Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia [1st ed.] 978-3-030-21397-8;978-3-030-21398-5

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xviii
Introduction (Devin T. Hagerty)....Pages 1-9
India-Pakistan Crises, 1999–2016 (Devin T. Hagerty)....Pages 11-42
Explaining Indian Moderation During Crises, 1999–2016 (Devin T. Hagerty)....Pages 43-66
Deterrence Stability in South Asia Today (Devin T. Hagerty)....Pages 67-107
Enhancing India-Pakistan Deterrence Stability (Devin T. Hagerty)....Pages 109-130
Back Matter ....Pages 131-134

Citation preview

Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia

Devin T. Hagerty

Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia

Devin T. Hagerty

Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia

Devin T. Hagerty Department of Political Science University of Maryland, Baltimore County Baltimore, MD, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-21397-8    ISBN 978-3-030-21398-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Pattern © Melisa Hasan This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For Barb and Viv, with love

Preface

On February 14, 2019, a suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into a long convoy of vehicles transporting Indian security forces toward Srinagar, on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LOC) in Jammu and Kashmir.1 Near Pulwama, the bomber’s improvised explosive device (IED) tore through one of the vehicles, killing 40 paramilitary troops of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), in the deadliest attack on Indian security personnel since an insurgency erupted in 1989 against New Delhi’s rule in the state. Jaish-e-Mohammed (“Army of Mohammed”—JeM), a Pakistanbased terrorist group, took credit for the blast, and an unfortunately familiar scenario began to unfold. New Delhi immediately blamed Pakistan for the “heinous and despicable” attack, demanding that it “stop supporting terrorists and terror groups operating from their territory and dismantle the infrastructure operated by terrorist outfits to launch attacks in other countries.”2 Islamabad countered that “we strongly reject any insinuation by elements in the Indian government and media circles that seek to link the attack to the state of Pakistan without investigations.”3 Indian prime minister Narendra Modi threatened to “punish the perpetrators of terror,” and Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan vowed that “Pakistan will retaliate” to any Indian strike.4 The massacre had ignited the fifth crisis between India and Pakistan since the two countries became acknowledged nuclear weapon states in May 1998. Indian military retaliation seemed all but certain. Elected in 2014, Modi had sharply criticized previous Indian prime ministers for their cautious responses to subconventional operations emanating from Pakistan. In the autumn of 2016, after JeM had killed 19 Indian soldiers in a fiery assault vii

viii 

PREFACE

on a military encampment near Uri, he had ordered Special Forces raids against terrorist targets across the LOC in Pakistani Kashmir. With an Indian general election looming in spring 2019, Modi had already been campaigning hard for a second term in office; as the Pulwama attack energized his political base, pressure mounted for a resolute counter to Pakistan’s perfidy. After convening the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), India’s highest national security decision-making body, the prime minister said on February 15 that he had given “complete independence” to India’s armed forces, which had been authorized to “take decisions about the timing, place, and nature of their response.”5 Across the border, Pakistani leaders offered neither condolences nor contrition, and Pakistani troops were put on high alert along the LOC and the Working Boundary, a 193-kilometer line that runs between Indian Kashmir and the Sialkot area of Pakistan’s Punjab province.6 Indian military forces were also placed on alert, with restricted personnel leave, while the Indian Navy “shifted to combat mode.”7 Official U.S. statements in the attack’s immediate aftermath were notable for condemning Pakistan, but saying little about any need for military restraint or talks between the two sides. The White House implored Pakistan “to end immediately the support and safe haven provided to all terrorist groups operating on its soil, whose only goal is to sow chaos, violence, and terror in the region.”8 During a conversation between the U.S. and Indian national security advisors, John Bolton and Ajit Doval, Bolton “supported India’s right to self-defence against cross-­border terrorism.”9 Islamabad’s National Security Council stated after meeting on February 21 that Pakistan was “not involved in any way” in the Pulwama “incident,” which was “conceived, planned, and executed indigenously.” At the meeting, Khan authorized Pakistani armed forces to “respond decisively and comprehensively to any aggression or misadventure by India.”10 Early in the morning of February 26, Indian Mirage-2000 fighter-­ bombers carried out strikes against what New Delhi said was a JeM training camp in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa—sovereign Pakistani territory bordering Kashmir. The Indian government pronounced the air assault a great success, claiming that it destroyed the installation near Balakot and killed some 200–300 people, including “JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders, and groups of jihadis.” According to Indian officials, intelligence had indicated that JeM was preparing another suicide bombing, with “fidayeen jihadis” being trained; “in the face of imminent danger, a preemptive strike became absolutely ­necessary.”11 Pakistani sources responded that the Indian aircraft had actually missed their target, harmlessly striking the nearby landscape and causing minimal casualties. On February 27, the

 PREFACE 

ix

Pakistan Air Force (PAF) followed through on Islamabad’s retaliatory threat by sending its fighter-­bombers across the LOC to strike targets in Indian Kashmir. An aerial dogfight apparently ensued, during which an Indian Air Force (IAF) MiG-­21 was shot down. The Indian pilot ejected, and both aircraft and pilot landed on Pakistan’s side of the LOC. Pakistani authorities took custody of the pilot and displayed photographs of the plane’s wreckage. Islamabad claimed also to have shot down a second Indian aircraft, which seems not to have been true, while New Delhi maintains that the MiG-21 shot down a Pakistani F-16 before itself being struck, a claim which has not been confirmed as of this writing (in mid-March). After a meeting of the National Command Authority (NCA), Pakistan’s highest nuclear decision-­making body, Prime Minister Khan stated that the “sole purpose of our action [today] was to convey that if you can come into our country, we can do the same.” Observing that miscalculations cause wars, he said, “I ask India: with the weapons you have and the weapons we have, can we really afford such a miscalculation? If this escalates, things will no longer be in my control or in Modi’s.”12 On the evening of February 27, Doval spoke by phone with Asim Munir, the head of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s apex espionage agency, warning that India would not back off from its new campaign of counter-terrorism and was prepared to escalate it. Unnamed Indian and Pakistani officials were also reported to have exchanged threats to launch missiles at targets in the other country.13 The outbreak of direct India-Pakistan hostilities alarmed U.S. leaders. Bolton again spoke with Doval by phone late on the night of February 27–28, in an attempt to defuse the crisis.14 U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo encouraged the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers to “exercise restraint, … avoid escalation at any cost … prioritize direct communication and avoid further military activity.”15 These and other U.S. efforts “were focused on securing the quick release of the Indian pilot by Pakistan and winning an assurance from India that it would pull back from the threat to fire rockets.”16 With Islamabad and New Delhi under intense diplomatic pressure, Khan announced on February 28 that the captured IAF pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, would be repatriated the next day.17 With Pakistan’s gesture, and Varthaman’s return to India on March 1, the crisis began to ease. The latest India-Pakistan crisis made the topic of this book, the stability of nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan, all the more timely and relevant. At the time of the JeM attack in Pulwama, I had just finished writing a draft of the manuscript and was revising the text in anticipation of the late March submission deadline. I had written an introduction (Chap. 1), examined the previous four post-1998 Indo-Pakistani crises

x 

PREFACE

(Chap. 2), analyzed the reasons for Indian moderation during those crises (Chap. 3), assessed the prospects for deterrence stability between New Delhi and Islamabad (Chap. 4), and suggested ways that the two countries could strengthen nuclear deterrence between them and avoid deterrence failure (Chap. 5). The February confrontation presented me with a dilemma: To what extent should I examine the crisis and attempt to incorporate it into my analysis? On the one hand, it is clearly too early for a granular analysis of February’s events. Many details remain secret or disputed, and it will take years for scholars to piece together a full picture of the crisis, much less to fully analyze its implications. On the other hand, it was equally clear to me that leaving the Pulwama attack and the subsequent crisis out of the manuscript entirely would render the book dated upon publication. After much thought, I decided to include the February 2019 crisis in its general outlines and modify my analysis of India-Pakistan deterrence stability where that seemed warranted. I have added this Preface and made revisions to Chaps. 1, 4, and 5. Chapters 2 and 3 remain essentially unchanged but for some shortening. It turns out it is even harder to write a book in your 50s than in your 30s and 40s. I have been blessed to have a great network of support along the way. My gratitude first and foremost goes to my wife, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, and my daughter, Vivian Hagerty. They have helped me more than they know, especially as the February crisis was unfolding and I worried that I might have to give up the book or put it on hold while events played out. As a longtime reporter and author, Barb well knows the stress of deadlines and was a great source of empathy. Viv was a terrific editor, indexer, and all-around research assistant. In addition to providing steady moral support, Barb and Viv both read and helpfully critiqued chapter drafts. At the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), I have been fortunate to have some excellent teaching assistants who have saved me an enormous amount of time and energy. Warm thanks to Madeline Dement, Jacob Street, and Rhyner Washburn. I am also grateful to Roger C. Lipitz and the Lipitz Family Foundation, and the UMBC College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, for awarding me research funding through the 2014–2015 Lipitz Professorship. Special thanks, as well, to Patricia Martin and her colleagues at Georgetown University’s Bioethics Research Library, which is the warmest, most comfortable space I know of for writing and quiet contemplation. Baltimore, MD

Devin T. Hagerty

 PREFACE 

xi

Notes 1. In this book, I refer to the disputed territory in the conventional shorthand, as “Kashmir.” While each side claims the entirety of Kashmir, the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled parts of the territory have been divided by the LOC since the 1972 Simla Agreement. For the sake of convenience, I refer to these areas as “Indian Kashmir” and “Pakistani Kashmir.” 2. “India Strongly Condemns the Cowardly Terrorist Attack on Our Security Forces in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi, February 14, 2019 (https://www.mea. gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/31053/India+strongly+condemns+the+co wardly+terrorist+attack+on+our+security+forces+in+­Pulwama+­Jammu+­ amp+Kashmir). 3. “Attack in Pulwama,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Pakistan, Islamabad, February 14, 2019 (http://www.mofa.gov.pk/pr-details.php). 4. “Terrorists Will Pay for Pulwama Attack, Says PM; Delivers Warning to Pak,” Hindustan Times, February 15, 2019; “Pulwama Attack: Pakistan Warns India Against Military Action,” BBC, February 19, 2019 (https:// www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-47290107). 5. Amy Kazmin, “Narendra Modi Vows Retribution After Deadly Kashmir Attack,” Financial Times, February 15, 2019; “Terrorists Will Pay for Pulwama Attack.” 6. Kamran Yousaf, “Pakistan Launches Diplomatic Blitz Amid Indian Warmongering,” Express Tribune, February 16, 2019. 7. “Viewpoint: Balakot Air Strikes Raise Stakes in India-Pakistan Stand-off,” BBC, February 26, 2019 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india47370608). 8. “Statement from the Press Secretary on the Terrorist Attack in India,” The White House, Washington, DC, February 14, 2019 (https://www.­ whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-press-secretary-terroristattack-india/). 9. “Readout of Telephonic Conversation between National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and U.S.  NSA Amb. John Bolton,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi, February 16, 2019 (https://www.mea. gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/31058/­­R eadout_of_Telephonic_ Conversation_between_National_Security_Advisor_Ajit_Doval_and_US_ NSA_Amb_John_Bolton). 10. PTI, “Imran Khan Asks Pak Army to ‘Respond Decisively’ to Any Indian Aggression,” Times of India, February 21, 2019. 11. “Statement by Foreign Secretary on the Strike on JeM Training Camp at Balakot,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi, February 26, 2019 (https://mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/ 31089/Statement+by+Foreign+Secretary+on+26+February+­2019+on+th e+Strike+on+JeM+training+camps+at+Balakot).

xii 

Preface

12. “All Wars Are Miscalculated, No One Knows Where They Lead To: PM Khan,” Dawn, February 27, 2019. 13. Sanjeev Miglani and Drazen Jorgic, “India, Pakistan Threatened to Unleash Missiles at Each Other: Sources,” Reuters, March 17, 2019. This account says “there was no suggestion that the missiles involved were anything more than conventional weapons.” A subsequent story reports that the Indian intelligence chief, Anil Dhasmana, told Munir that India would escalate the conflict if the Indian MiG pilot was harmed. Shishir Gupta, Rezaul H.  Laskar, and Yashwant Raj, “India, Pakistan Came Close to Firing Missiles at Each Other on February 27,” Hindustan Times, March 23, 2019. 14. Miglani and Jorgic, “India, Pakistan Threatened to Unleash Missiles at Each Other.” 15. Michael R.  Pompeo, Secretary of State, “Concern Regarding IndiaPakistan Tensions,” Washington, DC, February 26, 2019 (https://www. state.gov/secretary/remarks/2019/02/289733.htm). 16. Miglani and Jorgic, “India, Pakistan Threatened to Unleash Missiles at Each Other.” 17. Amy Kazmin and Farhan Bokhari, “Imran Khan Recast as Statesman after Deft Touch Eases India Crisis,” Financial Times, March 4, 2019.

Contents

1 Introduction  1 The India-Pakistan Nuclear Arms Competition in 2019   2 The Political Context   3 Main Arguments and Chapter Plan   5 2 India-Pakistan Crises, 1999–2016  11 The Kargil Conflict  13 The “Twin Peaks” Crisis  17 The 26/11 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks  22 The Uri Attack and Indian “Surgical Strikes”  27 3 Explaining Indian Moderation During Crises, 1999–2016  43 Nuclear Deterrence  45 U.S. Crisis Management  52 Poor Conventional Military Options  53 Strategic Restraint  56 Conclusion  58 4 Deterrence Stability in South Asia Today 67 The Concept of Deterrence Stability  69 India-Pakistan Relations After the February 2019 Crisis  73 Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Weapons: Capabilities, Doctrine, Command and Control  74

xiii

xiv 

Contents

The Nature of “Ugly Stability” Between India and Pakistan  78 The Theoretical Logic of South Asian Nuclear Deterrence  86 Conclusion: Deterrence Stability in South Asia?  94 5 Enhancing India-Pakistan Deterrence Stability109 Trends 112 Measures to Enhance Deterrence Stability 117 The U.S. Role 123 Index131

About the Author

Devin  T.  Hagerty  is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He was the founding director of UMBC’s Global Studies program. Hagerty teaches on international relations, national security policy, nuclear weapons and deterrence, and South Asian politics. He is the author of The Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: Lessons from South Asia (1998) and co-author (with Sumit Ganguly) of Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (2005). Hagerty also edited South Asia in World Politics (2005). He is an executive editor of the journal Asian Security.

xv

Abbreviations

BJP Bharatiya Janata Party BMD Ballistic Missile Defense CBM Confidence-Building Measure CCS Cabinet Committee on Security CENTCOM Central Command CFL Cease-Fire Line COAS Chief of Army Staff CRPF Central Reserve Police Force DGMO Director General of Military Operations ECC Employment Control Committee FATA Federally Administered Tribal Areas GLCM Ground-Launched Cruise Missile IAF Indian Air Force ICBM Intercontinental Ballistic Missile IED Improvised Explosive Device ISI Inter-Services Intelligence JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff JeM Jaish-e-Mohammed LeT Lashkar-e-Taiba LOC Line of Control MIRV Multiple Independently targetable Reentry Vehicle NCA National Command Authority (Pakistan) NCA Nuclear Command Authority (India) NFU No First Use NLI Northern Light Infantry PAF Pakistan Air Force

xvii

xviii 

ABBREVIATIONS

PTI SFC SLBM SPD

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Strategic Forces Command Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile Strategic Plans Division

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This book examines the theory and practice of nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan, two highly antagonistic South Asian neighbors who recently began their third decade of overt nuclear weaponization. In this introductory chapter, I first provide a brief overview of the Indo-Pakistani nuclear arms competition and some recent trends that threaten to undermine deterrence stability. I then give a synopsis of the underlying political context of Indo-Pakistani relations, focusing mainly on the dispute over the state of Jammu and Kashmir, which goes back to the partition of India and Pakistan when they gained their independence from Britain in August 1947. The combination of nuclear deterrence and continuing subconventional violence, such as the February 2019 attack on Indian forces in Pulwama, Kashmir, creates a kind of “ugly stability” that is unique in the nuclear era—and a main theme of the book. In the last section of this introduction, I preview the book’s organization by outlining the chapter topics and main arguments. Keywords  Ugly stability • Kashmir • India • Pakistan • Nuclear weapons • Deterrence stability • Narendra Modi

© The Author(s) 2020 D. T. Hagerty, Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5_1

1

2 

D. T. HAGERTY

The India-Pakistan Nuclear Arms Competition in 2019 Not long after the Indian and Pakistani nuclear explosive tests in May 1998, a group of scholars, research analysts, and government officials gathered around the conference table of an American think tank to discuss the implications of South Asia’s overt nuclearization. At one point in the proceedings, a very senior Indian official was asked what lessons New Delhi might have learned from the U.S.-Soviet experience with nuclear weapons during the Cold War. He visibly bristled, then thundered that India did not need to learn any lessons from the Americans and the Soviets. New Delhi, he said, had no intention of building large nuclear forces, engaging in arms racing, or brandishing its nuclear weapons for warfighting purposes. India would be a restrained, responsible nuclear weapon state, seeking only a “minimum” nuclear deterrent to provide itself with last-resort insurance against nuclear attacks by its adversaries, China and Pakistan. Pakistani officials likewise voiced similar intentions regarding their nuclear weapons program. They, too, would forgo large nuclear stockpiles and the other costly trappings of the superpower nuclear arms race, pursuing only a minimum-deterrent capability of their own. Twenty years later, these aims have expanded. Contrary to Indian and Pakistani officials’ initial expectations, the nuclear arms competition between New Delhi and Islamabad has begun to bear certain similarities to the Cold War experience of Washington and Moscow. While it would be a great exaggeration to call the South Asian nuclear standoff a microcosm of the superpower balance, especially in its scale, India and Pakistan are resolutely pushing the boundaries of what they have claimed to be the underlying mission of their nuclear capabilities: “credible minimum deterrence.” Both possess roughly 140 nuclear weapons, with their arsenals growing steadily.1 Each country is striving for a nuclear triad of mobile land-based missiles, fighter-bomber aircraft, and submarine-launched missiles, and each is developing an array of nuclear-capable cruise and ballistic missiles with different ranges, launch configurations, and potency. New Delhi and Islamabad have both signaled their plans to pursue multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) capabilities for their ballistic missiles. In recent years, the two sides have given indications of increasing the operational readiness of their nuclear forces—Pakistan by deploying a tactical nuclear weapon system, the short-range Nasr missile, and India by evolving the capabilities, and possibly the intention, to create

1 INTRODUCTION 

3

damage-limiting counterforce targeting options for itself.2 The long-­ established practice of maintaining their nuclear weapons in a de-mated, unassembled form, touted by both countries as a stabilizing measure, could well be eroding.3 India has been deeply engaged in research and development of ballistic-missile defenses (BMD),4 which would increase Pakistan’s sense of strategic vulnerability and induce it to generate countervailing offensive capabilities. As will be discussed at greater length in Chap. 5, New Delhi’s pursuit of more sophisticated nuclear and related technologies stems in great measure from its apparent ambition to achieve rough qualitative parity with China in the nuclear realm; however, its most immediate effect is to intensify the Indo-Pakistani nuclear rivalry.5 Concerns are growing among South Asia nuclear analysts that India and Pakistan are inexorably moving beyond the minimum-deterrent imperatives of assured, survivable second-­strike capabilities toward an interaction characterized by a mutual quest for escalation dominance, arms racing, and the gradual creation of warfighting forces and doctrines. Like their superpower predecessors, Indian and Pakistani strategic elites seem intent on escaping, rather than embracing, the logic of the nuclear revolution, which suggests that once two adversaries have deployed survivable second-strike nuclear capabilities, mutual deterrence should prevail between them, military victory in any meaningful sense is impossible to achieve, and relative capabilities are less important than each side’s absolute capacity to severely punish its opponent with nuclear devastation.6 If this assessment is accurate, the stability of India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence may be jeopardized as the two sides edge closer to damage-limitation capabilities and strategies, and the “reciprocal fear of surprise attack” begins to fuel preemptive temptations between them.7

The Political Context The core driver of South Asia’s nuclear arms competition is the bitter political relationship between India and Pakistan, which has been pathological since the moment they gained their independence from the British in August 1947. Leading up to, during, and after the partition of territory in Punjab and Bengal, communal conflict raged between Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other. Half a million to a million people are believed to have been killed during the migration of Hindus and Sikhs into the new India and Muslims into the new Pakistan. Approximately 12 million people crossed the newly drawn borders.8 Soon

4 

D. T. HAGERTY

thereafter, the two sides fought their first war, over the disputed former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, between October 1947 and January 1949. Kashmir’s contested status was also the casus belli in the 1965 India-­ Pakistan war, and the territory was the scene of additional fighting during the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war, which resulted in the creation of the new state of Bangladesh out of what had previously been East Pakistan. The 1971 war was officially brought to an end by the Simla Agreement of 1972, in which India and Pakistan pledged to resolve the Kashmir dispute peacefully and bilaterally—in other words, not to attempt to alter the territory’s status through the use of military force. At the very end of the 1980s, an Islamist insurgency erupted on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LOC) dividing Kashmir. Although the insurgents’ grievances were initially rooted in Indian domestic politics, more specifically the chronic meddling of Indian governments in Kashmiri state politics, Pakistan soon stepped in with weapons, other material resources, training, and sanctuary for thousands of militants who were now waging a subconventional campaign of armed violence against the Indian security forces, which soon numbered in the hundreds of thousands. A serious Indo-Pakistani crisis flared up over Kashmir in early 1990, bringing the two sides to the brink of war before their nascent nuclear capabilities and U.S. diplomacy caused them to back away from military conflict.9 The Pakistan-supported insurgency in Indian Kashmir has continued in fits and starts for the last three decades, with regular eruptions of violence between the insurgents and the government, and between Indian and Pakistani military forces across the LOC. An estimated 50,000 people have died in the fighting.10 The most serious India-Pakistan battles took place during the 1999 conflict near Kargil, initiated by the Pakistan Army, and these are analyzed in Chaps. 2 and 3. In addition to stoking the violence in Kashmir, Islamabad has also supported mass-casualty terrorist attacks in India proper, the most spectacular of which were the December 2001 assault on the Parliament complex in New Delhi and the multi-day Mumbai massacre of November 2008, both of which set off crises that will be covered in Chaps. 2 and 3. India has been led since 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Bharatiya Janata Party (“Indian People’s Party”—BJP) has pursued a more muscular foreign policy and national security agenda than that of the Congress Party it succeeded. In September 2016, after a deadly cross-LOC attack on an Indian military encampment near the Kashmiri town of Uri, Modi ordered so-called surgical strikes against what the Indian government said were ter-

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

rorist “launch pads.” While New Delhi had secretly carried out such smallscale strikes before, the fact that the government publicized India’s retaliation in 2016 fed a narrative suggesting that Modi’s hawkish bent might portend a more forceful, militarized Indian response to a future Pakistani subconventional provocation. This indeed proved to be the case after Jaish-e-Mohammed’s (JeM’s) deadly February 2019 suicide bombing in Pulwama. India’s retaliatory airstrikes in Balakot marked the first time since the 1971 Bangladesh war that the IAF had carried out attacks against undisputed, sovereign Pakistani territory. They also represented a significant escalation of firepower over the 2016 cross-LOC raids undertaken by Indian special forces after the Uri attack. With New Delhi having so demonstrably upped the ante, Islamabad had little choice but to follow suit with Pakistan’s own airstrikes, but limited them to Indian Kashmir. Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-­e-­Insaf (“Pakistan Movement for Justice”—PTI) had been in power for less than a year since being elected in July 2018. The Pakistani state is a praetorian quasi-democracy in which the Pakistan Army continues to be the most powerful institution, calling the shots on vital issues like Kashmir, relations with India more broadly, the nuclear weapons program, and Islamabad’s ties with important extra-regional actors such as China, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. Since the February crisis tapered off after Pakistan’s speedy return of India’s downed MiG-21 pilot on March 1, Islamabad has begun what it depicts as a crackdown on violent substate actors. The government, reportedly with the army’s backing, has arrested scores of militants, shut down Islamic “charities” linked to terrorists, and imposed restrictions on militant-linked financial transactions by Pakistani banks.11 Given Islamabad’s history of initiating such “crackdowns” with little sustained follow-through, Indian officials and other international observers are skeptical that the latest actions will have any lasting effect. Many experts, myself included, believe that it is only a matter of time before another Pakistan-abetted mass-casualty terrorist attack in a large Indian city or against Indian security personnel in Kashmir causes a new crisis. The sternest test of deterrence stability in South Asia may be yet to come.

