Unpublished article - June 

Information war as India’s default strategy
(abridged and updated)

Introduction

The current day India-China faceoff in Ladakh that has exacted a toll of 20 Indian soldiers has put into spotlight the phenomenon of control of information by the state for its ends. This article examines this in an India-Pakistan context, highlighting that information operations directed by the state at the citizenry is now almost a default state strategy. The article focuses on implications for democratic control of the state, the agent, by the principal, the electorate, in a democracy. If the state manipulates the information domain in a manner as to impact enlightened understanding of citizens of their choices and options, including those that impact electoral verdicts, such manipulation in terms of its extant and extent needs examination.

Information war as default strategy

Though China is the new primary threat, power asymmetry compels placatory behaviour, such as settling for talks with an unattainable aim of reversion to a status quo ante in Ladakh. Compensating for and obscuring this appeasement, would entail greater vigour, if not aggression, in pursuit of strategies elsewhere.

Counter intuitively, in democratic India, information operations must be acknowledged. The famed troll army of the ruling party is well known. The trolls succeeded handsomely once before when the economic downturn that foreshadowed elections was papered over by recourse to the Pakistani bogey in the Pulwama-Balakot-Naushera episode, allowing Modi to sweep back into power. Therefore, for it to be a strategy in the repertoire of the regime is sensible from regime stability and perpetuation point of view. The diversionary drumbeat keeps attention away from significant national priorities, such as the lockdown brought-on migrant crisis and the tanking-in of the national security edifice in face of the Chinese challenge in Ladakh.

That it is a preferred strategy can be seen from the manner it has approached the two crises this year, COVID-19 and the one with China in Ladakh. Tactics in the COVID-19 diversionary strategy were the beating utensils, lighting lamps, showering petals on hospitals from helicopters, aerobatic displays with no spectators under lockdown conditions and band concerts in hospital silent zones. From the Ladakh crisis, an example is the alleged number of Chinese casualties, put at a tidy 43, by intelligence sources, to reassure Indians that India had the upper hand in the Galwan skirmish.

The pre-COVID-19 and pre-Galwan incident targets are ready on hand: Pakistan, Kashmir and India’s Muslims. The regime’s self-congratulatory list of ‘achievements’ inevitably comprises three points, indicating the collapsing of the three targets into one: the triple talaq bill; rendering Article 370 vacant; and surgical strikes. India’s favoured Kautilyan framework, has Pakistan as the external abettor of an internal – Muslim-centric - threat, considered as most dangerous.

There is a pre-existing decades-long narrative of the Indian Muslim minority as an internal security threat in Hindutva canonical texts. The Indian Muslim as target of the narrative acquired further impetus under conditions of the COVID-19 lockdown; the Tablighi Jamaat episode is evidence. Take for instance, an example is of an article on bio-warfare on the website of a military think tank under the headquarters reporting to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, the Center for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS). Seemingly innocuously timed with the Tablighi Jamaat episode, the article egregiously notes, “the terrorist with fidyan (sic) mind set on getting infected will try spreading it to the target groups by intermingling with them….He however, may take care not to infect the group / community whose support or sympathy he continues to seek in achieving his larger aim (Sharma 2020).” In another instance, the Kashmir police’s director general implausibly averred that Pakistan was sending in COVID-19 inflicted to spread the disease in Kashmir. Though not as explicitly, the corps commander in Srinagar also made a similar allegation.

In relation to Kashmir, information war is the much-in-evidence complement to security operations internally. Take for instance Ram Madhav’s view that, “the people of J&K decided to give the new status a chance. That is the reason why the region has been largely quiet in the last nine months. The detractors would attribute this calm to the excessive presence of security forces and arrests of leaders.” The heavy deployment of troops and COVID-19 are competing explanations why, “people are not on the streets pelting stones and shouting azadi.” That these do not find mention is dead give-away of the information war underpinnings of his observation, that papers over the intensified operations there accounting for some 100 militants this year.

Ram Madhav also attempts to portray normalcy, writing, “The most significant change that has been brought about by the Narendra Modi government was to stop looking at Kashmir from a Pakistani or a terrorist prism.” Evidence of information war obfuscation is in the next steps he projects: taking back Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for fulfilling the Akhand Bharat concept. Information war is to distract from the reality within, targeting concerned Indians as much as India’s external interlocutors distressed by human rights violations.

Information warfare targeting citizen-voters will likely continue to divert attention from the uphill economic battle ahead. Policy missteps, such as the return of migrant labour to home states, will need obscuring, as will the differentiation in the shouldering of the pain of recovery in favour of the corporates as against the masses. The ongoing scapegoating of Muslims, including calls for an economic boycott, can be expected to worsen. Marginalising the minority, a prerequisite for normalising a non-secular, ‘Hindu India’, requires intensification of information war. The ramifications have heightened in light of the set back to the regime in Ladakh, requiring greater diversionary operations, and therefore, the probability of an intensified focus on scapegoating an existing target, India’s Muslims including Kashmiris.

Implications for democracy

The reservation here is that what is good for the right wing is not necessarily good for the country. Even though in the constitutional scheme a democratically elected government can exercise its mandate of setting the national agenda, it cannot be taken as self-evident that it would do so in the national interest. Instead, political interests prevail in national policy and decision-making, in this case, the need for a majoritarian hold on polity and governance in perpetuity.

India’s Pakistan strategy has little to do with the arguments of Realists: that strategy determinants are balances of power and the constellation of forces and threats. Instead, the under theorized perspective, that national security strategy emerges from internal wellsprings in domestic politics, is pertinent in India’s case. Factors in the external environment, such as an inimical neighour, Pakistan, at best provide a rationale for strategies that are instead predominantly internally motivated and directed, with the dividend also being sought in the internal political domain.

In strategic circles, there is a marked absence of sensitivity to the primary internal security threat faced by India - Hindutva extremism - that has hollowed out national institutions. For instance, a security think tank lists only Jammu and Kashmir, North East and Left Wing Extremism, as internal security challenges. Since Hindutva extremists are not listed as a threat, and, instead, what Hindutva extremism takes as threats constitute the internal threat perception. The agenda of the security discourse is thus a doctored one.

Whereas for Pakistan, information war is largely external-foe centric, in the Indian security discourse, purveyed by a subverted media suitably embellished, the external and internal foes are increasingly being collapsed into one: Pakistan and India’s Muslims, including Kashmiris. This makes the Indian information war more dangerous than the one conducted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. The targeting of Indian citizens, through a pliant media, with information war is not in the national interest but is in the interest of the right-wing political formations.

Finally, examples abound of instruments of state being appropriated as information war conduits. In instances akin to propaganda by deed are the manner the investigations and prosecution proceeds against Muslim activists in the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests and, in relation to leftists, in the Bhima Koregaon case. In the latter, the information war gambit, that some were in a conspiracy to kill the prime minister, is stark.

