Download the PhD text from https://www.dropbox.com/s/p3qe0obnat22iac/full%20text.pdf?dl=0

of which the abstract submitted with the PhD is below: 

ABSTRACT: Ph.D. THESIS

 

INDIA’S LIMITED WAR DOCTRINE:

STRUCTURAL, POLITICAL AND ORGANISATIONAL FACTORS

Introduction

 

In the wake of the Kargil War, India developed a Limited War doctrine.  The doctrine has evolved from preceding military developments going back over four decades. The study set out to examine the impetus behind India’s conventional doctrines in light of nuclearisation. The puzzle that this dissertation has set out to address has been: Why has India gone in for a proactive offensive doctrine despite nuclearisation? The understanding prior to nuclearisation was that deterrence in light of the nuclear backdrop would make conventional contest obsolescent. Strategic stability would result in conflict resolution and an outbreak of peace. India’s formidable power indices in the region and its status as a power without any extra-territorial ambitions could have reasonably been expected to have combined to make for a deterrent military doctrine. Instead, there has been a turn to a more offensive conventional doctrine by India, redolent with compellence. This departure of reality from expectations prompted the research question: ‘What accounts for the change to an offensive conventional doctrine?’ Thus, the aim of the dissertation was to understand the impetus behind development of India’s Limited War doctrine

 

In the chronological narrative, inception of the doctrine is at a conference at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) in wake of the Kargil War. The Kargil War had brought home to the Indian military that there was a conventional space between the subconventional and nuclear threshold for military exploitation. Even as conceptualisation of the change was underway, the ‘twin peaks’ crisis intervened. The limitations of India’s ‘all or nothing’ approach that had hither to been dependent on strike corps being launched after mobilisation was found wanting. The 2004 document was an outcome of the ‘lessons learnt’. It would appear from such a reading that structural level factors, principally threat perception, were responsible for the change. However, there is a need to go investigate further given that during the period of development of the doctrine certain changes in India’s strategic culture were occurring, informed in the main by the advent of cultural nationalism. The nationalist impulse favoured an assertive India at home in the creation of power and exercise of force. The impact has been in an offensive turn to doctrine when mediated by a military organisational predisposed to the offensive. There is also the need to look ‘into the box’. At the organisational level is the military as part of the wider the national security establishment. Overt nuclearisation of 1998 had transformed the verities of this complex. The doctrinal output in the aftermath of outbreak of the nuclear age in the subcontinent can therefore equally legitimately be explicated as a result of organisational impulse at self-preservation in first place and secondly, of extension in terms role expansion. Given the coincidence of three possible explanations, the dissertation adopted a ‘multi-level and multidimensional approach’ to understand the factors behind change.

 

India’s Limited War doctrine

 

The doctrine, in nutshell, countenances a quick mobilisation followed by multiple offensives across a wide front. The doctrine caters for the changed nuclear reality by envisaging that military advances would be to limited depth in light of possible nuclear thresholds. This study examines the nuclear dangers that attend even such limitation. These escalatory possibilities give rise to the questioning of the doctrine and consequently as to how and why it has been arrived at. Limitation has been brought about by the need to avoid triggering the envisaged nuclear thresholds of Pakistan. These are taken to be along four dimensions: military attrition, territorial losses, economic viability and internal stability. Concerted offensive action by the Indian military would simultaneously nudge all four thresholds directly and indirectly. The cumulative physical and psychological impact could unhinge and lower the nuclear retaliation threshold. To obviate such breakdown in nuclear deterrence, India’s nuclear deterrence is based on ‘assured retaliation’, with the proviso that such reaction could well be of higher order or ‘massive’ levels. It would appear that the promise of ‘unacceptable damage’ is to heighten the adversary’s nuclear threshold in order to provide space for the offensive posture of Cold Start. This explains India’s adaptation of the nuclear deterrence concept to its purpose and circumstance. India believes nuclear weapons deter nuclear weapons and not war. Thus, there appears scope for war, albeit a Limited War. Nevertheless, learning and reflection have contributed to a move away from Limited War towards the end of the last decade. This recent distancing from Cold Start indicates that there has finally been an intellectual adaptation to the imperatives of the nuclear age.  

 

Research question and hypothesis

 

The answer to the key question (‘What accounts for the change to an offensive conventional doctrine?’) can be discerned at the separate ‘levels of analysis’. These are systemic level, state level, of the organisation and that of the individual decision maker. Adopting this approach to strategic analysis, the dissertation attempts to find the impulse for doctrinal change in India at three levels, the individual level being excluded. The study follows the inductive approach.

 

At the structural level, the regional security situation has impacted India’s strategic posture. At this level, primarily was the threat posed by Pakistan, India’s revisionist neighbour. Given its revisionist aims and weak power status, Pakistan went nuclear covertly. This has accounted for its venturesome in prosecuting proxy war. India was consequently forced to respond with restraint, both at Kargil and during Operation Parakram. Emulating Pakistan, it reworked its doctrine to exploit the space between sub-conventional level and the nuclear threshold for conventional operations. This was in accord with the tenets of Limited War concept. The expectation is that an offensive posture would reinforce deterrence.

 

The second level of analysis is the ‘unit’ level. At the national level, there has been a change towards an assertive strategic culture in India. Political developments, particularly advent of ‘cultural nationalism’ more sensitive to national security, has been consequential for this change. Concurrent developments in terms of growing power capabilities through economic liberalization, acquisition of nuclear capability and positioning of India as an Asian power and potential global player, have led to evolution in strategic culture. The link between the national level political developments and changes in doctrine is provided by the intervening organisational culture. The culture permeating the organisation is a professional one, valuing the warrior ethic. It privileges conventional war fighting and preparedness. Together, the change in strategic culture and a pre-existing offensive organisational culture account for the proactive offensive doctrine. 

 

At the next lower level, that of the organisation, nuclearisation rendered conventional operations problematic due to prospects of escalation. The general understanding is that utility of conventional force is threatened by obsolescence in a nuclear age. Limited War thinking has helped keep the armed forces relevant into the nuclear age. It has enabled all three Services to seek a fresh mandate in light of the nuclearised backdrop. This has benefits for institutional interest such as maintaining respective self-image, relative salience in the nuclearised context and autonomy from intrusive civilian control. This perspective looks ‘inside the box’, at the interaction between Service culture, inter-Service rivalry and organisational processes giving rise to the new doctrine.