Main Arguments and Chapter Plan In the context of the seven-decade Kashmir dispute and Pakistan’s long-­ standing ties with anti-Indian terrorist groups, the Indo-Pakistani nuclear arms competition represents one of the most significant challenges in

6 

D. T. HAGERTY

international security today. This book examines three of its most important dimensions: (1) Indian and Pakistani behavior during five crises since New Delhi and Islamabad went overtly nuclear in 1998. Particularly important in this regard are the reasons for India’s forbearance in the face of serious Pakistani provocations, which in the first four cases provided an essential buffer between peace and war. With New Delhi having chosen a stronger military response during the fifth crisis in February 2019, I will also offer a tentative analysis of the implications of India’s increasingly vigorous posture; (2) the nature, operation, and stability of Indo-Pakistani mutual nuclear deterrence, pithily termed “ugly stability.”12 In essence, ugly stability means the persistence of subconventional conflict between the two South Asian antagonists in a context of both nuclear and conventional deterrence. This “ugliness” is dangerously exacerbated by the fact that the Pakistani state is a non-unitary actor, some of whose elements may not be under the full control of executive authorities and are therefore free to support jihadi elements with violent anti-Indian agendas, with or without official sanction13; and (3) measures that can be taken, mainly by the Indian and Pakistani governments, to enhance the stability of the Indo-­ Pakistani nuclear balance and prevent future subconventional conflicts from escalating to conventional war and, possibly, nuclear war. The February 2019 crisis heightens the urgency of proactively addressing the elements of instability inherent in the India-Pakistan strategic competition. The remainder of the book unfolds in the following way. Together, Chaps. 2 and 3 offer a comparative empirical analysis of four India-­ Pakistan crises between 1999 and 2016: the Kargil conflict of 1999, the “Twin Peaks” crisis of 2001–2002, the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008, and the 2016 Uri assault in Indian Kashmir. My objective is to explain why, in each of these episodes, Indian leaders chose notably moderate responses to subconventional aggression emanating from Pakistan. I argue that three factors—nuclear deterrence, U.S. crisis intervention, and the absence of promising conventional military options— combine to explain Indian forbearance, but that the primary cause of Indian restraint was nuclear deterrence. U.S. crisis management and the lack of good conventional military options were closely linked—and ­subservient—to the influence of nuclear weapons, which induced U.S. crisis management in the first place and sharply limited Indian conventional military options, which run the risk of a Pakistani nuclear reprisal. I also find that a fourth purported reason for Indian caution—a doctrine of strategic restraint—makes a virtue out of necessity but actually has little

1 INTRODUCTION 

7

explanatory power. In sum, Chaps. 2 and 3 provide an empirical basis for nuclear deterrence in South Asia. Chapter 4 is a theoretically driven analysis of regional deterrence stability. I first flesh out the concept of deterrence stability, which I view in relative—rather than binary—terms. Next I briefly examine the state of the India-Pakistan relationship after the February 2019 crisis. After that, I provide an overview of Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons capabilities, doctrines, and command and control arrangements. Then I develop the chapter’s underlying theme, which is that the India-Pakistan nuclear arms competition has elements of both stability and instability. On the one hand, chronic Indo-Pakistani friction and subconventional violence, such as the JeM Pulwama attack, suggest that future crises are likely. On the other, nuclear deterrence dampens the likelihood of low-level conflicts escalating to higher levels of warfare. I closely examine these two oppositional aspects of ugly stability in the context of a hypothetical Indo-­ Pakistani crisis escalation scenario. Next I analyze the theoretical logic of India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence, which, in my conception, arises from a hybrid of “existential deterrence”14 and the respective Indian and Pakistani nuclear doctrines of “assured retaliation” and “asymmetric escalation.”15 I conclude the chapter by arguing that while nuclear deterrence mitigates the likelihood of escalation to conventional—and possibly nuclear—war, the embittered relations between New Delhi and Islamabad mean that deterrence failure resulting in major warfare cannot be ruled out. Chapter 5 is a normative assessment of measures that can be taken to help prevent India-Pakistan crises from erupting and dangerously escalating. Most importantly, I argue that New Delhi and Islamabad should address the “ugly” elements of ugly stability. First, after Pakistan makes a definitive decision to stop terrorist groups from operating on its soil, the two countries should reach an agreement not to sponsor, support, assist, or condone subconventional operations in the other country, Kashmir included. Second, India should give up its ill-advised effort to create “space under the nuclear threshold” to conduct limited conventional operations in response to Pakistani or Pakistan-abetted subconventional aggression. Third, New Delhi and Islamabad should agree not to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, which can be destabilizing and prone to dangerous security lapses. Fourth, India should clarify its nuclear doctrine, reinforcing its no-first-use (NFU) policy and replacing “massive” retaliation with the threat of “calibrated” retaliation to Pakistan’s first use of nuclear weapons. Fifth, rather than pursuing escalation dominance, New Delhi

8 

D. T. HAGERTY

and Islamabad should align their nuclear postures with the realities of the nuclear revolution, the most important of which is that military victory in a war between them is now impossible. Sixth, India and Pakistan should, at the right time, resume negotiations to resolve the Kashmir dispute. Although the prospects for agreement are currently remote, they need not be forever, especially if New Delhi and Islamabad alter their perspectives and use mutual nuclear deterrence as a foundation for conflict resolution. The chapter’s final section concludes the book with a brief look at the U.S. role in promoting regional nuclear deterrence.

Notes 1. Hans M.  Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 74, no. 6 (November 2018): 361–66; Hans M.  Kristensen, Robert S.  Norris, and Julia Diamond, “Pakistani Nuclear Forces, 2018,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 74, no. 5 (August 2018): 348–58. 2. Christopher Clary and Vipin Narang, “India’s Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities,” International Security 43, no. 3 (Winter 2018/19): 7–52. 3. Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 55–120; Clary and Narang, “India’s Counterforce Temptations,” 36–38. 4. Yogesh Joshi and Frank O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia: Forces, Doctrine, and Dangers (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019), 34–38. 5. Devin T. Hagerty, “India’s Evolving Nuclear Posture,” Nonproliferation Review 21, nos. 3–4 (September–December 2014): 297–310. 6. Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 1–45. 7. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 207–29. This concept captures the crisis dynamic in which each side fears that the other is about to strike one’s own nuclear forces preemptively, generating a mutual temptation to “use rather than lose” one’s nuclear forces. 8. Both estimates are from Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 6. 9. Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 82–115.

1 INTRODUCTION 

9

10. “Nadir in the Valley: India’s Government is Intensifying a Failed Strategy in Kashmir,” The Economist, March 7, 2019. 11. Farhan Bokhari and Amy Kazmin, “Pakistan Launches Crackdown on Militants,” Financial Times, March 6, 2019. 12. Ashley J. Tellis, Stability in South Asia (Santa Monica: RAND, 1997), vii, 30–33. Tellis invented this concept and accurately predicted its enduring usefulness as a descriptor of the India-Pakistan strategic equation. 13. George Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” in Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, eds. Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2013), 21–40. 14. McGeorge Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” in The Security Gamble: Deterrence Dilemmas in the Nuclear Age, ed. Douglas MacLean (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984), 3–13. 15. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 13–54.

CHAPTER 2

India-Pakistan Crises, 1999–2016

Abstract  This chapter examines four India-Pakistan crises between 1999 and 2016: the Kargil conflict of 1999, the Twin Peaks crisis of 2001–2002, the Mumbai attacks and their aftermath in 2008, and the Uri attack and subsequent Indian “surgical strikes” in 2016. I present a concise chronological narrative of each episode, focusing in particular on the nature of the Indian response to Pakistani and Pakistan-abetted subconventional aggression. In all of the crises, the Indian government opted for markedly restrained, non-escalatory responses in the face of intense domestic pressures to retaliate with punishing military force. The chapter sets the empirical stage for a comparative analysis of the explanations most often posited by scholars for New Delhi’s forbearance, which is the subject of Chap. 3. Keywords  Kargil conflict • Twin Peaks crisis • Mumbai attack • Uri attack • Nuclear weapons • Cold Start • Surgical strikes In the two decades after New Delhi and Islamabad went overtly nuclear in May 1998, India was the victim of repeated armed provocations by Pakistan and substate actors supported by Pakistan. Each of these attacks sparked a crisis in Indo-Pakistani relations, and in each case, Indian political leaders demonstrated notable forbearance by not striking back in ways that might have escalated to a major India-Pakistan war. India’s restraint was evident during India-Pakistan crises in 1999, 2001–2002, 2008, and © The Author(s) 2020 D. T. Hagerty, Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5_2

11

12 

D. T. HAGERTY

2016. The long-standing dispute over the territory of Jammu and Kashmir1 was at the root of the spring 1999 conflict, which was sparked by Pakistan’s initiation of secret subconventional military operations on the towering Himalayan mountain peaks just across the Line of Control (LOC) in Indian Kashmir. After initially struggling to mount an effective military response, Indian forces eventually prevailed over the intruders with ground and air attacks that were strictly limited to the Indian side of the LOC.2 In December 2001, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists linked to Pakistan3 ignited another crisis with an attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi. The crisis was prolonged when militants followed up in May 2002 with a mass-casualty attack on an Indian military installation in Kashmir. India responded with a massive mobilization of its military forces along the Pakistani border and the LOC, and Pakistan reacted in kind. Although India seemed close to launching a conventional invasion of Pakistan at two distinct points in the standoff, known as Twin Peaks, the crisis was eventually resolved without the use of force in the autumn of 2002.4 In November 2008, 10 terrorists from the Pakistan-linked Lashkar-e-Taiba (“Army of the Pure”—LeT)5 roamed around Mumbai, unleashing a 60-hour bloodbath. The terrorists came ashore on boats before rampaging through the city, murdering civilians at luxury hotels, a busy rail station, and other soft targets. The death toll was 166.6 As in 2001–2002, Indian decision-­makers debated launching a punitive military response, but Congress Party Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ultimately desisted. In September 2016, infiltrators from Pakistan crossed the Kashmir LOC and attacked an Indian military encampment at Uri, killing 19 soldiers. In response, BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered what New Delhi termed “surgical strikes” against terrorist “launch pads” on Pakistan’s side of the LOC.7 In sum, after 1998, there was a substantial historical record of Indian decision-­ making across nearly two decades of an overtly nuclear South Asia, involving different types of Pakistani or Pakistan-abetted attacks in both Kashmir and India proper. During this period, different Indian political parties and prime ministers were in office. Diverse groups of Indian political leaders repeatedly chose circumspect responses that were clearly intended to limit escalation to a major India-Pakistan war. (After the February 2019 JeM attack in Pulwama, Kashmir, Prime Minister Modi opted for more aggressive retaliation in the form of airstrikes near Balakot, in sovereign Pakistani territory. The 2019 crisis will be examined in Chaps. 4 and 5.) The next four sections, respectively, provide succinct narrative accounts of the 1999, 2001–2002, 2008, and 2016 India-Pakistan crises.

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

13

The Kargil Conflict In the spring and summer of 1999, India and Pakistan fought a limited military conflict in the Himalayan mountains of the disputed territory of Kashmir. It began when Pakistani troops of the Northern Light Infantry (NLI)8 covertly occupied a number of ridges on the Indian side of the LOC, which had been vacated by Indian forces in the winter.9 By May, more than a thousand soldiers in civilian clothes, operating in small groups,10 had secretly dug themselves into more than 130 posts along a 75-mile stretch of Himalayan ridges, “up to five miles deep on the Indian side of the LoC” separating Indian and Pakistani Kashmir. They were armed with “machine guns, antipersonnel land mines, man-portable air defense missiles, mortars … and light artillery pieces.”11 Some of the intruders’ positions overlooked National Highway 1A, which is the best road between Srinagar and Leh—and thus a vital ground supply route to Indian military forces both on the Siachen Glacier and along the sensitive border between Ladakh and China.12 The Indian military discovered Pakistan’s intrusion on May 3. Six days later, the Pakistani soldiers destroyed an Indian ammunition dump outside the town of Kargil.13 New Delhi’s initial response was to send in thousands of soldiers to evict the aggressors. Special Forces personnel were dropped onto ridges by helicopter. Indian troops equipped with howitzers, rocket launchers, and heavy mortars launched attacks supported by helicopter gunships. “The aim was to surround the infiltrators and choke off their supplies even while building up Indian strength to launch assaults.”14 It soon became clear that the army would need help. As Indian forces attempted to push their way up to extremely high altitudes—18,000 feet in some cases—they were easy targets for Pakistani snipers and gunners. Not only that, but helicopter gunships were of limited effectiveness at such altitudes. After taking heavy casualties, the Indians realized that greater firepower would be necessary to dislodge the Pakistanis. The Indian Air Force (IAF) was initially skeptical about using fighter-bombers at Kargil, worrying that it might escalate the conflict. The IAF was supported in its initial caution by the CCS; however, mounting casualties and subsequent consultation between the army and air force chiefs led them to conclude that the more potent IAF assets should, in fact, be used. On May 25, the CCS ordered the Indian armed forces to “take any action necessary to evict the invaders.”15 IAF ground-attack aircraft began to pound the intruders’ positions on May 26. In the ensuing few days, the Indian forces lost two aircraft and a

14 

D. T. HAGERTY

helicopter.16 In the longer term, IAF operations had devastating effects on the Pakistanis’ morale, as fighter aircraft pummeled their vulnerable supply lines.17 The possibility of military operations across the LOC was a constant subject of debate within the CCS, but Indian forces were ordered to restrict their operations to the Indian side of the line.18 Indian leaders also tasked their armed forces to prepare for war all along the Indo-Pakistani border. In late May, U.S. satellites detected these preparations. According to one account, “elements of the Indian army’s main offensive ‘strike force’ were loading tanks, artillery, and other heavy equipment onto flatbed rail cars.” In addition, U.S. officials said later, “armored units intended for offensive use were leaving their garrisons in Rajasthan … and preparing to move.”19 As one analyst puts it: “The key offensive formations intended for the international border, the three ‘strike corps,’ were ‘untouched’ by Kargil deployments and thus available if the political decision had been made to deploy them.”20 A senior US official recounts that “we could all too easily imagine … a deadly descent into full scale conflict all along the border with a danger of nuclear cataclysm.”21 Nuclear-tinged statements by Pakistani leaders fed into these concerns. On May 30, four days after the IAF began attacking Pakistani positions, Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad said that Pakistan would “not hesitate to use any weapon in our arsenal to defend our territorial integrity.”22 One source speculates that this signaling was intended to caution India “against any further escalation, vertical or horizontal, in its conventional military response along the international border.”23 Indeed, according to the then Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, New Delhi perceived at one point that Pakistan was “operationalizing its nuclear missiles.”24 India’s army chief during the conflict, V.P. Malik, recollects that, in turn, “we considered it prudent to take some protective measures … some of our missile assets were dispersed and relocated.”25 Although media reports suggested “both sides moved ballistic missiles and possibly initiated nuclear weapons readiness measures during the crisis,” the exact nature of any such activities remains unclear to this day.26 As of mid-June, India’s armed forces continued to have strict orders not to cross the LOC.27 The IAF was carrying out some 40 sorties daily,28 in an attempt to rout the Pakistani invaders—or at least to soften up their positions so that Indian ground forces could overwhelm them. In mid-­ June, the IAF and the Indian Navy were put on alert, with the Eastern Fleet reinforcing the Western Fleet.29 The navy’s mission in the Arabian Sea was to contain Pakistan’s naval assets in the event of conflict ­escalation.

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

15

On June 18, Malik ordered his forces to be “prepared for escalation—sudden or gradual—along the LOC or the international border and be prepared to go to (declared) war at short notice.”30 However, by the third week of June, the tide had begun to turn in India’s favor. Indian soldiers managed to retake two vital posts on the Tololing Ridge in the Dras sector, which overlook National Highway 1A, the ground supply route to other posts near the LOC.31 By late June, Indian “mechanised and artillery divisions [had] advanced to forward positions all along the border in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir.” All army leave had been canceled. Trains continued to transport tanks and ammunition toward the border in Rajasthan. The Pakistan Army was making similar preparations for war near its preferred point of attack along the Punjab frontier. But neither army “made any decisive movements” of its strike corps, and New Delhi remained resolute against crossing the LOC.32 As the Kargil fighting intensified, so did the diplomatic maneuvering between New Delhi, Islamabad, Beijing, and Washington.33 Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, spoke by phone several times in the early weeks of the crisis, with Vajpayee telling Sharif that India would do whatever was necessary to drive the intruders back across the LOC.34 In response, Sharif refused to accept Pakistani responsibility for the invasion. Senior State Department officials also urged Pakistani leaders to withdraw their forces from India’s side of the LOC.35 During a visit to Beijing in late May, the chief of the Pakistan Army, Pervez Musharraf, was urged to pursue peace with India, an “implicit rejection of Pakistan’s efforts to internationalize the Kashmir issue through its precipitation of the conflict over Kargil.”36 When Indian foreign minister Singh met with U.S.  Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in late May, Washington agreed to take a firm stand with Pakistan, in return for which India reportedly pledged not to cross the LOC or otherwise escalate the fighting.37 On June 11, Pakistani Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz traveled to Beijing a day before meeting with Singh in New Delhi. The Chinese urged “negotiations and dialogue” to resolve the Kargil matter; once again, “China’s non-mention of the United Nations or a role for the international community in resolving the Kashmir issue constituted rejection of Pakistan’s Kargil gambit and an implicit gesture toward India.”38 Aziz’s talks with Singh the next day were unavailing. As fears of escalation grew, U.S. president Bill Clinton called Vajpayee and Sharif on June 14–15, urging both sides to resist widening the conflict.39 But, New Delhi’s patience was wearing thin.40 On June 17–18,

16 

D. T. HAGERTY

Vajpayee aide Brajesh Mishra told U.S. national security adviser Sandy Berger that India might be compelled to escalate its operations.41 From Washington’s perspective: “by late June the situation was deteriorating fast. The two parties were engaged in an intense conflict along the Kargil front and both were mobilizing their forces for larger conflict. Casualties were mounting on both sides. Our intelligence assessments were pointing toward the danger of full-scale war becoming a real possibility. The danger was that the Indians would grow weary of attacking uphill (actually up-­ mountain) into well dug in Pakistani positions… New Delhi could easily decide to open another front elsewhere along the [LOC] to ease its burden and force the Pakistanis to fight on territory favorable to India. Even if the conflict remained confined solely to Kargil, the danger of escalation was high.”42 Deeply concerned about the prospect of an escalating war between two nuclear weapons states, Clinton dispatched the commander-­ in-­chief of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. Anthony Zinni, to Islamabad from June 23 to 27. Zinni urged Pakistani leaders to call off the Kargil operation43; in response, he reportedly received “fairly clear” assurances from his interlocutors that the so-called insurgents would be withdrawn from the Indian side of the LOC.44 Then, during a late-June visit to Beijing, Sharif was rebuffed in his efforts to seek Chinese support for “Islamabad’s efforts to internationalize the Kashmir issue.”45 Ultimately, New Delhi’s resolve to eject Pakistani forces from its side of the LOC, Indian military successes on the Himalayan ridges, and Pakistan’s diplomatic isolation convinced Islamabad to call off its misadventure. On July 2, Sharif called Clinton, pleading for American intervention to stop the fighting and mediate the Kashmir dispute; Clinton replied that he could only help if Pakistan first withdrew its forces. A similar exchange took place the next day, with Sharif offering to meet with Clinton in Washington on July 4.46 According to one account, just prior to the Clinton–Sharif meeting, U.S. officials received “disturbing evidence that the Pakistanis were preparing their nuclear arsenals for possible deployment.”47 However, Musharraf contradicts this version of events in his 2006 memoir: “In 1999 our nuclear capability was not yet operational. Merely exploding a bomb does not mean that you are operationally capable of deploying nuclear force in the field and delivering a bomb across the border over a selected target. Any talk of preparing for nuclear strikes is preposterous.”48 The July 4 meeting was tense, with Clinton hammering home both the need for Pakistani withdrawal and the dark specter of nuclear war in South

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

17

Asia.49 At one point, “Clinton asked Sharif if he knew how advanced the threat of nuclear war really was? Did Sharif know his military was preparing their nuclear tipped missiles? Sharif seemed taken aback and said only that India was probably doing the same.”50 Indeed, India reportedly had been “doing the same.” In an unverified account that refers to “several highranking [Indian] officials” but mentions no exact dates, an Indian journalist writes, “India … activated all its three types of nuclear delivery vehicles and kept them at what is known as Readiness State 3—meaning that some nuclear bombs would be ready to be mated with the delivery vehicles at short notice.”51 Clinton “then reminded Sharif how close the U.S. and Soviet Union had come to nuclear war in 1962 over Cuba. Did Sharif realize that if even one bomb was dropped. … Sharif finished his sentence and said it would be a catastrophe.”52 With Sharif continuing to vacillate over a Pakistani withdrawal from Kargil, Clinton grew angry: “Did Sharif order the Pakistani nuclear missile force to prepare for action? Did he realize how crazy that was? You’ve put me in the middle today, set the U.S. up to fail and I won’t let it happen. Pakistan is messing with nuclear war.”53 Finally, Sharif agreed to withdraw Pakistani forces in exchange for U.S. diplomatic cover. In a joint statement, he and Clinton expressed their “view that the current fighting in the Kargil region of Kashmir is dangerous and contains the seeds of a wider conflict.” In return for a restoration of the “sanctity of the LOC,” Clinton pledged to take a “personal interest” in helping to resolve the Kashmir dispute.54 Days later, Vajpayee announced that “the enemy’s intrusion and aggression in Kargil has now been decisively turned back. … our troops are back on the LOC. … A turning point has come.”55 On July 11, the Indian and Pakistani directors-­ general of military operations (DGMOs) agreed to end the fighting. A pullout timetable was reached and the Pakistani withdrawal began.56 In a televised address on July 12, Sharif told his people “the deterioration in Pakistan–India relations brought our two countries to the brink of war. … We know that in a nuclear conflict there can be no victors. … It has been my constant effort that our countries be spared the horror of a nuclear war. Only a desire for collective suicide can prompt us to take such a step.”57

The “Twin Peaks” Crisis On October 1, 2001, terrorists from JeM attacked the Jammu and Kashmir legislative assembly building in Srinagar, killing 38 people.58 On December 13, JeM attacked the Indian Parliament in New Delhi, leaving 14 dead,

18 

D. T. HAGERTY

including all six of the terrorists. The strike at the heart of India’s government profoundly shook the country’s national psyche. It was described by Indian Home Minister L.K.  Advani as the “most audacious and most alarming act of terrorism in the history … of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India.”59 New Delhi responded by launching Operation Parakram on December 18. The Indian Army deployed to border positions as New Delhi put its combined military forces—including those in Kashmir—on high alert. India also severed road, rail, and air links with Pakistan and recalled its high commissioner from Islamabad. Both sides reportedly moved nuclear-capable ballistic missiles to positions closer to the Punjab border.60 The Indian government served notice that unless Pakistan reined in its murderous jihadi groups, India would do it for them by destroying terrorist training camps, sanctuaries, and supply routes in Pakistani Kashmir.61 Ultimately, India moved roughly half a million soldiers— including three armored strike corps—to border areas in Punjab, Rajasthan, and Gujarat.62 One account argues that “in the event of Pakistani noncompliance, the Indians planned to launch rapid, multiple strikes across the Line of Control into Pakistan-administered Kashmir, destroying terrorist training camps and infrastructure and seizing territory that would enable Indian forces to staunch the flow of cross-border infiltration. In case Pakistan sought to relieve pressure on Kashmir by escalating the conflict horizontally, Indian Army forces deployed along the international border would be prepared to meet and repulse any Pakistani attacks.”63 Another analyst notes that “what distinguished the mobilization of 1999 from that of 2001–2002 is that in 1999 strike corps were not moved to their launch areas. In 2001–2002, they were.”64 Islamabad responded by mobilizing its own armor and 300,000 Pakistan Army troops to the adjacent border areas of Punjab and Sindh.65 In addition, fearing that its nuclear forces might come under attack, Pakistan “took alert measures to disperse the nuclear weapons and missiles to new locations away from their storage sites.”66 Early in the crisis, Pakistani Gen. Khalid Kidwai, director of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), the body responsible for the command and control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, publicly stated that nuclear weapons would be used against India “if the very existence of Pakistan as a state is at stake.” In addition, he pointedly set out a number of redlines that would cause Pakistan to respond with nuclear weapons if deterrence failed. Foremost among these was “India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part of its territory.”67 Across the border, Indian defense minister George Fernandes hinted that

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

19

“India had prepared its nuclear assets for retaliatory use in the event of a Pakistani first strike.68 Fernandes added that India “could take a [nuclear] strike, survive and then hit back. Pakistan would be finished.”69 As if to underline this point, India test-fired its Agni-I intermediate-range, nuclear-­ capable missile in January.70 India’s compellent strategy was partly aimed at inducing Washington to urge Islamabad to stop supporting jihad in Kashmir and India proper. One account says that “in the days after the Parliament House strike, John McLaughlin, then the deputy C.I.A. director, reported to the Bush Cabinet that C.I.A. and other intelligence analysts believed that, because of confusion among Indian and Pakistani decision-makers about when and how a conventional war would escalate, there was a serious risk of the first hostile use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki.”71 On December 29, Bush called Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to urge restraint; he also implored Musharraf to “take additional strong and decisive measures to eliminate the extremists who seek to harm India, undermine Pakistan, and provoke war.” In addition, U.S. and British officials devised a coordinated strategy of back-to-back visits to the region, “with an eye to defusing tensions and postponing decisions to launch hostilities.”72 On January 11, 2002, the Indian army chief, S. Padmanabhan, issued a blunt nuclear threat to the Pakistani leadership. If Pakistan were to carry out a nuclear strike against India, he said, “the perpetrator of that particular outrage shall be punished so severely that their continuation thereafter in any form of fray will be doubtful.” Responding to a reporter’s question, he said, “We are ready for a second strike, yes,” adding that India had enough nuclear weapons for such a response.73 As in the Kargil conflict, Pakistan hoped that the latest crisis would cause the United States to take a more active role in resolving the Kashmir dispute. Islamabad argued that the necessity of mobilizing troops along the border with India would require Pakistan to deploy fewer soldiers in the post-9/11 hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in northwestern Pakistan. New Delhi’s diplomatic strategy was more successful; while Washington urged both sides to back off, it pointedly put JeM and LeT74 on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Many U.S. officials’ main worry was that the dueling mobilizations of Indian and Pakistani forces would “trigger unintended escalation to a general war or even nuclear use.” As a State Department South Asia specialist framed this concern: “The question was would things get out of hand and prompt