Conclusion

The stakes of falling to information operations of the state’s instruments are high for India. It can imperil liberal democracy, constitutionalism, secularism, federalism, unity in diversity and its freedom and equality. A check on the ruling formation’s agenda from within the government is unlikely. There is little incentive for a government with a parliamentary majority and an agenda for national transformation into a majoritarian state, to change course on ways and means that have yielded political dividend so far. Citizens as enlightened voters must reckon for themselves whether they consent to continue as targets of information war. If not, then they need to use their vote appropriately to push back.

An unpublished article - April 2020

India-Pakistan: The price of information warfare

The death of a commanding officer of a Rashtriya Rifles battalion, followed by the killing of the Hizb ul Mujahedeen (HM) chief, indicates that the usual summer insurgency and counter insurgency is well into its thirtieth year. On the Line of Control (LC), in a fierce hand to hand fight, ten perished, five of whom were India’s Special Forces’ troops. The war of words continues with Pakistan’s prime minister tweeting out his concern over escalation resulting from, in his words, a possible Indian ‘false flag’ operation. For its part, India protested Pakistan’s closer embrace of Gilgit-Baltistan when Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled on elections there and has since begun coverage of the Pakistan occupied areas in its weather bulletins.

All this was altogether predictable with the change in status of Jammu and Kashmir mid last year into a union territory and persistent lock down conditions since. It can reasonably be said that had the corona virus (COVID-19) pandemic not occurred, the situation could well have bordered on war. A provocation-surgical strike crisis could have escalated in the circumstance of an increasingly isolationist United States - the usual crisis-manager in South Asia - distracted by the challenge posed by China, and busy with creating the conditions for exiting its longest war, in Afghanistan. COVID-19 has aborted a plausible scenario this summer in Kashmir.  

Even so, the situation is serious enough to prompt an establishment leading light, Ram Madhav, to warn. “It will be in Pakistan's own interest to change its actions in (the) emerging new world order and India knows how to handle such nations (Madhav 2020a).” Since the strategy currently unfolding appears to be one of coercion, how that helps ‘handle’ Pakistan remains to be seen. This article deals with what could be the outcome for India.

Within Kashmir, suppression of dissent is in evidence. The COVID-19 pandemic led to easing of detentions of politicians and political workers, held since August last year. The security forces are busy with neutralizing the militancy. India pushed in the paramilitary in significant numbers last year in anticipation of the outbreak of a rebellion. The paramilitary troops have been used in strengthening the counter insurgency grid. It has empowered the central armed police forces to the extent of impunity for routine transgressions on human dignity, such as by not affording a decent burial by families not only of militants, but also victims of security forces’ retribution. Highhandedness in operations is much in evidence (The Citizen 2020). With the courts looking on, India, using the security card liberally, has restricted freedoms such as of speech and expression in its control of internet and by pursuing cases under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act such as against photojournalist Masrat Zahra. 

Against Pakistan, the strategy of deterrence remains in place. The strategy calls for surgical strikes of differing magnitude against provocations, supplemented with the promise of retribution by conventional military means to deter escalation by Pakistan. However, in the post COVID-19 situation, a consensus is building up that deterrence is liable to dissipate (Menon 2020). The past few years have seen a decline in defence budgets relative to the proportion of the gross domestic product. The economic consequences of COVID-19 have put paid to any thought of diversion towards higher defence spending. The operationalization of the integrated battle groups has been setback (Hindu 2020). This implies that India stands to lose its swagger over dampening the Pakistani threat of escalation in case of India’s surgical strikes.

The corollary is that Pakistan can be more venturesome in fueling the Kashmiri insurgency. The recent spike in violence in Kashmir suggests that it has taken cue. Adequate tinder exists to keep the insurgency going for another generation, with new, seemingly indigenous, outfits such as ‘The Resistance Front’, at the vanguard. In short, the option that India appears to be exercising sustains the suppression-alienation cycle, but under conditions of decline in efficacy of deterrence. 

The status quo is sustainable for India. It has the security forces for suppression in Kashmir and to keep deployment along the LC indefinitely. Forced by an adverse economic circumstance even prior to COVID-19 advent, it abandoned the intent to stare down China by doing away with the intended Mountain Strike Corps and instead invoking the ‘‘Wuhan spirit’’ (Print 2018). Downplaying the two-front threat, it can afford to focus on one front, further attenuated to only the Kashmir theatre. It would mean a reversion to the nineties when internal security operations continued in Kashmir, with conventional deterrence then at low ebb.

Such a strategy is not an implausible from the lights of Ram Madhav, a leading right-wing intellectual. Kashmir fits in well with the decades-long narrative of the Indian Muslim minority as an internal security threat. This narrative acquired further impetus under conditions of the COVID-19 lockdown, with the Tablighi Jamaat episode as evidence. It serves to keep up the diversionary drumbeat away from significant national priorities as the lockdown brought on migrant crisis in the near term and that of revival of the economy over the long term. The diversionary strategy succeeded handsomely once before when the economic downturn that foreshadowed elections was papered over by recourse to the Pakistani bogey in the Pulwama-Balakot-Naushera episode, allowing Modi to sweep back into power.

The diversionary strategy is now a default one in the repertoire of the regime. Tactics used in diverting the attention of the middle classes during the COVID-19 crisis included beating utensils, lighting lamps, showering petals on hospitals from helicopters, aerobatic displays with no spectators under lockdown conditions and band concerts in hospital silent zones. Another illustration is the regime’s resort to anodyne protestations of good faith in relation to minorities when confronted with ire in West Asia at the Islamophobic epidemic in India. The prime minister led India’s diplomatic damage limiting exercise with a tweet, joined by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leader, Mohan Bhagwat, belatedly intoning similar sentiment.

In relation to Kashmir, Ram Madhav, has it that, “the people of J&K decided to give the new status a chance. That is the reason why the region has been largely quiet in the last nine months. The detractors would attribute this calm to the excessive presence of security forces and arrests of leaders (Madhav 2020b).” There being no mention of COVID-19 in explaining why, “people are not on the streets pelting stones and shouting azadi,” is dead give-away of the information war underpinnings of his article.

India’s strategy can thus be taken as being information warfare led, which in India’s favoured Kautilyan framework has Pakistan as the external abettor of an internal threat, considered in the framework as most dangerous. The point is that what is good for the right wing is not necessarily good for the country. Even though in the constitutional scheme a democratically elected government can exercise its mandate of setting the national agenda, it cannot be taken as self-evident that it would do so in the national interest. Instead, political interests prevail in national policy and decision-making, in this case, the need for a majoritarian hold on polity and governance in perpetuity.

India’s Pakistan strategy therefore has little to do with the arguments of Realists, that balances of power and the constellation of forces and threats in the external environment are strategy determinants. Instead, national security strategy in the India-Pakistan case emerges from internal wellsprings in domestic politics. Factors in the external environment, such as an inimical neighour, Pakistan, at best provide a rationale for strategies that are instead predominantly internally motivated and directed, with the dividend also being sought in the internal political domain.

