Dr. Zulfqar Khan*

he September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States (US) instantaneously changed the political landscape of the world.  In a dramatically changed situation, Washington immediately restored its traditional relationship with Pakistan, much to India’s annoyance.[1] At the same time, it also deepened its strategic relationship with India.[2] The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) elite, including the Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee himself, had wished to portray India and the South Asian region as an area of great strategic significance to the US in the war against terrorism.[3] This volatile situation primarily had motivated both the nuclear rival states to woo the US in a bid to coerce and intimidate the “rival suitor” – to achieve their respective diplomatic and strategic objectives.[4] 

            Prior to September 11, the Indian Government already had cordial and close relations with the US, and in spite of the sanctions imposed after the May 1998 nuclear tests, it still benefited from Washington’s leaning toward New Delhi, which was highlighted by President Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000.[5] On the other hand, the Indian leadership and analysts, including the former Premier, I. K. Gujral, had always undermined Pakistan’s nuclear capability, before Pakistan proved the Indian “doubters wrong.”[6]  About these developments Harald Muller writes:   

Since May 1998, the events in South Asia have changed the parameters of world politics, and in particular those of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, fundamentally. They are as significant as the fall of the Berlin Wall nine years ago. Unfortunately, they point us in the opposite direction: away from cooperation, arms control and disarmament, towards confrontation, arms racing and, eventually nuclear war…. It is essential to see the trigger to the events in the fundamentally changed character of the present Indian government – a precarious coalition headed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).  These nuclear weapons are not for security, status or prestige in the first place, as is all too often assumed.  They are instruments for political power, for dominating the subcontinent and achieving equality with China.  They are instruments for increasing the tensions with Pakistan, so that the more radical elements within the BJP can enhance their influence within their party and in India at large.[7] 

            As Muller has pointed out, the fundamentalist Hindu party, the BJP, had used the nuclear weapons capability to establish Indian hegemony on the subcontinent and to attain a strategic parity with China, a de jure nuclear weapon state.  More significantly, in the first phase, it had deliberately accentuated its confrontational policy with Pakistan with a view to achieving its strategic objectives.  In the second phase, it had embarked on a collision course with China and Pakistan, in order to resurrect the BJP’s Hindutva credentials on the Indian domestic political scene.  Thirdly, India had demonised the Pakistani and Chinese nuclear programmes with aim of justifying its nuclear tests against the prevalent international customs. 

            According to BJP’s ideologue, Jaswant Singh:                

India, in exercise of its supreme national interests, has acted in a timely fashion to correct an imbalance and fill a potentially dangerous vacuum…. A more powerful India will help balance and connect the oil-rich Gulf region and the rapidly industrialising countries of Southeast Asia…. India could not accept a flawed non-proliferation regime as the international norm when all realities conclusively demanded the contrary.[8]

Subsequently, the BJP skilfully employed India’s nuclear weapons programme to boost its national ego and credentials, and exploited it as the dominant security discourse vis-à-vis Pakistan.[9] This amply reflects India’s obvious disregard for the security of the other South Asian states.[10] Furthermore, New Delhi also planned to resurrect itself as a balancing state stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Far East, as demonstrated in the above-cited statement of Jaswant Singh. In such a problematical environment, it was imperative for Pakistan to establish a robust nuclear deterrent to protect its “sovereignty and territorial integrity against external threats,” and to strengthen its “ability to resist Indian efforts to dominate the region.”[11] Because, in 1998, the BJP government was, in any case, bent upon crossing the nuclear threshold, notwithstanding the strategic environment and, in return, provoked Pakistan to test its nuclear weapons.  India construed this, in retrospect, as a rationale for its decision for nuclear testing.[12]  

            The Kargil War in 1999 had accorded India an alibi to announce its Draft Nuclear Doctrine, which had envisaged everything the superpowers possessed during the heydays of the Cold War.  Soon after the Kargil conflict, the hawks in India developed a risky misperception that they could manage a limited war with Pakistan without it escalating into an all-out war – and without each side resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. Besides, the Indian nuclear doctrine also vividly envisages an “assured capability to shift from peacetime deployment to fully employable forces in the shortest possible time.”  In addition, it calls for “space based and other assets” for its early warning and delivery systems.[13] This Indian decision is expected to start a nuclear and missile arms race in South Asia, which would obviously aggravate the launch-on-warning posture in the subcontinent. The launch-on-warning travel time for a missile from the US to the then Soviet Union (present day Russia) was 30 minutes, while in the South Asian environment, it takes around 10 minutes for a missile to travel from one country to another.[14] Adaptation of the US and Russian nuclear posture by India and Pakistan would be more dangerous. “Once elements of South Asia’s nuclear arsenal begin to be permanently deployed on high alert, US-Russian experience shows, bureaucratic and political forces will come into play, resisting any attempt to roll back a hair-trigger posture.”[15] The nuclear posture becomes even more volatile and hazardous if it is combined with brinkmanship and coercive diplomacy, which India had initiated to bully Pakistan to accept a settlement of the Kashmir problem on its conditions. The Indian leadership had orchestrated brinkmanship against Pakistan after the terrorist attack on its Parliament on December 13, 2001. The succeeding paragraphs would recapitulate the entire gamut of India’s dicey strategy, which was prima facie premeditated to intimidate and pressurize Pakistan to acknowledge New Delhi’s hegemony. 