20 

D. T. HAGERTY

one side or another to slide toward [nuclear weapon] use … Escalation could come quickly.” Another State Department official recollected fearing that India and Pakistan could misperceive or not recognize each other’s “red lines.” A “seasoned diplomat” in State’s South Asia bureau characterized the main danger as unintended escalation.75 In her memoirs, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice wrote: “one thing was clear: whatever the intentions of the two sides, they could easily stumble into war whether they intended to or not. Those nuclear-armed adversaries could, within a matter of hours, plunge the region into chaos—possibly nuclear chaos.”76 In response to Indian and U.S. pressure, and with U.S. input, Musharraf made an impassioned speech to the Pakistani people on January 12, 2002, in which he condemned the October and December terrorist attacks in India. “The day of reckoning has come,” Musharraf said. “Do we want Pakistan to become a theocratic state? Do we believe that religious education alone is enough for governance, or do we want Pakistan to emerge as a progressive and dynamic Islamic welfare state?” Claiming that “the verdict of the masses is in favor” of the latter course, Musharraf pledged that “no organization will be allowed to indulge in terrorism in the name of Kashmir,” and that “Pakistan will not allow its territory to be used for any terrorist activity anywhere in the world.”77 Alas, Musharraf proved unwilling to clamp down completely on Pakistan’s jihadi groups. In the aftermath of his January 2002 speech, Islamabad arrested some 2000 militants and closed more than 300 of their offices, but few militants were prosecuted. Moreover, the leaders of JeM and LeT were released in March and promptly vowed to reinvigorate the Kashmir insurgency. On May 14, terrorists attacked the Indian military base at Kaluchak in Jammu, killing 34 people and reigniting a full-blown crisis. Indian leaders promptly resumed their consideration of military strikes against terrorist training camps in Pakistan.78 As one reporter vividly described the situation in late May, “preparations for cataclysm advance daily along the Indo-­ Pakistani frontier. About 1  million soldiers have crowded to the long border, equipped with missiles, tanks, and fighter jets … War-fevered politicians in both capitals organize appeals for national unity … And in the secret military warehouses of both countries, engineers presumably are turning screws on doomsday’s reserve force—two crude but functional nuclear arsenals.” On a visit to Jammu, Vajpayee rallied Indian soldiers: “the time has come for a decisive battle, and we will have a sure victory in this battle.” In turn, Musharraf strongly implied that “if India insists on

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

21

launching all-out war to attack Pakistan’s support for Kashmiri militants, Pakistan is prepared to go nuclear.”79 Once again, the Indian media breathlessly reported official deliberations over military options ranging from limited strikes across the LOC to full-scale war. India’s plan during the summer phase of the 10-month crisis was to “concentrate its three strike corps in the Rajasthan sector, so as to draw Pakistan’s two strike corps into desert terrain and inflict heavy attrition losses on them.”80 The Indian strike corps “were concentrated in their respective assembly boxes, ready to execute deep penetrating maneuvers to engage and destroy Pakistan’s two strike corps and seize the Sindh and Punjab provinces, thus threatening to effectively slice Pakistan in two.”81 Foremost in the minds of decision-makers on all sides in late May was the nuclear shadow hovering over the Subcontinent. As one Indian diplomat said, “the idea that Pakistan will cooperate in a conflict and comply with India’s wishes to fight a limited war is ridiculous. It will naturally be in their interest to keep any conflagration as unlimited as possible.”82 On May 22, the Pakistani Minister for Railways—and former head of ISI— Lt. Gen. Javed Ashraf Qazi, said: “If Pakistan is being destroyed through conventional means, we will destroy them by using the nuclear option.”83 As if to underline this message, Pakistan test-fired three nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, which the Indians interpreted “as a warning … to apply brakes on India’s most ambitious plan ever.”84 Musharraf claimed that the tests “validated the reliability, accuracy, and … deterrence value of Pakistan’s premier surface-to-surface ballistic missile systems.”85 On May 29, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations defended his country’s refusal to adopt a no-first-use nuclear posture by asking rhetorically: “How can Pakistan, a weaker power, be expected to rule out all means of deterrence?”86 In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage “worried … about the nuclear dimension of the crisis.” One source reports that “the situation from late May onward appeared sufficiently bleak for the Pentagon to reexamine the effects of nuclear weapons’ use on the Subcontinent. One official vividly remembers interagency discussions … on evacuating the embassies and U.S. nationals in the event of a nuclear exchange. The Subcontinent’s seasonal ‘plumology’ was studied.” U.S. Embassy staff in both New Delhi and Islamabad worried about the possibility of the crisis escalating to nuclear war.87 Asked in early June if his government had considered the possibility of war escalating to the use of nuclear weapons, Indian Defense Secretary Yogendra Narain replied, “Certainly. But we

22 

D. T. HAGERTY

don’t know [Pakistan’s] nuclear threshold. We will retaliate and must be prepared for mutual destruction on both sides.”88 All in all, reports one authoritative account, “Washington’s regional specialists were nearly unanimous in predicting that war was … imminent. They saw no obvious pathway for the two governments to walk back from the brink.”89 A senior U.S. intelligence analyst with years of regional experience told the author in early June 2002 that he estimated the chances of India-Pakistan war at “100 percent.” With Pakistan sending “many signals to Delhi that any invasion of Pakistan would warrant a Pakistani nuclear response,”90 Washington began another flurry of diplomatic activity to prevent war in South Asia. The State Department also issued a travel advisory urging U.S. citizens to leave India.91 On June 6, Armitage went to Islamabad, where he reportedly elicited a promise from Musharraf to “end cross-border infiltration permanently.”92 Armitage relayed this pledge to Indian officials in New Delhi the next day. Two weeks later, though, Musharraf seemed to backtrack when he told a reporter, “I’m not going to give you an assurance that for years nothing will happen.”93 That said, infiltrations across the LOC did decrease during the summer before rising again in the autumn, “but not to the level that they had been at previously, prior to the commitments made by the Pakistani government.”94 Although the immediate crisis faded in June, the Indo-Pakistani troop buildup lasted until October, when India announced that it would withdraw its forces from the border with Pakistan. The Indian decision came on the heels of state elections in Kashmir, after which “there was no reason to continue a deployment that has placed enormous strains on personnel, equipment, and morale.”95 Pakistan immediately reciprocated the troop withdrawal. All sides agree that India and Pakistan nearly fought a major war in the summer of 2002. Musharraf said war was “very close.” Vajpayee called it “a touch-and-go affair.” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca stated that the two sides had “barely averted war.”96

The 26/11 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks On November 26, 2008, 10 LeT terrorists went on a killing spree in Mumbai, India’s commercial capital and second-largest city. Armed with AK-56 automatic assault rifles, pistols, hand grenades, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and supplied with satellite phones and Global Positioning System (GPS) sets,97 they murdered 166 people and wounded

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

23

more than 300  in a 60-hour rampage. They departed from Karachi by boat, hijacked an Indian vessel at sea, arrived in Mumbai under cover of darkness, split into four teams, and systematically carried out their assaults at multiple locations, including the luxury Oberoi-Trident and Taj Mahal Palace hotels; a major railroad station, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus; a high-end restaurant popular with tourists, the Leopold Cafe; and a hostel run by the Jewish Chabad-­Lubavitch movement.98 The terrorists were directed during the attacks in real time by LeT handlers in Pakistan, and live television coverage added to the shock value of the assaults. Similar to the way Americans remember “9/11,” Indians recall the Mumbai carnage simply as “26/11.” The attacks did not ignite a full-blown war scare like Twin Peaks, nor did they set off an Indo-Pakistani military conflict like Kargil. However, “there was a sense of crisis, even if less severe than in previous confrontations.”99 A subsequent U.S.  Ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer, said of 26/11: “[the terrorists] almost started a war between Pakistan and India that might have resulted in some kind of a nuclear war.”100 The massacre generated extreme pressure on the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to retaliate against Pakistan with military force, which in turn stoked escalating Indo-Pakistani tensions.101 Discussions between Indian leaders focused on India’s “options, the likely Pakistani response, and the escalation that could occur.”102 Senior national security officials met on November 29, the last day of the bloodshed, to discuss possible Indian responses. Although Singh made it clear at the outset that he was not in favor of another massive mobilization of forces like Operation Parakram in 2001–2002, more limited military options were thoroughly discussed.103 Air Chief Marshall Fali Major reportedly “suggested striking terrorist camps” on Pakistan’s side of the LOC in Kashmir.104 Another credible account of the meeting says that while Major did say that Indian ground-attack aircraft could hit training camps across the LOC, he added that “precise coordinates and adequate imaging weren’t available.”105 Missile strikes against Pakistani targets were another option, but “no one could guarantee missile strikes wouldn’t escalate into war, or even a nuclear exchange.”106 As for potential ground operations, the Chief of Army Staff (COAS) subsequently raised the possibility of a limited ground strike approximately 10–15 kilometers into Pakistani Punjab.107 According to one account, however, both he and Major “made it clear that they lacked the wherewithal for war if Pakistan decided to escalate matters, adding that the Pakistan Army was unlikely to not retaliate.”108 In another meeting between Defense

24 

D. T. HAGERTY

Minister A.K. Antony and the service chiefs, Antony asked again about the prospect of limited ground strikes. One reliable account has it that the army chief said “it would be a ‘highly risky’ affair. … In the Army’s assessment, any strike would definitely lead to an escalated military conflict and the government ought to be prepared for it. The air force agreed that a strong Pakistani reaction was certain.”109 In sum, secret Indian deliberations about the use of force in response to the 26/11 attacks were characterized by deep uncertainty about the likelihood and nature of Pakistani retaliation, leavened with worst-case expectations of significant escalation potential. One thorough study of the 26/11 episode argues that “Indian officials were genuinely conflicted about how to respond to Pakistan. They certainly did not want to risk a nuclear exchange. … But they did not want their country to appear weak.”110 As a consequence of this dilemma, senior Indian officials signaled mixed messages regarding their intentions, especially in the early days following the attacks. On the one hand, they periodically issued warnings that all options, including military ones, were on the table.111 On the other hand, Indian officials repeatedly maintained that the political leadership had decided against military action.112 Meanwhile, reputable media accounts in early December tended to focus on the possibility of so-called surgical strikes against “militant infrastructure” in Pakistani Kashmir, even as prominent national security figures weighed in with warnings about the dangerous consequences of even limited attacks.113 Across the border, Pakistani leaders, uncertain which of these messages were authentic, grew fearful that India was gearing up for a military response and braced themselves for an attack.114 One retrospective account suggests that both the Indian and Pakistani air forces raised their alert levels “during and immediately after the attacks,” and that Pakistan put its “advance ground units on alert.”115 Pakistan’s concerns about Indian military action drove esteemed nuclear scientist Samar Mubarakmand to note in a television interview that Pakistan was “capable of launching a nuclear missile against India with ten minutes’ notice,” and that “the force that launched first had an advantage.”116 As in 1999 and 2001–2002, U.S. policymakers were quick to mobilize in an effort to prevent Indo-Pakistani tensions from spiraling into war. Within 24 hours of the attacks, President Bush had spoken with both the Indian and Pakistani leaders by telephone. He counseled restraint and offered investigative resources to India. The administration also began to coordinate with President-elect Barack Obama, who would inherit the

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

25

aftermath of the crisis in January 2009.117 An FBI team arrived in Mumbai on December 1.118 U.S. decision-makers initially feared that India might carry out air strikes on LeT camps in Pakistan. LeT’s “home base” was in Muridke, Punjab, in a heavily populated area about 20  miles north of Lahore. Said one official: “It would have meant a conventional war or worse. Plus the bad guys would have been long gone.”119 Another concern was that Pakistan might try to preempt limited Indian Army thrusts across the international border, often referred to under the moniker of “Cold Start.”120 U.S. analysts tried hard to read Indian intentions as the confrontation unfolded, but their view inside the CCS was “incredibly murky.”121 As one granular narrative summarizes U.S. perceptions, “The Mumbai attacks sparked concerns about a replay of escalatory actions by India and Pakistan” during the Twin Peaks crisis. “Indian officials were … blaming Pakistan for the attacks. Any conflict between the two nuclear-­ armed neighbors could get out of hand. Pakistani leaders vowed to respond to any attack by India as a threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty and survival, while Indian leaders pointedly did not take off the table limited-­ war scenarios.”122 Senior U.S. officials also traveled to the region to meet with their Indian and Pakistani counterparts. Secretary Rice interrupted a trip to Europe to meet with Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on December 3. She cautioned New Delhi against actions that might produce “unintended consequences.” At the same time, Adm. Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), was in Islamabad meeting with President Zardari and COAS Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Rice then traveled from India to Pakistan, where she met with Zardari, Kayani, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, and Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.123 Immediately after the Mumbai attacks, India had demanded that Pakistan apprehend 20 high-profile terrorist suspects and extradite them to India for trial.124 Rice and Mullen complemented that message by urging their Pakistani interlocutors to aggressively investigate and bring to justice those ­responsible for the carnage, with Rice adding that there was “irrefutable evidence” that Pakistani nationals were involved in the massacre.125 Days later, U.S. Sen. John McCain, visiting Islamabad after talks in New Delhi, warned Pakistani leaders that India “would be left with no choice but to carry out surgical strikes against” targets linked to the Mumbai attacks unless Pakistan cracked down on terrorist elements.126 In sum, U.S. crisis-­ management priorities in early December were to convince New Delhi not to respond militarily to 26/11 and to “get the Pakistanis to cough up

26 

D. T. HAGERTY

people and clamp down [on terrorists].” In response, Islamabad—which denied any connection to the Mumbai tragedy—went through the motions of arresting 22 LeT members, banning LeT affiliate Jamaat-ud-­ Dawa (“Society for Proselytization”), and putting LeT leader Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. But, there was “no systematic crackdown on LeT’s infrastructure and apparatus in Pakistan.”127 A week after the LeT attacks, it looked as though the danger of a major crisis had been contained. An Indian diplomat emphasized to his counterparts in the U.S. embassy in Islamabad that “India has issued no war warnings to Pakistan and had not mobilized its forces.”128 Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon subsequently told U.S. diplomats that “India, in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, had consciously not built up troops on the border, as it had following the 2001 attack on its Parliament.”129 New Delhi did, however, put on hold the “Composite Dialogue,” a diplomatic process begun in 2004 that had generated some momentum in attempting to resolve a number of India-Pakistan political conflicts. As U.S. diplomats in New Delhi explained, “the Mumbai terrorist attacks deeply angered the Indian public. This time, in addition to the reactions against Pakistan, Indians directed a new level of fury at their own political establishment, which they feel failed to protect them.” The “public’s anger pushed” Prime Minister Singh to “shelve” the dialogue.130 In a forceful speech in Parliament on December 11, Singh described Pakistan as the “epicenter of terrorism,” warned that Indian restraint should not be “misconstrued as a sign of weakness” and demanded that the “infrastructure of terrorism” in Pakistan be “dismantled permanently.” But, the bulk of the prime minister’s speech focused on the necessity of domestic security reforms and improving future efforts to prevent attacks.131 Generally speaking, New Delhi’s “focus was primarily on domestic security measures, rather than on military action or on coercive threats aimed at Pakistan. … The Indians took no rhetorical or military steps to threaten to attack Pakistan as they did during the 2001–2002 crisis.”132 Still, tension lingered into mid-December and beyond. Islamabad claimed that Indian fighter jets violated Pakistani airspace on December 13.133 Alongside media reports that “Indian air force units were placed on alert for possible strikes on suspected terrorist camps inside Pakistan,”134 this heightened the tension among Pakistani decision-makers. The Pakistan Air Force (PAF) carried out exercises over major northern cities and Kashmir on December 22, and on December 23, the head of India’s Western Air Command, Air Marshal P.K.  Barbora, said that India had

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

27

“earmarked” 5000 Pakistani targets for air strikes.135 At the same time, Pakistani COAS Kayani warned that Pakistani military forces would “retaliate within minutes” if India carried out a surgical strike within Pakistan.136 In late December, the Indian Army extended the presence of two brigades in Rajasthan after scheduled seasonal exercises.137 In response, Islamabad moved some 5000–7000 troops from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), bordering Afghanistan, eastward to positions along the LOC and the Punjab frontier.138 Senior Pakistani officials asked the Indian side to pull its forces back from the border area, and repeated that Pakistan would meet any Indian aggression, even surgical strikes, with quick retaliation. Still, the two sides continued to communicate directly in an effort to ease the tension. On December 26, for example, the Indian High Commissioner in Islamabad told the Pakistani foreign secretary “that India had no plans to go to war.”139 With the arrival of the new year, hostilities gradually abated. India had once again chosen not to retaliate militarily in the face of egregious provocation by Pakistan-based terrorists.

The Uri Attack and Indian “Surgical Strikes” In the pre-dawn hours of September 18, 2016, four guerrillas from Pakistan attacked an Indian army encampment roughly 6 kilometers from the LOC. The attackers, armed with grenades and assault rifles, slaughtered 19 Indian soldiers and wounded 20, before themselves being killed in a 3-hour gun battle. The scene of the carnage, a brigade headquarters, was unusually crowded at the time with two battalions of soldiers rotating in and out. Many of the casualties had been sleeping in tents and other temporary shelters, which quickly caught fire when the attackers used incendiary ammunition. The assault at Uri was India’s largest mass-­ casualty attack since Mumbai in 2008 and the deadliest raid on an Indian base in Kashmir since 2002. It was carried out in the context of a rapidly deteriorating security situation in Indian Kashmir since the July 8 killing of a Hizbul Mujahideen commander, Burhan Wani, in a shootout with security forces. Since Wani’s death, more than 80 people had been killed and thousands more wounded in hostilities between protesters and government forces. The attack also followed on the heels of cross-border strikes on an Indian police station at Gurdaspur in July 2015 and an IAF base at Pathankot in January 2016, both in Punjab. Seven Indians were killed in each of those assaults.140

28 

D. T. HAGERTY

The Uri massacre caused an outcry in India. The number of dead and wounded, and the gruesome manner in which they were killed or injured, generated heated demands for a punitive response by the BJP government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Elected in 2014, Modi had offered Pakistan several olive branches in an attempt to stabilize Indo-Pakistani relations, but his efforts had come to naught. Modi had been critical of the previous government of Manmohan Singh for not retaliating more forcefully to Pakistani provocations like the Mumbai attacks of 2008. Modi’s supporters strongly approved of his more muscular disposition, and the Indian media in Uri’s aftermath were filled with breathless speculation about strikes against “terrorist infrastructure” on the Pakistani side of the LOC. Hours after the attack, Modi pledged that “those behind this despicable act will not go unpunished.” The BJP’s national general secretary, Ram Madhav, added fuel to the fire by declaring: “For one tooth, the complete jaw. [The] days of so-called strategic restraint are over.” India’s DGMO said that the attackers were “foreign terrorists” whose weapons had “Pakistani markings.”141 Indian home minister Rajnath Singh was more explicit, tweeting that “Pakistan is a terrorist state.”142 As in previous crises, India’s national security leadership gathered quickly to discuss “possible long-term options to retaliate against jihadist logistics and the Pakistani military infrastructure.” In a September 19 meeting at Modi’s residence, the prime minister, Home Minister Singh, Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval were told by the senior military leadership that Pakistan had “raised its defensive posture along the LOC” by “fortifying its positions,” making an Indian military response risky.”143 On September 22, the Indian DGMO, Lt. Gen. Ranbir Singh, briefed Modi and his national security team more specifically on “LOC strike options.”144 An American analyst captured the dilemma faced by New Delhi: “India still lacks military options that could satisfy its strategic objectives, the first of which is to get the Pakistani army to demobilize the most potent anti-­India militant groups.” Punitive retaliation “robust enough to really harm the Pakistani military could also leave that military unwilling and unable to demobilize the most potent anti-India militants in Pakistan. And even if Indian forces had the ability to move into Pakistani territory to inflict major damage on the army, Pakistan could use its nuclear weapons to stave off defeat. … But a restrained use of force could signal lack of Indian resolve, thereby emboldening the Pakistani military.”145

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

29

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s leadership vigorously denied any involvement in the Uri attack, instead criticizing New Delhi for the ongoing violence in Kashmir. In a speech before the U.N. General Assembly on September 21, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif argued that “a new generation of Kashmiris has risen spontaneously against India’s illegal occupation—demanding freedom from occupation. Burhan Wani, the young leader murdered by Indian forces, has emerged as the symbol of the latest Kashmiri intifada,” while New Delhi has responded with “brutal repression by India’s occupation force of over half a million soldiers.”146 During the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) meeting in New York, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with both Sharif and Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, urging them to avoid escalating the conflict in Kashmir.147 At home, Pakistani leaders girded themselves for a potential Indian attack while at the same time issuing their by-now characteristic nuclear deterrence threats. Army Chief Raheel Sharif said that his forces were in their “highest state of vigilance” along the border.148 PAF fighter aircraft practiced takeoffs and landings on a major six-lane highway connecting Islamabad and Lahore, in the process blocking traffic and closing commercial airspace. Although officials characterized this as a “routine” air defense exercise, it was anything but.149 Meanwhile, in a September 26 television interview, Pakistan’s Defense Minister, Khawaja Muhammad Asif, said, “Tactical [nuclear] weapons, our programmes that we have developed, they have been developed for our protection. We haven’t kept the devices that we have just as showpieces. But if our safety is threatened, we will annihilate them [India].”150 However, unbeknownst to Islamabad, Modi had already made his decision in favor of a limited military strike and conveyed it to his senior-most advisers on September 23.151 On September 29, Indian DGMO Singh announced that the army had carried out “surgical strikes” the night before against terrorist “launch pads” on the Pakistani side of the LOC. “Terrorist teams,” he said, “had positioned themselves” at these staging areas “with an aim to carry out infiltration and terrorist strikes in Jammu and Kashmir and in various other metros in our country.” Singh claimed that the Indian strikes had caused “significant casualties,” but pointedly added that the army had no “plans for continuation of further operations.” Lastly, Singh said that he had informed the Pakistani DGMO of the Indian operation and “explained our concerns.”152 In the following days, details of the “surgical strikes” emerged in the Indian and international media, although many of them were contradictory or simply mistaken.153 Apparently, some 70–80 Special

30 

D. T. HAGERTY

Forces commandos crossed the LOC on foot under cover of Indian mortar and machine gun fire. Armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles, pistols, and plastic explosives, the soldiers advanced some 1–3  kilometers into Pakistan-administered territory and attacked six to seven launch pads—essentially safe houses where militants gather prior to infiltration across the LOC. Early Indian estimates put the number of militants killed in the raids as high as 45, which is almost certainly inflated. The Economist’s estimate of “a dozen or fewer” killed is probably closer to the mark.154 While some early accounts of the Indian strikes portrayed them as a fundamental change in New Delhi’s policy regarding Pakistan’s support for subconventional operations across the LOC,155 it was soon revealed that India had occasionally executed its own shallow incursions across the LOC to prevent and disrupt such operations.156 What was different this time was the “public—and political” announcement of the strikes.157 Of all the available military options, Modi had chosen the one that was least likely to escalate into a larger conflict with Pakistan,158 while at the same time sending a message to Islamabad, the international community, and Modi’s frenzied domestic audience. Indeed, the option he chose was so limited that Pakistani leaders were able to deny that it even happened, so as to preempt pressures from their own public to retaliate in ways that might spark escalation. Pakistani officials termed India’s assertion of “surgical strikes” a “fabrication,” claiming instead that two of their soldiers were killed by Indian forces firing across the LOC.159 New Delhi had also received diplomatic cover from the United States in the form of a telephone conversation between National Security Adviser Doval and his U.S. counterpart, Susan Rice. In that conversation, which seems to have occurred just before the strikes, Rice “strongly condemned” the Uri attack and highlighted the “danger that cross-border terrorism poses to the region.”160 Indian officials publicized Rice’s message at the same time that the surgical strikes were announced, leaving the strong impression that Washington supported India’s right to self-defense and did not oppose the attacks. In the immediate aftermath of India’s surgical strikes, both sides braced themselves for more violence. Fearing a Pakistani reprisal, India ordered an evacuation of communities in a 10-kilometer belt along the Punjab border between the two countries.161 New Delhi also raised the alert status of its Western and Northern commands and canceled leaves in both commands,162 while the Pakistan Army maintained its own heightened state of

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

31

readiness and also canceled all leaves.163 Clashes continued in their “normal” fashion across the LOC, with regular exchanges of small arms and mortar fire.164 At the same time, the two governments indicated that they did not wish to see the fighting escalate. In the first week of October, the Indian and Pakistani national security advisers spoke by phone multiple times and agreed to defuse tensions along the LOC.165 Modi’s decision to retaliate in a limited way across the LOC, targeting militants rather than Pakistan army forces, combined with Islamabad’s decision to deny that the surgical strikes had even taken place, dampened what otherwise might have developed into a full-blown Indo-Pakistani crisis. In sum, during the two decades after New Delhi and Islamabad went overtly nuclear in 1998, India suffered four major subconventional attacks emanating from Pakistan. In each case, a crisis ensued, with India’s political leadership facing intense pressure to retaliate with decisive military force. Every time, however, the Indian prime minister chose more circumscribed options with limited potential for escalation to major warfare and, possibly, the use of nuclear weapons. Ultimately, despite the predictions of many pundits and analysts in South Asia and elsewhere, all of the crises ran their course without generating such dire outcomes. The next chapter comparatively analyzes the four most prominent arguments scholars have made in their attempts to explain Indian forbearance in the face of Pakistan provocations.