This is truer for India’s Kashmir strategy, that is doubly damned, linked as it is with Pakistan and, lately, with the downward trajectory of India’s Muslims. That Ram Madhav attempts to delink Pakistan and Kashmir, writing, “The most significant change that has been brought about by the Narendra Modi government was to stop looking at Kashmir from a Pakistani or a terrorist prism (Madhav 2020b),” is evidence of information war obfuscating the linkage. Else why would he project next steps as being to take back Pakistan Occupied Kashmir for fulfilling the Akhand Bharat concept (PTI 2020).

In effect, India is increasingly aping its neighbour, Pakistan. Just as the Pakistan army has appropriated the national agenda to serve its interests, the Indian state has been captured by the right wing for its own purposes. Since both profit from the status quo, it is set to continue. In both cases, information warfare directed internally shall be the main line of operations of this strategy, besides a relatively low-cost proxy war and its counter.

In case of Pakistan, the hit Pakistani tele-serial, Ehd e Wafa (You Tube), produced by its propaganda arm, the Inter Services Public Relations, provides a clue. The climax is picturised on the LC with the uniformed hero depicted as getting the better of his Indian opponents in a tactical level engagement. Healing from his wounds, he gets a hero’s welcome at his alma mater. In his speech to wide eyed school boys, he says, “I believe I cannot perform my job until the entire country’s prayers and backing are not with me…When all of us come together, only then the nation will progress.” The Urdu serial has an actor comically depicting Abhinandan Varthaman, the Indian fighter pilot, who was shot down in the skirmish over Rajauri-Naushera post Balakot. India serves the Pakistan army well as an increasingly credible bogeyman, enabling that army’s ostensible aim of furthering national cohesion, as also its covert purpose of perpetuation of its institutional interest.

In India, information operations must be called out for what they are. The famed troll army of the ruling party is well known. Information warfare targeting citizen-voters will likely continue to divert attention from the uphill economic battle ahead. Policy missteps, such as the return of migrant labour to home states, will need obscuring, as will the differentiation in the shouldering of the pain of recovery in favour of the corporates as against the masses. The ongoing scapegoating of Muslims, including calls for an economic boycott, can be expected to worsen. Marginalising the minority, a prerequisite for normalising a non-secular, Hindu, India, requires intensification of information war.

Information war is also a facet of India’s transforming into a national security state. The glorification of martyrs, as battle casualties are unreflectively referred to in the media; the militarisation of the police; and ubiquity of police brutality, best displayed on the library precincts of a central university in the national capital, Jamia Millia Islamia, are illustrations. Rather than politically ministering problems under the cabinet system, the national security adviser, operating out of the prime minister’s office, eclipses relevant ministers. The intelligence background of the national security adviser foregrounds perception management, making information war a favoured instrument.

Examples abound of instruments of state being appropriated as information war conduits. Take for instance, an example is of an article on bio-warfare on the website of a military think tank under the headquarters reporting to the Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, the Center for Joint Warfare Studies (CENJOWS). Innocuously timed with the Tablighi Jamaat episode, the article egregiously notes, “the terrorist with fidyan (sic) mind set on getting infected will try spreading it to the target groups by intermingling with them….He however, may take care not to infect the group / community whose support or sympathy he continues to seek in achieving his larger aim (Sharma 2020).”

In another instance, the Kashmir police’s director general implausibly averred that Pakistan was sending in COVID-19 inflicted to spread the disease in Kashmir. Though not as explicitly, the corps commander in Srinagar also made a similar allegation (Scroll 2020). A third illustration is the arrests of left wing and anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act activists on trumped up charges of sedition, unlawful activity and, in case of the former, improbably conspiring to assassinate the prime minister.

In strategic circles, there is a marked absence of sensitivity to the primary internal security threat faced by India - Hindutva extremism - that has hollowed out national institutions. For instance, in a security overview, CENJOWS, lists only Jammu and Kashmir, North East and Left Wing Extremism, as internal security challenges (CENJOWS 2020). Since Hindutva extremists are not listed as a threat, and instead, what Hindutva extremism takes as threats constitute the threat perception, information war sets the agenda in the security discourse.

Whereas for Pakistan, information war is largely external-foe centric, in the Indian security discourse, purveyed by a subverted media suitably embellished, the external and internal foes are increasingly being collapsed into one: Pakistan and India’s Muslims, including Kashmiris. This makes the Indian information war worse than the one conducted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies. The targeting of Indian citizens, through a pliant media, with information war is not in the national interest but is in the interest of the right wing political formations. Therefore, information war that makes this possible and the extent of security institutions’ participation in such information operations is ‘anti-national’, rightly defined.  

The stakes of falling to information operations of the state’s instruments are high for India. It can imperil liberal democracy, constitutionalism, secularism, federalism, unity in diversity and its freedom and equality. A check on the ruling formation’s agenda from within the government is unlikely. There is little incentive for the government with a parliamentary majority and an agenda for national transformation into a majoritarian state, to change course on ways and means that have yielded political dividend so far. Citizens as enlightened voters must reckon for themselves whether they consent to continue as targets of information war. If not, then they need to use their vote appropriately to push back.

References

Madhav, Ram (2020a): “India knows how to handle countries like Pakistan: Ram Madhav,” 3 May, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/75519345.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Menon, Prakash (2020): “Dealing with adverse impact of COVID 19 on India’s military planning,” United Services Institution of India, 9 April, https://usiofindia.org/publication/cs3-strategic-perspectives/dealing-with-adverse-impact-of-covid-19-on-indias-military-planning/

Hindu (2020): “Roll out of Integrated Battle Groups delayed due coronavirus pandemic: Army chief,” 10 May, https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/roll-out-of-integrated-battle-groups-delayed-due-coronavirus-pandemic-army-chief/article31550377.ece

Print (2020): “Indian Army puts Mountain Strike Corps aimed at China in cold storage,” 12 July, https://theprint.in/defence/indian-army-puts-mountain-strike-corps-aimed-at-china-in-cold-storage/82319/

Madhav, Ram (2020b): “It is time to allow J&K full-fledged political activity,” 21 May,  https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jammu-kashmir-article-370-abrogation-kashmir-4g-services-internet-restoration-domicile-certificate-ram-madhav-6419914/

Hum TV: “Ehd e Wafa (Last episode),” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGGN_HLJ2g0

PTI (2020): “Taking back PoK is next step towards achieving Akhand Bharat,” Times of India, 22 February,https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/taking-back-pok-is-next-step-towards-achieving-akhand-bharat-objective-ram-madhav/articleshow/74258970.cms

Sharma, GD (2020): “Bio terrorism: A non-traditional threat,” 6 April, https://cenjows.gov.in/article-detail?id=257