 

The hypotheses that emerge at the three levels of analysis are:

 

• The structural level: The change in India’s military doctrine has been due to continuing external security threats.

 

• The unit level: The change in India’s military doctrine owes to evolution of Indian strategic culture. 

 

• The organisational level: The change in India’s military doctrine has been to preserve the military’s institutional interest.

 

Layout of the study

 

The conceptual layout of the dissertation is as per the levels of analysis. This has dictated its chapterisation. Chapter 2 is analytical in dealing with the doctrines in question, the Cold Start doctrine in particular. It is descriptive in tracing doctrinal change over the past four decades in a historical look at the evolution of Indian conventional and nuclear doctrine. It seeks to establish the shift from a defensive strategic doctrine to a proactive one. It also discusses processes of doctrine formulation and change in the Services. It reflects on the conventional-nuclear interface that is at the heart of Limited War concept and doctrine. In Chapter 3 on the ‘Structural Factor’, India’s regional strategic predicament is dealt with to bring out how land warfare doctrine in particular has adapted. The change in threat perceptions over time, brought on largely due to Pakistan’s proxy war, is discussed. The effects of the nuclearisation in emboldening Pakistan are studied in their impact on Indian doctrine, both strategic and military. Chapter 4 is on the ‘political factor’ at the unit level. It draws on cultural theory to argue that strategic culture has evolved under influence of changes in the regional security environment and internal political developments in India. Since it is difficult to trace impact of strategic culture on doctrine directly, the intervening variable of organisational culture has been incorporated. An organisational culture that privileges an offensive warrior ethic lends itself to strategic assertion. This is found reflected in the more expansive doctrines the military has engaged with over the past decade.  The fifth chapter on the organisational factor draws on organisational process and bureaucratic politics models to account for the change in doctrine. The concluding chapter carries an assessment of the relative validity of the three hypotheses based on the three drivers of doctrine at differing levels – structural, unit and organisational. The chapter seeks the primary impetus behind doctrinal change in India.

 

Parameters

 

The study restricts the scope to the India-Pakistan equation. The ‘Cold Start’ doctrine is not applicable to China, even though the Limited War concept has applicability to that front. It is inconceivable that either state would engage in a wider conflict in light of potential of war to derail their very promising economic trajectories. Discussions on airpower doctrine, naval doctrine and sub-conventional doctrine are included to make this a study one of military doctrine, as against more narrowly focussed on land warfare doctrine. ‘Cold Start’, though an Army doctrine, serves as a peg for the discussion. The period covered is from 1971 War to bring out the doctrinal changes from a defensive doctrine of the seventies to a deterrent doctrine in the eighties. The quasi compellent doctrine of developed over the last decade is thus placed in the context of its evolution.

 

The case study method has been adopted so as to provide scope for an elaborate - ‘thick’ - description of doctrinal change. A multi-disciplinary approach straddling strategic studies, international relations, domestic politics and military sociology is inescapable. This entails studying strategic literature, particularly in-service publications for thinking on Limited War and its justification, and corresponding commentary output of the strategic community. The Cold Start doctrine is traced elliptically through well-publicised exercises with troops and the plethora of commentaries on it since. Illuminating thinking within the Services has been done through access to dissertations of officers on courses at the Army War College (AWC), Mhow, and National Defence College (NDC), New Delhi. The War College Journal (earlier Combat Journal) and the USI Journal have also served to access Service opinion. The interview technique for data collection has not been used since the thesis is concerned with doctrine that is currently operational in the Services. It is for this reason that the individual level that is taken as the lowest level of analysis, has not been touched on in this dissertation.

 

Reviewing the drivers

 

The structural factor

 

In realist theory, the world order is taken anarchic and power balancing is the manner states ensure their survival and security. This is in the form of internal balancing, in which the internal potential of the state is leveraged, and external balancing, in which alignments amounting at times to alliances are forged to offset threats. Military power is consequential in such balancing. Strategic doctrine lends the power orientation to a state by determining its external posture. This places the state along a defensive-compellence continuum. The location of the state on this shapes the creation, deployment and employment of military power. The function of military doctrine is to lend coherence to the military instrument of power. In effect, strategic doctrine of a state determines its military doctrine, with strategic doctrine being the political level approach to power and its instrumentality. The independent variable is at the structural level in terms of the prevalent power equations and corresponding threat perception. Strategic doctrine is the intervening variable and military doctrine is the dependent variable.

 

The threat posed by Pakistan has been manifest at the subconventional level over the last three decades.  In the eighties there was also the apprehension that Pakistan could follow up its subconventional proxy war with conventional war. In response, India’s strategic doctrine moved from defensive in the seventies to deterrence in the eighties with mechanisation. India’s military doctrine was increasingly in favour of the offensive to the extent by the first edition of the written doctrine in 1998, it discoursed on an intention to fight the war on enemy territory. By the end of the eighties recessed deterrence was in place. This made India’s mechanised advantage recede, though military doctrine did not move correspondingly. This lack of movement in military doctrine owed to the military being out of the nuclear loop, the assumption that nuclear deterrence based on counter value targeting would hold and an internal fixation with counter insurgency over the nineties. It was only with over nuclearisation and the Kargil War that the military was forced to contend with an obsolescent military doctrine. This was impelled by a movement in strategic posture from deterrence to coercion and quasi-compellence as demonstrated by Operation Parakram. It was only in wake of Operation Parakram that the military formulated the Limited War doctrine, discerning a window below the nuclear threshold to bring conventional advantages to bear. The current strategic doctrine goes by the term strategy of deterrence. This implies a reversion to deterrence, but one refurbished by heightening defence budgets over the decade. The direction of the future is a movement away from Limited War doctrine, since this is seen as potentially disruptive of the national economic trajectory. The military is therefore contemplating contingency operations, with Limited War as a possibility brought on by Pakistani reaction.

 

The political factor

 

The next lower level of analysis is the unit level. Cultural theory has it that there are three cultures to be contended with at this level: political culture, strategic culture and organisational culture. Political culture is a site of ideological and intellectual competition between strategic elites. It determines control over the levers of the state. 
This considerably involved concept has not been gone into in this dissertation from point of view of retention of focus.  Instead, strategic culture has been taken as the independent variable, organisational culture the intervening variable and military doctrine as the dependent variable.