Notes 1. For an overview, see Sumit Ganguly, Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 2. Detailed accounts of the Kargil conflict include: Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India–Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 143–66; Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage, 2000); S.  Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 117–31; Peter R. Lavoy, ed., Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and Consequences of the Kargil Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); V.P.  Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2006); Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir (New York: Free Press, 2006), 87–98; Ashley J. Tellis, C. Christine Fair,

32 

D. T. HAGERTY

and Jamison Jo Medby, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2001); and Nasim Zehra, From Kargil to the Coup: Events that Shook Pakistan (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2018). 3. On Pakistan’s support for JeM and other terrorist groups, see S.  Paul Kapur, Jihad as Grand Strategy: Islamist Militancy, National Security, and the Pakistani State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 4. Detailed narratives of the Twin Peaks crisis include: P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Stephen P.  Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2007), 149–83; Ganguly and Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry, 167–86; Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent, 131–39; Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, “U.S.  Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” The Stimson Center, Washington, DC, September 2006; and V.K. Sood and Pravin Sawhney, Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished (New Delhi: Sage, 2003). 5. On LeT and its connections to the Pakistani state, see C. Christine Fair, In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Stephen Tankel, Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). 6. Detailed accounts of the 2008 Mumbai attacks include: Myra MacDonald, Defeat Is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War (London: Hurst, 2017), 189–207; Shivshankar Menon, Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2016), 60–81; Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, The Unfinished Crisis: U.S. Crisis Management after the 2008 Mumbai Attacks (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2012); and Bruce Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon: America, India, and Pakistan to the Brink and Back (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2013), 1–25. 7. For overviews of the Uri attack and Indian response, see: Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland, eds., Investigating Crises: South Asia’s Lessons, Evolving Dynamics, and Trajectories (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2018); Nitin A.  Gokhale, Securing India the Modi Way: Pathankot, Surgical Strikes and More (New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2017), 1–52; MacDonald, Defeat Is an Orphan, 255–61. 8. According to John H. Gill, even though the NLI was “classed as a paramilitary force in 1999,” its “battalions were incorporated into regular army brigades along with regular army battalions, so this was a distinction ­without a substantial difference.” See his “Provocation, War, and Restraint under the Nuclear Shadow: The Kargil Conflict 1999,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42 (March 2019): 5.

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

33

9. Pakistan’s motives for launching the Kargil initiative are discussed in Feroz Hassan Khan, Peter R. Lavoy, and Christopher Clary, “Pakistan’s Motivations and Calculations for the Kargil Conflict,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 64–91. 10. Lavoy, “Introduction,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 19. Gill puts the “total number of intruders,” including escorts, porters, and other support personnel, at “at least 1500–2000.” “Military Operations in the Kargil Conflict,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 96. 11. Gill, “Military Operations,” 99. 12. In April 1984, Indian military forces occupied the Siachen Glacier in far northern Kashmir, just south of China’s Xinjiang province. Pakistani forces soon followed suit, and sporadic battles have been fought between the two sides since June 1984. The glacier occupies some 1000 square miles of territory in the Karakoram Mountains, much of which lies at elevations above 17,000 feet. The question of which country is sovereign over the Siachen Glacier is a dispute within a dispute, because both India and Pakistan claim all of Kashmir; each country also claims complete control over the glacier. The Siachen conflict has its roots in the vagueness of the 1949 Karachi Agreement, which demarcated the Cease-Fire Line (CFL) between India and Pakistan after the first Kashmir war. That pact delineated the ostensibly “temporary” boundary between the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir and Azad (“Free”) Kashmir and the Northern Areas, both held by Pakistan. When the Cease-Fire Line was drawn, roughly 40 miles of the boundary leading up to the Chinese border was left undelineated because the area “was considered an inaccessible no-man’s land.” The issue remained unresolved by the Simla Agreement of 1972, which replaced the Cease-Fire Line with the new LOC without addressing the matter of the undrawn boundary. See Robert G. Wirsing, Pakistan’s Security under Zia: The Policy Imperatives of a Peripheral Asian State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 143–94. 13. John Lancaster, “U.S.  Defused Kashmir Crisis on Brink of War,” Washington Post, July 26, 1999. 14. Ramesh Vinayak, “Nasty Surprise,” India Today International, May 31, 1999, 21; Harinder Baweja and Ramesh Vinayak, “Peak by Peak,” India Today International, June 14, 1999, 17–21. 15. Manoj Joshi and Harinder Baweja, “Blasting Peace,” India Today International, June 7, 1999, 12–17. See also Gill, “Military Operations,” 106–7. 16. Joshi and Baweja, “Blasting Peace”; Michael Fathers, “On the Brink,” Time, June 7, 1999, 48–49. 17. Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning, 105; Zehra, From Kargil to the Coup, pp. 216–17.

34 

D. T. HAGERTY

18. Saba Naqvi Bhaumik, “The Dove at War,” India Today International, July 12, 1999, 26–27. 19. Lancaster, “U.S. Defused Kashmir Crisis on Brink of War.” 20. Gill, “Military Operations,” 105. 21. Bruce Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,” Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2002, 4. 22. Lavoy, “Introduction,” 11, note 31. 23. Tellis, Fair, and Medby, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella, 15. 24. Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India (New Delhi: Rupa, 2006), 320. 25. Malik, Kargil, 259–60. 26. Gill, “Military Operations,” 111. See p. 112, notes 64 and 66 for media references. For an analysis, including many instances of disorganized nuclear signaling, see Timothy D.  Hoyt, “Kargil: The Nuclear Dimension,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 144–70. A concise overview of Kargil’s nuclear dimensions is in Todd S. Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 147–55. 27. Manoj Joshi and Raj Chengappa, “The Marathon War,” India Today International, June 21, 1999, 12–13. 28. Baweja and Vinayak, “Peak by Peak,” 18. 29. Harinder Baweja, “Slow but Steady,” India Today International, June 28, 1999, 21; Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning, 105. 30. Malik, Kargil, 146–47. 31. Lavoy, “Introduction,” 21. See Gill, “Military Operations,” 114–19, for a detailed discussion of the Indian Army’s increasingly successful efforts to dislodge the invaders. 32. Raj Chengappa, “Will the War Spread?” India Today International, July 5, 1999, 14–17. 33. For an overview, see Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2004), 154–69. 34. Raj Chengappa, “Minefield Ahead,” India Today International, June 7, 1999, 17. 35. Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 4. 36. John W.  Garver, “The Restoration of Sino-Indian Comity Following India’s Nuclear Tests,” China Quarterly, no. 168 (December 2001): 882. 37. Raj Chengappa, “Face-Saving Retreat,” India Today International, July 19, 1999, 16. 38. Garver, “Sino-Indian Comity,” 882. 39. Raj Chengappa, “On High Ground,” India Today International, June 28, 1999, 25.

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

35

40. The most authoritative account of the Kargil conflict, Lavoy’s Asymmetric Warfare, concludes that “Indian troops were within days of opening another front across the LOC and possibly the international border, an act that could have triggered a large-scale conventional military engagement, which in turn might have escalated to an exchange of recently tested Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons.” Lavoy, “Introduction,” 2. 41. Chengappa, “Face-Saving Retreat,” 17. 42. Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 6. 43. Chengappa, “Will the War Spread?” 14. 44. Lancaster, “U.S. Defused Kashmir Crisis on Brink of War.” 45. Garver, “Sino-Indian Comity,” 884. 46. Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 6, 7. 47. Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 8, 9. 48. Musharraf, In the Line of Fire, 97–98. 49. Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 9–12. 50. Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 11. 51. Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to Be a Nuclear Power (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000), 437. The three delivery systems were the Prithvi and Agni missiles, as well as the Mirage-2000 attack aircraft. Lavoy contends that “neither Pakistan nor India readied its nuclear arms for employment.” “Introduction,” 11. 52. Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 11. 53. Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit,” 12. 54. “Press Briefing by Senior Administration Official on President’s Meeting with Prime Minister Sharif of Pakistan,” Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, Washington, DC, July 4, 1999, http://www.fas.org/ news/pakistan/1999/990704-pak-wh2.htm. 55. “India Claims Control of Key Kashmir Sector,” CNN Interactive, July 10, 1999. 56. “India, Pakistan Agree to End Kashmir Fighting,” CNN Interactive, July 11, 1999. 57. Nawaz Sharif, “Prime Minister’s Address to the Nation,” July 12, 1999, http://www.pak.gov.pk. 58. K. Alan Kronstadt, “Pakistan–US Relations,” Issue Brief, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, October 28, 2002, 9. 59. Rama Lakshmi, “India Wages a War of Words,” Washington Post, December 19, 2001. 60. Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 52. 61. Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram, 73–79. 62. John Lancaster, “Pakistan to Follow India in Removing Troops from Border,” Washington Post, October 18, 2002.

36 

D. T. HAGERTY

63. Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent, 134. 64. Hoyt, “Kargil: The Nuclear Dimension,” 160, note 58. 65. John Lancaster, “India to Remove Some Forces from Border with Pakistan,” Washington Post, October 17, 2002. The oft-quoted figure of one million Indian and Pakistani soldiers facing off against one another included troops in Kashmir. 66. Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W.  Norton, 2013), 146. (Sagan) 67. Devin T. Hagerty, “The Nuclear Holdouts: India, Israel, and Pakistan,” in Slaying the Nuclear Dragon: Disarmament Dynamics in the TwentyFirst Century, ed. Tanya Ogilvie-White and David Santoro (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 223–24. 68. Praveen Swami, “A War to End a War: The Causes and Outcomes of the 2001–2 India-Pakistan Crisis,” in Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: Crisis Behaviour and the Bomb, ed. Sumit Ganguly and S.  Paul Kapur (London: Routledge, 2009), 144. 69. Kanti Bajpai, “To War or Not to War: The India–Pakistan Crisis of 2001– 2,” in Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia, ed. Ganguly and Kapur, 165. 70. Rajesh Basrur, South Asia’s Cold War: Nuclear Weapons and Conflict in Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge, 2008), 61. 71. Steve Coll, “The Stand-Off,” New Yorker, February 13, 2006, https:// www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/02/13/the-stand-off. 72. Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 52, 24–25. 73. Celia W.  Dugger, “Indian General Talks Bluntly of War and a Nuclear Threat,” New York Times, January 12, 2002. 74. LeT played a small part in the Parliament attack. Tankel, Storming the World Stage, 112. 75. Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 25–26. 76. Condoleezza Rice, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington (New York: Broadway, 2011), 123. 77. President Pervez Musharraf’s Address to the Nation, January 12, 2002, http://www.pak.gov.pk/President_Addresses/President_address.htm. 78. Edward Luce, “India Prepares for Strike on Camps,” Financial Times, May 17, 2002. 79. Steve Coll, “Between India and Pakistan, a Changing Role for the US,” Washington Post, May 26, 2002; Nayak and Krepon, “U.S.  Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 19. Musharraf recalls that he “personally conveyed messages to Prime Minister Vajpayee through every international leader who came to Pakistan, that if Indian

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

37

troops moved a single step across the international border or Line of Control, they should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan.” See Dinshaw Mistry, “Tempering Optimism about Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” Security Studies 18, no. 1 (2009), 171. 80. Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 154. 81. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 275. 82. G.V. Gireesh, “Game of Patience,” Outlook, May 27, 2002, 34–39. 83. Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, “Nuclear Doctrine, Declaratory Policy, and Escalation Control,” in Escalation Control and the Nuclear Option in South Asia, ed. Michael Krepon, Rodney W.  Jones, and Ziad Haider (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2004), 109. 84. Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram, 82–83. Pakistan also moved its nuclear-capable missiles in May. Mistry, “Tempering Optimism,” 172. 85. Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 350. 86. Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 55. Also see Rahul Bedi, “The Military Dynamics,” Frontline, June 8–21, 2002. 87. Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 33–36. A former U.S. official, Bruce Riedel, recounts that both Powell and Armitage later told him “that they thought that war was a very real danger and that if it began, it would go to the brink of nuclear war, if not over.” Avoiding Armageddon, 151. 88. “A Surgical Strike Is the Answer,” Outlook, June 10, 2002. 89. Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 33. 90. Michael Cohen, When Proliferation Causes Peace: The Psychology of Nuclear Crises (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 141. 91. Ganguly and Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry, 177–80. 92. Rahul Bedi and Anton La Guardia, “Pakistan Steps Back from Brink,” Daily Telegraph, June 8, 2002. 93. “Musharraf: Here’s What I’ll Do,” Washington Post, June 23, 2002. 94. “Spokesman Richard Boucher,” State Department Daily Briefing, October 31, 2002, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2002/14832. htm. 95. Lancaster, “Pakistan to Follow India in Removing Troops from Border.” 96. “Musharraf: Here’s What I’ll Do”; “Vajpayee: Keep Your Promise,” Washington Post, June 23, 2002; Christina B. Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs, “Deepening US Engagement in South Asia,” remarks to the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC, October 10, 2002.

38 

D. T. HAGERTY

97. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 1; Angel Rabasa et al., The Lessons of Mumbai (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009), 4; Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon, 5; 98. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 6; Rabasa, Lessons of Mumbai, 4. 99. Rajesh Basrur et al., The 2008 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks: Strategic Fallout (Singapore: S.  Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, 2009), 19. 100. “Mumbai Attack Might Have Led to Ind-Pak Nuclear War: Roemer,” Indian Express, September 1, 2011. 101. Srinath Raghavan, “Terror, Force and Diplomacy,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 49 (December 6–12, 2008): 10–12; Helene Cooper, “South Asia’s Deadly Dominoes,” New York Times, December 7, 2008. 102. Menon, Choices, 62. 103. Pranab Dhal Samanta, “26/11: How India Debated a War with Pakistan That November,” Indian Express, November 26, 2010. 104. Samanta, “26/11”; Pravin Sawhney, “Whither Our War Preparedness?” Pioneer, June 4, 2015. 105. Praveen Swami, “Talking to Pakistan in Its Language,” The Hindu, June 11, 2014. 106. Swami, “Talking to Pakistan in Its Language.” 107. Sawhney, “Whither Our War Preparedness?” 108. Sawhney, “Whither Our War Preparedness?” 109. Samanta, “26/11.” 110. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 44. 111. Raj Chengappa and Saurabh Shukla, “Reining in the Rogue,” India Today, December 4, 2008; Basrur, 2008 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, 18; Samuel Black, “Appendix I: The Structure of South Asian Crises from Brasstacks to Mumbai,” in Crises in South Asia: Trends and Potential Consequences, ed. Michael Krepon and Nathan Cohn (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2011), 52, 53. 112. Rama Lakshmi, “Cabinet Member Resigns amid Anger in India,” Washington Post, December 1, 2008; “Indian Defense Chief: No Plans for Military Action.” Associated Press, December 16, 2008. 113. Chengappa and Shukla, “Reining in the Rogue.” This piece quotes former Indian Army chief V.P. Malik as saying: “Such strikes are a risky gambit,” as they “can trigger a full scale war.” 114. “We Feared Indian Strike: ISI Chief,” The Hindu, January 8, 2009. 115. Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon, 22. 116. Basrur, 2008 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, 22. 117. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 13. 118. Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 51.

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

39

119. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 27. 120. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 27–28. In the early 2000s, frustrated by their inability to punish Pakistan for its persistent subconventional aggression, Indian military planners developed ideas for conventional retaliatory options that (they hoped) would not cross Islamabad’s nuclear “red lines.” For more details, see George Perkovich and Toby Dalton, Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016), 73–103, and Christopher Clary and Vipin Narang, “Doctrine, Capabilities, and (In)Stability in South Asia,” in Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, ed. Krepon and Thompson, 94–99. The so-called Cold Start option refers to the rapid unleashing of shallow armored incursions along a broad front, intended to seize limited territory and impose a political settlement on Pakistan. In theory, such a quick, measured response could be undertaken before third parties (e.g., the United States) can get involved in crisis management. Indian political leaders have been skeptical of these designs, and Cold Start has never been official Indian doctrine, but Pakistani military planners had repeatedly expressed to U.S. officials their concerns regarding Cold Start. 121. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 19. 122. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 7, 28. 123. Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 51. 124. Basrur, 2008 Mumbai Terrorist Attacks, 22; Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 19. 125. Emily Wax and Rama Lakshmi, “As Rice Presses Pakistan, Mumbai Residents Hold Massive Rally,” Washington Post, December 4, 2008; Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 51. 126. Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 42. See also Muhammad Saleh Zaafir, “India Planned Strike on Muridke after Mumbai Attacks, Reveals Kasuri,” The News International, August 28, 2015. 127. Riedel, Avoiding Armageddon, 21. 128. U.S. Embassy Islamabad to Department of State, “GOI Embassy Draws Distinction between ISI and Civilian Leaders,” secret cable, December 5, 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/30/pakistanusforeignpolicy1. 129. U.S.  Embassy New Delhi to Department of State, “Indian Foreign Secretary: ‘Huge Stake’ in Special Representative Holbrooke’s Success,” secret cable, February 17, 2009, http://theguardian.com/world/usembassy-cables-documents/192309. 130. U.S. Embassy New Delhi to Department of State, “India Scenesetter for Special Representative Holbrooke,” secret cable, February 12, 2009, http://theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-document/1991731.

40 

D. T. HAGERTY

131. “Excerpts of Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s Intervention in the Lok Sabha during Discussion on the Recent Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai,” New Delhi, December 11, 2008, https://www.indianembassy.org/ archives_details.php?nid=940. 132. Sumit Ganguly and S.  Paul Kapur, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 72–73. 133. Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 52. 134. K. Alan Kronstadt, “Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai, India, and Implications for U.S.  Interests,” CRS Report for Congress, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC, December 19, 2008, 12. 135. Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 53. 136. “Pakistani Army Warns India of Response,” The Australian, December 24, 2008. 137. Samanta, “26/11.” 138. U.S. Embassy Islamabad to Department of State, “Scenesetter for Special Envoy Holbrooke,” secret cable, February 4, 2009, http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/190330; Richard A. Oppel, Jr. and Salman Masood, “Pakistan Moves Troops amid Tension with India,” New York Times, December 26, 2008. 139. Black, “Structure of South Asian Crises,” 53. 140. Fayaz Bukhari and Rupam Jain, “India Mulls Response after Deadly Kashmir Attack It Blames on Pakistan,” Reuters, September 19, 2016; Pamela Constable and Annie Gowen, “Deadly Attack in Indian Kashmir Renews ‘War of Words’ with Rival Pakistan,” Washington Post, September 20, 2016; “Militants Attack an Indian Army Base,” The Economist, September 19, 2016; George Perkovich, “India’s Options in Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, September 21, 2016. 141. “Rising Tensions in Kashmir,” New York Times, September 23, 2016. 142. “India Backs Off Major Retaliation,” Reuters, September 22, 2016. 143. Praveen Swami, “Uri Terror Attack: Avoid Rash Military Action, Commanders Advise Government,” Indian Express, September 20, 2016. 144. Shishir Gupta, “Mission LOC: How India Punished Pakistan with Surgical Strikes,” Hindustan Times, October 3, 2016. 145. Perkovich, “India’s Options in Pakistan.” 146. “Statement by His Excellency Mr. Muhammad Nawaz Sharif,” General Debate of the 71st Session, UN General Assembly, September 21, 2016. 147. Shubhajit Roy, “John Kerry Spoke to Sushma Twice over Two Days,” Indian Express, September 29, 2016. 148. Annie Gowen, “India’s ‘Surgical Strike’ on Pakistan Territory Hints at New Era for Nuclear-Armed Rivals,” Washington Post, September 30, 2016.

2  INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISES, 1999–2016 

41

149. Pamela Constable and Shaiq Hussain, “Pakistan Prepares for a Possible Indian Attack,” Washington Post, September 22, 2016. 150. TNN, “Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif Threatens to Unleash Nukes Against India,” Times of India, September 29, 2016. 151. Gupta, “Mission LOC”; Nitin A. Gokhale, “The Inside Story of India’s 2016 ‘Surgical Strikes’,” The Diplomat, September 23, 2017. 152. “Transcript of Joint Briefing by MEA and MoD,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi, September 29, 2016. 153. The remainder of this paragraph synthesizes the reporting of reputable journalists and media outlets, which are cited below. 154. Gowen, “India’s ‘Surgical Strike’”; Gupta, “Mission LOC”; Suhasini Haidar and Kallol Bhattacherjee, “Target Terror: India Strikes across LOC,” The Hindu, September 29, 2016; Niharika Mandhana, “India Says It Hit Terrorist Bases in Pakistan-Controlled Kashmir,” Wall Street Journal, September 29, 2016; Manu Pubby, “Army’s Daring Surgical Strike Marks Radical Change in India’s Pakistan Policy,” Economic Times, October 3, 2016; “Reversing Roles,” Economist, October 8, 2016; Sushant Singh, “Inside the Surgical Strike,” Indian Express, October 1, 2016. 155. See, for example, Gowen, “India’s ‘Surgical Strike’” and Pubby, “Army’s Daring Surgical Strike.” 156. “Congress Releases Dates of Cross-LOC Attacks during UPA Regime,” Hindustan Times, October 5, 2016. 157. Manoj Joshi, “Uri Aftermath: Retaliation, With De-Escalation Built In,” The Wire, September 29, 2016. See also: C. Raja Mohan, “Breaking Out of the Box,” Indian Express, October 3, 2016. 158. One very experienced Indian defense correspondent argues that Modi “chose strikes across the LOC as these had been carried out before and the two armies had dealt with such situations without escalating things further.” Raj Chengappa, “Game Changer,” India Today, October 6, 2016. 159. Mandhana, “India Says It Hit Terrorist Bases.” One “senior Pakistani security official” did take the opportunity to warn that if India were to initiate a war, Pakistan “could use tactical nuclear weapons.” Ellen Barry and Salman Masood, “India Claims ‘Surgical Strikes’ across Line of Control in Kashmir,” New York Times, September 29, 2016. 160. “Statement by NSC Spokesperson Ned Price on National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice’s Call with National Security Advisor Ajit Doval of India,” The White House, Washington, DC, September 28, 2016. Barry and Masood, “India Claims ‘Surgical Strikes’ across Line of Control in Kashmir.” 161. “India Strikes Back, Carries Out Surgical Strikes on Terror Launch Pads at LOC,” Times of India, September 29, 2016. 162. Pubby, “Army’s Daring Surgical Strike.”

42 

D. T. HAGERTY

163. ANI, “Aftermath of India’s Surgical Strikes in POK,” Business Standard, October 5, 2016. 164. “Indian and Pakistani Troops Exchange Fire in Kashmir,” Associated Press, October 3, 2016. 165. Samanth Subramaniam, “What Actually Happened in Kashmir,” The Atlantic, October 6, 2016.

CHAPTER 3

Explaining Indian Moderation During Crises, 1999–2016

Abstract  This chapter is a comparative analysis of Indian decision-making in the four crises examined in Chap. 2. It asks why New Delhi consistently chose temperate, measured responses to significant Pakistani and Pakistan-­ abetted provocations. I argue that, in combination, three of the most common explanations—nuclear deterrence, U.S. crisis management, and a lack of favorable conventional military options—best account for Indian forbearance. Of these three causes, the nuclear factor is most important, because the other two are both linked and subservient to it. The Indo-­ Pakistani nuclear competition generates the urgent need for crisis management and sharply diminishes New Delhi’s favorable options for conventional retaliation. The least compelling explanation for Indian moderation is the ostensible doctrine of Indian strategic restraint, which stems from the deterrent power of nuclear weapons, not from any doctrine or abiding principle of Indian strategic culture. Keywords  Kargil conflict • Twin Peaks crisis • Mumbai attack • Uri attack • Nuclear deterrence • Crisis management • Strategic restraint This chapter investigates a question of great importance for the future of deterrence stability in a nuclearized South Asia: Why did New Delhi consistently choose non-escalatory responses in the face of Pakistani aggression between 1999 and 2016? There can be, of course, no mono-causal © The Author(s) 2020 D. T. Hagerty, Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5_3

43

44 

D. T. HAGERTY

explanations for such vital and complex national security decisions. Numerous, varied pressures weigh heavily on decision-makers, and different individuals and organizations prioritize these factors in different orders. In addition, each crisis has its own idiosyncratic contributing factors. Across the four episodes, though, broader patterns emerge from India’s policy choices that narrow causes down to the most essential ones. The explanations most often adduced by scholars for India’s cautious responses to Pakistani and Pakistan-abetted aggression from Kargil through Uri identify four causes: (1) nuclear deterrence, or the fear that more lethal Indian military action would run the risk of Pakistani nuclear retaliation or set off an uncontrollable escalatory process that could lead to a nuclear exchange1; (2) timely and energetic U.S. diplomatic intervention to help manage conflicts and reduce tensions before they escalated to major war2; (3) an Indian “doctrine” of strategic restraint that predisposed political leaders to prefer nonmilitary responses to security challenges emanating from Pakistan3; and (4) a dearth of good conventional military options that would induce Pakistan to cease its provocations without running the risk of conflict escalation to major war, perhaps even to a nuclear exchange.4 My main argument in this chapter has two threads. First, three of these four causes—nuclear deterrence, U.S. crisis management, and the lack of good conventional military options—combine to best explain Indian forbearance in the face of Pakistani provocations. Second, the primary factor causing India to refrain from more vigorous retaliation was nuclear deterrence. U.S. crisis management and the absence of good conventional military options were also influential across the four crises but less so. These two causes are closely tied—and subservient—to the influence of nuclear weapons, which sparked U.S. crisis-management efforts in the first place and severely limited Indian conventional military options. I argue that the least compelling explanation for Indian moderation is the ostensible doctrine of Indian strategic restraint, which stems mainly from the deterrent power of nuclear weapons themselves, not from any doctrine or abiding principle of Indian strategic culture. In the remainder of the chapter, I analyze the robustness of each explanation laid out above. I assess how well these arguments capture the pattern of Indian caution, explain the relationship between the primary and secondary causes noted above, and elaborate at greater length on why nuclear deterrence is the most critical factor in the Indian decision-making calculus. The final section is a brief conclusion.

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

45

Each of the four cases under examination began with aggression against India emanating from Pakistan. Two of the attacks—one by Pakistani forces in 1999, the other by Pakistan-based terrorists in 2016—involved breaches of the line of control (LOC) dividing the two countries’ territory in Kashmir. The other two assaults were carried out in India’s largest cities—New Delhi in 2001 and Mumbai in 2008—by terrorist groups with close ties to ISI. (And the 2001 onslaught was followed by another mass-­casualty attack against an Indian military installation in Kashmir in 2002.) Each of these strikes was severely provocative, because of the large number of fatalities, the audacity of the target, or both. In every case, India’s most senior national security officials convened quickly in the CCS to discuss a range of potential responses.5 The mooted military options tended to involve everything from very limited, post-Uri-like ground incursions across the LOC, to air strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistani Kashmir or Punjab, to a conventional ground invasion across the international border.6 In each case, the Indian prime minister chose a measured response tailored to avoid escalation to major conventional war, and possibly a nuclear exchange.