 Indian Strategic Thinking

The fundamental purpose of Indian nuclear weapons is to deter the use and threat of nuclear weapons by any State or entity against India and its forces.  India will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail. India will not resort to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against States which do not possess nuclear weapons, or are not aligned with nuclear weapon powers.[16] 

            The above cited passage of the much-publicised Draft Report of the National Security Advisory Board on the Indian Nuclear Doctrine, although apparently contains a ‘no first-use’ assurance against the use of nuclear weapons against the Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) but it is clearly linked with the sustainability of deterrence.  Most significantly, it is only valid against those states that are NNWS, and are not aligned with the Nuclear Weapon States (NWS).  Therefore, India’s nuclear doctrine does not hold true vis-à-vis Pakistan (‘no first-use’ guarantee), which is also a NWS.  In addition, the culmination point of India and Pakistan’s strategic concept, rationally speaking, should adhere to the concept of sustainability of nuclear deterrence. The paragraph 3.2 of the Nuclear Doctrine, it also “envisages assured capability to shift from peacetime deployment to fully employable forces in the shortest possible time,” which generates misperceptions regarding India’s actual motives. Besides, they neither possess the economic and technological resources nor the infrastructure to establish an effective defence against the nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.[17]  This would obviously increase the chances of accidental use, or the outbreak of nuclear war on the subcontinent. According to Michael Krepon, President of the Henry L. Stimson Centre, “This is a region that tends towards misreading, tends towards surprises, tends towards misperceptions.”[18] In particular, the absence of a dialogue process between India and Pakistan has made the escalating tension potentially more perilous and prone to miscalculation than the US-Soviet Union crisis over the Cuban missile issue in 1962.  Unfortunately, the Indian leadership had further aggravated the tension by issuing threatening statements against Pakistan. For instance, Defence Minister George Fernandes claimed that India “could take a strike, survive, and then hit back.  Pakistan would be finished.” Indian Defence Secretary Yogendra Narain, in an interview to the Indian magazine, Outlook, advocated surgical strikes against Pakistan, and said, “We must be prepared for total mutual destruction.”[19] Above all, Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee, during his visit to the Line of Control (LoC) in the Indian Held Kashmir in May 2002, urged India to be ready for sacrifices for a “decisive fight” against Pakistan.[20] On the other hand, Pakistan vowed to use full force in retaliation to an Indian attack. While, India accused Pakistan of cross-border terrorism in the Indian Held Kashmir.[21] This approach reflected a dangerous Indian misperception and mindset regarding the use of nuclear weapons against Pakistan. It would be appropriate to recapitulate this mindset, especially after the Kargil War.

The Post-Kargil Discourse

            In the aftermath of the Kargil War, the entire security paradigm between the two de facto NWS had changed. By January 2000, India had evolved a doctrine of a limited conventional conflict under the nuclear environment of South Asia. Fernandes, outlining this hypothesis, (in January 2000), claimed that there was a provision between a low-intensity and a high-intensity conventional conflict where a limited conventional war was possible.  He said that: 

Nuclear weapons did not make war obsolete; they simply imposed another dimension the way warfare was conducted…Pakistan…had convinced itself for decades, that under the nuclear umbrella it would be able to take Kashmir without India being able to punish it in return…. There was perception that the overt nuclear status had ensured that covert war could continue…while India would be deterred by the nuclear factor.

…obviously they [Pakistan] have not absorbed the real meaning of nuclearisation: that it can deter only the use of nuclear weapons, but not all and any war…that 30-years ago [in 1969] two nuclear-armed neighbouring countries – China and the Soviet Union – had fought a bitter war across their borders. So the issue was not that war had been made obsolete by nuclear weapons, and that covert war by proxy was the only option, but that conventional war remained feasible, though with definite limitations, if escalation across the nuclear threshold was to be avoided.[22] 

Fernandes had referred to the Sino-Russian conflict to rationalise his projected concept of a limited war between India and Pakistan. But the fact remains that the Sino-Russian clashes of 1969 were of a low-intensity, and had never conflagrated into an open conflict. Therefore, it is difficult to use the Sino-Russian hostilities model to project a limited conventional war concept for South Asia, which India apparently intended to undertake against Pakistan in the future.[23] In the Indian viewpoint, in some cases, it could intentionally escalate a war with Pakistan in order to test the latter’s nuclear resolve, and the alleged nuclear bluff over Kashmir.[24]  However, it would be irrational to equate the Kargil combat with a limited conventional war. Kargil conflict was a geographically limited operation, which was contained to that region due to the prevalence of nuclear deterrence between the two countries.[25] Therefore, this Indian policy can rightly be termed a huff and bluff strategy, which is primarily based on the precarious nuclear fault line of South Asia.[26] 