 

The George Tanham thesis (1992, 1996) had it that India lacked a strategic culture and to the extent it did have one it was defensive. Kanti Bajpai (2002) characterizes Indian strategic culture as collage-like in subsuming multiple strategic subcultures: Nehruvian, neoliberal and hyper-nationalist. India’s early post-independence period was of ascendance of the Nehruvian paradigm that relied on internationalism and diplomacy rather than self-interest narrowly defined and military power. It was followed by a turn to a more assertive and pragmatic strategic culture in the form of the Indira doctrine. The strategic culture privileged self-interest defined in terms of power. Changes in India’s political culture can be traced to the early eighties with the advent of cultural nationalism. The political ascendance of the conservative nationalist forces enabled India’s overt nuclearisation. A cultural theoretical interpretation would have it that this has less to do with strategic appreciation but equally if not more to do with a sense of identity, concept of the national self and prestige. Even as political culture has witnessed the shift in centre of gravity of politics from the left to the right in the transition from the socialist to the liberalization era, the strategic culture too has been under change. There has been a movement to greater assertion of power. This was clearly visible in the eighties and accounted for India’s seeming overreach. In the nineties, the assertiveness of strategic culture was less externally directed and more internally directed in India’s military predominant tackling of internal problems. Nuclearisation was a result in part of an assertive strategic culture, unwilling to subordinate itself to imposition of a global non-proliferation regime. Persistence of the Pakistani challenge in face of this assertive turn to strategic culture resulted in an offensive strategic culture. This explains the strategic doctrine of quasi compellence to cope with the Pakistan challenge over the turn of the century.

 

Organisational culture in the Indian case has all along been receptive to an assertive strategic culture. This can be seen in the civil-military tensions surrounding the Nehruvian doctrine even as it unfolded prior to the 1962 War. The loss in the war only deepened organisational cultural proclivities in favour of use of force purposefully and forcefully. The 1971 War was the climax and its validation. An offensive bias has therefore been a cultural trait of the military, even in face of the static, defensive mindset brought on by the notion that no loss of territory was politically acceptable. Therefore, when political level changes impacted strategic culture, the military made the conventional option usable despite nuclearisation since there was a congruence between strategic culture and organisational culture. It helped end the impunity enjoyed by Pakistan’s recourse to the stability/instability paradox. This resulted in the Limited War doctrine countenancing proactive offensives. Therefore it can be said that change in strategic culture towards a more assertive one over the past three decades, mediated by an amenable organisational culture, has led to the offensive doctrine. This has validated the hypothesis, limited to noting the correspondence.

 

The Organisational factor

 

The independent variable in the case study has been taken as organisational interest with the dependent variable being doctrine. Organisational or institutional interests include survival, autonomy, scope of role, budgets, prestige, relative salience, control of environment etc. Organisational process is geared to facilitating these for the organisation. The processes and the internal disharmony have been reflected on in detail to draw up a more accurate picture of the internal reality of the military. This has been a necessary filling of the gap in literature. The fact that the military has professional autonomy in the doctrinal function is evident from the deficiencies in higher defence organisation as also the ministry’s traditionally hands-off policy. This means that the organisation sets its own terms. That organisational interests would then have wider play is axiomatic, even if the rationale is taken as fulfilment as an organisationally defined national obligation.

 

Bureaucratic fights that result of organisational pursuit of institutional interests with other organisations similarly engaged, is explained by bureaucratic politics. This is amply brought out in India’s case in terms of turf war between the military and the civilian bureaucracy and the intra-military, between the Army and Air Force. This has been attributed here to essentially being a face-off over doctrine. The civil-military divide, absence of Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) and lack of articulation of strategic doctrine make the organisational defence of self-conceived doctrine more compelling. This results in bureaucratic fights of greater severity since each organisation is not necessarily pursuing ‘parochial’ interests, but is engaged in persuading the environment of the efficacy of its doctrinal position and its follow on implications such as for higher defence organisation, war strategy etc. 

 

 

The finding is that the explanation at this level has greater salience than is generally attributed to it in strategic literature. In effect the neglect of this factor and level of analysis is unjustified. Given the lack of focus on this in literature, it has been possible only to reveal a correspondence rather than arrive at a causal link. But future research in terms of accessing the individual level on availability later of memoirs of those who have participated in doctrine generation will be able to uncover more significant links.

 

Prioritisation of drivers

 

The foregoing brings out that there is reasonable and sufficient evidence for the three factors to be considered as drivers. The impetus to Indian doctrine is at all three levels. In this case study on the Limited War doctrine, the finding is that at the structural level, doctrine has been a response to India’s Pakistan predicament. At the unit level, the political factor involving a shift in strategic culture accounts for the Limited War doctrine. Lastly, at the organisational level, as expected from theory, perceived failure of conventional deterrence in the outbreak of Kargil War and an inability to react appropriately to the parliament attack, led to doctrinal evolution. This was further prompted by existing inter-Service doctrinal competition to determine India’s military doctrine for the nuclear age. Overall, it can be said that the primary impetus from among the three is difficult to discern. Instead, all three are complementary factors responsible for doctrine.

 

Major findings

 

Policy relevance:  The foremost policy relevant conclusion is that India needs to arrive at an explicit Limited War doctrine. This must be cognizant of the nuclear-conventional interface. It needs as a prerequisite to first make the structural changes necessary, in particular the creation of the CDS. Even so, it must be mindful that Limited War has its limitations and the nascent impulse distancing the military from a default resort to Limited War, as the term ‘Cold Start’ suggests, should be taken to its logical conclusion.

 

Case study relevance: Objectively, it is difficult to determine, which of the three drivers was most prominent. However, it can be said that crediting the structural factor is, as is the wont in Indian strategic writings, is not sustainable. The explanation in cultural theory has been found to be more consequential than is admitted to.

 

Theory relevance: From a single case study, it is not possible to generalise as to which of the three theories, namely, ‘balance of power’, cultural theory and organisational theory, has comparative merit. The research design has not catered for judging this. Suffice it to maintain that all are relevant and cannot be discounted. This makes doctrine generation multi-causal. Given that realism remains the dominant paradigm, development of the latter two theories helps as their comparative relevance stands demonstrated in this case study. In particular, the comparative weight of cultural theory and realism appears in favour of the former in this case.