Scroll (2020): “Covid-19: Pakistan ‘trying to push’ infected persons into Kashmir, says J&K police chief,” 23 April, https://scroll.in/latest/960017/covid-19-pakistan-trying-to-push-infected-persons-into-kashmir-says-j-k-police-chief

CENJOWS (2020): “Future ready India: Structures to meet non traditional security challenges/ threats,” 23 April, https://cenjows.gov.in/article-detail?id=268

The Citizen (2020): “Havoc in Kashmir,” 21 May, https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/18769/Havoc-in-Kashmir

Yelena Biberman, Gambling with Violence: State Outsourcing of War in Pakistan and India, New York: Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 220, ISBN 9780190929978

The book is an outcome of the dissertation of the author, Yelena Biberman, at Brown University, under tutelage of Prof. Ashutosh Varshney. Varshney is also series editor of the Modern South Asia series of which the book is the fifth product. The slim volume encompasses work of eight years, covering field work in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and archival research in three continents. The book was completed at Skidmore College, where the author currently teaches. Her inspiration appears to be her family’s experience as refugees fleeing persecution from her place of origin where even discussion of politics in private could prove fatal. For these reasons, the book’s simple and honest coverage of the illicit activity that attends counter insurgency needs taking seriously in our part of the world, the focus of the book.

Two of the in-depth case studies on the use of irregulars by the state security forces are centered in South Asia: by Pakistanis in East Pakistan in the run up to and during the 1971 War and the employment of the Ikhwan in Kashmir against Pakistani proxies in the nineties. Two further case studies are dwelt on in one chapter: the resort to lashkars by the Pakistani army to roll back the Taliban and Islamist intrusion into the areas along the Durand Line and the use of the Salwa Judum by India to combat the Maoist insurgency in Central India. To highlight that such manner of resort to local fighters in an armed group affiliated with the state is not a typically South Asian counter insurgency innovation, the author also touches upon the experience of the Turkish military in deploying irregulars in their containment of the Kurdish insurgency and of the two rounds of Russian military intervention in Chechenya wherein the Russians liberally employed Chechen fighters with allegiance to them against their compatriot Chechen insurgents.

The six case studies between them cover most conceivable issues that arise from a political, strategic and human rights perspective. The book is on this count a recommended read for both practitioners and academics since it elaborates on a topic usually touched on in hushed tones and of which little is known. It is significant for the light it casts on both major militaries in South Asia – the Pakistani and Indian military and security forces – in revealing perhaps for the first time in one set of covers their use (and abuse) of proxy armed groups. Clearly, the foremost take away from the book is that the practice of raising, deploying and employing such armed groups is a bad idea and must be struck of the counter insurgency repertoire at least in India, a self-regarding democratic state. That the practice is shady and the knowledge of which leads to these groups being abandoned after use is at variance with democratic ethic. The tactical and short term gains accruing on the security front – a questionable proposition - are at a cost of induction of anti-democratic biases into a military’s organizational culture.

The case study on the Ikhwan illustrates this point. The army was in a bit of a fix rolling back Pakistan’s proxy war in Kashmir. It wanted to keep its redoubtable infantry free for a conventional retaliation against Pakistan in case it failed to keep the proxy war below a certain threshold of tolerance. Therefore, it raised a new counter insurgency force, the Rastriya Rifles. Though the force is now institutionalized to an extent, in the days when the idea of the Ikhwan was thought up and acted on, it was a fledgling, rather ungainly force. The army therefore had to resort to unorthodox means to take on the Pakistani challenge. It turned to turn coat militants, the Ikhwan, who were then let loose on the Pakistani sponsored groups, over ground workers and the population in general. The state terror they inspired over time enabled a semblance of stability, wherein assembly elections were held for the first time after outbreak of troubles. Eventually, the proxy group were merged into the police as the notorious and dreaded, special operations group. The leader of the group tried his hand in politics and was later assassinated. The sorry story has a telling climax in the stronghold of the group, Hajin, currently a hotbed of Pakistani proxy groups.

The story of India’s resort to the Salwa Judum is even more sordid. The author makes a significant point in highlighting the link between India’s attempt at opening up the Central Indian forests to exploitation by corporate entities and the displacement of the vulnerable tribal populations from their lands. The Salwa Judum was at the forefront of this bit of unacknowledged ethnic cleansing by India. It is only later when the Supreme Court stepped in at the behest of concerned academics and activists who petitioned it and pursued the case, that the state changed gears. Even then, it merely transferred the illiterate fighters, usually recruited as child soldiers, into new forces, colourfully called Koda Commandoes etc. It has continued its strategy of appropriating tribal lands for capitalist penetration under a larger deployment of a paramilitary of questionable capability for jungle operations and a deafening media silence. The author informs of poetic justice catching up with the founder of Salwa Judum.

The Pakistani, Turkish and Russian experiences are instructive in only reinforcing the point that the tactic is unsuitable for democratic militaries, particularly since the three are the best company to be in for a liberal democratic state as India. The Russian experience is decidedly the most repulsive. The Russian military was at its lowest ebb in the nineties when it ventured to retake Chechenya from the rebels. It eventually got its act together, but succeeded in gaining control of the rubble that its military resort, supplemented by proxy fighters, left behind. The case study from Turkey indicates how a secular Turkey associated with Islamists to cow down Kurdish fighters.

The lesson for readers here is that if a military route is not possible without the sacrifice of democratic credentials then it should not be taken, but substituted by political means involving where necessary, suitable concessions. This observation has bearing on the current day lock-down – at the time of writing - ongoing in Kashmir. Underlining this is necessary since the use of proxy groups figures in the first iteration of India’s subconventional operations doctrine as force multipliers. Under the current dispensation, when India is turning to a harder strategic line, it can be easily inferred that the state will not be chary of going to any lengths in the name of security. Proxy fighters will therefore remain as an enticing option, but the military – and other security forces - need warning off. Towards this end, the book is timely. The author’s revelations help debunk the understanding, held in sections of the military, that the use of proxies is a replicable tactical innovation. This explains the apt title of the book. For a nation with a robust military, national security cannot be gambled away for questionable tactical gains enabled by proxies.

https://www.epw.in/journal/2020/9/strategic-affairs/portentous-india%E2%80%93pakistan-escalation-dynamic.html

The portentuous India-Pakistan escalation dynamic

On his first official trip to Pakistan as secretary-general the United Nations (UN), Secretary-General António Guterres, at press stakeout in Islamabad, said, “I have repeatedly stressed the importance of exercising maximum restraint and taking steps to de-escalate, both militarily and verbally, while reiterating my offer to exercise my good offices, should both sides ask. Diplomacy and dialogue remain the only tools that guarantee peace and stability... (Guterres 2020).” In response, India’s foreign ministry swiftly reiterated India's position that, “There is no role or scope for third party mediation (Ministry of External Affairs).”