            In spite of inherent dangers in such a defective strategy, the Indian leadership, including its military commanders, are still advocating the concept of a limited war, which, in their perception, would not lead to an all-out, or a general war.[27] This indicates that the Kargil conflict is expected to influence the war strategies of both India and Pakistan. Both states have evolved divergent perceptions and misperceptions about war strategies and each other’s concepts of limited conventional wars. Therefore, in case of an escalation of a limited, or a high-intensity conflict, between India and Pakistan, it would enhance the prospects of gross miscalculation and the inadvertent use of nuclear weapons on the subcontinent.[28]

 The Post-September 11, 2001 Situation

            As argued in the preceding pages, the Indian leadership had developed a serious misperception that the Kargil conflict had shown that they could fight a limited conventional battle with Pakistan without its escalation into an all-out war. The terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, and Washington’s initiation of a war against terrorism and Islamic militancy, proved a catalyst that exasperated tensions between Pakistan and India. India planned to capitalise from the emerging worldwide focus against terrorism, which accorded New Delhi an opportunity to portray Pakistan as a state sponsoring Jihad and terrorism.[29] Most significantly, the US campaign against terrorism, the UNSC Resolution 1373 of September 2001 on terrorism, had made no distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters, thereby providing India a rationale to launch a coercive diplomacy with a view to compelling Pakistan to settle the Kashmir dispute on its conditions. 

            Immediately after September 11, India speedily joined the US-led campaign against terrorism with a view to motivating Washington to declare Pakistan a terrorist state due to the latter’s support to the Taliban regime, and to the Kashmiri elements.[30] However, Pakistan’s unequivocal support – including logistical and intelligence assistance – against global terrorism; its abandonment of the Taliban regime in Kabul (after the latter’s intransigent attitude towards Islamabad’s mediation to defuse controversy over Laden’s extradition to the US), the Bush Administration’s priority to remove the Taliban government; politico-economic stabilisation of Pakistan in an effort to prevent latter’s nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of militants in India’s perspective, had prima facie prevented US from declaring Pakistan a terrorist state.[31] 

            Simultaneously, India also calibrated a strategy of intentional escalation of tension with Pakistan in the wake of terrorist attacks – one outside the Srinagar State Assembly’s building on October 1, and the other one on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001. In spite of Pakistan’s outright condemnation of these terrorist attacks, the Vajpayee government threatened Pakistan with a limited war.[32]  According to US government experts, India’s conventional and strategic forces advantage over Pakistan had not only enhanced the unpredictability factor in the subsequent military standoff, but had also increased the probability of a war. Because, Vajpayee had announced to punish Pakistan[33], for the crime it did not commit.  The post-13th December India’s calibrated strategy against Pakistan, and its cavalier approach toward a limited war concept, had multi-dimensional facets, which are discussed in the succeeding passages.

India’s Calibrated Strategy

            India’s grand escalatory strategy against Pakistan was primarily premised on the parameters which the Indian Defence Review, a government sponsored publication, has comprehensively summarised:

      India needs to respond with a strategy that unleashes total war…primarily on four counts: First, even if Musharraf temporarily turns coat under international pressure, he cannot afford to dismount the Jihadi Tiger that he himself created…. Second, if Pakistan does not focus on its “Balkanise India” campaign, it will wither away as a nation state…. Third, Pakistan is almost a rentier state like Afghanistan.  Therefore, it is willing to act as a frontline mercenary nation for any international actor…. Fourth, in Pakistan, the military-intelligence-mosque combine shares synonymous strategic vision…to ultimately carve out two super-Islamic states. One to run from Islamabad to almost Moscow across Central Asia. The other in East Asia… 

To bring to an end Islamabad’s export of terrorism as part and parcel of its foreign policy, New Delhi should evolve a geo-political strategy that supports and sustains military action with clarity.

 Our intelligence apparatus is one of the most under-utilised instruments of state…. The intelligence agencies should be tasked to conduct operations inside Pakistan, so as to escalate burgeoning internal dissension…. Over a period of time, this one instrument, if effectively operated with sufficient funds, can ensure that the law and order situation continues to deteriorate, thereby deterring foreign investment, and a widening of the unbridgeable sectarian divide that would strengthen the demand for an independent Shia state, and encourage non-Punjabi communities like the Sindhis to move towards independence…. Even now it’s not too late to implement – if Pakistan fragments into five parts, at least three to four sub-nationalities would align with us. That would lower the threat perception on the Western front by sixty per cent. 

In Kargil we erred by fighting on a single front…Indian military offensive should be bold, swift and innovative taking the war to the enemy instead waiting to receive him. 

Since both are nuclear powers, the remote possibility of nukes being exchanged exists.[34] 

            India’s escalatory policy, as enunciated in the above-cited quotation, was designed to:

1. Portray Pakistan as a state sponsoring terrorism and fomenting the Jihadi culture virtually against the entire world, with a view to creating two hypothetical super-Islamic states.
2. That Pakistan’s inherent weaknesses as a nation-state compelled it to pursue a policy to balkanise India.

            Therefore, India’s grand strategy was projected to achieve the following objectives:

1. Exploit and escalate Pakistan’s internal dissension with a view to creating internal anarchy and preventing foreign investments; and to balkanise Pakistan.
2. Formulate an aggressive strategy to fight a conventional war on Pakistan’s territory.