 

Conclusion

 

The study has focused on what drives military doctrine development in India. It has looked at the three levels of analysis – structural, unit and organisational - for answers. The three theories – realism, cultural theory and organisational theory - have been employed to arrive at the drivers. The finding has been that all three have explanatory value and that the drivers exist at the three levels, making doctrine making a case of equi-finality. Its examination of conventional doctrine has been of an under-studied area in India. While nuclear doctrine and counter insurgency doctrine, that have aura of urgency, have had attention, conventional doctrine has remained elusive. The study has historical significance in tracing the formulation and eclipse of India’s Cold Start doctrine over the century’s first decade. The doctrine was conceptualized as brought out in January 2000 and the military is currently in the process of moving away from the doctrine towards one that is more adapted to the defining reality of the periods – the nuclear dimension. The study has engaged with a problem of contemporary relevance in its being pitched at the conventional-nuclear interface. The limitation parameters have therefore been highlighted with the policy relevant finding being that limitation needs to attend both the conventional and nuclear realms of military application. India needs therefore to reset its strategic doctrine to defensive realism.  An implication of reliance on defensive realism is for a return to deterrence with a defensive bias on the Pakistan front. Military doctrine would move further into making military power less usable. This would be in keeping with the principal dictate of the nuclear age.

 

Something I wrote in 2004-5, in the context of US GWOT in the vicinity and implications for India

JIHAD AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR FOURTH GENERATION WARFARE

INTRODUCTION

1.        Jihad is an Islamic doctrine that has acquired prominence over the past quarter century beginning with the anti Soviet war in Afghanistan and culminating in the attacks on the mainland of the remaining superpower on 11 Sep 01. Coincident with the period has been the decline in governance in J&K resulting in the exploitation of the disaffection among the people from the Indian state by India’s perennial foe, Pakistan. Pakistan’s learning curve on such military intervention had peaked in its duty as a front line state against communist intrusion into Southern Asia in the Eighties. With Gorbachev having pulled out Soviet forces from its northern border, Pakistan was able to expand its interference in Indian Punjab to encompass J&K as part of twin plans attributed to it, dubbed ‘K2’ (Khalistan and Kashmir) and the semi-fictional ‘Op Topac’. While the long standing territorial dispute and imbalance of power between the two south Asian protagonist states was partially at the root of the ensuing conflict, Zia’s preceding Islamisation of Pakistan provided the opening for Jihadi forces into the issue. In the event, it became indistinct whether Pakistan was in control of policy as a rational inter state engagement, or whether the Pakistani state was increasingly a tool in the hands of Islamist forces. 

 

2.        Islamism had in the interim acquired status as the new global force with which the sole hyperpower had to contend in wake of the metamorphosis of Soviet Union into Russia. This owed in part to the control of energy resources in Arab lands by USA and its attempt to use the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait to reaffirm it. The relatively under employed Islamist fighters released from Afghanistan gained an outlet for the jihadi energy as the stability of the Cold War dissolved in the early part of the Nineties. Their motivational doctrine, that of Jihad, increasingly found echo on the Arab street where the condition of the masses was aggravated by a persecution complex brought on by a perception of being on the receiving end of the rash of conflicts along Islam’s ‘bloody borders’. Among these conflicts, it was Pakistan’s endeavor to make Kashmir also figure. This was in keeping with its technique of proxy war, that strategic theorists were acknowledging as an evolution in land warfare into ‘fourth generation warfare’.

 

3.        ‘Fourth generation warfare’ at the strategic level is to force a change in policy of the antagonist through a combination of diplomatic, military, economic and psychological pressures extended over time. At the tactical level, it amounts to waging of a low intensity conflict to exhaust the military capabilities of the opponent. From the broad contours of the conflict in Kashmir it can be discerned that the conflict in Kashmir can be classified as such. Since Jihadist forces are enmeshed as combatants in Kashmir, Pakistan’s resort to non-state elements for plausible deniability is obvious. Therefore the conflict lends itself to a study of the impact of Jihadist philosophy on ‘fourth generation warfare’ expansively defined to include unconventional warfare. 

 

 

AIM OF THE STUDY

 

4.        The aim of the proposed study is to examine the linkages between Jihad and fourth generation warfare at the global and regional level to arrive at a strategy for India to negotiate the future.

 

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

 

5.        From the topic it is self evident that the two aspects requiring a stand-alone exploration at the very outset are Jihad and Fourth Generation Warfare. With the definitional exercise aside, the wider implications of the intermeshing of both would require to be done prior to getting into the specifics as obtains in the incidence of fourth generation warfare to the extent it is impelled by Jihad in J&K. The logical sequencing of the study emerging from the foregoing is as broadly as follows:-

 

(a) A definitional exercise encompassing Jihad and fourth generation warfare individually and a survey of the international security situation in which an intermeshing of both aspects is discernible.

 

(b) The Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir in its secular dimension and implications of the Jihadist connotations of the conflict on the Indo-Pak strategic dyad.

 

(c) The probable trajectory of Jihad inspired Islamism in its global contention with the corrupted Enlightenment project as represented by the Western world and its implications for the subcontinent.

 

THE CONCEPTUAL PRELUDE

 

Jihad

 

6.        Jihad is an Islamic doctrine dealing with selfless ‘exertion’ in pursuit of the cause of Islam. While Islam is popularly known to have five fundamental pillars, namely, belief in monotheism and the prophet hood of Mohammad; five time prayer; fasting in the month of Ramzan; a pilgrimage to Mecca in case feasible in a lifetime; and charity for the underprivileged, Jihad in at least one tradition of Islam is elevated as the sixth fundamental pillar. The Jamaat e Islami founded by Maulana Abu Ala Maududi has propagated this through his writings that have grown in posthumous popularity in pace with religious revivalism the world over. His first original work, not yet translated from Urdu, was titled ‘Jihad in Islam’. The concept found a ready audience in sections of the Arab world, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, reeling under colonialism since the discovery of oil and the end of World War I. The failure of the pan Arab and socialist project, the imposition of client sheikhdoms, the continuation of Israel as both an existential threat and affront and self centered actions of the USA as abandonment of Afghanistan and Iraq, combined to raise the profile of Jihad into being seen as central to Islam’s engagement with the world in some militant quarters. This politicization of Islam in the radicalization of the opposition to regimes and their patrons has been perceived as bringing about the new fault line in the ‘clash of civilizations’. It is what defines the main theoretical problem in international relations today in the tradition of the earlier focus on the cold war.