Such exchanges evoke a sense of déjà vu, India having similarly rebutted similar offers from the United States’ (US) President Donald Trump twice earlier. Nevertheless, the international community does have a stake in the regional security situation since fallout of it going awry potentially has global consequences. Two recent studies highlight nuclear dangers. While one talks of climate effects on the global ecosystem accounting for 125 million dead (Toon et al. 2019), the second is on implications on the marine domain (Lovenduski et al. 2020). 

The secretary-general’s foregrounding the delicate state of regional security in exercise of his early warning and conflict prevention function are borne out in the pre-conference report of the Munich Security Conference 2020. It expresses the predicament thus: “In this strained situation, any attack committed by the Kashmiri insurgency bears the risk of escalation, including into military confrontation between the two nuclear-armed powers. Increasing ethno-religious nationalism and anti-Muslim sentiment in India heighten this risk, as they might induce Indian authorities to respond with particular force (Munich Security Report 2020: 50).” The international community cannot but take the rhetorical exchanges between India and Pakistan seriously.

Take the latest warning by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who speaking at the annual the National Cadet Corps’(NCC) Republic Day rally, said, “We know that our neighboring country has lost three wars. It does not take more than ten days a week for our forces to defeat it. In such a situation, it has been fighting proxy-war against India for decades (Modi 2020).”

Aware of the ruling party’s propensity on display over the past five years to parlay its decision-making on national security issues for electioneering purposes, Indian analysts are not be amiss to discount the remarks as political rhetoric, citing the then-forthcoming Delhi elections as a possible rationale (Joshi 2020).

Even so, the prime minister’s reference to proxy war amounts to India’s messaging Pakistan that its continuance could lead up to war, albeit a limited one. Thus the prime minister’s statement can be taken as signaling with a deterrence rationale. Conveying a readiness to up-the-ante from surgical strikes to limited war helps deter Pakistan, firstly, from any terror provocation that can bring on a crisis, and, significantly, from any subsequent reaction by it to India’s surgical strikes that could confound a crisis into a war.

The policy of ending Pakistani impunity through surgical strikes was reiterated by the new army chief, General MM Naravane, at his first press conference on taking over (Pandit 2020). Pakistan has demonstrated its intent and capability to respond in kind, hoping to deter Indian surgical strikes.  Against this backdrop, Narendra Modi’s warning of a limited war appears to be directed at influencing Pakistani against a robust response to future surgical strikes with an to open up the space for such strikes continuing.

As part of its deterrence communication and interest in catalyzing external intervention, Pakistan has taken care to keep fears of escalation alive. Within days after the Indian prime minister’s statement, it deployed its former long-serving head of the Strategic Plans Division and currently Adviser in the National Command Authority, retired Lt Gen Khalid Kidwai, to stoke the fire (Kidwai 2020). In his keynote address at a joint conference in London of the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a Pakistani think tank, Kidwai underlined that, “Pakistan has ensured seamless integration between nuclear strategy and conventional military strategy (Kidwai 2020: 5).”

To him, this reminder is, “especially relevant today post-Pulwama and Balakot, because there are people in important places in India’s strategic circles who have drawn dangerously wrong conclusions about what they are referring to as Pakistan’s nuclear bluff (Kidwai 2020: 5).” He seems to be trying to close the door on India’s advertised intent of limited war by pointing to a “seamless” transition between conventional and nuclear doctrine in Pakistan.

What does this peacetime doctrinal tussle between the two sides spell for the next crisis?

In the last crisis, escalation was sensibly avoided by both sides. This is in keeping with what appears to be a new turn in military escalation dynamics encompassed by the phrase: ‘escalate to de-escalate’. Its inception was in the alleged Russian intention to resort to nuclear weapons in case of a western attack since its conventional preparedness was relatively low (Krepon 2018). Conceptually, this amounts to a step-up the proverbial escalation ladder by a side not so much in order to prevail as much as to trigger uncertainty associated with escalation so as to mutually de-escalate a conflict.

The example is the recent US-Iran face-off. A preceding spiral witnessed a US drone strike on an active-duty Iranian general, the popular Qasem Soleimani. The Iranians, left with little option than perforce to shoot themselves out of the corner boxed into by the unexpected US strike, responded with missile strikes on two US bases. They apparently took care to tacitly warn the Americans targeted. Though Trump later claimed that there were no casualties, some 150 US soldiers suffered brain concussion. Even as the escalatory step was taken, the intent to limit the exchange was broadcast to evoke reciprocity in the other side.

Both India and Pakistan through their rhetoric are signaling intent to ‘escalate to de-escalate’: India with its surgical strikes and Pakistan with its determination to counter India tooth-for-tooth. Credibility of deterrence rests on capability and its communication to the other side. Rhetoric is communication of sorts.  Both sides seek to leverage the delicacy of deterrence - in that it can break down - with an aim to reinforce it – so the other side does not test it. 

In case of India, on the very day the prime minister alluded to India’s ten-day war preparedness, General MM Naravane revealed that earlier shortages of ammunition for a ten-day war at intensive rates of ammunition expenditure had been redressed (India Today 2020). In the aftermath of the surgical strikes by land in retaliation to the Uri terror attack of late 2016 had been replenished by thirty contracts amounting to Rs. 30000 crore. This explains the prime minister’s timeline of seven to ten days to bring Pakistan to its knees.

For its part, Pakistan, through Kidwai’s speech warns that, “Pakistan’s nuclear capability operationalised under the well-articulated policy of Full Spectrum Deterrence (FSD) comprises of a large variety of strategic, operational and tactical nuclear weapons, on land, air and sea, which are designed to comprehensively deter large-scale aggression against mainland Pakistan (Kidwai 2020: 5-6) (italics added).” The use of the term “large-scale” implies that short of a “large-scale” attack Pakistan may not resort to nuclear first use even under conditions of “relative conventional asymmetry (Kidwai 2020: 5)”.

Its confidence of taking on India conventionally appears emboldened by Indian defence budget figures. In wake of the prime minister’s threat of a short, sharp war, Shekhar Gupta pointed out that, “India had to have a decisive, deterrent conventional edge over Pakistan. If that is built in the years to come, it might even be possible to defeat Pakistan in less than a week (Gupta 2020).” Other analysts have referred to the defence budget, criticized over successive years as the lowest since the 1962 War in terms of a proportion of the gross national product, as insufficient to cover the modernization necessary to defeat Pakistan (Panag 2019).

From their deterrence pitch, it appears both sides believe that each has called the other side’s bluff: India thinking it has called Pakistan’s nuclear bluff (Unnithan 2020) and Pakistan believing that it has told India off. This posture of nonchalance in face of the other’s deterrence messaging is liable to be further complicated by the danger in India taking Khalid Kidwai literally: that an attack short of a “large-scale” attack would not trigger Pakistan’s Full Scale Deterrence (FSD). FSD is Pakistan’s drawing of a nuclear awning over its conventional forces to compensate for their comparative weakness.