            As argued that the Indian leadership had developed a dangerous strategic psychosis that a limited conventional war, that too on the Pakistani territory, was feasible. And that Pakistan’s alleged threat to use weapons was purely huff and bluff. Such an erroneous strategy, misperception and irrational behaviour, was used as an “art of coercion, intimidation and deterrence”, as Schelling has described it,[35] by India after the 13th December incident to achieve its political objectives against Pakistan. Narrowly perceived strategies, especially in the event of “crisis instability,” as per the theory of deterrence, each side would tend to strike first, with a view to restricting the damage to minimum. Therefore, in such a volatile situation, a surprise attack could lead to an outbreak of war, which otherwise none desired.[36] For instance, during the 1986-87 ‘Brasstacks’ crisis, which was not a military exercise, but was a “plan to build up a situation for a fourth war with Pakistan.”  And disturbingly, the Indian premier was not aware about “these plans of war.”[37]  According to George Perkovich, the Indian policymakers had considered the option of attacking Pakistan’s nuclear installations in January 1987 to remove the threat of Pakistan’s nuclear counter-attack on India.[38] But since the Kargil conflict, a perception has evolved that even the nuclear-armed states can fight a conventional war, which obviously has a propensity to start crises, or a limited war between India and Pakistan in the future. “This will increase the dangers of both a preventive and pre-emptive strike if war is considered inevitable, as well as the danger of a deliberate, but limited use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield,” writes Sagan.[39] 

Mobilisation of Forces

            Soon after an attack on the Parliament, which Pakistan had condemned in the strongest possible terms, India ordered the mobilisation of its armed forces, shifted its air assets along the LoC and borders with Pakistan, and moved its naval ships to the Arabian Sea, closer to Pakistan.  And, India’s Home Minister, L. K. Advani, on December 19, 2001, demarche Pakistan to: 

1. Strike against the alleged militant Islamic organisations and groups allegedly undertaking Jihad in India.
2. Cessation of support to cross-border terrorism into the Indian-controlled Kashmir.
3. Hand over 20 individuals accused of terrorism in India.[40]

            According to the Indian leadership’s perspective, they can start a major or a limited conventional war against Pakistan, without triggering the use of nuclear weapons. Secondly, they planned surgical strikes across the LoC into the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir on the justification of combating terrorism, and to destroy the alleged terrorist camps. Obviously, this Indian design was expected to evoke a Pakistani response, which could have ranged from a proportionate reaction to escalation into a full-fledged nuclear conflict. India’s miscalculated strategy was expected to have disastrous ramifications, not only for India and Pakistan, but also for the security of the entire world.[41] Other factors responsible for the initiation of Indian brinkmanship were: 

1. That, it had largely stemmed from domestic political considerations, and not necessarily from a threat to India’s security from the alleged Pakistan-based Kashmiri militants.
2. The Vajpayee government was under pressure to bring a victory for the BJP in order to exploit its laurels in the State Assemblies election in February 2001, including Kashmir in October 2002.  Therefore, it was expected that India would neither de-escalate the tension nor demobilise its forces, at least until the Kashmir polls.[42]
3. To portray Pakistan as a “Rouge State,” on account of terrorism, and to subsequently use it as a rationale – and as a moral high ground, to fight militancy by whatever means India deemed appropriate.[43]
4. To manoeuvre a link between the terrorists involved in the attacks on the World Trade Centre, and the Kashmiri militants and the Al-Qaeda elements.[44]
5. To secure a permanent settlement of the Kashmir dispute on New Delhi’s terms, and to establish its hegemony on the subcontinent.

Nuclear Rhetoric and International Reaction

            In the second phase, parallel to diplomatic measures – reduction of diplomatic staff in each other’s country and India’s withdrawal of its High Commissioner from Islamabad, the Indian leadership had stepped-up a nuclear war rhetoric. Vajpayee claimed that India was ready for a nuclear war with Pakistan, while, President Musharraf retorted that India had also earlier doubted Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability before the overt nuclearisation in May 1998. Musharraf further maintained that Islamabad was compelled to test nuclear weapons, and reiterated that as Pakistan was not bluffing in 1998, and again in May 2002 “we were compelled to show that we do not bluff.”[45] With the start of nuclear rhetoric, the Indian policymakers planned to utilise a new form of bilateral nuclear diplomacy. Secondly, New Delhi intended to employ this new version of diplomacy to engage the US and other major powers to settle South Asia’s “most neuralgic dispute” – Kashmir.  India’s leading defence analyst, C. Raja Mohan, writes: 

Until recently, it was Pakistan which sought to manipulate the risks of a nuclear confrontation for political objectives. But it is New Delhi today that is subtly using the threat of nuclear war to get the international community to pressure Pakistan…[46]

 
            A senior Western diplomat based in New Delhi, thus commented on the Indo-Pakistani nuclear rhetoric:

               Was the huge…military pressure solely designed to scare the pants off the international community and pressure Pakistan or were the Indians really prepared to use it? As a last resort, they probably were prepared to use it, but the saner figures in the government wanted to avoid war…[47] 