 

7.        The concept of Jihad is now a political football. In the traditional understanding it had two variants: ‘Greater Jihad’ dealing with the conquest of the self and ‘Lesser Jihad’ meaning striving in the defense of Islam. Islamists – Muslim extremists – privilege the latter version of Islam in pursuit of political ends of gaining power in Muslim societies. Their advantage is in collapsing the two versions of Jihad into each other. The striving in the Lesser Jihad itself amounts to Greater Jihad. There is however no religious or social consensus over their usurpation of the concept. Their agenda has acquired center stage as the principal threat to polity and international order largely because of Western domination of the media and its self-interest in preserving the same. The possibility and extent to which Islamists are proto-nationalists engaged in an anti-colonization project has not been broached adequately in security literature. That the West, through the dominant media, is engaged in hyping the Jihadi threat also indicates that the concept is being made to sub serve political interests by both opponents. The ‘Jihad threat’ will be utilized for legitimizing American expansion and control of energy resources as a national security compulsion. Imposition of democracy with Iraq as a forerunner to the neo-conservative Project for the New American Century only indicates that this conflict between the two forces will perpetuate itself into the future.

 

8.        The extent it impinges on the subcontinent is dependent on the stability of the Pakistani state that has flirted with both forces. The penetration of instability into India will be less a function of what transpires in Pakistan but more on India’s exertion of its ‘soft power’ in regaining the allegiance of Kashmiris. Elsewhere in India, the orientation of India’s secular polity will determine the extent to which minority management is successful.

 

9.        The argument here is that Jihadi doctrine fulfils a motivational function for the ‘cannon fodder’ being employed in the conflict at global level. It presents a ‘win-win’ situation for their madrassa learning benumbed minds – in death they ascend to heaven and in life Islam inherits the earth. An echo of the sermon of the Gita cannot be missed. Its political utility for mobilization of masses is limited by the several stronger competing lived realities of Islam all over the world in which the fundamentalist version of Jihad does not find resonance. In Kashmir, the study could seek to interrogate as to the extent Jihad is implicated in the actions of terrorists, both local and foreign. While there is a propaganda advantage to be had in elevating Jihad as the primary impulse, it would not do for the study to begin with this as assumption for in the Kashmir issue multiple tendencies predominate, with Jihad being not necessarily the most significant.

 

Fourth Generation Warfare

 

10.      There are varying conceptualizations on the evolution of warfare – one being its classification into four generations of warfare by two Marine Corps officers in conjunction with a civil military theorist in the Marine Gazette, circa 1989. In their postulation, the first generation comprised the Napoleonic ear when the smooth bore musket dominated the battlefield. The advent of machine guns and barbed wire in the American civil war lead up to the second generation of warfare with its high point in the First World War. The third generation of warfare had its inception in thinking on breaking through the trench lines of the Great War. It comprised the use of mechanized forces in conjunction with air power in a battle of maneuver. The ultimate was reached in Norman Swarzkopf’s ‘Hail Mary’ maneuver in Iraq War I. Prognostication on the direction of warfare lead these theorists to conjuring up Fourth Generation Warfare which was in effect a return to the old manner of war that has recurred even as warfare moved through the preceding three generations of technology induced innovation - the manner the Spaniards fought Napoleon, the Boers fended off the British, and the Slavs held down the Nazis. In effect fourth generation warfare is the original form of warfare though not technologically innocent in that it innovates in the field of information rather than steel and iron.

 

11.      An extract below from a document forming part of an inaugural publication of the Army’s Center for Land Warfare Studies, ‘Army 2020’ makes clearer the concept:

 

“Military analysts in the USA are now deliberating and reflecting on a fourth generation warfare in which the target will be the whole of the enemy’s society (ideology, culture, political, infrastructure and civil society).  This generation of warfare, they say, will be characterized by dispersion, increased importance of actions by small groups of combatants, decreasing dependence of centralized logistics, high tempo of operations and more emphasis on maneuver.  Masses of men or firepower may become a disadvantage, as they will be easy to target.  Small, highly maneuverable, agile forces will tend to dominate.  The aim would be to cause the enemy to collapse internally rather than physically destroying him.  There will be little distinction between war and peace.  It will be non-linear, possibly to the point of having no definable battlefields or fronts.  Major military and civil facilities will become targets.  Success will depend heavily on joint operations.  If we combine these general characteristics with new technology, we see one possible outline of the new generation of warfare.”

 

12.      This generation of warfare retains some of the characteristics from earlier generations. For example, the Total Wars of last century were aiming at structural and ideological changes. Likewise, the cold war was neither peace nor war, but was fought through proxy in the Third World. Civilian targets were not spared and joint operations were pursued to the extent material was available. Crystal ball gazing in 1989 however has not captured the essence of the conflict well underway by the turn of the century. In this conflict the chief characteristic is of non-state actors combating a coalition of states. Non-state Islamist cells embedded in society have waged a technologically sophisticated war best exemplified by the coordinated attacks on the symbols of American capitalist, political and military might, known to history as 9/11. This dimension of the latest form of war has not been adequately covered in fourth generation warfare conceptualization indicating that at the turn of the penultimate decade of last century America was interested in discerning contours for employability for its massive military power. Towards this end fourth generation warfare conceptualization provided a blueprint, while Huntingtonion theorizing provided rationalization for a new enemy in the form of radical Islam.

 

13.      An admixture of asymmetric war theorizing drawing on Maoist revolutionary theory helps flesh out the concept of fourth generation war. The asymmetric dimension is implicit in the David versus Goliath analogy exploited by the Jihadi opposition, while the lead nation in the ‘coalition of the willing’ engages in the war its military is best configured for – that of fourth generation war towards regime change in ‘rogue states’.  It is here that the linkage between Jihad and fourth generation war can be established. In order to take on the military might and cultural hegemony of the USA, its allies and client states, the Islamist opposition has to rely on the Jihad doctrine to mobilize its supporters for the encounter. As with any universalistic movement, Islamism also has a comprehensive ideological frame affixed on Islam. That Islamic doctrine obtains in many narratives and that privileging any does not command a consensus is not material. Instead the ‘foco theory’ that originated in post revolution Cuba is being relied on to energize the opposition to the USA. The actions of the USA in this regard have only deepened the skepticism with which they are received. The point is that ascendance of Jihad owes to the asymmetric dimension of fourth generation war being engaged in between Islamism and the USA.