Such an interpretation of Kidwai’s remarks is incentivized by his second reference to “large-scale” in his downplaying India’s conventional doctrinal make-over with its turn to proactive strategy or Cold Start. He claimed “Pakistan took corresponding operational, doctrinal and force developmental measures both in the conventional as well as nuclear fields, including the establishment of a Full Spectrum Deterrence regime…. As a consequence, the Cold Start Doctrine stayed neutralised, nuclear deterrence holds, and informed strategists consider large-scale wars (italics added) on the international borders as a thing of the past (Kidwai 2020: 7).”

What Kidwai misses is that Cold Start does not envisage a “large scale” conventional show-down. Limited war therefore remains possible even in Kidwai’s logic. India’s Cold Start doctrine, that guides the employment of IBGs for punishing Pakistani military for terror provocations, is predicated on not crossing Pakistani nuclear thresholds. India has readied two integrated battle groups (IBG) on the western front after test-bed exercises last year.

Kidwai’s useful visualization of an India-Pakistan escalation ladder is as follows:, “while it may be easy to climb thefirst rung on the escalatory ladder (surgical strikes), the second rung would always belong to Pakistan (its response), and that India’s choice to move to the third rung would invariablybe dangerously problematic in anticipation of the fourth rung response by Pakistan (Kidwai 2020: 7) (parenthesis added).” The rub is in Kidwai’s revelation of Pakistani policy of going “quid pro quo plus” (Kidwai 2020: 8) at the second rung. Both sides appear to be relying on escalation control to compensate for respective ‘escalate to de-escalate’ choices at diverse rungs of a proverbial escalation ladder: India at the first and third rungs and Pakistan at the second rung.

On the threat of escalation, the prime minister’s NCC rally speech has a clue. He claims that, “Today there is young thinking, the country is moving forward with a young mind, so it performs surgical strikes, air strikes and teaches the lesson to the terrorists in their home (Modi 2020).” This implies political responsiveness to pressures from the street, pressures that such speeh-making only serves to engender.

A crisis can turn into conflict if India ventures on to the third rung. Its limited war strategy has the disadvantage of being checked by Pakistan’s conventional counter since, by definition of limited war, India would not be throwing its full weight behind it. In order to prevail owing to pressures in domestic politics may force India to up the ante, forcing Pakistan to bring FSD into play.

Kidwai takes fear mongering further, saying, “that the escalatory rung climbing could not be so neatly choreographed, but could quickly get out of hand and morph into a major war which perhaps nobody wanted but whose outcomes would be disastrous for the region and the globe (Kidwai 2020: 7-8).” Candidness lets Kidwai’s real intent out of the bag as he goes on to state: “(it is) the Full Spectrum Deterrence capability of Pakistan (that) brings the international community rushing into South Asia to prevent a wider conflagration (Kidwai 2020: 6).” Even as Pakistan seeks to draw the international community in – such as urging intercession by President Trump - India persists in fobbing it off - as the UN secretary-general’s offer of his good-offices. This can be taken as part of messaging to Pakistan that India will not countenance a third party scrambling to save Pakistan from defeat.

Under a circumstance, the two sides are unwarrantedly sanguine. India thinks that there would be no further terror provocation to prompt its stepping on the first rung; that its limited war preparedness will deter a Pakistani “quid pro quo plus” counter at the second rung; and that its operationalisation of Cold Start will limit the war to the third rung. For its part, Pakistan appears to believe that its promise of “quid pro quo plus” at the second rung will prevent Indian surgical strikes at the first rung; and its FSD at the fourth rung will prevent India’s operations at the third rung from going “large-scale” onto the fourth rung.

Both want to escalate to de-escalate, knowing how to do the former better than the latter. Both can do with being bailed out by the international community stepping up when the conflict transitions between third and fourth rungs. However, staying apart till the crunch would be to leave it to the next crisis to test deterrence. Instead, the international community must follow through with its good offices’ initiative, under the logic that if the two sides do not negotiate, it behooves on the international community – that stands to suffer the consequences - to attempt conciliate the two (Bondevik 2020). 

References:

Bondevik, KjellMagne (2020): “The UN Must Take the Lead in Kashmir,” 3 February, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/united-nations-must-mediate-political-solution-in-kashmir-by-kjell-magne-bondevik-2020-02

Gupta, Shekhar (2020): “How Indian armed forces can defeat Pakistan in less than a week,” The Print, 1 February, https://theprint.in/national-interest/how-indian-armed-forces-can-defeat-pakistan-in-less-than-a-week/357701/

Guterres, António (2020): “Opening remarks at joint press briefing with the Foreign Minister of Pakistan and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees,” 17 February, https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2020-02-17/press-remarks-pakistan-foreign-minister-and-unhcr

India Today (2020): “Ammo reserves full, stocks high: Army chief says preparedness not dependent on budget allocations,” 28 January, https://www.indiatoday.in/business/budget-2020/story/ammo-reserves-full-stocks-high-army-chief-says-preparedness-not-dependent-on-budget-allocations-1641027-2020-01-28

Joshi, Manoj (2020): “A balance of forces: The very meaning of ‘victory’ and ‘defeat’ in a war has changed. Ask the Americans,” The Times of India, 1 February, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/a-balance-of-forces-pms-claim-of-being-able-to-defeat-pakistan-within-ten-days-cannot-be-borne-out/

Kidwai, Khalid (2020): “Keynote Address and Discussion Session withLieutenant General (Retd) Khalid Kidwai, Advisor,National Command Authority; and formerDirector-General, Strategic Plans Division, Pakistan,” London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 6 February, https://www.iiss.org/events/2020/02/7th-iiss-and-ciss-south-asian-strategic-stability-workshop

Krepon, Martin (2018): “Escalating to de-escalate,” Arms Control Wonk, https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1204755/escalating-to-de-escalate/

Lovenduski, NS et al (2020): “The Potential Impact of Nuclear Conflict on Ocean Acidification,” Geophysical Research Letters, Volume47, Issue3.