            Besides, the Western leaders also expressed grave concern regarding the escalating tensions between the two countries. The US Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, in an interview to the BBC said, “The international community was frightened to death that we were on the verge of nuclear war.”[48] This amply demonstrates an inherent danger in a situation leading to a tit-for-tat type of action-and-reaction. And if both sides had consistently kept on responding to heightening tension, then the risk of losing control over the situation and the escalation ladder was high.[49] India had deliberately started the policy of nuclear brinkmanship in order to intimidate and coerce Pakistan to accept its hegemony in the region.  But the situation has its own inbuilt mechanisms and dynamics, which keep on unfolding with each event. And the most significant aspect of nuclear weapons on the subcontinent is ambiguity, and to determine the threshold or the trigger, of a nuclear response of India and Pakistan.[50] As discussed in the opening paragraphs of this article, India’s Nuclear Doctrine is an ambiguous document. Moreover, the post-13th December events had further diluted the credibility of its ‘no first use’ clause due to threats of a nuclear war enunciated by the Indian policymakers, the start of coercive diplomacy, and India’s persistent refusal to hold a dialogue with Pakistan.[51] A serious impasse between the de facto NWS had evoked international mediation efforts to defuse rising tensions in the region.

            The US, the EU (European Union), and the other world leaders, including the UN Secretary General, had undertaken shuttle/telephonic diplomacy between New Delhi and Islamabad to facilitate the diffusion of tension. India had also stepped up diplomatic efforts, and wrote separate letters to the US, Russia, and the UK (United Kingdom), explaining the motives behind India’s stepped up military build-up along the borders with Pakistan. Similarly, Pakistan also sent special emissaries to the major capitals of the world outlining its viewpoint about India’s dangerous brinkmanship against Islamabad.  The SAARC (South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation) and the CICA (Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia) summits in January and June 2002 respectively, also could not defuse tension between India and Pakistan.[52] During the SAARC and the CICA conferences, Musharraf had categorically condemned terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and offered a dialogue to India for peace and stability in the region.[53] On the other hand, Vajpayee reiterated that a dialogue would be considered by India only when the “cross-border terrorism” had ended.[54] In spite of President Musharraf’s commitment at the SAARC and the CICA conferences, address to the Pakistani nation on January 12, March 23, May 27, and to the religious scholars and intellectuals on January 18, to fight against the menace of terrorism, and to end what India termed as “cross-border terrorism;” India continued with its policy of threat and war rhetoric against Pakistan.[55] India expressed apprehension about Pakistan’s sincerity to end the “cross-border terrorism,” and termed Musharraf’s speech of May 27 as unacceptable and dangerous.[56] India’s External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, on May 28, remarked that Pakistan was the “epicentre of international terrorism” and rejected Musharraf’s assurances of ending infiltration across the LoC.[57]

            Since President Musharraf’s address to the Pakistani nation on May 27, 2002, Pakistan consistently maintained that it had taken a position not to allow anybody across the LoC. He reiterated that, “Why doesn’t India arrest infiltrators when they cross over? The onus on what is going on in Indian Kashmir cannot be laid on Pakistan.”[58]  Pakistan also ruled out the jointing patrolling proposal of India, and argued that in a situation where there are more than a million troop deployed on the LoC, “there is not sufficient confidence in each other to start joint patrolling.”[59] Whereas India constantly accused Pakistan of cross-border terrorism, and to disrupt the scheduled elections in the Indian Kashmir (in September/October) even during Armitage’s visit to India on August 23, 2002.  Interestingly, the Kashmiri leaders had called for a boycott of Indian-backed polls. They claimed that the past elections in Kashmir were also rigged in favour of the pro-India political parties, and called for the implementation of the UNSC resolutions on Kashmir.[60] Incidentally, India had earlier rejected Colin Powell’s proposal during his visit to India in July 2002, to allow foreign observers to monitor the polls, and instead continued the war rhetoric and described the military standoff as a state of war.[61] 

An aggressive Indian discourse was expected to last until the elections in Indian Held Kashmir.[62] India’s fixed policy was intended to secure US support to accept its version of the Kashmir dispute, which it could not achieve. Secondly, it also indicates New Delhi’s frustration that the international community had accepted that Pakistan has ended infiltration across the LoC.[63] On the other hand, Pakistan continuously offered a dialogue option to India. But India continuously refused to engage in peace diplomacy, and continued pursuing its policy of coercive diplomacy, which had not shown any signs of success.[64] “India’s strategy of putting pressure on Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism in Kashmir has clearly failed,” writes P. R. Chari, an Indian defence analyst. He further commented that, “India has made itself a hostage to fortune. It cannot de-escalate its military build-up without completely losing face.”[65] A retired Indian Army general, Ashok Mehta, also writes that, “Indian generals are telling the politicians that they cannot remain fully mobilised indefinitely.”[66] Hence, India refused demobilisation of its forces until New Delhi could independently verify the fact that Pakistan had reduced support for “cross-border terrorism.”[67]