Nuclear Deterrence Nuclear deterrence was the deepest root of Indian caution. Any analysis of the role of nuclear deterrence on Indian decision-making must begin with a simple truth: It is difficult, if not impossible, to “prove” that nuclear deterrence “worked” in any given case. In order to do so, one would have to compile mutually consistent, authoritative accounts of key decision-­ makers, to the effect that they were primed to order military operations but refrained from acting because they feared nuclear retaliation by the other side or an escalation spiral that might lead to a nuclear exchange. Indian leaders would naturally be reluctant to admit either that they were actively planning military strikes or—more importantly—that they were dissuaded from doing so by Pakistani nuclear weapons, which would signal weakness and set a bad precedent.7 As Robert Jervis writes, “to project an image of high resolve and preserve their bargaining power for future confrontations, states have an interest in minimizing the extent to which others believe that they were influenced by their adversary’s threats, especially threats to use nuclear weapons.”8 What analysts sometimes forget is that it is equally difficult to prove that nuclear deterrence did not work during a particular crisis. Nuclear deterrence is a psychological process

46 

D. T. HAGERTY

wherein one side’s capabilities and signaling work in often subtle ways on the perceptions, fears, and ambitions of the other side’s most important actors. What we are left with, then, is to assess the plausibility of deterrence having worked. Generally speaking, the effects of nuclear deterrence on Indian behavior between 1998 and 2016 were twofold. First, the option of a major conventional military invasion of Pakistani territory (not Pakistani Kashmir) was no longer feasible for Indian decision-makers. This is a stark contrast with South Asia’s pre-nuclear era, when New Delhi launched substantial ground attacks on Pakistani soil during wars over Kashmir in 1965 and Bangladesh in 1971. The implications of this change can scarcely be overstated. What it means is that the punitive option that would best leverage India’s overall advantages in material power over Pakistan, a war of attrition employing India’s greater military and economic resources, was removed from the Indian strategic toolkit. Second, Indian planners were acutely aware that any substantial military response to cross-border provocations raises at least the possibility of an escalation spiral that is fraught with peril and might lead to nuclear war. As a consequence, they carefully chose options that had little or no chance of triggering a process of escalation to conventional, and then possibly nuclear, war. Thus, India’s strategic dilemma in South Asia’s nuclear era is that any military offensive robust enough to compel Pakistan to change its behavior runs the risk of nuclear retaliation, while Indian military strikes that are certain not to provoke a Pakistani nuclear response, or an escalatory spiral that might lead to such a response, are unlikely to change Pakistan’s behavior. During the 1999 Kargil crisis, India responded forcefully after the discovery of Pakistani intruders on its side of the LOC in Kashmir.9 However, India’s military forces had strict orders from the political leadership to carefully limit their operations to the Indian side of the LOC, despite the fact that more aggressive operations across the LOC would have empowered the air force and army to disrupt Pakistani supply lines and shortened the conflict. One source says that Pakistan made four distinct nuclear threats toward India in an attempt to deter New Delhi from escalating the conflict.10 Moreover, each side repositioned its ballistic missiles, raising concerns across the border. These signals seem to have worked: numerous analysts “concur that the prospect of a Pakistani nuclear reprisal deterred New Delhi from escalating the conflict in ways that not only would have worked to India’s tactical advantage, but also would have saved Indian lives.”11 Paul Kapur marshals an impressive roster of senior Indian officials

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

47

who deny that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons deterred Indian forces from breaching the LOC in 1999.12 But, other accounts suggest that some of those same Indian leaders were actually very mindful of the nuclear dangers. One observes that “Prime Minister Vajpayee was known to have seriously considered a Pakistani nuclear strike had India escalated the war.” In a “crucial closed-door meeting, … Vajpayee expressed his apprehension about Pakistan using the nuclear weapon if India enlarged the conflict by crossing the LOC.”13 Army Chief Malik recounts that “the nuclear weapons factor played on the minds of the political decision makers … political and military planning and preparation for conflict escalation had to be carried out carefully. Escalation control was essential.”14 It was not the fear of an immediate Pakistani nuclear reprisal that deterred New Delhi from sending its army across the LOC; it was, rather, Indian officials’ understanding that the war could escalate from there to the international border, and perhaps beyond, into the nuclear realm. Many observers have pointed out that this dynamic represents a distinct shift in Indian behavior since the 1965 war, which began with a clandestine Pakistani effort to foment rebellion among Muslims in Indian Kashmir. For example, Narang writes that “[t]he BJP, fearing Pakistan’s now-credible nuclear threats, curtailed the Indian military’s options to expel Pakistani forces and strictly prevented any operations on or above Pakistani soil. This was in striking contrast to the manner in which India had conducted previous engagements with Pakistan, most notably in response to the 1965 infiltration, which provided the blueprint for Kargil.”15 Although Indian officials are circumspect about admitting that they were deterred by Pakistan from choosing more muscular military options, for the reasons noted above, “it is exceedingly difficult to imagine their having been so restrained in the absence of the dissuasive power of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.”16 The influence of nuclear deterrence on Indian calculations during the 2001–2002 crisis was even more profound. For nine months after the attack on the Parliament complex, India’s and Pakistan’s armed forces were mobilized along the international border and LOC, including long stretches of time at their highest alert levels. India enjoyed an advantage with three strike corps to Pakistan’s two; unlike during Kargil, the Indian strike corps were poised for action in their forward launch areas. Both sides tested nuclear-capable ballistic missiles and repositioned missiles closer to the international border. Pakistan also deployed its nuclear-­ capable attack aircraft to forward bases near the border.17 Senior officials on both sides exchanged pointed, aggressive, nuclear-tinged threats.

48 

D. T. HAGERTY

Pakistani president Musharraf recollects that he transmitted repeated nuclear-deterrent messages to Indian prime minister Vajpayee via intermediaries. One retrospective analysis counted 17 nuclear threats, 9 issued by Pakistan and 8 by India.18 India was ready to launch major conventional military operations, and Vajpayee apparently came very close to making a decision for war in both January and June 2002.19 Instead, he chose peace. Authoritative accounts based on extensive interviews point to nuclear deterrence as the main factor inducing New Delhi to stand down. “The risk of nuclear escalation, [Indian] officials said, was important in shaping Indian policy responses. Vajpayee feared that a full-scale military response to Pakistan-backed terrorism could precipitate a wider conflagration.” Even small reprisals across the LOC could lead to an escalatory spiral—a “possibility unacceptable in a nuclear South Asia.” The same source concludes that “nuclear weapons played a central role in ensuring that the crisis provoked by the terror strike on India’s Parliament did not lead to war.”20 Vajpayee’s National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra, recollects that in January 2002 there “was a 90 per cent possibility of going to war.”21 Mishra says: “we were pretty sure—fairly certain—that if we crossed the border, Pakistan would threaten the use of nuclear weapons. Actual use is uncertain, perhaps doubtful.” In Mishra’s view, “the risk of nuclear weapons use increased sharply as soon as Indian forces crossed either the LOC … or more critically the international border.” He maintains that “there was no such thing as limited war in the India–Pakistan context, arguing that ‘if you cross the [LOC] or the Punjab border there is bound to be an all-out war,’ and that Pakistan would escalate and this would be the mechanism for nuclear use.”22 Narang writes: “Just as in Kargil, India was—at great cost—deterred from employing limited, let alone overwhelming, conventional force against Pakistan across the international border or the LOC. Although several factors may have stopped Delhi from executing Parakram, the role of Pakistan’s asymmetric escalation posture in deterring India’s conventional assault was crucial … Such an attack, as was contemplated in May and June 2002, risked triggering nuclear use and was thus no longer possible.”23 Indian fears were shared across the border. In interviews, President Musharraf has recalled “many sleepless nights” just after the Parliament attack, asking himself whether he would or could deploy nuclear weapons.” He “contemplated the use of nuclear weapons, but decided against doing so out of fear of retaliation.”24 During the second peak of the crisis, Musharraf remembers that he “hardly slept for several nights” and “feared nuclear war.”

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

49

According to Michael Cohen, who interviewed Musharraf,” the latter “knew that any Indian invasion would have quickly triggered Pakistani nuclear escalation,” and he “worried that nuclear war would engulf his country.”25 In sum, the Twin Peaks crisis had the effect of further embedding the fear of nuclear war in the perceptions of Indian and Pakistani officials. As one analysis notes, with each new crisis, the “constraining role of nuclear weapons” became “more explicit.”26 Despite the severity of the Mumbai attacks, the near-crisis that followed receives less attention than Kargil or Twin Peaks. This is ironic, because while this episode was relatively muted, it was muted mainly because—ten years after South Asia’s overt nuclear weaponization and seven years after India’s frustrating Operation Parakram—it had been established that a significant conventional Indian military response was simply out of the question. Thus, the case in which the impact of nuclear deterrence on Indian behavior may have been greatest is the least examined one. Indians were naturally outraged at the slaughter in Mumbai, but Congress Prime Minister Singh decided virtually immediately that his government would react with restraint and deliberation, not repeating the Twin Peaks rush to mobilization, which had cost India dearly in blood, treasure, and reputation. When Indian national security officials met after Mumbai, they discussed military options ranging from, at the high end, limited ground strikes across the Punjab border and, at the low end, “surgical strikes” against terrorist targets in Pakistani Kashmir. In between were air and/or missile strikes against terrorist “infrastructure” across the LOC, but military leaders admitted that they lacked reliable enough intelligence to recommend such operations. The strong consensus among the services was that Pakistan would retaliate for any Indian aggression, and the service chiefs made it abundantly clear that they were not ready to engage in a substantial conventional conflict with Pakistan (which will be further addressed below). Political leaders were themselves very mindful of the escalation risks and did not want to run the risk of a nuclear exchange. Although insisting that all options were on the table, the government “conceded that its military options to retaliate against Pakistan were again limited, because any meaningful strikes risked uncontrollable escalation, possibly up to the nuclear level. India was once again deterred by Pakistan’s perceived low nuclear threshold from executing retaliatory airstrikes against suspected [LeT] camps in Pakistan for fear of escalation to general war.”27 Michael Krepon writes: “[Prime Minister] Singh, like Vajpayee,

50 

D. T. HAGERTY

appears to have concluded soon after the Mumbai attacks that the benefits of punishing Pakistan would likely be modest and the risks would likely be great. Foremost among those risks was the possibility of uncontrolled escalation resulting in nuclear detonations.”28 Because of New Delhi’s subdued reaction, the resulting tension saw limited escalation and only three nuclear threats.29 The Pakistan Army took several precautionary steps, such as moving a modest number of ground forces and heightening the alert status of others. Both air forces were briefly on alert, and the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) carried out and loudly advertised exercises of its fighter aircraft. Ultimately, though, India refrained from launching military strikes, again demonstrating its dilemma in South Asia’s overt nuclear era: meaningful military operations against Pakistan run the risk of catastrophe, while lesser ones have little chance of bringing about desired changes in Pakistani policies. The September 2016 Uri attack and India’s response again demonstrated the effects of nuclear deterrence on Indian decision-making. Prime Minister Modi had repeatedly criticized New Delhi’s weakness in not standing up to Pakistani provocations, often calling out his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, by name for not retaliating against Pakistan after the 2008 Mumbai slaughter. Modi’s senior national security aides had pledged on many occasions that Indians could expect him to respond to Pakistani aggression with much greater resolve than had his predecessors. Then the gruesome Uri attack sparked the onset of a familiar cycle—full-throated calls for revenge in the Indian media, a cross-border war of words, including a very precise nuclear threat by the Pakistani defense minister, both armies put on alert in Punjab and Kashmir, an emphatic show of force during PAF “exercises,” and India’s evacuation of border villages in Punjab. After the usual Indian discussion of military options, Modi then picked one with little potential for escalation to a conventional war and, possibly, a nuclear exchange. As a longtime Indian defense journalist put it, Modi “chose the option that was least likely to escalate to an all-out war.” More robust choices “were ruled out as they raised the specter of a nuclear conflict.”30 Overall, after nearly 20 years of an overtly nuclear South Asia, there was a broad consensus that Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons have deterred major war between New Delhi and Islamabad. Stephen Cohen calls this the “reality of [nuclear] deterrence” on the Subcontinent. Ashley Tellis writes: “Pakistan’s construction of a large, diversified, and ever-expanding nuclear arsenal … serves to prevent any significant Indian

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

51

retaliation against Pakistan’s persistent low-intensity war for fear of sparking a nuclear holocaust.” This represents an “insidious kind of ‘ugly stability’ over the past few decades.” After the 2008 Mumbai episode, Kenneth Waltz wrote: “Both countries know that a serious conventional conflict risks a resort to nuclear weapons. Given that neither India nor Pakistan can know whether its opponent will resort to nuclear use, either inadvertently or on purpose, both are disincentivized from beginning a conventional conflict at all as the anticipated result is simply disastrous.” Also after Mumbai, Krepon wrote: “Nuclear weapons have played a significant part in previous crises on the subcontinent. As deterrence optimists argue, nuclear weapons may well have reinforced caution and helped to forestall escalation across the nuclear threshold.” For Narang, the Kargil, Twin Peaks, and Mumbai episodes “reveal that Pakistan’s asymmetric escalation posture means that major conventional war—even in retaliation—is no longer a viable option for India … Pakistan’s … posture inhibited Indian leaders from executing militarily effective retaliatory options that might have otherwise been on the list of choices for fear of triggering Pakistani nuclear use.” In George Perkovich’s view, expressed just after the Uri attack, “mutual nuclear deterrence has made leaders on both sides conclude that major warfare between the two states would be suicidal.” But, the Pakistan-generated “low-intensity conflict can escalate,” leading to what he calls an “unstable equilibrium.” The bottom line, however, is that: “The leaders of India and Pakistan understand that they have more to lose than to gain by military conflict. They both have interests in avoiding escalation, in part due to the shadow of potential nuclear war if escalation did occur.” Perkovich and Toby Dalton write: “Reviewing the record of conflicts and crises in South Asia since 1990 through a prism of escalation dominance indicates that the threat of any conflict becoming nuclear has had a dampening effect on Indian strategy and decisionmaking … The possibility of escalation drove India to limit the geographic scope of its airstrikes during the 1999 Kargil crisis. It was also a major element of the decision calculus that led India to mobilize forces but not cross the border during the 2001–2002 crisis, and to limit responses to economic and diplomatic means following the attacks in Mumbai in 2008.” Rajesh Rajagopalan observes that the “fear of nuclear escalation prevented India from responding to terror attacks on … the Indian Parliament [2001], on Indian military establishments, and on Mumbai, as well as many other less serious attacks.”31

52 

D. T. HAGERTY

U.S. Crisis Management Another significant factor in New Delhi’s choices to respond to Pakistani aggression in ways that would not escalate out of control was the crisis-­ management role of the United States. U.S. initiatives to dissuade Indian decision-makers from carrying out more punishing military operations were most important during the Kargil and Twin Peaks episodes. In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks, U.S. intervention was significant, but less so than in 1999 and 2001–2002, mainly because Prime Minister Singh decided very early on that India would not mobilize its armed forces, which in turn sent a strong signal to Pakistan and the world that New Delhi would not mount a robust military reprisal. U.S. crisis management was notably less pronounced during the 2016 Uri aftermath, with senior Obama administration officials seeming implicitly to condone India’s right to respond proportionately. If it is difficult to show that nuclear deterrence has “worked” in a given situation, it is too easy to show that U.S. suasion “worked” in the same context. While deterrence is invisible and plausibly deniable by the deterree, crisis intervention is typically highly visible, with senior U.S. officials embarking on whirlwind tours of South Asia at critical junctures, activity that is highly visible via the media and for which the intervening government is always willing to take credit. Particularly salient in this regard were trips to the region by CENTCOM commander Zinni in June 1999, as the Indian government was facing severe escalatory pressures during the Kargil conflict; by Deputy Secretary of State Armitage in June 2002, as the Twin Peaks crisis crested its second peak; and by Secretary of State Rice and Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) chairman Mullen during the Mumbai tensions in December 2008. Furthermore, in all three cases, Presidents Clinton and Bush energetically worked the phones with their Indian and Pakistani interlocutors. Just as important as the fact, and number, of the visits and phone calls by U.S. officials was the message they consistently hammered home; namely, that any escalation of the crises to substantial cross-border military operations would run a serious risk of further tit-for-tat escalation. Were that to happen, U.S. leaders could easily imagine two possible paths to a nuclear exchange: first, if India decided during such an escalation process to invade Pakistan, and its forces were winning preliminary engagements and making progress into Punjab or Sindh, Islamabad would begin to consider, and perhaps eventually order, nuclear strikes against the invading

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

53

forces or on targets within India; second, the fog of war during escalation would generate severe stresses on people and machines, with the possibility of inadvertent escalation to a nuclear exchange growing with every step up the ladder. In each case except for Uri in 2016, there was a distinct synergy between nuclear deterrence and U.S. crisis management, which complemented, reinforced, and strengthened each other. However, nuclear deterrence deserves pride of place, because if nuclear weapons had not been potentially involved, crisis-management efforts would have been less urgent, possibly even negligible. This synergy between them was demonstrated most obviously during the Kargil conflict, whose denouement included the extraordinary meeting in which President Clinton accused Pakistan of “messing with nuclear war.” Zinni, too, was unsparing in his language to Pakistani officials: “I put forward a simple rationale for withdrawing: ‘If you don’t pull back, you’re going to bring war and nuclear annihilation down on your country.’”32 As Lavoy summarizes the synergy between nuclear deterrence and crisis management in 1999, “the fear of nuclear war did drive the international community to end the crisis as quickly as possible and prevent Pakistan from claiming a victory that could validate a defense strategy based on nuclear threats and military aggression.”33 Similar dynamics were apparent in the Twin Peaks and Mumbai cases. U.S. diplomatic intervention undoubtedly played a role in persuading Indian leaders not to attack Pakistan in response to the terrorist attacks in New Delhi, Kashmir, and Mumbai. Here again, though, it is virtually impossible to disentangle U.S. diplomacy from the underlying fear of possible escalation to a nuclear exchange. As Krepon writes, “Washington did not need much prompting to engage in crisis management, as nuclear capabilities and the potential for missteps, accidents, and breakdowns in command and control grew on the subcontinent. While nuclear dangers during crises remained hard to assess, underestimating them was a luxury that senior US policy makers could not afford.”34 The threat of escalation to the nuclear level provided both the best reason for Washington’s crisis-­ management efforts and the most compelling argument U.S. interlocutors could use to ease the two sides away from war.

Poor Conventional Military Options A third causal factor in the pattern of Indian moderation has been New Delhi’s lack of favorable conventional military options at key moments. This might be framed as conventional deterrence, but—here again—it is

54 

D. T. HAGERTY

analytically difficult to disentangle conventional from nuclear inhibitions against the Indian use of large-scale force. As noted previously, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons have taken away the option that in South Asia’s pre-­ nuclear era was India’s ace in the hole: a major conventional assault across the India–Pakistan frontier that would take advantage of India’s superiority in armored strike forces, attack aircraft, and overall material resources to overwhelm Pakistan’s armed forces.35 For the last two decades, India’s conventional military advantage has rested not on glaring net asymmetries between Indian and Pakistani air and ground forces,36 but rather in its ability to grind Pakistan down in a longer, attrition-style ground war. But, this is exactly the type of assault Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and asymmetric escalation posture most credibly deter.37 During the cases under examination, if India had clear, even blitzkrieg-level, superiority in ground forces, and could have inflicted a severe defeat on Pakistani forces, it would have run serious risks of a nuclear reprisal. Furthermore, looming over Indian consideration of even limited conventional strikes across the established international border is that India is damned if it loses, but also damned if it wins, because Pakistan might well respond to imminent defeat by resorting to nuclear weapons. Large military organizations are not enthusiastic about, or good at, winning big … but not too big. The champions of Cold Start-type limited war operations have not succeeded in convincing their political masters that they know where the line is between penetrating “far enough” versus “too far” into a nuclearized Pakistan. Even absent the constraints imposed on Indian decision-making by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, it is arguably the case that India has never had good options for going on the offensive against Pakistan in the four cases examined here. Strikes against terrorist targets across the LOC are likely to have minimal impact on Pakistan’s willingness to support cross-LOC attacks. Kashmir’s mountainous terrain is unpromising for meaningful conventional incursions, militants are likely to have evacuated their rudimentary encampments and escaped at first warning of major Indian military operations, and—in any event—Pakistan’s terrorist infrastructure extends well beyond Kashmir. Only a successful Indian conventional invasion across the international border might compel changes in Pakistani behavior, but—nuclear weapons aside—analysts tend to agree that India does not have sufficient conventional superiority along its Western frontier to be confident of victory. India’s overall advantages in conventional military forces are reduced by its need to keep hundreds of thousands of troops engaged in Kashmir38 and deployed in the eastern part of the

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

55

c­ ountry against potential threats from China. Although the Indian Army has three strike corps to Pakistan’s two, their peacetime positions are relatively far from the border and their mobilization times remain slow. Pakistan Army strike corps are much closer to the border in peacetime, and the country’s narrow geography means that its internal lines of supply and communications are considerably shorter than its opponent’s. Because India would be unlikely to have the advantage of strategic surprise in a sudden crisis, by the time its strike corps are poised for battle after 2–3 weeks of mobilization, Pakistan’s would be well positioned for both defensive and counteroffensive operations.39 While India enjoys somewhat favorable ratios of tanks, fighter aircraft, and other equipment, these ratios are not high enough for Indian military planners to provide assurances of success to the political leadership.40 Lastly, India’s armed forces have been plagued by obsolete tanks, armored vehicles, artillery pieces, and other equipment, as well as chronic shortages of officers, ammunition, missiles, air defense assets, and war stores.41 These restraints on India’s conventional warfighting potential came into play in each of the four cases between 1998 and 2016. During Kargil and Twin Peaks, official Indian estimates put the country’s conventional combat edge over Pakistan at an estimated 1.1–1.2:1, essentially “operational-­level parity.”42 The official Indian government review of the Kargil conflict says flatly: “On the Indian side, it had been made abundantly clear that the Indian Army has not for sometime enjoyed a punitive edge over the Pakistan Army to adopt an effective pro-active strategy”43 were India to escalate the fighting. During Twin Peaks, New Delhi opted for a full mobilization of Indian forces without any specific guidance as to what their mission(s) would be. V.K. Singh, then a Brigadier with the XI Corps in Punjab, recalls that the “very first few days of Operation Parakram exposed the hollowness of our operational preparedness.”44 With three strike corps ready to roll out of their launch areas, Prime Minister Vajpayee twice backed away from the brink of war. One account quotes a senior BJP foreign policy adviser as saying, “‘the notion that international pressure from the United States impelled India to hold fire in 2001–2002 and defuse the crisis was a political excuse. The real problem was a lack of viable military options.’”45 In 2008, Prime Minister Singh, apparently having learned from the 2002 mobilization fiasco, resisted pressures to order the Indian military into action in retaliation for the Mumbai massacre. Singh’s instinctive caution was undoubtedly bolstered by senior army leaders’ view that an “inadequate and obsolete arsenal at their disposal mitigated

56 

D. T. HAGERTY

against” war.46 The army chief’s admission that India was unprepared for war with Pakistan was the “most visible manifestation of the ‘hollowing out’ of the Indian Army.”47 After intensive discussion of options, even the most limited military response was ruled out, owing partly to Indian conventional deficiencies.48 In 2016, with Indian military forces still suffering from shortcomings that “raise serious questions whether India can undertake large-scale military operations at all,” and which suggest that “Indian policy makers cannot be confident that even a limited resort to military force would achieve a rapid result,”49 Prime Minister Modi belied his more hawkish reputation by ordering pinprick military operations in Kashmir that were militarily insignificant. One influential Indian defense analyst was of the view that Indian conventional warfighting capabilities were even worse in 2016 than they had been in 2008.50

Strategic Restraint A fourth potential explanation for Indian forbearance in the face of repeated provocations is New Delhi’s alleged “strategic restraint doctrine,” which is said to be a driving force behind the political leadership’s tight limitations on the use of military force.51 For Cohen and Dasgupta, India has a “deeply embedded tradition of strategic restraint.” In this view, “reticence in the use of force as an instrument of state policy has been the dominant political condition for Indian thinking on the military.”52 This “long-standing international political–military posture” can be traced to the views of Indian nationalist heroes like Gandhi and Nehru, who “saw the use of armed force as normatively flawed and practically costly for India.” Going back to Independence, this argument continues, “the Indian political leadership has generally seen military force as an inappropriate instrument of politics.”53 Indian strategic restraint is rooted in a “political culture stressing disengagement, avoidance of confrontation, and a defensive mindset.”54 In Sarang Shidore’s conception, strategic restraint is one of the “operational elements” of India’s strategic culture specifically “with respect to nuclear weapons and security relations with Pakistan.” Shidore traces India’s alleged strategic restraint to the post-­ independence leadership: “Moralism has traditionally been a prominent driver in India’s strategic restraint doctrine. Nehruvian ideas of resolution of conflict through communication influenced the defining of Indian restraint.”55 In more recent decades, he says, “liberal globalism is also a driver for the continued persistence of India’s strategic restraint policy”;

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

57

New Delhi’s economic liberalization and high economic growth rates have generated a “view that a major conflict with Pakistan carries unacceptable risks to India’s prospects for development and security.”56 One proponent of this argument, retired Indian brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal, claims that New Delhi has observed “immense strategic restraint” in the face of “grave provocation.” As examples, he includes: “low-intensity limited conflict and proxy war since 1947 in Jammu and Kashmir; Pakistan’s Operation Gibraltar (1965); Pakistani support to the Khalistan movement in Indian Punjab (1980s); the Kargil conflict (1999); the attack on the Indian parliament, Operation Parakram, and the attack on Indian Army family quarters, Kaluchak (2001–2002); and the Mumbai terrorist strikes (2008).”57 Shidore concurs, writing that “strategic restraint in Indian security policy is largely borne out by the empirical record with respect to Pakistan. India’s response to pointed provocations such as terrorist attacks has traditionally been overwhelmingly diplomatic rather than military.” He specifically refers to Kargil, Twin Peaks, and Mumbai as good examples of Indian strategic restraint in practice.58 Although a comprehensive history of India’s use of military force is beyond the scope of this chapter, there are strong reasons to doubt that a doctrine of strategic restraint has caused India to shy away from wielding military power, either in general or during the episodes examined above. In the pre-nuclear era, New Delhi ordered substantial military operations in Kashmir in the autumn of 1947, a provocative and disastrous “forward policy” toward China in the lead-up to the Sino-Indian war of 1962, an invasion across the international border with Pakistan in 1965 (escalating the second Kashmir war, begun by Pakistan), another invasion of Pakistan during the Bangladesh war of 1971, a military occupation of the Siachen Glacier in 1984, and an enormous military exercise in Punjab which kicked off the Brasstacks crisis and near-war with Pakistan in 1986–1987. Drawing on Alastair Iain Johnston’s theoretical framework,59 Ali Ahmed argues convincingly that “India has not shied away from the use of force. Such resort has been discreet and conditioned by strategic considerations. It has displayed both resolve and restraint.” Furthermore, the “operational set in India’s strategic culture was never as pacifist as suggested by India’s popular self-image.”60 In the post-nuclear era, India has mounted vigorous attacks against Pakistani positions during the Kargil conflict,61 attempted via a massive military mobilization in 2001–2002 to coerce Pakistan to modify its behavior,62 and resorted to “surgical strikes” across the LOC on several

58 

D. T. HAGERTY

occasions, including after the 2016 Uri massacre. However, unlike in the pre-nuclear era, New Delhi has refrained from launching major attacks across the LOC or the international border. As discussed in previous sections, the combined effects of nuclear deterrence, U.S. crisis management, and a dearth of good conventional military options together provide a robust explanation for Indian restraint. Nuclear weapons, in particular, have induced demonstrable caution, evident in the cases presented above and in the numerous scholarly analyses cited in this chapter. In contrast, supporters of the strategic restraint explanation never even attempt to show through evidence or a specific causal mechanism that such a “doctrine” in fact animates Indian behavior. Their argument is tautological: India acts with restraint; therefore, it must have a doctrine of strategic restraint. Indeed, they sometimes inadvertently betray their belief that the primary phenomenon at play is actually nuclear deterrence, while strategic restraint is distinctly epiphenomenal. For example, Dasgupta and Cohen maintain that “once India and Pakistan accepted the basic reality of nuclear deterrence … restraint by choice became restraint without choice. No Indian leader could risk the chance of a Pakistani [nuclear] attack on an Indian city.”63 Cohen, writing with two colleagues about Kargil, notes that Indian “restraint was in marked contrast to India’s response in the 1965 and 1971 conflicts, when nuclear weapons had not entered the equation and it had not displayed any inhibitions in invading Pakistan.”64 Strategic restraint in its truest sense is simply an inclination toward moderation under the nuclear shadow. “It means responding in a way that does not potentially become strategically costly for India by risking a broader conventional war, which carries with it not only human and economic costs, but also the risk of nuclear use if the war spills across the international border.”65 Claiming a doctrine of “strategic restraint” makes a virtue out of necessity.