 

 

THE INDO PAK CONFLICT

 

 

14.      Interpretations of the Indo-Pak conflict abound. The secular dimension of the conflict can be deemed to be in the internal and external balancing being resorted to by a weaker power in face of the superiority of the regional power. This is historically proven, with Pakistan seeking US aid in the cold war and lately in the War on Terror to firm up its political, diplomatic and military position in the Indo-Pak equation. In so far as the Jihad factor is concerned, it can be deemed to be a form of internal balancing in its motivational dimension with respect to the Pak Army post its Islamisation of the Zia era. The non-state Jihadi actors implicated in the Kashmir question are in it for varying ends not least being the self professed aim of completion of the ‘unfinished business’ of Partition. They only apparently have a broader agenda that propagandistically is projected as extending into defending Muslims in India. However, pragmatically, it may be an outcome of internal politics of the Pakistani state in which the Islamist right would prefer to move to center stage by capture of state institutions to include the Army that has controlled Pakistan for most of its existence with not a little help from Islamist parties. In Kashmir they are thus at the vanguard, with the Army controlling the level of their ‘success’ so as to keep it below the threshold of tolerance of India. Interestingly, motivated analysis apart, the institutional interest of the Pakistani Army, and at one remove the national interest of the Pakistani state defined by its Army, lies in keeping the Jihadis occupied in keeping India tied down, reminiscent of the cliché ‘two birds with one stone’.

 

15.      The Pakistan Army has the requisite experience stemming from the role of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) in the Afghan conflict of the Eighties. It has been well established that the precursor to the International Islamic Front, colloquially termed Holy War Inc, of today were the groupings of the Afghan Arabs aided by the CIA as mediated by the ISI. With Afghanistan neglected, the rash of conflicts accompanying the retreat of cold war frontiers of Russia, and the physical intrusion of the USA into the holy lands of Islam provided these fighters a new focus. That the ISI ensured diversion of Jihadi energy and resources into Kashmir has been well substantiated. However to what extent if any is the Jihadi element in Kashmir an offshoot of the larger confrontation of Islamism with the West elsewhere is worth a study.

 

16.      In this enquiry there is also no need to repeat the themes of information war relevance projected during the Kargil conflict in which some analysts went to the extent of suggesting the hand of Osama bin Laden in the intrusion, his presence in Gilgit and the presence of his 055 Brigade in Kargil! An additional fact must also be factored in that the information on the agenda and utterances of the presiding figurehead of the Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is Western mediated. As to how much of the same is Kashmir related is questionable and would do with an independent enquiry. The recommendation is that there is no call to develop a contrived linkage with the wider Islamist phenomenon than warranted for this may in the event may not amount to more than a tactical linkage, for example of usage of the same training facilities in Afghanistan or Pakistan by the two sets of fighters with differing preoccupations.

 

17.      To preempt a finding that may emerge, it is possible to see the Pakistani inspired Jihad in Kashmir as having strategic utility for Pakistan. However, on that account it is a rational policy with the attendant connotations of control and limitation even if at a risk of flirtation with Frankenstein. That Pakistan has realized this and is engaged in an extent to remedy the self-created situation as part of its side of the bargain with the USA has to be conceded. To what extent would they compromise on the gains made through Jihadis in Kashmir is a debatable issue that could invite study. The study’s major contribution would be in discerning respective levels of Jihad inspired terrorism and that springing from other reasons as Kashmiri sub nationalism, misadventure, inappropriate angst, or as victims of circumstance. An earlier study of similar nature by a former BGS of the Valley based corps titled ‘Kashmir Diary’ had not reported an alarming Jihadi influence. The present study could ascertain if the situation has changed radically since. The fact that Jihadis have been on an ascendant curve since the publication of the mentioned finding needs to be brought out without overstating the point as psychological war related tracts are prone to do. While Jihadis are indeed the mainstay of the terrorists in Kashmir, the jury is still out on the extent of their linkage with wider Jihad and the levels of support enjoyed by these elements in the demographic terrain of Kashmir.

 

18.      Objectivity amounting to intellectual honesty is all the more important when dealing with the question of the levels of penetration of Jihadi elements into India’s Muslim minority. In so far as religious strife obtained in the Nineties and persisted into the new century in the form of the infamous Godhra-Gujarat episode, there is a case made that the ISI has acquired ubiquitous dimensions within India. There are competing interpretations of India’s socio-political trajectory through the period in which Hindu revivalism, exploited by interested political parties, is also implicated. It is suggested contrary to the terms of reference of the study, that this dimension not be belabored for it would amount to a political comment that has questionable space in an in-service endeavor. Alternatively, the study could highlight the converse to the popular, if alarmist, analysis on the susceptibility of Muslim India to Pakistan inspired Jihadi subversion. Instead the study would do well to highlight the local coordinates that have lead up to the localized violence that has punctuated the Indian scene over the past decade and more. Rightly the media has alighted on the exploits of Irfan Pathan and Sania Mirza to reveal the hitherto fore ignored tendency in Muslim India to partake of India’s economic miracle.

 

PROGNOSIS: GLOCAL (GLOBAL AND LOCAL)

 

19.      The outgoing Chief has already highlighted the beginning of the end game in Kashmir. The fresh policy predicated on exposing the ‘human face’ of the Army in Kashmir will likely yield result in the form of expanded good will for the Army and at one remove the Indian state, of whom the Army has episodically been the only credible representative. While the ingress of the fundamentalist philosophy into Kashmir has to be contended with, the accommodationist orientation of Indian democracy would be able to handle the challenge. With a subsiding of gun culture, the eclipse of syncretic Islam as practiced in Kashmir can be expected to make a recovery. The perceived legitimacy of the forces of violence would recede in face of drawing down of their supposed cause of fighting in the way of Islam against oppression of fellow Muslims. This outcome is feasible in case the current twin initiatives of engaging Pakistan and interfacing with the separatist element in Kashmir are taken to its logical conclusion. So long as Pakistan retains agency this is not a pre-determined outcome. Much would depend on the internal politics of Pakistan of which ads has already been noted the Kashmir problem is a spillover. Pakistan’s stability would also be a function of the international security environment in which the self-willed actions of the US have a major role.