The Role of Coercive Diplomacy and Future Implications

            The initiation of India’s coercive diplomacy has further destabilised the region, and has disrupted the entire concept of nuclear deterrence between Pakistan and India. India’s defence analysts, including the External Affairs Ministry officials, claimed that the coercive diplomacy has succeeded.[68] Soon after the escalation of military tension in December 2001, the Indian writers in began articulating an official Indian version that Pakistan was using the nuclear threat to coerce India, and urged the government to “call this bluff.”[69]  Interestingly, Henry L. Stimson Center in the US, in a study, has indicated that India was confident that its potentially dangerous policy options would not prompt a nuclear catastrophe.[70] According to this study, both the countries had divergent perceptions about the stand-off: 

a.       India claimed that the brinkmanship and coercive diplomacy had succeeded in convincing the US to pressurise Pakistan to end the infiltration.

b.      Pakistan had drawn entirely different viewpoint that the combination of conventional and nuclear deterrence had gone in its favour. They also termed the standoff as an “Indian bluff, tough talk, and brinkmanship without a will to fight.”[71] 

            Therefore, the emerging dangerous misperception between the two nuclear-armed neighbours points toward a terrible direction.  “Success that quickly sour for both parties,” writes the Stimson experts, “combined with a belief by both that they would do well in the next round, sets the stage for the next crisis.”[72] In addition, both countries believed that the US has more influence on the other side.  India held the opinion that if the US were to exert its pressure on Pakistan, then the latter would end the infiltration on a permanent basis. On the other hand, Pakistan held the view that unless the US gave its tacit consent, the Indian attack could not materialise. Hence, any future crisis between the two would have a short “fuse.”[73] Therefore, US ability to manage the future crisis would be limited, and India and Pakistan’s propensity to engage in brinkmanship would lead to more posturing.  This would require more US involvement through a ‘facilitation strategy’ with a view to averting a catastrophe.[74] According to Shekhar Gupta, Editor of The Indian Express, and Arundhati Roy, a peace activist, who, while addressing a seminar in Islamabad on August 15, 2002, urged India and Pakistan to start a dialogue for the resolution of all outstanding issues, including Kashmir.[75] Gupta emphasised a need to shift the entire paradigm where people of both the countries could start interacting with each other at various levels in order to remove the bilateral “misconceptions.”[76] Thus, in the absence of a dialogue process, if India and Pakistan continued their respective policies, then the prospects of peace and stability in the region would be bleak.  And both India and Pakistan would carry on shifting the onus of responsibility on to each other.[77]

Nuclear Deterrence

            As elucidated in the preceding pages, the existing level of misconceptions between the two countries would have shorter “fuse” in future crises. Since December 2001, India and Pakistan had kept up the pace of their nuclear rhetoric. India continued its nuclear brinkmanship and constantly reiterated that all options, including military strikes against Pakistan, were open.[78] There were varieties of factors responsible for the initiation of India’s military brinkmanship.  First, India perceived that the US would not allow a limited conventional conflict to escalate into an all-out war in a bid to protect its strategic goals in Afghanistan. Secondly, the BJP government thought that Pakistan would not dare start a war with India due to fears that the US might launch an attack on Pakistan’s nuclear installations with a view to averting the risks of a nuclear conflict. Thirdly, India’s growing strategic partnership accorded it a confidence that the diplomatic effects of a limited conventional conflict with Pakistan could be contained.[79] But the US and the EU shuttle diplomacy has indicated that the Bush Administration took President Musharraf’s restructuring programme for the Pakistani state quite seriously, and perceived that a moderate Pakistani state, on the lines of Turkey, was the prime foreign policy objective of Washington.[80] Besides, India also did not possess a sufficient conventional military edge to launch a conventional war against Pakistan.[81] Pakistan’s strategy of offensive defence, nuclear and conventional deterrence, and determination to resist the perceived Indian “hegemonic attitude,” were the other factors that had restrained India from initiating a limited conflict.[82] Subsequently, Pakistan endeavoured to reinforce its conventional deterrence concept, and to give a strong message to India, had test fired a series of nuclear-capable missiles just before Musharraf’s address to the nation on May 27, 2002. In his speech, he reiterated to the need to end the “cross-border” infiltration. But at the same time, he expressed the determination to fight in the enemy’s territory if war was “thrust” on Pakistan.[83] 

            Theoretically speaking, in an unstable strategic environment, the chances of sustaining losses in a limited war are fewer.  Therefore, the likelihood of a nuclear war, even by a “rational opponent,” is there.[84]  According to this concept:  

…limited war requires limits – i.e., mutual recognition of restraints.  These tacit agreements, arrived at through partial or haphazard negotiations, require terms that are qualitatively distinguishable from the alternatives and cannot simply be a matter of degree. For example, in the Korean War the 38th parallel was a powerful focus for a stalemate…the explicit statements and the tactical moves of nations constitute strategic signals. Adversaries watch and interpret each other’s behaviour, each aware that his own actions are being interpreted and each acting with a consciousness of the expectations he creates.
 