Conclusion The main causes of Indian forbearance in the four cases examined in this chapter are nuclear deterrence, a paucity of good conventional military options, and U.S. efforts to manage Indo-Pakistani conflicts and ease tensions. Nuclear deterrence is the most significant of these factors, because it spawned and strengthened the other two. The underlying presence of nuclear weapons triggered U.S. crisis management and provided the most compelling rationale for Indian and Pakistani interlocutors to heed the

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

59

warnings of U.S. diplomats. The ever-present possibility of escalation to the use of nuclear weapons strictly limited Indian conventional military options, including the one most likely to inflict defeat on Pakistani forces and potentially bring an end to Islamabad’s subconventional operations on Indian soil (including Indian Kashmir). Framed another way, nuclear deterrence has been the cause which, if taken away, would have made the most difference. It is difficult to imagine that the Indian political leadership would, in the absence of nuclear weapons, have resisted pressures to order more punitive military strikes against Pakistan. Given the constraints they have faced when contemplating the retaliatory use of force against Pakistan, Indian decisionmakers have acted with prudence, wisdom, and rationality. Unfortunately, this is not how many Indians see it. Indian analysts and the population at large, justifiably livid after years of Pakistani and Pakistan-supported attacks, often bemoan their political leaders’ lack of “resolve” in not responding with decisive military force. It was partly this sentiment that drove Indian prime minister Modi to retaliate more forcefully in February 2019. While Indians’ frustration is understandable, they should instead celebrate their government’s sober assessments of the costs and benefits of striking back hard against Pakistan. Indian decision-­making in the four crises covered in this chapter was the chief firebreak against major, possibly nuclear, war in South Asia. Indians should prefer that the power of escalation control rest in their hands, rather than in Pakistan’s. Crossing the international border with large conventional military forces has been established as the brightest of red lines in a nuclear South Asia. Two analysts capture the essential logic of Indian restraint: “as horrific as these acts [against India] are … they are not existential threats to Indian security—but overreaction and a war that risks nuclear escalation could be.”66

Notes 1. Representative treatments include: Sumit Ganguly in Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010); Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India–Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005); Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), 253–82; and Kenneth Waltz in Scott D.  Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013).

60 

D. T. HAGERTY

2. See Dinshaw Mistry, “Tempering Optimism about Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” Security Studies 18, no. 1 (2009): 148–82; Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” The Stimson Center, Washington, DC, September 2006; Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, The Unfinished Crisis: U.S. Crisis Management after the 2008 Mumbai Attacks (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2012); and Moeed Yusuf, Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018). 3. Works in this vein include: Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Arming without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2010); Sunil Dasgupta and Stephen P. Cohen, “Is India Ending Its Strategic Restraint Doctrine?” Washington Quarterly 34, no. 2 (Spring 2011): 163–77; and Sarang Shidore, “India’s Strategic Culture and Deterrence Stability on the Subcontinent,” in Deterrence Instability and Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, ed. Michael Krepon, et al. (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2015), 119–47. 4. For works focused on the India–Pakistan conventional military balance, see: Christopher Clary, “Deterrence Stability and the Conventional Balance of Forces in South Asia,” in Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, ed. Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2012), 135–60, and Walter Ladwig III, “Indian Military Modernization and Conventional Deterrence in South Asia,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 5 (May 2015): 729–72. 5. See the table in Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland, “Anatomy of a Crisis: Explaining Crisis Onset in India–Pakistan Relations,” in Investigating Crises: South Asia’s Lessons, Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland, ed. Evolving Dynamics, and Trajectories (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2018), 35. 6. The exception, of course, was India’s Kargil response, because the aggressors were on the Indian side of the LOC. 7. Devin T. Hagerty, The Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: Lessons from South Asia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 163. 8. Robert Jervis, “Kargil, Deterrence Theory and International Relations Theory,” in Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and Consequences of the Kargil Conflict, Peter R. Lavoy, ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 390. 9. There is a great deal of confusion in the literature about the nature of Pakistan’s aggression at Kargil in 1999. Narang refers to Pakistan’s “conventional aggression,” arguing that “India was unable to deter Pakistan from launching a relatively aggressive conventional attack.” Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 253. Also see pp.  7, 11, 296. Elsewhere,

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

61

Narang notes India’s failure to deter “high-level conventional conflict, such as the Kargil War” (297), and India’s inability to deter “high-intensity wars, such as the 1999 Kargil War” (11). Other analysts use terms like “asymmetric operation,” John H.  Gill, “Military Operations in the Kargil Conflict,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 123; “limited military exercise,” Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage, 2000), 236; “limited war,” Michael Krepon, “Crises in South Asia,” in Crises in South Asia: Trends and Potential Consequences, ed. Michael Krepon and Nathan Cohn (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2011), 27; “low-intensity conflict,” Rajesh M. Basrur, Minimum Deterrence and India’s Nuclear Security (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 73–74; “sub-conventional” conflict, Moeed Yusuf and Jason A.  Kirk, “Keeping an Eye on South Asian Skies: America’s Pivotal Deterrence in Nuclearized India–Pakistan Crises,” Contemporary Security Policy 37, no. 2 (May 2016): 11–12; “unconventional” conflict, Ashley J. Tellis, C. Christine Fair, and Jamison Jo Medby, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2001), xi, etc. Pakistan’s covert infiltration of the Kargil area was not a conventional invasion. The territory was claimed by both countries, with the dispute between them unresolved. The Northern Light Infantry (NLI) intruders were “lightly-equipped” forces, “not designed for major offensive operations,” who relied on “pack mules and human porters” for logistical and other needs. Gill, “Military Operations,” 97–98; Feroz Hassan Khan, Peter R. Lavoy, and Christopher Clary, “Pakistan’s Motivations and Calculations for the Kargil Conflict,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 67. They fought in local civilian garb, i.e., shalwar kameez. The terrain was “highly glaciated and avalanche-prone, a desolate, uninhabited desert waste of serrated, knife-edge ridges piercing the sky” at altitudes of 13–18,000 feet. This was “not a very major operation either in terms of size or capability.” Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning, 17, 103–4. With its forceful response, it was India that “conventionalize[d] the unconventional conflict.” Peter R.  Lavoy, “Introduction,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 4–5. Also see pp. 8–9, 26. Pakistan’s Kargil incursion did not represent a failure of India’s nuclear posture to deter a conventional invasion. (Emphases added.) 10. Samuel Black, The Changing Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear Threats from 1970 to 2010 (Washington, DC: 2010), 17–18. These signals consisted of three menacing statements by Pakistani civilian and military leaders, as well as the suggestive but ambiguous nuclear-related activity discussed in the Kargil section in Chap. 2. 11. Devin T.  Hagerty, “The Kargil War: An Optimistic Assessment,” in Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: Crisis Behaviour and the Bomb, ed.

62 

D. T. HAGERTY

Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur (London: Routledge, 2009), 110. Also see: Michael Cohen, When Proliferation Causes Peace: The Psychology of Nuclear Crises (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017), 138; Toby Dalton and George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Options and Escalation Dominance (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2016), 7; Gill, “Military Operations,” 124; Jervis, “Kargil, Deterrence Theory and International Relations Theory,” 395–96; S.  Paul Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability: Why Nuclear South Asia Is Not Like Cold War Europe,” in Inside Nuclear South Asia, ed. Scott D.  Sagan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 197; Lavoy, “Introduction,” 33; Sagan, in Sagan and Waltz, eds., Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 145–46; Todd S.  Sechser and Matthew Fuhrmann, Nuclear Weapons and Coercive Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 150; Waltz, in Sagan and Waltz, eds., Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 163. 12. Ganguly and Kapur, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, 52–53. 13. V.K. Sood and Pravin Sawhney, Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished (New Delhi: Sage, 2003), 70–71, 106. 14. V.P.  Malik, India’s Military Conflicts and Diplomacy: An Inside View of Decision Making (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2013), 127. 15. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 271. Also see: P.R.  Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Stephen P.  Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2007), 139 and Cohen, When Proliferation Causes Peace, 141. 16. Hagerty, “The Kargil War,” 112. Musharraf’s assertion that Pakistan did not have an operational nuclear weapons capability in 1999 is irrelevant in this context. At the time, Indian leaders had to assume that Pakistan might have such a capability. 17. Black, Changing Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons, 16. 18. Black, Changing Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons, 16–18. These signals included threatening statements by senior officials, raised alert levels, movements of ballistic missiles, ballistic missile tests, and movements of nuclear-capable aircraft. 19. Mistry, “Tempering Optimism about Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” 174; Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram, 9. 20. Praveen Swami, “A War to End a War: The Causes and Outcomes of the 2001–2 India-Pakistan Crisis,” in Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia, ed. Ganguly and Kapur, 150, 145. 21. Mistry, “Tempering Optimism about Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” 174. 22. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 278.

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

63

23. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 277. Narang’s analysis confirms and reinforces similar conclusions reached previously by scholars, for example: Rajesh Basrur, South Asia’s Cold War: Nuclear Weapons and Conflict in Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge, 2008), 62; Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 160, 163, 172, 173, 182; Ganguly and Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry, 167–86; Kapur in Ganguly and Kapur, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, 58; Dinshaw Mistry, “Complexity of Deterrence among New Nuclear States: The India– Pakistan Case,” in Complex Deterrence: Strategy in the Global Age, eds. T.V. Paul, Patrick M. Morgan, and James J. Wirtz (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 24; Rajesh Rajagopalan, Second Strike: Arguments about Nuclear War in South Asia (New Delhi: Viking, 2005), 204; Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram, 83, 97, 116, 144, and Waltz, in Sagan and Waltz, eds., Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 171–72. 24. “Interview: Ex-Pakistani Pres. Musharraf Mulled Using Nukes Against India after 2001 Attack,” The Mainichi, July 26, 2017. 25. Cohen, When Proliferation Causes Peace, 141–2. 26. Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 197. 27. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 279. 28. Krepon, “Crises in South Asia,” 9. Singh “reportedly asked whether Pakistan could misperceive an Indian conventional strike as a nuclear one and respond by launching its own nuclear forces. No one could answer with any certainty.” George Perkovich and Toby Dalton, Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016), 2. 29. Samuel Black, “Appendix I: The Structure of South Asian Crises from Brasstacks to Mumbai,” in Crises in South Asia, ed. Krepon and Cohn, 51; Black, Changing Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons, 15. Two of the threats involved increases in the alert levels of the Pakistan Army and PAF. One was a pointed statement by a senior Indian official. 30. Raj Chengappa, “Game Changer,” India Today, October 6, 2016. 31. Stephen P. Cohen, Shooting for a Century: The India–Pakistan Conundrum (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2013), 194; Ashley J.  Tellis, Are India– Pakistan Peace Talks Worth a Damn? (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2017), 37, 71; Waltz in Sagan and Waltz, eds., The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 172–73; Krepon, “Crises in South Asia,” 11; Vipin Narang, “Posturing for Peace? Pakistan’s Nuclear Postures and South Asian Stability,” International Security 34, no. 3 (Winter 2009/2010): 64; George Perkovich, “Uri Won’t Lead India to Undertake Major Military Action,” rediff.com, September 21, 2016, http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/09/21/uri-won-t-lead-india-toundertake-major-military-action-pub-64649; Dalton and Perkovich,

64 

D. T. HAGERTY

India’s Nuclear Options and Escalation Dominance, 16; Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Annex B. India’s National Security Perspectives and Nuclear Weapons,” in The Strategic Chain Linking Pakistan, India, China, and the United States, eds. Robert Einhorn and W.P.S. Sidhu (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2017), 28. 32. Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 133. 33. Lavoy, “Introduction,” 12; also see p.  28. Similar arguments appear in: Jervis, “Kargil, Deterrence Theory and International Relations Theory,” 391; Rodney Jones, “The Kargil Crisis: Lessons Learned by the United States” and Peter R. Lavoy, “Why Kargil Did Not Produce General War,” in Asymmetric Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 374, 197, 200–1; Mistry, “Tempering Optimism about Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” 156; and Yusuf and Kirk, “Keeping an Eye on South Asian Skies, 7, 11. 34. Krepon, “Crises in South Asia,” 13. See pp. 20–26 for an overview of U.S. crisis-management efforts during all of the cases through Mumbai. Several detailed accounts of Twin Peaks and the Mumbai episode document the important role of U.S. diplomacy in helping to dampen India’s understandable desire to punish Pakistan. On Twin Peaks, see Kanti Bajpai, “To War or Not to War: The India–Pakistan Crisis of 2001–2,” in Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia, ed. Ganguly and Kapur, 163, 171, 175–77; Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 149; Mistry, “Tempering Optimism about Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” 163–75; Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 275; Nayak and Krepon, “U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia’s Twin Peaks Crisis,” 37–43. On Mumbai, see Nayak and Krepon, Unfinished Crisis, 53. 35. Tellis, Are India–Pakistan Peace Talks Worth a Damn?, 36. 36. Ladwig, “Indian Military Modernization and Conventional Deterrence in South Asia,” 21–31; Clary, “Deterrence Stability and the Conventional Balance of Forces in South Asia,” 141–52. 37. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 281. Tellingly, Ladwig’s 2015 analysis of conventional deterrence in South Asia examines only limited Indian attack options, given the implausibility of larger operations in the shadow of nuclear weapons. “Indian Military Modernization,” 8–9. 38. Ali Ahmed writes: “Since the mid-1990s, a large proportion of the army has been deployed in Kashmir, perhaps over a third. Even though the army in the period acquired a third strike corps, Pakistan succeeded in bogging down in Kashmir any surplus conventional advantage India might have gained, thereby neutralising India’s conventional edge.” “Corrosive Impact of Army’s Commitment in Kashmir,” Economic and Political Weekly, February 25, 2017. 39. Ladwig, “Indian Military Modernization,” 16–17.

3  EXPLAINING INDIAN MODERATION DURING CRISES, 1999–2016 

65

40. Ladwig notes that while force ratios vary, “in any instance the margin of India’s local force advantage is not decisive.” He puts the Indian manpower advantage in the Western theater at 1.1–1.2:1, well short of the 2:1 or higher ratios that would be preferable. He also puts the Indian advantage in tanks at 1.1:1 and “modern, high-performance main battle tanks” at 1.3:1, again much lower than Indian military planners would prefer. Ladwig, “Indian Military Modernization,” 27–30. Clary estimates that the ratio of combat power “may be closer to 1:1 at the theater level on day 1 of conflict than it is to 2:1. “Deterrence Stability,” 159–60, note 84. 41. Shashank Joshi, “The Mythology of Cold Start,” New York Times, November 4, 2011; Myra MacDonald, Defeat Is an Orphan: How Pakistan Lost the Great South Asian War (London: Hurst, 2017), 135–37; Ladwig, “Indian Military Modernization,” 6; “Guns and Ghee,” The Economist, September 24, 2016. 42. Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram, 158–59, 77, 170, 145. 43. Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning, 77. 44. MacDonald, Defeat Is an Orphan, 136. 45. Perkovich and Dalton, Not War, Not Peace?, 8. 46. Siddarth Srivastava, “Indian Army ‘Backed Out’ of Pakistan Attack,” Asia Times Online, January 21, 2009. 47. Ladwig, “Indian Military Modernization,” 7. 48. Pranab Dhal Samanta, “26/11: How India Debated a War with Pakistan That November,” Indian Express, November 26, 2010. 49. Ladwig, “Indian Military Modernization,” 6. 50. Pravin Sawhney, “Whither Our War Preparedness?” Pioneer, June 4, 2015. On India’s “effective conventional parity” with Pakistan, see Manoj Joshi, “Why Things Will Likely be All Quiet on the Western Front,” The Wire, September 26, 2016. 51. Dasgupta and Cohen, “Is India Ending Its Strategic Restraint Doctrine?” 163–77; Cohen and Dasgupta, Arming without Aiming, especially ix–xiii and 1–28; Shidore, “India’s Strategic Culture and Deterrence Stability on the Subcontinent”; Ali Ahmed, India’s Doctrine Puzzle: Limiting War in South Asia (New Delhi: Routledge, 2014), 110, 115–50. 52. Cohen and Dasgupta, Arming without Aiming, xiii, 1. 53. Dasgupta and Cohen, “Is India Ending Its Strategic Restraint Doctrine?,” 163. 54. Cohen and Dasgupta, Arming without Aiming, 147. 55. Shidore, “India’s Strategic Culture,” 119, 135. 56. Shidore, “India’s Strategic Culture,” 135. 57. Presentation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, January 23, 2015.

66 

D. T. HAGERTY

58. Shidore, “India’s Strategic Culture,” 133–35. With respect to Twin Peaks, Shidore also cites nuclear deterrence and U.S. crisis management as other causes of Indian restraint. On Mumbai, he argues that “there is no evidence that the Cabinet Committee on Security seriously considered a military response” (134). This is refuted by first-person accounts, including Shivshankar Menon, Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2016), 60–81. 59. Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Johnston differentiates between a country’s “symbolic set” and its “operational set.” The former is a “symbolic or idealized set of assumptions and ranked preferences”; the latter “reflects [a] hardpolitik strategic culture [arguing] that the best way of dealing with security threats is to eliminate them through the use of force.” x. 60. Ahmed, India’s Doctrine Puzzle, 130, 150. For a particularly convincing critique of the “strategic restraint” logic in South Asia’s pre-nuclear era, see Rudra Chaudhuri, “Indian ‘Strategic Restraint’ Revisited: The Case of the 1965 India–Pakistan War,” India Review 17, no. 1 (March 2018): 55–75. 61. Gill, “Military Operations,” 114–19, especially 115; Rajesh Rajagopalan, “India: The Logic of Assured Retaliation,” in The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia, ed. Muthiah Alagappa (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 204. 62. For a more complete summary of Indian military activities, see Ahmed, India’s Doctrine Puzzle, 129. 63. Dasgupta and Cohen, “Is India Ending Its Strategic Restraint Doctrine?” 166–67. 64. Chari, Cheema, and Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process, 139. 65. Vipin Narang, “The Lines That Have Been Crossed,” The Hindu, October 4, 2016. 66. Ankit Panda and Vipin Narang, “Nuclear Stability, Conventional Instability: North Korea and the Lessons from Pakistan,” November 20, 2017, https://warontherocks.com/2017/11/nuclear-stability-conventionalinstability-north-korea-lessons-pakistan/.

CHAPTER 4

Deterrence Stability in South Asia Today

Abstract  This chapter analyzes the stability of India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence. I first flesh out the concept of deterrence stability. Then, I briefly examine the precarious state of the relationship between New Delhi and Islamabad in the wake of the February 2019 Pulwama/Balakot crisis. Next, I provide an overview of Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons capabilities, doctrines, and command and control practices. I then analyze the two dimensions of “ugly stability” between the rivals: the underlying context of subconventional violence combined with the overlay of nuclear deterrence. After that, I assess the nature of nuclear deterrence in South Asia, which is based on the empirical record of India-Pakistan crises and the underlying theoretical logic of nuclear deterrence. Lastly, I argue that while nuclear deterrence dampens the likelihood of escalation to conventional—and possibly nuclear—war, chronically tense relations between New Delhi and Islamabad mean that deterrence failure resulting in major warfare cannot be ruled out. Keywords  Deterrence stability • Ugly stability • Pulwama attack • Existential deterrence • Cold Start • Nasr missile • Balakot In this chapter, I assess the stability of nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan. My overarching theme is that the India-Pakistan strategic equation is today characterized by “ugly stability,”1 a mixture of ­stabilizing © The Author(s) 2020 D. T. Hagerty, Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5_4

67

68 

D. T. HAGERTY

and destabilizing elements. As demonstrated in Chap. 3, nuclear deterrence played an important role in preventing escalation to conventional war in four Indo-Pakistani crises between 1998 and 2016. While it is too early to fully assess the role of nuclear deterrence in the February 2019 crisis, both New Delhi and Islamabad crafted their military operations in ways that indicated—and communicated—their conspicuous desire not to escalate the conflict. On the other hand, the Jaish-e-­Mohammed (JeM) massacre in Pulwama demonstrated once again that political violence in disputed Kashmir and Pakistan’s evident refusal to prevent anti-Indian jihadi terrorist groups from operating freely on its soil have generated, and will probably continue to generate, crises with significant escalatory potential. This chapter analyzes the condition of ugly stability in the South Asian nuclear arms competition. I conclude that, while nuclear deterrence dampens the likelihood of escalation to conventional—and possibly nuclear—war, chronically tense relations between New Delhi and Islamabad mean that deterrence failure resulting in major warfare cannot be completely ruled out. The remainder of the chapter unfolds in the following way. The next section elaborates on the concept of deterrence stability so that it can later be applied to my analysis of the theory and practice of India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence. In my view, deterrence stability is best represented as a continuum between two ideal types: “pure deterrence stability” and “pure deterrence instability.” In the second section, I briefly examine the precarious state of the relationship between India and Pakistan in the wake of the February 2019 crisis. The third section overviews the Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons capabilities, nuclear doctrines, and command and control practices. The fourth section more closely analyzes the two conflicting dimensions of ugly stability, namely, the underlying subconventional violence versus the overlay of nuclear deterrence. For context, I use a hypothetical Indo-Pakistani escalation scenario from the subconventional to the conventional to the nuclear level. In the fifth section, I probe the nature of mutual nuclear deterrence in South Asia, which I argue is based on (a) the empirical record of India-Pakistan crises since 1998 and (b) the underlying theoretical logic of nuclear deterrence. I then further develop my conception of the logic of regional nuclear deterrence, which I perceive to be a hybrid construct encompassing “existential deterrence”2 and the Indian and Pakistani nuclear doctrines of “assured retaliation” and

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

69

­asymmetric escalation,” respectively.3 Most importantly, I argue that “ existential deterrence and distinct nuclear doctrines have mistakenly been treated as competing policy alternatives, when in fact they are completely different—and complementary—phenomena. Lastly, the sixth section concludes the chapter with a summary discussion of deterrence stability in South Asia. I argue that the ugly stability between India and Pakistan lies somewhere near the middle of the conceptual continuum between pure deterrence stability and pure deterrence instability, but is trending in the latter direction.