 

20.      While the above may be the preferred future, the past also does not make for confidence in its inevitability. Pakistan has revealed a propensity to turn the clock back when signs of improvement make an appearance in Kashmir. The elevation of the HM over the JKLF in the early Nineties and the Kargil misadventure are cases to point. However, there is a case for examination of the indicators from the internal polity in Pakistan that may be indicative of Pakistan turning a new leaf in President Musharraf’s endeavor to ape his model, Ataturk. If strategic rationality of policy in terms of a weak power seeking to balance a regional power is conceded, then its logical extension is an examination of the comparative trajectory of both powers. Given the current movement in India’s economic and military power, Pakistan’s self-analysis rationally would be to incline towards a period of stability resulting from foregrounding Pakistan over Kashmir. This has been partially initiated in the form of seeking US support while also playing up to its part of the bargain, if insubstantially. The institutional interest of the Pakistani Army that is widely acknowledged as being a state within a state is thus assured and fundamentalists are kept at bay even if their support is tactically solicited. In case the President is assassinated, a fate he has providentially escaped reportedly six times already, there is the specter of civil war. The recent coming together of secular democratic forces albeit in exile is an indicator of alignments in the offing of a post Musharraf and possibly post Jihadi future.

 

21.      It would be a misreading of Islam if the concept of Ummah is taken literally. The differences define the Islamic reality more than commonality of belief. The state of the Arab world comprising nineteen nations is a pointer. Clearly the gap between the Arab cells of Osama bin Laden and South Asia is insuperable, not least because of the threat to Arab cultural imperialism that South Asia poses as housing the largest concentration of Muslims on the planet of which the dynamism of the majority is only now becoming apparent. The salience of Pakistan’s untutored masses does detract from this analysis. However, the lionizing of Osama bin Laden does not in itself indicate a Pakistani preference for fundamentalism of the Taliban variety. The point is that the connection between Arab centric Islamism and South Asian fundamentalism is not of the order as to warrant India weighing uncritically on the side of the West in its current face off with radical Islam.

 

22.      The future of the global battlefield is predictable. The presence of the USA in the Muslim world is set to deepen with the US threatening Iran in wake of winding up its commitment in favor of a clientelist regime in Iraq. The uncertainty of upset power equations between communities in Iraq brought on by US design would be a breeding ground for tomorrow’s terrorists. In so far as Iraqi society is currently devouring itself, this future is not readily apparent. But to the Arab watching Al Jazeera there is a growing demand for a pay back time that cosmetic democratic moves such as the recent municipal elections in Saudi Arabia can unlikely amend. Thus irrespective of the longevity of OBL, the urges he has set in motion and partially represented are not likely to halt by themselves. The USA’s preparation for fourth generation warfare in terms of stand off bombings with no boots on the ground would not be relevant for the Fallujas of the future. Its well-tried strategy would be to exploit the faultlines within Islam that are as salient as the fault line postulated by Samuel Huntington. The outcome of attacks by the Iraqi underground against American collaborators would have a bearing on gauging US success. The hold of the Egyptian and Algerian regime indicates that the military suppression of Islamist forces is feasible. The loosening grip of the Saudi monarchy does not however lend confidence of replication elsewhere. The twin provocations of US actions in preserving energy security and its undemanding support for Israel could prove the Achilles heel of a superpower in overstretch.

 

CONCLUSION

 

23.      India would do well to await the outcome of the global standoff rather than bandwagon with the US. The threat to intrusion of Islamism into India as a manifest threat is slight, even if its presence in Kashmir is an irritant India could do without. India’s best defense is its economic trajectory for which stability is indispensable. In so far as energy needs go, even fundamentalist regimes in oil rich lands require selling of oil. By maintaining a distance from the conflict, India would not attract the terrorist scourge onto itself, something that US planners may wish so as to avail themselves of India’s participation in manpower intensive missions as taming Iraq. India may seek tactical advantage in its triangular relationship with Pakistan and China by playing along with the US. However, it must be borne in mind that the US being the global hegemon can play a like game that an India mindful of its long term national interest should take care to handle.

 

24.      For such a conclusion to emerge from the study, there is a requirement of departing from the traditional mode of analysis that makes a bogeyman out of the Jihadi and pushes India into the American embrace or into militarizing its state and society. To this end there is a requirement of clarity as to whether the proposed study is to be a psychological initiative or one conducted to enliven the strategic scene through generation of fresh insight. The future is made by actions taken based on perceptions of reality. It is therefore of importance that the perception is rightly informed. The study could fulfill this function by lending balance to strategic analysis based on which the hoped for Indian reality of tomorrow will unfold itself. 

 

The thesis proposal in 2008 and its outcome in 2012: 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/p3qe0obnat22iac/full%20text.pdf?dl=0

THESIS PROPOSAL FOR DIRECT PHD AT CIPOD, SIS, JNU : ALI AHMED - Jul 2008

Title : Strategic doctrines of India and Pakistan: 1998-2006.

Thesis Statement : Realist inspired strategic doctrines in India and Pakistan have adversely impacted state security and regional stability.

Period of the Study: 1998-2006

The period 1998-2006 covers the considerable developments in both states post overt nuclearisation and the accelerated changes in the aftermath of Operation Parakram.

Doctrinal development in India has been prompted by India’s regional aspirations and as a response to its military predicament brought on by Pakistan exercising its prerogative as a weak and revisionist power. These doctrines at the sub-conventional plane range from a strategy of exhaustion to one of ‘velvet glove – iron fist’. On the conventional level there has been the pincer offensives of the Surdarji era through Limited War to today’s ‘cold start’. On the nuclear level, the move has been from recessed and existential deterrence through ‘massive retaliation’ of the Draft Nuclear Doctrine to one probably more nuanced in light of developments in the nuclear field of command and control, survivability, delivery and miniaturisation.

Pakistan for its part has not explicitly stated its doctrine, but the reliance on irregulars to supplement its conventional capabilities has been hinted at. To constrain the conventional space that India perceives as existing below the nuclear threshold, Pakistan has not outlined its nuclear doctrine, but it is believed to be a ‘high’ nuclear threshold. However, its strategic doctrine is one of war avoidance, forced on it due to India’s changed doctrine to a pro-active strategic posture, as also the preoccupation with the GWOT and the blowback in its own backyard.  There is a greater intermeshing of doctrines in the three planes, posing a considerable challenge to its regional foe and making for a rewarding theoretical study.   