An adversary who might be tempted to initiate a limited war must therefore proceed cautiously. In a stable strategic context, however, nuclear war means mutual annihilation; and, therefore, adventurous nations can instigate limited wars with less fear of all-out retaliation.[85] 

            The leaders of the two countries have consistently traded threats and counter-threats with a view to achieving their respective political objectives. Therefore, the chances of containing a limited conventional conflict within required “limits,” as argued in the preceding quotation, were quite bleak. The element of agreement on a certain focal point – like the 38th parallel during the Korean War, for example – was absent. Above all, the emanating “tactical” and “strategic signals” from New Delhi and Islamabad were also likely to be misinterpreted by both sides. Furthermore, India’s start of nuclear brinkmanship, instead of proceeding “cautiously,” had further destabilised the environment. Otherwise India and Pakistan, who had fought three wars over the last fifty years, had not fought a major war since the enunciation of nuclear deterrence.[86] Thus, the international community had appropriately expressed genuine fears that the simmering tension between India and Pakistan had the potential to escalate into a nuclear war.[87] In the nuclear deterrence paradigm, the fear of retaliation by a nuclear-armed adversary is a potent and central factor for the successful perpetuation of deterrence.[88] In the subcontinent, the situation had deteriorated due to mobilisation of troops by India to “maximize strategic goals and objectives” vis-à-vis Pakistan.[89] This policy of India was prima facie formulated without taking into consideration a series of consequences, which it was expected to exert in the event of a limited war.[90] Therefore, the “fog of war” is likely to generate miscalculation, “bureaucratic momentum,” and chaos in any future crises.[91]

            One thing is quite clear that different models, or perceptions, about the viability of a conventional war and the risk of a nuclear holocaust were expected to produce different explanations and perspectives in India and Pakistan. Hence, the chances of misperception were much greater between India and Pakistan than the US and Soviet Union during the Cold War. “Different conceptual lenses lead…to different judgements about what is relevant and important,” which can enhance the prospects of miscalculations.[92] For instance, India’s leading analyst, Pravin Sawhney, quoting K. Subrahmanyam, writes that it was never the policy of New Delhi to go to war with Pakistan. Rather, it was merely meant for coercive diplomacy.[93] But at the same time Sawhney writes that in January and June 2002, the Indian Army was fully prepared to attack across the LoC. He claimed that even Premier Vajpayee had “confirmed” this fact. Sawhney cited four schools of thought with a view to determining the reasons that had prevented a war. The first was that nuclear weapons had prevented war. The second was that the mobilisation of troops by India was designed to induce the US-led coalition against terrorism to include cross-border terrorism on its agenda. The third contended that a limited war against a nuclear-armed Pakistan could not have assisted India in achieving its military and political objectives. The fourth school of thought argued that Pakistan’s conventional deterrence had restrained India from starting a war.[94] The divergent perceptions and schools of thought coupled with the mode and availability of information and estimates, which usually reflect “organizational goals and routines” meant for the rational actor’s calculation, are invariably “chancy” that could lead nations “irrationally” into a nuclear conflict.[95] This fact is also substantiated by the history of the Cold War where the organisational processes had produced inadvertent military crises.[96] Therefore, it is absolutely imperative for the peace and stability of the region that the US calibrates its policy to induce India and Pakistan to hold a dialogue on Kashmir with a view to finding a solution of this dispute, and to encourage confidence building and arms control measures between them.[97]

Conventional and Strategic Forces

            There is a marked disparity between the conventional forces of both India and Pakistan. For example, in 2001, India’s defence budget had increased by 3.2 per cent to Rs. 732 billion, from Rs. 709 billion in 2000. Since 1998, it had increased by nearly 70 per cent, which amounted to 3.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2000.  On the other hand, Pakistan’s defence budget in 2000 was Rs. 190 billion and, in 2001, its defence spending had been frozen at Rs. 157 billion.[98] The active strength of India and Pakistan’s armed forces was: 1,263,000 (excluding 535,000 reservists), and 620,000 (excluding 513,000 reservists) respectively.[99] See Figure-1 for the comparative strength of their armed forces.[100]

 Figure-1

            As reflected in Figure-2, asymmetry between India and Pakistan’s military equipments is also quite extensive.[101]

Figure-2 

            Moreover, the difference in both countries’ strategic forces is also disproportionate. However, different sources have given conflicting figures about India and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capabilities.  Nuclear arsenals of both countries are reproduced in Figue-3.[102]

Figure-3

            Disparity in conventional and strategic forces, geographical proximity, and the absence of C⁴I² (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Information and Intelligence) and, above all, the existing state of misperception and mistrust between India and Pakistan, has further accentuated the “fog of war.”  Although officially, the Indian and Pakistani leaders have consistently reiterated that a nuclear war is “unthinkable,” “unlikely,” and “insanity.”[103]  Although, both sides are showing cognisance that there are nuclear hazards, therefore, they have to be cautious.  Probably the Indian leadership, in a bid to prove to Pakistan that they are not afraid of war, had started a policy of escalation of tension.  According to some experts, the deterrence perception did not go down well in India. During the crisis, the Indian leadership, including its defence minister, had stated that Pakistan would not respond to India’s conventional attack with nuclear weapons.[104]  Interestingly, Lee Butler, the former head of the US Strategic Command, commenting about the nuclear deterrence concept remarked that, “No thanks to deterrence, but only by the grace of God” and the US and the Soviet Union survived their crises during the Cold War.[105] Hence, an initiation of brinkmanship and the ensuing rhetoric between India and Pakistan, has demonstrated that several conventional-warfare scenarios could lead South Asia to a nuclear holocaust:

a.       A naval blockade of Pakistan, which could put its economic survival in jeopardy.