The Concept of Deterrence Stability For many years, analysis of the stability of regional nuclear arms competitions was framed by the debate between “proliferation pessimists” and “deterrence optimists” over the stability of nascent nuclear balances.4 This framework provided a useful theoretical lens through which scholars could assess the likely strategic consequences of nuclear proliferation in regions like South Asia where the empirical record was as-yet scanty. However, with the passage of time and the accumulation of substantial historical evidence, the optimism-pessimism debate has grown somewhat stale. As analysts have gained more access to empirical data about the interactions of new nuclear proliferants, they have naturally grown less dependent on the competing abstract logics of earlier years. Over the last decade or so, the binary optimism-pessimism conception of regional proliferation’s potential consequences has given way to a more nuanced—and useful— framing, organized around the notion of “deterrence stability.”5 I will use this concept to analyze the stability of the India-Pakistan nuclear arms competition as we enter the third decade of overt nuclearization on the subcontinent. My perspective on deterrence stability is that every adversarial nuclear relationship can be plotted along a continuum from “pure deterrence stability” to “pure deterrence instability.” The two ends of the continuum are ideal types, that is, perfect theoretical manifestations of the essential elements of a phenomenon which are not actually found in reality. An ideal type is an “abstract model that, when used as a standard of comparison, enables us to see aspects of the real world in a clearer, more systematic way.” It is a “pure … form that is unlikely to actually exist anywhere other than in our minds.” The purpose of ideal types is not to “describe or explain the world. Instead, they provide us with points of comparison

70 

D. T. HAGERTY

from which to observe it.”6 In practical terms, all relationships involving enmity between two nuclear weapon states can be plotted somewhere on the continuum. What are the fundamental characteristics of nuclear-deterrent relationships that, in combination, make for relative stability or instability? In my conception, these factors fall into four categories: material-technological, doctrinal, organizational, and political. “Pure deterrence stability” would represent a nuclear balance in which the numbers, variety, and configuration of the weapons on both sides promote deterrence and are not subject to preemptive or other first-use temptations. Ideally, each side would have assured second-strike capabilities, defined as sufficient redundancy and diversity of nuclear forces that the adversary knows it cannot destroy all of one’s retaliatory capabilities in a decapitating first strike. Deterrence stability between foes with survivable second-strike capabilities would be further enhanced by the adoption of countervalue doctrines (targeting “soft” population centers), rather than counterforce doctrines (targeting “hard” military, especially nuclear, forces), because counterforce doctrines can, theoretically, generate preemptive temptations in which, during a crisis, one or both sides might prefer to “use rather than lose” their nuclear weapons.7 Additionally, situations of pure deterrence stability would embody robust, safe, reliable command and control arrangements. A particularly salient factor in this context is how the weapons are deployed during peacetime. The strategic interaction between two nuclear-armed states whose weapon systems are not fully operational because they store the warheads separately from the delivery systems, and perhaps keep the warheads themselves disassembled, is likely to be more stable than a standoff between countries whose nuclear weapon systems are fully integrated and ready for immediate use. Here again, preemptive temptations would be reduced. Organizationally, the nuclear chain of command would be clear and centralized, with well-specified actors and procedures, as well as in-built buffers against lapses in safety and reliability. Politically, states in a pure context of stable mutual deterrence would have “normal” relations, characterized by regular diplomatic intercourse, few or no active points of potential conflict, and an absence of crises with the potential to escalate to conventional, and then possibly nuclear, war. These states would understand that conventional military operations carried out against one another will always be fraught with the potential for escalation to a nuclear exchange, an outcome neither side would want, because no conceivable benefit would be worth the enormous and inevitable costs. Pure d ­ eterrence

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

71

stability would also require that the authority structures on each side are productively assumed8 to be unitary and rational; that is to say, both states are sensitive to costs and have unified lines of authority running up the conflict spectrum from subconventional operations to conventional operations, culminating with the apex nuclear decision-maker.9 Overall, pure deterrence stability would arise from a cohesive combination of materialtechnological, doctrinal, organizational, and political elements wherein the prospects for escalation of conflict from the subconventional to the conventional level to the nuclear level are negligible. In all of these dimensions, pure deterrence instability would lack the attributes noted above. One state would perhaps have distinct advantages in relative numbers of weapons and/or types of delivery platforms. The two rivals’ weapon systems would be configured in ways that promote not deterrence, but—rather—temptations to actually use nuclear weapons preemptively. For at least one of the two sides, second-strike capabilities would not be assured, making a decapitating first strike seem potentially feasible in the minds of planners on the other side. At least one of the two countries would perhaps have adopted a counterforce nuclear targeting doctrine, with attendant “use them or lose them” fears prevailing on the other side. Weapon systems would be integrated and operationally primed for use, also creating first-strike temptations, while command and control systems would otherwise be delicate and potentially dysfunctional. In this context, delegative policies—which, under certain circumstances, devolve nuclear-release authority to lower levels in the chain of command—would be particularly worrisome. Politically, nuclear weapon states in a context of pure deterrence instability would have volatile or moribund diplomatic relations, one or more areas of chronic tension, and regular crises with significant escalatory potential. One or both adversaries would perhaps continue to regard conventional military operations as a potentially effective tool in the strategic toolbox. The unitary, rational actor assumption would be misplaced in a context of pure deterrence instability; at least one of the contesting nuclear powers would have a fragmented, rather than unitary, authority structure, in which substate actors and/or rogue elements of the state could potentially unleash aggression with escalatory potential. Sensitivity to costs would be overshadowed by a tendency for recklessness and chronic tactical opportunism at lower levels of the conflict spectrum.10 On the whole, pure deterrence instability would comprise a combustible mixture of material-technological, doctrinal, organizational, and political elements, with the distinct possibility of conflict escalation

72 

D. T. HAGERTY

from the subconventional to the conventional to the nuclear level. It bears reiterating here that no actual nuclear-deterrent relationship will fully accord with either ideal type, pure deterrence stability or pure deterrence instability. In reality, each nuclear balance will exhibit ever-dynamic degrees of relative stability/instability. This conception of deterrence stability has some similarities to, but also important differences with, the most prominent understanding within the academic and think-tank literature on India-Pakistan nuclear issues. Michael Krepon describes deterrence stability as a situation in which “both adversaries feel that offsetting nuclear capabilities are generally balanced and stably configured, thereby providing assurance against a nuclear attack or the damaging use of conventional military capabilities.”11 He writes that “nuclear weapons deter a small, but critically important, subset of adversarial moves.”12 They have, for example, prevented “large-scale conventional war,” fostered “cautious behavior in severe crises,” provided for “a measure of deterrence, dissuasion, and national assurance,” and kept “border skirmishes limited.”13 Elsewhere, he writes: “What we can say is that nuclear weapons have so far contributed to deterrence in two extreme cases—the avoidance of nuclear exchanges and major conventional warfare.”14 All of the above descriptions fit my conception. For Krepon, though, while “deterrence stability is a sensitive and wise concept” in the abstract, in reality it is a “hoax”15 or a “myth,” or a “mirage.”16 He argues that “deterrence stability has proven feasible only when nuclear-armed states have little or nothing to fight about, when they address their security concerns through diplomatic means, when they agree to set them aside, or when one of the rivals collapses.”17 This assertion is logically problematic. If two nuclear weapon states have “little or nothing to fight about,” they are not actually adversaries; indeed, they are not actually in a nuclear-deterrent relationship at all. This is why we don’t speak of British-­ French nuclear deterrence. What is the basis of—and need for—deterrence if the two sides have no reason to fight? In that case, what are nuclear weapons deterring? The empirical case Krepon cites in support of his contention that deterrence stability is chimerical raises another logical issue. Describing the U.S.-Soviet nuclear competition, he writes that “deterrence stability was not assured until the Cold War ended with the Soviet Union’s demise.”18 The key word here is “assured.” If nuclear deterrence were “assured,” why would it even deter? If there is no chance that nuclear weapons will be used, then nuclear deterrence ceases to exist as a meaningful concept. The possibility of deterrence failure is what makes deterrence

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

73

work. As George Perkovich writes, “if there were not a willingness to risk actually engaging in suicide, the deterrent effect would be attenuated or lost. Deterrence depends on the risk of its failure, that is, that the other side may initiate armed attack, and nuclear weapons will then be used, perhaps in mutually devastating exchanges.”19 Effectively, Krepon’s position is that deterrence stability between nuclear-armed states is possible only when there is no need for deterrence; in other words, his inflated standards for deterrence stability render it a theoretical impossibility. My perspective is that viewing deterrence stability as a relative, rather than a dichotomous, phenomenon generates a more realistic, fine-grained understanding.

India-Pakistan Relations After the February 2019 Crisis At the time of writing in mid-March, relations between New Delhi and Islamabad seem to be slowly returning to their normally “correct,” but frigid state. At the official level, the two sides’ High Commissioners, who were recalled after the Pulwama attack for “consultations,” have returned to their posts. India vowed during the crisis that it would pursue diplomatic measures to ensure the complete isolation of Pakistan from the international community, and there is no sign that it intends to reverse course. New Delhi withdrew Most-Favored-Nation privileges from Islamabad, worked assiduously at the United Nations to have the Security Council condemn in the “strongest terms the heinous and cowardly suicide bombing in Jammu and Kashmir,”20 tried but failed, because of Chinese opposition, to have JeM leader Masood Azhar black-listed by the Security Council, successfully encouraged the Financial Action Task Force to condemn Pakistan for failing to stem funding for terrorist groups such as JeM, and mounted a global campaign to bring pressure on Pakistan to shut down terrorist organizations operating on its territory. The long history of Indo-Pakistani animosity, culminating in the February 2019 crisis, has left a legacy of deep mistrust between the two governments. As shown after the Pulwama carnage, New Delhi and Islamabad continue to frame their differences in starkly different terms, with Pakistan highlighting the long-standing conflict over Kashmir, and India emphasizing Pakistan’s support for cross-border terrorism. Ceasefire violations in Kashmir have risen dramatically in recent years, with increases in mortar fire, artillery

74 

D. T. HAGERTY

barrages, and consequent casualty rates. Heavy cross-LOC shelling has continued unabated since the crisis. All told, the Kashmir dispute continues to be the “bleeding wound” of Indo-Pakistani relations, with no end in sight. There remains a distinct possibility of future India-Pakistan crises.

Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Weapons: Capabilities, Doctrine, Command and Control Reliable estimates put the overall number of nuclear warheads at 130–140 for India and 140–150 for Pakistan.21 New Delhi and Islamabad both deploy a formidable nuclear dyad of fighter-bomber aircraft and land-­ based ballistic missiles. In peacetime, they apparently maintain mostly unassembled weapon systems, with the warheads located separately from the delivery vehicles, albeit not far away.22 India’s nuclear-capable aircraft, New Delhi’s most reliable nuclear delivery systems,23 are the Mirage 2000H and Jaguar IS/IB, with respective ranges of 1850 and 1600 kilometers. Pakistan’s nuclear bombs can be delivered by the F-16A/B and Mirage III/V aircraft, with ranges of 1600 and 2100 kilometers, respectively. India is believed to have four operational, land-based, nuclear-­ capable ballistic missiles: the short-range Prithvi II (250 km) and Agni-I (700 km), the medium-range Agni-II (2000 km), and the intermediate-­ range Agni-III (3200  km).24 The latter three are solid-fueled, road- or rail-mobile systems. New Delhi also operates a rudimentary sea-based nuclear-capable missile, the Dhanush (400  km), which can be launched from Sukanya-class patrol vessels, but its limited range makes it extremely vulnerable to attack. One of India’s top nuclear-developmental priorities today is to deploy a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) capability. India’s first nuclear-capable submarine, the Arihant, reportedly went on its maiden “deterrent patrol” in 2018.25 When fully operational, the Arihant will be armed with the K-15 Sagarika SLBM, with a range of 700  kilometers, and perhaps the K-4 SLBM, with a range of roughly 3500 kilometers. Pakistan deploys six nuclear-capable, land-based, road-­ mobile missile systems: the short-range Abdali (200  km), Ghaznavi (300 km), Shaheen-1 (900 km), and Nasr (70 km), as well as the medium-­ range Ghauri (1250 km) and Shaheen-2 (2000 km). Islamabad also fields the Babur, a nuclear-capable, road-mobile, ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM—350 km). Pakistan has plans for a sea-based version of the Babur and, eventually, an SLBM capability, but the operational realization of a Pakistani nuclear triad is many years off.

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

75

India and Pakistan both claim to have nuclear doctrines of “credible minimum nuclear deterrence.”26 In each case, it is unclear exactly what nuclear forces this would ultimately entail, because neither government specifies what the necessary numbers and qualitative characteristics of such an arsenal would be. A logical definition of “credible minimum” in this context would be just enough redundancy and diversity of nuclear arms as to ensure survivable second-strike capabilities; but with both countries gradually, yet resolutely, pursuing a triad of air-, land-, and sea-based weapons, they seem to be moving well beyond that point. New Delhi and Islamabad are instinctively resistant to greater nuclear weapons transparency, calculating that their deterrent postures are made more, rather than less, robust by presenting each other with substantial ambiguity and uncertainty. The stated purpose of Indian nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks; deterrence of conventional aggression is considered a residual side benefit of India’s arsenal. New Delhi says that it has a no-first-use (NFU) doctrine, meaning that it (says it) would use nuclear weapons only in response to an adversary’s first use of nuclear weapons.27 In this context, Indian nuclear doctrine makes no distinction between the enemy’s use of tactical versus strategic forces. Nor does India’s doctrine distinguish between an opponent’s first use against Indian territory and its first use against invading Indian forces on the rival’s own soil. India’s public stance is that it would respond to Pakistan’s nuclear first use with massive retaliation, presumably meaning that it would ride out the attack, assess the damage, and then attack the enemy in response, imposing “unacceptable damage.”28 Vipin Narang refers to India’s doctrine as one of “assured retaliation.” He writes: “The key differentiating feature of the posture is a nuclear force structure that is arrayed to potentially and plausibly survive an attempted disarming conventional or nuclear first strike and be capable of retaliating with nuclear forces.”29 Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine differs from India’s in important respects. Islamabad rejects the notion of NFU; its nuclear weapons are explicitly intended to deter conventional as well as nuclear attacks. Because India’s overall conventional forces are greater than its own, Pakistan reserves for itself the right to use its tactical nuclear weapons—the Nasr short-range missile system—in response to an Indian conventional invasion. In early 2002, Pakistan Army Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, then director general of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD)—the organization effectively in charge of Pakistan’s nuclear forces—said that Islamabad would resort to nuclear weapons “only if the existence of Pakistan as a state is at stake.”30 But with

76 

D. T. HAGERTY

India’s subsequent development of so-called “proactive” conventional military options that loosely fall under the rubric of “Cold Start,”31 and the fanfare surrounding them, Islamabad’s doctrinal perspective has shifted. Pakistan claims that its deployment of the Nasr is a direct result of Indian planning for limited conventional strikes,32 but the contemplated strikes would be too shallow to threaten Pakistan’s survival. In any event, Pakistani strategists now refer to their nuclear doctrine as “full-spectrum” deterrence, meaning they have endeavored to—and, they believe, succeeded in—filling the ostensible “space” under the nuclear threshold that Indian strategists claim to be exploiting as they plan their limited conventional ground incursions.33 Narang describes this doctrine of “asymmetric escalation” as being “explicitly designed to deter conventional attacks by enabling a state to respond with rapid, asymmetrical escalation to first use of nuclear weapons against military and/or civilian targets.” With such a doctrine, “nuclear weapons must be operationalized as war-fighting instruments.”34 As with their nuclear capabilities, precise details about Indian and Pakistani command and control arrangements remain somewhat obscured and thus subject to conflicting assessments and interpretations based on incomplete and possibly unreliable information. India maintains pronounced, centralized civilian control of its nuclear weapon systems.35 In peacetime, the nuclear warheads are under the control of two civilian scientific organizations. The fissile cores are stored by the Bhabha Atomic Research Center and the non-fissile trigger packages by the Defence Research and Development Organization. The relevant military services manage the delivery systems, principally fighter-bomber aircraft and land-­ based ballistic missiles. Despite this apparent separation of the weapon systems’ various components, analysts tend to concur in their assessments that, over the years, New Delhi has gradually reduced the potential time-­ to-­launch of at least a small subset of its nuclear weapons, in an effort to make its operational posture more responsive during a developing crisis. Narang summarizes this trend: India now seems to utilize “various states of disassembly and co-location to optimize survivability and rapidity of deployment if necessary;” the “baseline readiness” of Indian nuclear weapons is likely higher than it was previously, “with some systems almost fully ready during peacetime.”36 Gaurav Kampani’s assessment is slightly more tentative on this point. In his understanding, Indian nuclear forces are normally in a “low state of operational readiness,” with the weapons essentially de-mated, but there is some co-location of weapons and delivery systems at Indian Air Force (IAF) bases.37 An additional consideration is the ongoing canisterization of India’s ballistic-missile systems, “in which

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

77

the warhead is likely pre-mated to the delivery vehicle and kept hermetically sealed for storage and transport,”38 although questions persist about the extent and implications of canisterization. Gurmeet Kanwal asserts that, with the canisterization of mobile missiles, “it may be assumed that limited mating of warheads would have taken place.”39 If this is accurate, New Delhi has the ability to use nuclear weapons against Pakistan very early in a future crisis. A decision to do so can only be made by India’s Nuclear Command Authority (NCA), composed of the Prime Minister, national security, intelligence, and foreign affairs principals, as well as the military leadership. “Nuclear assets would only be constituted, operationalized, and transferred to military end users on the orders of the Prime Minister, the de jure head” of the NCA.40 The NCA consists of a Political Council, chaired by the Prime Minister and mainly comprising senior national security officials, as well as an Executive Council chaired by the national security adviser and consisting mainly of senior military officers and the heads of the intelligence and scientific agencies. In practice, the Political Council would authorize the use of nuclear weapons, and the Executive Council would execute those orders via the Strategic Forces Command (SFC), led by the service chiefs and charged with managing Indian nuclear weapons operations.41 The highest rungs of India’s nuclear chain of command are dominated by the Prime Minister and other political leaders, whose aim is to “maintain maximal control over the nuclear arsenal even after it had absorbed a first strike.”42 That said, they have in recent years “made the military a co-participant with the scientific agencies that had earlier dominated nuclear planning.”43 In contrast to India’s, Pakistan’s nuclear command and control system is dominated by the military services, in particular the Pakistan Army. Islamabad generally keeps its nuclear weapon systems and warheads unassembled in peacetime.44 However, every element of Pakistan’s nuclear forces is under the firm control of the army and the PAF. The army has custody of the land-based missiles and warheads, while the PAF maintains the nuclear-capable fighter-bombers and their bombs. Narang writes: “It is believed that single or proximate military bases store all the necessary components”—fissile cores, non-fissile trigger packages, and delivery ­vehicles—“for rapid assembly and deployment in a crisis.”45 Some analysts express doubts about whether Pakistan has managed to miniaturize a warhead small enough to be mated with the Nasr missile.46 If Pakistani scientists have surmounted that challenge, David Smith argues that with the smaller warheads using plutonium or a “hybrid mix of HEU and plutonium,” the Nasr warheads’ “nuclear cores are almost certainly sealed

78 

D. T. HAGERTY

inside the weapon,” which is thus “stored in a fully assembled state.”47 Other analysts agree: the Nasr “appears to be a canisterized system in which the warhead would have to be mated to the missile prior to being fielded.”48 If true, this implies that Pakistan has a short time-to-launch in the early stages of a crisis. Pakistan’s reported deployment of a battlefield nuclear weapon system raises other potential challenges. Because of their short range, Nasr missiles would have to be deployed relatively close to the front lines in case of an Indian conventional invasion; but, to be useful in blunting such an invasion in case deterrence had failed, launch authority would likely have to be predelegated to commanders in the field, lest disruptions in communications cut them off from higher authorities.49 Pakistani officials “state flatly that all Pakistani nuclear weapons will remain under centralized control and that no predelegation of use authority will be given,” but knowledgeable analysts are skeptical.50 Nuclear-release decision-making is vested in Pakistan’s NCA, nominally headed by the Prime Minister. More specifically, the NCA’s Employment Control Committee (ECC) would authorize the use of nuclear weapons. The ECC is also chaired by the Prime Minister, with four other senior civilian officials as members—the foreign minister and the ministers of defense, finance, and interior. Despite the fact that the ECC’s military representatives—the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and the chiefs of the three military services—are outnumbered, there is no doubt that, in practice, nuclear-use decisions would be made by the military.51 In the second echelon of the chain of command is the SPD, which oversees and manages Pakistan’s nuclear weapons operations, including the execution of the NCA’s nuclear-release decisions. Directly below SPD are the Strategic Force Commands of each military service. In sum, the way Pakistan attempts to ensure that its asymmetric escalation strategy can be rapidly implemented when necessary is by total military control of the nuclear command hierarchy and full integration of conventional and nuclear operations.52

The Nature of “Ugly Stability” Between India and Pakistan The India-Pakistan nuclear balance, along with a dearth of promising conventional military options for either side, has generated an “ugly stability” on the subcontinent. Given the toxic political relationship between Islamabad and New Delhi, it is unfortunately easy to imagine a scenario in

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

79

which another India-Pakistan crisis erupts. The triggering event would likely be another mass-casualty terrorist attack in Kashmir, such as the 2019 Pulwama assault, or in India proper, such as the 2008 Mumbai operation. In South Asia’s complex landscape of violent jihadism, responsibility for such an attack might at first be difficult to ascertain, but Indian suspicions would logically focus on Pakistan-based groups such as LeT and JeM. The Pakistani state has long viewed subconventional attacks, the classic weapon of the weak against the strong, as an effective part of its pursuit of asymmetric warfare against India. The public and political pressure on Prime Minister Modi to respond forcefully to the Pulwama tragedy was intense; in the event of a spectacular terrorist attack killing scores or hundreds of citizens in Delhi or Mumbai, it would be even greater. Multiplying the inherent dangers of such a scenario is that the initial provocation, call it “Step One,” would not be the move of a unitary, rational actor. Pakistan is the world’s only nuclear weapon state for which this can be said. In every crisis from 1998 to 2019, Islamabad denied, dissembled, and obfuscated its way through the ensuing highly charged interaction with New Delhi. Its established practice is to deny any role in the initial aggression or to argue that it cannot control (and cannot be expected to control) every group of jihadis that bears a grudge against India. This issue has been most insightfully analyzed by Perkovich, who anticipated the exact dynamic that played out after the Pulwama attack: “If a state is not functioning as a unitary actor, or claims not to be when it is convenient, or is not perceived to be by those who seek to deter it, the implications for deterrence stability are profound.” Indian decision-­makers facing such a fragmentary adversary are confronted with a “highly unstable dilemma. They could act as if the initial violence reflects the intentions of Pakistan’s chain of command and send countervailing signals of retaliatory action according to normal models of deterrence, in which greater credibility and righteousness tend to reside with the defender.” But “if Pakistani leaders believe or claim that the perpetrators were not carrying out state policies, and India does escalate, Pakistani leaders will feel that India is the aggressor, significantly changing the dynamics of crisis and deterrence stability.”53 In February 2019, both sides portrayed themselves as victims, which created severe pressures on political leaders to respond aggressively. The “ugliness” stems from the existence and resolve of subconventional actors and the ambiguity surrounding the precise authorship of their attacks, which renders clear state-to-state communication and signaling extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible. For Perkovich, “the most

80 

D. T. HAGERTY

immediate risk is that a major terrorist attack on India could instigate war that would then escalate to nuclear use. Deterrence stability requires control over the nuclear arsenal and prevention of conflict that can escalate— perhaps unintentionally—to major war between India and Pakistan.”54 Step Two in this ugly scenario would be India’s.55 We can productively assume the Indian state to be a unitary, rational actor in which there is strong civilian control of the military and little evidence that elements of the national security apparatus sponsor, support, and/or carry out deadly subconventional operations against Pakistan. However, the Indian Army has been planning and exercising for limited, Cold Start–style conventional military options. Indian military planners envision relatively shallow armored penetrations that would conquer a limited area of Pakistani territory, which would then be used as leverage to negotiate a favorable political settlement with Islamabad.56 The reasoning behind such limited-war options is that they could, in theory, be launched so quickly, perhaps within a handful of days, that the United States and other external actors would not have a chance to intervene before India could respond forcefully to Pakistan-abetted aggression. Planning for and publicizing these options has created a quandary for the Indian Army: The Indian political leadership, skeptical of the possibilities for escalation control, has never officially endorsed a “proactive” conventional military doctrine, but the army’s concept has drawn sufficient attention over the years to have become a major source of concern for the Pakistan Army, which has naturally responded with a number of countervailing moves, both conventional and nuclear. Although the champions of limited Indian conventional responses to Step-One attacks emanating from Pakistan claim that they can carve out “space” for retaliation under Islamabad’s nuclear threshold,57 their confidence that they can do so without transgressing Pakistan’s nuclear “red lines” is in all probability unwarranted.58 They have not been able to convincingly answer Indian political leaders’ questions about what would happen next. Would Pakistani commanders on the ground and the Army leadership in Rawalpindi interpret the invasion across the ­international border—the first Indian ground operation on Pakistani soil since 1971—as a limited attack? How would they respond to battlefield defeats and the loss of substantial amounts of territory? What if the Pakistani forces, well-prepared by now for the prospect of Indian incursions, and enjoying shorter logistical lines to the front, begin to outfight the Indian intruders? Would Indian forces accept a humiliating defeat, or would they redouble their efforts to take Pakistani territory by throwing

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

81

more armor and air power into the fight? If the latter, how would Pakistan respond in turn? Given the inherent friction59 of major conventional land warfare and the inevitable uncertainties it generates, could escalation from the conventional to the nuclear level certainly be avoided? How to be sure? Indian military planners’ seeming overconfidence regarding the conduct of conventional military options “under the nuclear threshold” could well have disastrous consequences. Step Three in this “ugly” scenario would be Pakistan’s. Predictably, Pakistani military strategists have responded to Indian planning for limited conventional war options by developing tactical nuclear weapons, deliverable via the short-range Nasr missile. The Pakistan Army describes this capability as a low-yield option for destroying large tank formations with relatively little explosive damage or spread of radiation beyond the battlefield. Pakistani military planners envision the Indian limited-war threat as a “pre-programmed, predetermined, shooting from the hip posture within 48 to 96 hours,” involving “eight or nine” “independent integrated battle groups of about armored brigade size,”60 totaling some 32,000–36,000 soldiers. Although analysts describe the Nasr as a “fielded” system,61 public sources do not disclose whether Pakistan has yet been able to successfully miniaturize a nuclear warhead to mate with the missile. It is possible that even Indian military planners do not know whether the Nasr system is fully operational, but it would be wise for them to assume that it is. Pakistan’s actual or anticipated deployment of an operational short-range nuclear missile system raises a number of potential instabilities in this evolving scenario. As noted above, in order for the Nasr to be available for use on short notice during an Indo-Pakistani crisis, authorization to launch the missile(s) against advancing Indian armor would likely have to be predelegated to commanders on the ground, perhaps in the midst of major military hostilities and the resultant fog of war. Under these circumstances, Pakistan’s command and control system would come under enormous stresses, quite possibly including the severing of communications links, which would leave battlefield commanders cut off from their ­superiors and forced to make decisions of the greatest magnitude on their own. Looming over all of this would be Pakistani decision-makers’ understanding that their failure to back up their nuclear-deterrent posture in response to an Indian invasion would forevermore render their nuclear capabilities—Pakistan’s crown jewels—suspect in Indian eyes. Given that knowledge, Pakistani commanders might well choose not to exercise nuclear restraint.62