Scope of Study

The central questions required to be addressed are as under:

What constitutes regional stability? What are implications for state security?

What are core aims and objectives of national security policies? How and in what measure are these provisioned by strategic doctrines?

How are strategic and military doctrines formulated in democratic and dictatorial regimes and what are the influences?

How does a realist paradigm render askew strategic and military doctrines in relation to rational national security policy aims and objectives?

What are the alternative paradigms and how would their adoption mitigate the doctrinal competition?

The study would require theoretical anchoring in a discussion of realism and its dominance in South Asia. It would require to be proven that realism inspires competitive doctrine formulation and these impact regional stability and national security adversely. The outcome would be a critique of realism and an assessment of the alternative paradigms thereby expanding the scope for peace in the region and providing a national security perspective that lends itself better to national security in the South Asian context.

 The manner of development of doctrine in terms of mechanisms, internal and external influences, impact of adversary’s doctrine and behavior can be charted through this study with fruitful academic fallout. The inter-linkages with the overarching national security doctrine and relationship with sister doctrines such as in the economic, diplomatic and internal security fields would find brief mention. It would look at actors, interrelations among these, external influence of foreign powers and doctrines originating elsewhere, higher defence organizations, military organizational developments such as creation of additional commands in both states, and democratic control.

Methodology

The need for the two states to appear responsible nuclear powers, prodded by the international community led by the US, has resulted in their being relatively more effusive in terms of their nuclear thinking.

India in taking its democratic traditions seriously has indulged in not only a wider media debate within its strategic community but has also published some of its doctrines, such as the Draft Nuclear doctrine, the services doctrines, MOD reports, parliamentary debates etc. Therefore there is not only the basic material available but also secondary material in terms of commentary. Interviews would be required to bring to fore aspects requiring closer scrutiny.  

Pakistan’s think tank and university based strategic community is very visible and vocal. Its retired fraternity is active and accessible, especially in championing the Pakistani perspective. With fresh democratic winds blowing access may be an easier proposition. Commentary in strategic journals, interaction with think tanks, interviews with decision makers and strategists and  commentaries of western and Indian observers would be the manner of accessing the Pakistani viewpoint. Thus balance in the dissertation can be maintained and sustainable conclusions for the study can be drawn.

Necessity

The periodically strained relations between protagonist states in South Asia make it a region prone to crisis. It is therefore necessary to probe for underlying propensity towards crisis and conflict. While most have been studied in greater detail, the role of competitive doctrine formulation has escaped adequate scrutiny, inexcusable on account of doctrine driving organizational changes, equipping policies and training that consume a high percentage of the defence budget – itself a major proportion of government expenditure. Therefore, if stability in regional security, and, thereby enhanced state security, is to be brought about, a start point is in examining the role of doctrinal development. An illustration is that the space India seeks below the nuclear threshold is curbed by Pakistan through its ‘first use’ philosophy, and resulting Indian uncertainty is exploited by Pakistan to further its sub-conventional proxy war.

Conclusion

Doctrinal development has been taken as the domain of the military owing to its expertise. True to its mandate for providing security to the state, the military in both states has adapted its doctrinal response to its national security ends. This accounts for the rich doctrinal evolution witnessed in South Asia in the nuclear and conventional fields. That this evolution has been furthered by a series of crisis, testifies in part to the failure of the preceding doctrines in providing the necessary security. The resulting evolution has set the stage for the next crisis, virtually leading to a notional cycle. This indicates that regional instability has origin, inter alia, in the doctrines adopted by both states to defend and further national security. Academic scrutiny can bring to fore the nature of impact of dysfunctional doctrines on state security and regional stability.

(Words – 1038)

REPRESENTATIVE READINGS

Abraham, I., The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State; London, Zed Press, 1998

Bajpai, K., Cohen, S., Cheema, P., and Ganguly, S., Brasstacks and Beyond: Perception and Management of Crisis in South Asia; New Delhi, Manohar, 1995

Bajpai, K., Karim, A. and Mattoo, A. (eds) Kargil and After: Challenges for Indian Policy; New Delhi, Har Anand, 2001

Chari, P., Cheema, P., and Cohen, S., Perception, Politics and Security in South Asia: The compound crisis of 1990; London, RoutledgeCurzon, 2003

Chengappa, R., Weapons of peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to be Nuclear Power; New Delhi, Harper Collins, 2000

Cohen, S., The Pakistan Army; Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998

Dixit, JN., India and Pakistan in War and Peace; New York, Routledge, 2002

Ganguly, S., Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947; New York, Columbia Unversity Press, 2001

Ganguly, S., and Hagerty, D., Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crisis in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons; New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2004

Hagerty, D., The Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: The Lessons from South Asia; Cambridge, MIT Press, 1998

Joeck, N., Strategic Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia; London, Frank Cass, 1996

Jones, O., Pakistan: Eye of the Storm; New Haven, Yale University Press, 2002

Krepon, M., The Stability-Instability Paradox, Misperception and Escalation Control in South Asia; Washington DC, Henry L Stimson Center, 2003

Krishna, A., and Chari., P., (eds), Kargil: The Tables Turned; New Delhi, Manohar, 2001

Malik, VP., Kargil: From Surprise to Victory, New Delhi, Harper Collins, 2006

Perkovich, G., India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact of Global Proliferation; Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999

Rajagopalan, R., Second Strike: Arguments of Nuclear War in South Asia, New Delhi, Penguin Books, 2005

Rajagopalan, R., Fighting Like a Guerilla: Indian Army and Counterinsurgency; New Delhi, Routeledge, 2007

Subrahmanyam, K., From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report, New Delhi, Sage Publications, 1999

Swahney, P., and Sood, VK., Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished; New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003

Tellis, A., India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Deterrence and Ready Arsenal; Santa Monica, California, RAND Corpn., 2001

Wirsing, R., Kashmir in the Shadow of Nuclear War: Regional Rivalries in the Nuclear Age; Armonk, New York, 2003

Wirsing, R., Pakistani Security Under Zia, 1977-88: The Policy Imperatives of a Peripheral Asian State; New York, St Martin’s Press, 1991

Indian Army Doctrine; HQ ARTRAC, 2004