b.      India’s initiation of air strikes on the strategic Pakistan-China link – the Karakoram Highway.

c.       Further escalation of “cross-border terrorism” and militancy in the Indian-controlled Kashmir.[106] 

            “The likelihood of a high-intensity conventional war due to inadvertence or miscalculation would be high in the event India undertook or expanded symbolic military strikes to territories beyond Pakistan-controlled Kashmir,” writes Gaurav Kampani, a Senior Research Associate of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.[107] According to David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, Washington:

Neither side wants this to come to a nuclear war, but they have spent so much time discounting the chances of it happening that there is little preparation for the scenario where a mistake is made that triggers the other side, or moves in a conventional battle are misread.[108]

            In such an eventuality, it would be quite difficult to retrieve the situation, or to rectify mishaps.[109] 

            Even a limited use of nuclear weapons against some symbolic targets – both counter-force (military targets) and counter-value (major cities) would entail a massive radioactive fallout, international reprobation, negative implications on non-proliferation efforts, and on peace and security.  In the case of use of nuclear weapons on the subcontinent, it could kill up to twelve million people and injure around seven million. The humanitarian catastrophe would be so overwhelming that even the entire medical facilities of the Southwest and Middle East, would not be able to cope with the situation.[110] According to Arthur Upton, University of Medicine and Dentistry, New Jersey, there would be a high death rate within a five-mile radius of the blast; and in the long-term, there would be an increase in cancer related deaths within 100 miles downwind of the detonation. Besides, the extent of collateral effect would be determined by whether the blast occurs on the ground or in the air. In case of a blast in the air, writes John D. Boice Jr., Vanderbilt University Medical School, “there was no fallout”. But in case the bomb explodes on the ground, radioactive isotopes like strontium and iodine could even reach the stratosphere, and obviously travel long distances.[111]

            As far as the negative impact on international security is concerned, there are over fifty states in the Asia/Pacific region that are already working on nuclear and missile programmes. The West, including the US, has a great concern regarding hazardous technologies falling into the hands of terrorist organisations.[112]  However, the threat of nuclear terrorism by non-state actors through the so-called state-sponsors, are apparently low. The state-actors – like Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea, who had pursued nuclear programmes at a very high political and economic cost and had invested years of research and development, would not allow their nuclear arsenals to fall in to the hands of non-state actors, knowing fully well that they will be held responsible for such actions.[113] Moreover, non-state actors would require access to massive finances and nuclear-related technologies, weapon components, delivery systems and detonators, skilled personnel willing to work for the terrorist organisations; and processing technologies and measuring equipment, which would be difficult for the non-state actors to manage.  Although the acquisition or efforts to acquire these components, particularly related to nuclear weapon designs, by the terrorist organisations, is an indication of threat potential.[114] Therefore, all the state-actors should calibrate an effective collective strategy to neutralise this threat potential.[115]

Analytical Conclusion

            The survey of Pakistan and India’s military standoff indicates that India’s political leadership had shown little responsibility and restraint while initiating a dangerous brinkmanship.[116] The Indian officials claim to emulate the US and Soviet Union’s mutual restraint paradigm but, during the crisis, it had overlooked the inherent perils and dynamics of a limited war’s escalation into a full-scale conflict.[117] Since 1947, India and Pakistan’s miscalculations and inadequate diplomatic communication had its share in the three full-scale wars, and a number of other crises. The internal and mutual constraints, which had prevented US and Soviet Union from using their nuclear arsenals during the Cold War, are, unfortunately, absent on the subcontinent.[118] In such a volatile geopolitical environment, mutual mistrust, and non-communication - absence of a dialogue process, the “fog of war” is expected to further aggravate the situation and bilateral misperceptions. 

Thus, it is imperative that both countries take nuclear weapons off hair-trigger in order to diminish, if not completely eliminate, the risk of an accidental use of nuclear weapons in crisis.[119]  It is more crucial that both sides refrain from treating nuclear bombs as “simply another weapon” system.[120] Besides, India and Pakistan have a tendency of reacting in a pre-programmed and counter-reaction fashion in an escalatory situation, which makes the crisis even more risky.[121] In a crisis, Pakistan being a weaker state vis-à-vis India, should not be expected to exclude all means of deterrence, which would tend to rationalise it with reference to the UN Charter that prohibits the use of force ­– that India had employed the threat of use of force against Islamabad after the 13th December’s incident.[122] Besides, India’s Nuclear Doctrine also did not exclude the possibility of use of nuclear weapons against the NWS, which of course included Pakistan. Neither is, its public opinion averse to the use of nuclear weapons against Pakistan.[123] Therefore, both the Indian and Pakistani nuclear capabilities might be classified as “deterrence stable” but not necessarily as “crisis stable,”[124] due to the inherent weaknesses in their C⁴I² systems, unpredictable behaviour of their rational actors – as demonstrated in the wake of India’s perilous brinkmanship – and divergent misperceptions vis-à-vis each other.  Hence, narrowly perceived strategies, especially in the event of “crisis instability,” as per the theory of deterrence, each side would tend to strike first, with a view to confining its damage to the minimum.