclear exchange of higher order magnitude. This diplomatic drawback of the declaratory nuclear doctrine requires factoring into the expected review.

However, in case India’s nuclear retaliatory strategy is cognizant of proportionality and escalation control, in that Pakistan hurts appropriately while not being provoked into spasm counter retaliation, it would be an easier case for diplomacy to pursue with concerned interlocutors.

Escalation control will require maximum diplomatic exertion to ensure that nuclear messaging is credibly conveyed to Pakistani decision makers. The key deterrent factor in this case will be the nuclear power held in reserve by India and the targets India has spared in Pakistan from inclusion in its nuclear retaliatory strike. Conveying that there is more punishment held in reserve would be the most effective deterrence on Pakistan. This will supplement on actions on the ground such as special forces and conventional operations directed at Pakistan’s nuclear forces and nuclear readiness displays.

Finally, diplomacy would require complementing conventional operations as they continue in a nuclear environment. The focus of diplomacy and an information campaign will be the mind of the Pakistani decision maker and the avenues to this end many, including the Pakistani public at the receiving end while the decision makers are ensconced safely in nuclear bunkers. Firstly, nuclear exchange termination will be take priority and thereafter conflict termination. A distinction may need to be drawn between decision makers who have authorized the strike and the Pakistan people and state so as to bring about conflict termination. Reassurance of traditional Indian respect of Pakistani sovereignty, backing of pro-peace constituency and isolating the leadership in preparation for indictment for crimes against humanity would be key areas.

Post conflict diplomatic offensive will need to be launched to ensure that India’s case is not misperceived by those who may have supported Pakistan. There would be pressures for a ‘root and branch’ conflict resolution. Ensuring the national interest is preserved in this circumstance and long standing national positions not compromised unduly will be the effort. India, being the regional power, would require measuring up to the role, with suitable diplomacy as part of consequence management and disaster control. Through the entire conflict period, overworked diplomats would require supplementing their arsenal with the resources of the diaspora and the media.

Currently, diplomatic engagement with nuclear matters is on the non-proliferation and nuclear security front. Thinking through of the different challenges of the nuclear genii in conflict may perhaps have been done behind closed doors. The same will now require factoring into the nuclear doctrine review and the diplomatic prong of nuclear strategy must form part of war games hereafter. The existential dangers of nuclear war brook no less than an ‘all of government’ approach and indeed an ‘all India’ approach.