Ministry of External Affairs (2020): “Official Spokesperson's response to a media query regarding comments made by UNSG in Islamabad,” 16 February, https://mea.gov.in/response-to-queries.htm?dtl/32398/Official_Spokespersons_response_to_a_media_query_regarding_comments_made_by_UNSG_in_Islamabad

Modi, Narendra (2020): “PM’s speech at National Cadet Corps rally,” 28 January, https://www.pmindia.gov.in/en/news_updates/pms-speech-at-national-cadet-corps-rally/?comment=disable&tag_term=pmspeech

Munich Security Report 2020 (2020): “Westlessness,” https://securityconference.org/assets/user_upload/MunichSecurityReport2020.pdf

Panag, HS (2019): “Narendra Modi govt wants a strong military, but its defence budget can’t guarantee that.” 14 February, https://theprint.in/opinion/narendra-modi-govt-wants-a-strong-military-but-its-defence-budget-cant-guarantee-that/192760/

Pandit, Rajat (2020): “Surgical strikes sent Pakistan a message, says Army chief,” The Times of India, 4 January, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/73090750.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

Toon, Owen B. et al., “Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Arsenals in Pakistan and India Portend Regional and Global Catastrophe,” Science Advances, Vol. 5, No. 10, 2019, https://advances.sciencemag.org /content/5/10/eaay5478

Unnithan, Sandeep (2020): “We have called Pakistan's nuclear bluff: Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane,” India Today, 4 January, https://www.indiatoday.in/mail-today/story/we-have-called-nuclear-bluff-of-pakistan-army-chief-general-manoj-mukund-naravane-1633816-2020-01-04

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/pzqy5wy3btp9cxm/ali%20book%20-%20doctrine%20puzzle.pdf?dl=0
India's doctrine puzzle: Limiting war in South Asia

https://books.google.co.in/books?id=zIubBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Preface
The genesis of this book was atop a canal obstacle in Punjab in 2006. I was then commanding a battalion that was deployed as exercise enemy, or the Nark force, in Exercise Sanghe Shakti. 1 Armoured Division of 2 Corps chose the canal site for the break in battle. It was fore ordained that they were to break out by first light. In effect, my unit was to be cut to pieces in a heavy breakthrough within three hours. I did not have much to do thereafter, and was able to witness the proceedings of the exercise as a bystander. Over the next four days the exercise timings were truncated to depict ten days or so. The strike corps ended up in its projection areas across the third obstacle, encompassing an airfield captured by a drop of a paratrooper force for subsistence and surge. I wondered as to what a nuclear armed enemy would make of all this. This experience prompted the question: Why has India gone in for an offensive conventional doctrine despite nuclearisation?
Ideally, the investment in nuclearisation should have made India secure. It was even advertised that now that both states, India and Pakistan, have the bomb, they could sit down and talk their differences through. Neither state has taken cue from this understanding. Instead, Pakistan launched Operation Badr in Kargil.Later,it went way past the Indian threshold of tolerance with the terror attack on the Parliament. India, for its part, has moved to a Limited War doctrine, dubbed colloquially as Cold Start. A counter-factual can be hazarded that in case 9/11 had not drawn the United States into the region, 26/11 would have taken place earlier and would not have witnessed a strategy of restraint by India. Given this offensive orientation by both states despite the nuclear backdrop, there is a case for believing that security is imperilled. There is, therefore, a need to investigate what impels offensive 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. In the first chapter, I do an interpretive history since the 1971 War to show that there has been a movement in India’s strategic posture and in its military doctrine. The strategic posture has moved from defensive to offensive deterrence bordering on compellence, while the military doctrine has moved from defensive to offensive. This agenda-setting chapter also carries a description of the Limited War doctrine, which is proactive and offensive, and discusses the conventional nuclear interface.
Thereafter in an attempt to answer the three questions that I posed above, the book in the succeeding chapters tries to locate the drivers behind India’s conventional doctrine. The search has been located at the three levels of analysis: structural, unit (state) and organisational. The last level - individual level – though consequential for doctrine generation, has been left for future doctoral study when the memoirs and records of individuals are available. Since the records are scarce due to the stringent information policy, the study is largely based on information available in military journals and research done by the strategic community.
What was I looking for?
A lot of theoretical work connected with doctrines has been produced over the last two decades. This research material has helped to make my case study a theoretically-informed one. The well-known ‘realist theory’ provided the theoretical backdrop to examine the
hypothesis at the structural level. According to this theory, the anarchical international system prompts self-help on part of states. The states 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 done by the states. A doctrine lends coherence to military power.
However, realism looks at the system and not at the unit (state), while the doctrine process occurs within the state. Therefore, there is a need to look at the unit (state) too. The unit level may be examined with the help of the cultural theoretical lens. According to the Cultural Theory, imbalance of power may exist in a system. The interpretation of this imbalance by the state, whether it is seen as an opportunity or a threat, is important. In other words, domestic politics matters. 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 political culture arising in the domestic sphere. There are three variants of culture: political culture, strategic culture and organisational culture. Cultural theory maintains that strategic or political-military culture impacts the state’s doctrine. However, its influence is mediated by organisational culture of the military in question.
A look at organisational culture necessitates ‘looking into the box’ or at the organisational level. The three famous models of Graham Allison provide a conceptual handle at this level. The rational actor model involving reasoned responses to external stimuli in the form of threats is equivalent to the realist response studied at the structural level. Therefore, the organisational process models and the bureaucratic politics models remain at this level. The organisational process model posits that doctrine, being a mandate of the military, is something that the military would generate as part of discharging its social obligation. In the process, organisations cater for institutional interests such as budgets, role salience, prestige, autonomy etc. Militaries prefer offensive doctrines for these reasons. According to the bureaucratic politics model organisations compete with each other. Since the military is not a monolith, the doctrinal sphere becomes a battle space for bureaucratic fights. Doctrine, therefore, becomes a weapon and doctrine-making a strategy in this contest.
The hypotheses drawn from the theories – realism, cultural theory and organisation theory – were respectively salient at the structural, unit (state) and organisational levels. The dependent variable at each level was the doctrine. At the structural level, the threat perception was taken as the independent variable. The hypothesis at this level therefore was: The change in India’s military doctrine has been due to continuing external security threats. The independent variable at the unit level was strategic culture. Since the military as an organisation reacts to its environment through the prism of organisational culture, the organisational culture serves as an intervening variable. The hypothesis at the unit level,which studied the political factor, was: The change in India’s military doctrine owes to evolution of India’s strategic culture. Lastly, at the organisational level the independent variable was the institutional interest. The hypothesis was: The change in India’s military doctrine has been to preserve the military’s institutional interest.
What did I find?
The chronology places the Cold Start doctrine as emerging after Operation Parakram. As we know, India was unable to leverage its military might in real time.As a result, it had to settle for coercive diplomacy instead of compellence in the face of Pakistan’s proxy war in
Kashmir and its spread elsewhere. The doctrine was apparently cognizant of Pakistan’s nuclear thresholds and therefore, appeared as a suitable answer to India’s strategic predicament. Yet, when the time came to exercise the military option furnished by the doctrine, after 26/11, India did not do so. This was due to several reasons. Firstly, the Limited War doctrine lacked credibility on the question of nuclear thresholds. Secondly, the political complexion of the regime had changed in the interim from an NDA one, in which the doctrine was formulated, to the UPA one, which was expected to give the imprimatur to the doctrine but carefully refrained from doing so in both its avatars. This suggests that the structural explanation while true is only partially so. There are other issues that need to be looked at for an explanation. This has implications for realism in that its paradigm dominance is perhaps unwarranted.
Looking at the political factor at the unit level, the major aspect was the change in strategic culture over the last four decades. The ‘Indira doctrine’, with its emphasis on power, had displaced the Nehruvian world view. India through the 1990s had been challenged by the perspective, raised by Tanham, for instance, that it lacked a will to exert power. The rise of India’s economy and its middle class led to a greater push for strategic assertion as India left the difficult nineties behind. The NDA regime, inspired by cultural nationalism, had a self-image of being strong on defence, best demonstrated by Pokhran II. The influence on strategic culture had been towards greater assertion. Viewing these changes at the national level through the prism of its organisational culture, the military opportunistically moved towards an offensive doctrine. The organisational culture of the military has been informed by the warrior ethic and a strong conventional war fighting tendency.
Taking the unit and the organisation a dyad – i.e. state/organisation – the next chapter examines the influence of institutional interest or organisational compulsions. Since the army was considerably embarrassed by the Kargil intrusion and by its inability to get into a position to exert timely military power, it sought to compensate by formulating an offensive doctrine. This enables it autonomy from its civilian masters, provides it with an offensive option through which it can shape the battle field and legitimize the budgets for operationalisation of the doctrine, if necessary. The bureaucratic politics framework was very useful in understanding the Indian situation since the military is not only pitched against the civilian bureaucracy but is also split within. The doctrinal issue is not so much a turf war but, I believe, a genuine and valid disagreement on how war is to be approached by the Army and the Air Force. The doctrinal sphere is consequently very fertile.
My conclusions?
Firstly, doctrine generation is multidimensional and has its origin in multiple causes. This is useful in terms of expanding the focus, usually fixated on threat perception, to other factors at the other two understudied levels, such as domestic politics and institutional interest. Secondly, doctrinal innovation occurs when there is an impetus at the three levels simultaneously– structural, political and organisational. The three independent variables need to be active in case there is to be a movement in the doctrine. In other words, a threat needs to be dealt with doctrinal movement as well as an enabling environment at the domestic level in terms of an amenable political factor. At the organisational level, the element of institutional interest must also be active. This was the case in the turn to an offensive, proactive doctrine, dubbed ‘Cold Start’ since the turn of the century, the Pakistani threat had heightened, the strategic culture was assertive under the National Democratic Alliance regime, and, military self-interest laid emphasis on the continued relevance of conventional forces into the nuclear age.
So what?
The policy relevance of these findings is that the conundrum posed by the nuclear age has not been answered adequately. While the Cold Start doctrine provides a blueprint for limited war, there is currently no explicit doctrine for limited war. Secondly, since introduction of nuclear weapons into a conflict is a decision for the adversary to make, a nuclear war can yet occur. Therefore, there is a need to stretch the limited war definition and concept to include Limited Nuclear War. The nuclear doctrine currently advocates ‘massive’ punitive retaliation to create unacceptable damage. In the unmistakable equation of mutual assured destruction that the vertical proliferation resorted to by Pakistan has brought the situation to, this is not only genocidal but also suicidal. In effect, India needs to move towards limitation in both its conventional and nuclear doctrines.
What else?
The case study, by its very nature cannot be generalised. It was not designed to test the theories in terms of deriving hypothesis and testing these for validity in a comparative case study. The aim was not theoretically ambitious but limited to seeking an explanation to the puzzle. The finding is that theories can only partially claim to answer the complex phenomena observed in strategic studies. War is a social activity with multiple dimensions that cannot be explicated by a single theory. The case study, however, suggests that the cultural explanation has value. While a view has it that cultural realpolitik behaviour owes to socialization of states by the structural imperative, the reverse is possibly a truer depiction in that realpolitik behavior gives rise to the security dilemma that then forms the structural level environment for the state. This then leads to self-perpetuation and legitimises realism inspired behaviour. The finding suggests that states can choose to change the structural imperatives and this favours constructivist approaches.
Any last words?
My final and perhaps the most significant point is a policy feedback. If there is to be peace, then there has to be a mutually agreed stowing away of respective sticks by India and Pakistan. The book ends by suggesting a strategic dialogue towards this end. While a tenuous peace process is in place, the dialogue can bring about a convergence in strategic thinking. This can spread an appreciation of the sub-continent really being a single strategic space, crying out for a shared security approach. Deterrence being a false god, this is the only way to preserve us from its inevitable breakdown.
This is the message I pass on from a military exercise atop a canal obstacle somewhere in the western sector.

Acknowledgments

The book is based on my doctoral dissertation. I take this opportunity to thank the Jawaharlal Nehru University, the School of International Relations and the Center for International Politics, Disarmament and Organisation for permission to publish it as a book. I must thank the examiners for their comments that have enhanced my work. I regret I have not been able to accommodate some of their many meaningful insights, no doubt at the cost of the book.
Foremost among my many obligations is to acknowledge my debt to my supervisor, Professor Rajesh Rajagopalan. Without his encouragement, neither the dissertation nor the book would have seen the light of day. The strengths of the book owe to him.
The book has drawn on the work of several eminent scholars and military practitioners. It is based on many conversations I had with my colleagues, both in the military and in academic life. I thank all those who shared their ideas, in particular, generals VR Raghavan, Shamsher Mehta, Arjun Ray, Vijay Oberoi and Prakash Menon. Many of my dear friends cannot be mentioned by name but to them must go the credit for any sense in the book. I must also acknowledge that the works of the stalwarts in the field, evident from the references to this volume, have informed my thinking. I hasten to add that he responsibility for the inevitable shortcomings in the book is entirely mine!
I also would like to pay tribute foremost to late Maj Gen SC Sinha and Maj Gen D Bannerji for their abiding interest in and unstinting support for my academic pursuits. I pay my respects to my teacher at the National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla, late Mr. P.R. Patra, whose painstaking efforts made even cadets sleepy in class like me acquire an interest in the subject! I thank Dr. Kanti Bajpai for his guidance over the years; and late Mr. K Subrahmanyam and Lt Gen Satish Nambiar for their indulgence along the route. Mr. N.S. Sisodia, former Director General, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi, generously permitted me to work on my dissertation while employed at the Institute. I thank the staff of the libraries at the IDSA, United Services Institution of India and the National Defence College for their ready assistance.
My gratitude also goes to my colleagues, students and staff at the Nelson Mandela Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia for their looking the other way while I moonlighted in getting this to print. Thanks to Radha Joshi for making the text readable!
My family has not only tolerated my inattention but sustained me over the years. The retirement abode of my parents has provided a ready refuge. The book would not have been completed but for Farah’s prodding, no doubt also so that we could get on with the rest of our lives! I thank Faiz for sparing the computer!
Finally, I pay homage to former Rashtrapati, Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma, in whose service as Aide-de-Camp, I started out on this intellectual journey two decades back