82 

D. T. HAGERTY

If Pakistan were to use tactical nuclear weapons in order to blunt an Indian conventional attack that threatened its vital national interests, the two rivals would be entering completely uncharted territory. Never have nuclear weapons been used against a country with the capacity to respond in kind. Forecasting next moves in the aftermath of the first use of nuclear weapons since 1945 would be sheer conjecture. Again, India’s declaratory nuclear doctrine does not make a distinction between nuclear strikes on Indian territory and those against Indian forces on Pakistani territory. Nor does Indian doctrine distinguish between the “tactical” and “strategic” use of nuclear weapons against its forces. If India’s nuclear doctrine of assured retaliation is to be believed—and some analysts doubt its credibility63—Step Four of this “ugly” scenario would be India’s escalation to “massive retaliation.”64 New Delhi has never publicly disclosed what this would entail, calculating that being purposefully vague strengthens India’s deterrent power. It is also possible that the Indian prime minister and other very senior officials simply do not know what massive retaliation implies, because they never expected to find themselves in a position to implement what they essentially consider to be a rhetorical stance. In Step Four, Pakistani strategists’ apparent calculation that such a devastating, disproportionate Indian response is unlikely would be put to the test. At this point, all bets would be off. Nobody knows how far the escalatory spiral would go and if it could somehow be controlled. Fortunately, there is also a “stability” side to this picture. The argument for stability is based on both the empirical record and the logic of nuclear deterrence. The empirical record was laid out to a great extent in Chaps. 2 and 3. Adding the February 2019 confrontation to the mix, we now have five crises in South Asia’s two decades of overt nuclear weaponization, and this history provides clues as to how New Delhi and Islamabad might behave in a future crisis. From 1998 to 2016, India reacted with pronounced caution to provocations emanating from Pakistan, in large part because of the effects of nuclear deterrence. In the Kargil conflict of 1999, New Delhi mounted a potent military response to Pakistan’s ­subconventional insertion of troops into the then undefended Indian side of the LOC, high in the Himalayan mountains. However, Indian military operations were strictly and explicitly limited to the Indian part of the disputed territory of Kashmir, for fear of escalation to conventional warfare along the established international border between India and Pakistan and of unpredictable escalatory consequences after that.65 In the Twin Peaks crisis of 2001–2002, New Delhi ordered a full mobilization of its

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

83

armed forces, which were on heightened alert along the LOC and the international frontier for nine costly months. At two different points in the tense standoff, Indian leaders seriously considered, but then refrained from ordering, conventional military operations into Pakistan. Then, in the aftermath of the Mumbai carnage of 2008, and despite years of Indian Army planning for Cold Start–style proactive options,66 the Indian prime minister quickly ruled out a conventional military response, opting instead for diplomatic pressure against Pakistan to cease its support for anti-Indian jihadis. The 2016 Uri attacks in Kashmir were met with Indian so-called surgical strikes across the LOC that were carefully calibrated not to bring about escalation to higher levels of conflict. Although it is too soon fully to assess the influence of nuclear weapons on Indian and Pakistani decision-making during the 2019 crisis, we can discern glimmers of nuclear signaling by Pakistani leaders, as well as indications that both New Delhi and Islamabad were conscious of the need to avoid escalation that might lead to major conventional operations and potentially the use of nuclear weapons. After the February 26 Indian airstrikes on Balakot, New Delhi went to great lengths to portray them as defensive measures intended to ward off further terrorist attacks. The IAF had conducted a “non-military preemptive action … specifically targeted at the JeM camp,” and not at civilian areas or Pakistani military installations.67 In a press briefing later that day, Pakistan Army Maj. Gen. Asif Ghafoor said: “the prime minister has summoned a meeting of the National Command Authority [Pakistan’s apex nuclear decision-making body]…. I hope you know what the NCA means and what it constitutes.”68 Then, after the PAF’s February 27 retaliatory strikes in Indian Kashmir, Islamabad stated that its intent was to “demonstrate our will, our right, our capacity for self-defence. We have no intention of escalation.”69 Indeed, by refraining from airstrikes in India proper—and therefore not matching India’s Balakot attack—Pakistan actually moved a rung down the escalation ladder. As noted in the Preface, after the February 27 PAF strikes and the NCA meeting, Prime Minister Khan pointedly directed a nuclear signal to his Indian audience: “I ask India: with the weapons you have and the weapons we have, can we really afford … a miscalculation” that might lead to war?”70 Between 1998 and 2016, Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons and deterrence imposed inhibitions on the conventional use of force and India-Pakistan conflict escalation. In addition to providing decision-­ makers with direct, compelling incentives not to engage in conventional

84 

D. T. HAGERTY

conflicts that might escalate to the nuclear level, the mutual possession of nuclear weapons limited New Delhi’s options for launching meaningful punitive strikes in response to Pakistan’s subconventional provocations. The February 2019 crisis was a watershed in that India escalated its retaliation both vertically—by opting for airstrikes—and horizontally—by hitting a target not in Pakistani Kashmir, but in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Media reports, mainly Indian, were full of assertions that India had “called Pakistan’s nuclear bluff,” which is a false—and perhaps dangerous—interpretation of events. Deterrence theory has never held that nuclear weapons deter small-scale attacks like India’s Balakot airstrikes; the theory is that they deter nuclear aggression and conventional (land) invasions.71 The closest instance we have to a failure of nuclear deterrence in the region is Pakistan’s 1999 Kargil misadventure.72 As noted in Chap. 3, though, the Kargil incursion was by no means a conventional military operation (see Chap. 3, note 9). The Pakistan Army secretly infiltrated mufti-clad, lightly armed, paramilitary soldiers across the LOC, at altitudes of up to 18,000 feet, after Indian posts in the remote Himalayan ranges had been abandoned for the winter.73 The intrusion’s initial success was enabled by the absence of Indian blocking forces, which allowed for inertial, opportunistic forward movement a few miles inside Indian Kashmir. As the Indian government’s “Kargil Report” noted, “the infrastructure available on the Pakistani side of the LOC and the limitations imposed by terrain and weather conditions did not allow the development of large size operations through the unheld gaps.”74 Moreover, the operation was mounted on territory claimed in its entirety by Pakistan (and by India), whose recognized international status was (and remains) undetermined. Many prominent specialists in South Asian security affairs have affirmed that Pakistan’s Kargil operation was a subconventional intrusion across the LOC. As Feroz Hassan Khan, Peter Lavoy, and Christopher Clary put this point: “Pakistan repeatedly has attempted daring and unconventional methods to wrest Kashmir militarily from India and liberate the Kashmiri Muslims from Indian rule…. The Kargil operation was the latest failed attempt to take the advantage in this perennial competition.”75 Krepon writes that “India and Pakistan have experienced severe crises, but national leaders have studiously avoided a conventional war that could result in a crossing of the nuclear threshold.”76 The “stability-instability paradox,” Krepon notes, “travelled to the subcontinent carrying new baggage: subconventional warfare.”77 Deterrence theorists have long appreciated that nuclear weapons deter conventional invasions and nuclear attacks but not

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

85

subconventional (or, in different terminology, “unconventional,” “low-­ intensity,” or “asymmetrical”) aggression.78 Narang nicely captures this logic in the South Asian context: “No serious analyst, scholar, or military officer ever argued that the threat of nuclear use against Indian forces was salient, or even possible, for operations across the LoC. It is only operations across the international border … where the threat of Pakistani nuclear use becomes salient.”79 The same reasoning logically applies to Pakistani cross-LOC operations, such as the Kargil initiative. What can we infer from the behavior of decision-makers in New Delhi and Islamabad during the four crises examined in Chaps. 2 and 3, and what we know about the February 2019 crisis so far? First, Pakistani leaders and their proxies know that limiting their aggression to the subconventional level is likely not to provoke either a conventional invasion or nuclear response from India. India’s forbearance in conventional terms is well-established, although its response to Pulwama suggests that its tolerance for subconventional violence is wearing thin. Regarding the nuclear level, New Delhi has said time and again that its nuclear weapons are intended to deter other countries’ use of nuclear weapons against India or its military forces. Moreover, as discussed, nuclear deterrence theorists have never surmised that nuclear weapons should or will deter subconventional attacks, which—while materially and psychologically damaging—do not threaten vital interests. As was demonstrated in 1999, 2002, 2016, and 2019, Pakistan’s ongoing support for jihadis in Indian Kashmir represents the type of provocation that falls far below any reasonable standard for Indian nuclear deterrence to operate. The same can be said for Pakistani support for terrorist acts in India proper, such as the ones carried out against the Parliament complex in New Delhi in 2001 and the Mumbai rampage of 2008. These are not failures of nuclear deterrence any more than 9/11 was a failure of U.S. nuclear deterrence. Second, three different Indian prime ministers have wisely decided that Pakistan’s subconventional aggression, while frustrating, does not warrant escalation to a conventional invasion and then possibly nuclear war, the negative consequences of which would greatly outweigh the initial provocation. They understand, in Perkovich’s words, that the “willingness to risk a breakdown in nuclear deterrence would only be rational if the threat that is being countered or deterred is of an existential scale. To risk suicide to redress a threat that is not itself mortal would be irrational, because if escalation to nuclear exchanges resulted, it would leave the state taking this risk worse off than it would be if it did not trigger such a nuclear

86 

D. T. HAGERTY

exchange.”80 Indian leaders also seem to grudgingly accept that any Step-­ Two conventional response that is forceful enough to actually chasten Pakistan would also be so consequential as to threaten a Pakistani nuclear riposte or to set in motion major hostilities with potential to escalate to the nuclear level. In this sense, they viewed the Balakot airstrikes as a political necessity, but likely had little expectation that they would actually change Pakistani behavior. Indian strategic planners are aware that the brightest of redlines in Pakistan’s security calculus is the accepted international border running from Jammu to the Arabian Sea, and that once this line is breached by Indian armor, there are no obvious additional redlines within Pakistani territory that would signal how far is too far, which is one reason why India’s civilian leadership is dubious about its Army’s proactive strategy.

The Theoretical Logic of South Asian Nuclear Deterrence What are the theoretical bases of regional nuclear deterrence in South Asia? My conception is that India-Pakistan deterrence arises from a combination of two complementary and mutually reinforcing factors. The first of these is “existential deterrence,” a concept that was created during the Cold War by McGeorge Bundy, who served as National Security Advisor to U.S. presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson from 1961 to 1966.81 The second is the distinct nuclear doctrine adopted by each state, as reflected in its weapons deployments, its command and control arrangements, and its public statements. As noted earlier, per Narang, these are encapsulated in the terms “assured retaliation” for India and “asymmetric escalation” for Pakistan. The essence of existential deterrence is that two nuclear adversaries with secure second-strike capabilities will avoid fighting with one another because of the possibility that armed conflict between them might escalate to a nuclear exchange. The concept effectively captures the inherent paradox of nuclear weapons: While they create the risk of enormous devastation and loss of life, that very risk is what deters conventional warfare, nuclear warfare, and potential escalation from the former to the latter. If the risk of calamity were zero, so too would be the deterrent effect of the weapons. The sheer destructive power of nuclear weapons is such that no conceivable political objective is worth the risk of fighting a nuclear war.

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

87

Because everyone can easily understand the horrific consequences of a nuclear exchange, existential deterrence creates strong disincentives for the escalation of lower-level conflicts. Since escalation cannot necessarily be controlled, decision-makers on both sides of a nuclear rivalry will look for ways not to climb the ladder of armed violence during crises. They understand that nobody can reliably predict the outcome of a nuclear war, in which there will almost certainly be relative degrees of defeat, but no victory. Bundy drew on his experience in the White House to build his theoretical argument: “It is one thing for military men to maintain our deterrent force with vigilant skill, and it is quite another for anyone to assume that their necessary contingency plans have any serious interest for political leaders,” whose object “is that these weapons should never be used. I have watched two Presidents working on strategic contingency plans, and what interested them most was simply to make sure that none of these awful events would occur.”82 Existential deterrence, for Bundy, was “strong in every major crisis between the superpowers since ‘massive retaliation’ became possible for both of them in the 1950s. As everyone closely involved recalls, such deterrence was particularly powerful during the Cuban Missile Crisis.”83 His aim in coming up with the term “existential deterrence” was to “distinguish this kind of deterrence from the kind that is based on strategic theories or declaratory policies or even international commitments.” As long as “each side has very large numbers of thermonuclear weapons which could be used against the opponent, even after the strongest possible pre-emptive attack, existential deterrence is strong. It rests on uncertainty about what could happen, not in what has been asserted.”84 Existential deterrence has often been mischaracterized.85 Some scholars over the years have mistaken it for a very small nuclear weapons capability that falls far short of constituting a survivable second-strike force.86 Analysts have also had a tendency to treat existential deterrence as a policy,87 a doctrine,88 a posture,89 or an early phase in the evolution of a state’s nuclear development.90 Narang refers to existential deterrence as “a ­concept first coined by McGeorge Bundy positing that the ‘mere existence of nuclear forces,’ even ambiguous or non-weaponized forces, should induce caution in adversaries and deter conflict, both nuclear and conventional. States are treated as equivalent once they acquire even a single nuclear weapon.”91 Narang here quotes not Bundy but one of his interpreters, Marc Trachtenberg, who wrote of existential deterrence in 1985: “the mere existence of nuclear forces means that, whatever we say or do,

88 

D. T. HAGERTY

there is a certain irreducible risk that an armed conflict might escalate into a nuclear war. The fear of escalation is thus factored into political calculations: faced with this risk, states are more cautious and more prudent than they otherwise would be.”92 However, Bundy himself was very careful to emphasize that his concept is contingent on two nuclear foes having mutual, secure second-strike capabilities: “As long as each side retains survivable strength so that no leader can ever suppose that he could ‘disarm’ his opponent completely, nuclear war remains an overwhelmingly unattractive proposition for both sides.”93 Elsewhere, he cautioned: “I must not leave the impression that the maintenance of existential deterrence is automatic. Such deterrence arises from the existence of large forces whose overall survivability is ensured.”94 For Bundy, existential deterrence is not a purposive act of human agency, an option that can be chosen or a phase that states can pass through; rather, it is a condition imposed upon two states by the “terrible and unavoidable uncertainties” arising from their mutual predicament.95 Of course, there are important differences between today’s India-­ Pakistan nuclear equation and the U.S.-Soviet nuclear balance that was the empirical genesis of Bundy’s existential deterrence concept. His reasoning incorporated three elements of the superpowers’ nuclear stockpiles: “they were large, unambiguously survivable, and thermonuclear.”96 So far, the South Asian nuclear standoff involves relatively small—but still substantial— forces with atomic rather than hydrogen explosives and thus a somewhat less certain margin of assured second-strike capabilities. Do these differences invalidate existential deterrence in the Indo-Pakistani situation? My answer is a resounding “no” on every count. First, the extremely dense population concentrations, severe congestion, and limited first-­responder and specialist medical capabilities in Indian and Pakistani cities mean that even a limited exchange of atomic warheads would quite possibly kill hundreds of thousands of people quickly and many more with the passage of time. Second, large nuclear forces are logically only required to deter an opponent that also possesses large nuclear forces. What is n ­ ecessary in this regard is a rough equality between two adversaries’ nuclear stockpiles, such that one side cannot destroy all of the other’s retaliatory capabilities in a first-strike barrage. Third, while the margin of second-­strike assurance is somewhat reduced in the India-Pakistan context, there can be little doubt that the two countries today have secure second-strike capabilities vis-à-vis one another. Both deploy bomber aircraft and land-­based missiles in significant numbers, including mobile missile systems that are easy to

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

89

conceal. At any given moment, neither side can be sure that it knows the precise locations of all the enemy’s launchers, warheads, and other weapon components; nor can either side be sure how the various elements of the opponent’s weapon systems are stored and configured or how quickly they can be integrated in preparation for launch. Furthermore, the possibilities for deception are rife. Perhaps the most effective way to depict this structure of mutual second-strike deterrence is to adopt the potential attacker’s perspective. Can its proverbial “clever briefer” provide apex decision-makers with any convincing scenario in which, if they attempt a first strike, all of the adversary’s nuclear weapons will certainly be demolished or otherwise rendered useless? If not, the attacker faces first-strike uncertainty97 and will be deterred from an attempted first strike by the possibility of nuclear devastation in response.98 The respective Indian and Pakistani nuclear doctrines (or “postures” in Narang’s terminology) constitute the second theoretical basis of South Asian nuclear deterrence. Because existential deterrence is a simple reality or structural condition, not a policy or doctrine, it can—and, in practice, does—co-exist with countries’ particular nuclear doctrines. Even as Bundy was developing his concept, the United States and the Soviet Union had declaratory and operational stances that together constituted their respective nuclear doctrines. Every nuclear weapon state tries to signal its deterrent resolve to potential enemies. Properly understood, existential deterrence complements states’ nuclear doctrines, as expressed in their tacit bargaining99 with one another, their force postures, their command and control arrangements, and their targeting and employment plans. In this conception, existential deterrence—as embodied in the existence of survivable, second-strike forces—is the foundation for mutual deterrence, while the relevant nuclear doctrines are layered on top of it. Framed a different way, existential deterrence provides the structure for the states’ strategic interaction, while each state’s nuclear doctrine is the expression of its agency within that structural context. Theoretically, individual countries’ nuclear doctrines can reinforce existential deterrence to a greater or lesser extent. In the South Asian context, the Indian and Pakistani nuclear doctrines combine with existential deterrence to make a strong theoretical case for mutual deterrence between New Delhi and Islamabad. This hybrid of existential deterrence and Pakistan’s doctrine of asymmetric escalation has for more than two decades deterred India from taking advantage of its greatest strategic edge over Pakistan—its overall conventional military

90 

D. T. HAGERTY

superiority. Absent the condition of existential deterrence and Islamabad’s doctrine of asymmetric escalation, if India were to suffer another mass-­ casualty terrorist attack originating in Pakistan, a large conventional war of attrition might be its best bet for truly punishing its enemy and coercively effecting a fundamental change in Pakistani behavior. But Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent dictates that New Delhi consider only smaller, more limited conventional ground thrusts whose outcome would be profoundly uncertain. In the best-case scenario, India could launch a successful Cold Start–style operation and then negotiate a political solution to the problem of Pakistani support for cross-border and cross-LOC attacks. However, the likelihood of actually achieving such a tidy outcome is low. India might well lose battles in the early stages of armed clashes on Pakistani soil, presenting New Delhi with difficult choices about whether to intensify its operations in dangerous ways. Alternatively, if it were to win early engagements and Pakistan chose not to surrender—a plausible scenario—New Delhi would run a serious risk of the Pakistan Army resorting to the use of its Nasr tactical nuclear system against Indian forces. Once the international border has been breached in land warfare, there is simply no reliable way for Indian military planners to determine what Islamabad’s internal redlines might be. Unlike such vague and ambiguous delineations, the India-Pakistan border has the status of an obvious threshold, which, to quote Thomas Schelling, has the benefits of “simplicity, uniqueness, discreteness, susceptibility of qualitative definition and so forth.” For Schelling, “certain kinds of limits are capable of being jointly expected by both sides, of focusing expectations and being recognized as qualitatively distinct from the continuum of possible alternatives.”100 Once this threshold is breached, “there is no confidence in any resting point, and expectations converge on complete collapse.”101 To repeat a point made above, the brightest nuclear redline in South Asia is the established, mutually recognized international border. If the Indian prime minister were to order even limited conventional ground strikes across that border into Pakistan, the chances of a regional nuclear war would rise immeasurably. Although India’s assured retaliation doctrine is less ambitious and precise than Pakistan’s asymmetric escalation strategy, in conjunction with the underlying foundation of existential deterrence, it still provides New Delhi with a strong nuclear deterrent. It is challenging to imagine any reasonable scenario in which Pakistan would start a nuclear or conventional war with India. Although India says that it will not use nuclear weapons first, it would be an extraordinarily unwise Pakistani leadership which tests that

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

91

pledge by initiating a conventional military attack across the international border. One commonality between Bundy’s existential deterrence and Narang’s nuclear postures is that neither theorist puts much stock in words alone. Bundy writes: “The uncertainties which make existential deterrence so powerful have the further consequence that what either government says it might do, or even believes it might do, in the event of open conflict cannot be relied on either by friends or opponents as a certain predicter of what it would actually do.”102 Narang agrees: “To put it bluntly, states care more about what an adversary can credibly do with its nuclear weapons than what it says about them.”103 Even if India did not retaliate with nuclear weapons immediately after a Pakistani conventional invasion, decision-­makers in Islamabad are surely aware that the eventual risks of escalation from there to a nuclear exchange would be significant. Doubts regarding Indian resolve creep in when analysts think about how India might respond to Pakistan launching nuclear strikes against either Indian territory or invading Indian forces on Pakistani soil. In Step Four of the scenario above, would New Delhi really escalate to “massive retaliation” if Pakistan had launched a handful of tactical nuclear weapons at advancing Indian armored columns? What about in response to a more provocative nuclear attack on Indian soil? As a declaratory position, the unfortunately termed “massive retaliation” suffers from the same inherent credibility problems as its 1950s U.S. forebear; namely, the magnitude of death and destruction it promises is wildly disproportionate to most of the conceivable provocations that might call for it to be invoked. The “assured retaliation” descriptor is more proportionate, and thus more credible, and—in my conception—it is bolstered by the underlying foundation of existential deterrence. “Deterrence,” it has been written, “hinges on uncertainty.”104 This uncertainty is “inescapable.”105 Innumerable questions arise as the two sides contemplate the use of force against each other, conventional or nuclear. How many nuclear weapons does the adversary have? How many are air-deliverable bombs, and how many are missile warheads? Estimates are widely variable and often based on projections of fissile-material production, “which is an incomplete methodology that tends to produce inflated numbers.” Other important factors include the “amount of weapon-grade fissile material produced, warhead design choice and proficiency, warhead production rates, numbers of operational nuclear-capable launchers, how many of those launchers are dual-capable [nuclear and conventional], nuclear strategy, and statements by government officials.”106

92 

D. T. HAGERTY

Additional questions include, but are by no means limited to: How are the weapon systems’ various components—delivery vehicles, warheads, fissilematerial cores—stored, where are they, how quickly can they be integrated, and what are the times-to-launch of each system? What are the adversary’s actual operational plans and protocols versus its reported, suspected, or declared plans and protocols? What are the two sides’ actual warhead-mating capabilities for its missile systems and bombers? How much can the opponents’ declaratory stances, for example, India’s NFU policy and Pakistan’s Step-Three threat to launch tactical nuclear weapons against invading Indian forces, be trusted? How would the inevitable friction affect the two countries’ ability to accurately interpret what is happening on the battlefield and prevent uncontrolled escalation to the nuclear level? What would be the impact of climatic and meteorological conditions on radioactive fallout and other follow-on consequences of nuclear explosions? In such close quarters, how might one’s own population be affected by those consequences? In sum, there are many things that Indian and Pakistani leaders do not know about their real, as opposed to presumed, capabilities, intentions, and circumstances. These uncertainties prey on the minds of decision-makers, making them very cautious. What Indian and Pakistani strategic elites do know for sure is that, in the shadow of nuclear weapons, any movement up the ladder of escalation is dangerous and potentially catastrophic. More specifically, the crux of South Asian deterrence stability is Indian decision-makers’ caution as they have considered their responses to Pakistani and Pakistan-abetted aggression over the last two decades, which in turn stems from their decided uncertainty about the ultimate consequences of choosing more aggressive responses. When we adopt the Indian perspective in Step Two of the above scenario, the uncertainties mount.107 Perkovich insightfully captures the dilemma New Delhi faces in coming up with an effective conventional option that does not risk Pakistani nuclear retaliation: developing limited conventional “capabilities and using them precisely enough not to trigger nuclear war is easier said than done and is inherently risky. The calibration of escalation is exceedingly tricky and requires unattainable confidence in one’s own knowledge of the opponent’s red lines—what level of conventional retaliation would the adversary be willing to withstand without countering with greater escalation, including the use of nuclear weapons?”108 Regarding Pakistan’s Nasr tactical nuclear system, at any given point in time, is the system deployed and fully operational? Has launch authority been predelegated

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

93

to commanders in the field? Exactly where are the various launchers? Which of these are real and which might be dummies? Are other missile batteries perhaps concealed? Analysts have tended to focus on the potential instabilities introduced by the Nasr, including the possibility of accidental, inadvertent, or unauthorized use.109 While these are legitimate fears, Indian military planners undoubtedly understand these risks and would factor them into their Step-Two calculations. After all, the risks’ probability would sharply rise if an onslaught of Indian forces were to threaten the Nasr systems’ very survival. Moreover, it is not far-fetched to argue that if India does indeed have plans to utilize some variant of its limited-war proactive options, Pakistani tactical nuclear weapons could also have stabilizing effects. Their deployment tempers what might otherwise be dangerous overconfidence on the part of the Indian military and political leadership.110 In this context, it is difficult to sustain the argument that “Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons will add little to deterrence.”111 What they add, arguably, is the credibility of an all too imaginable Pakistani riposte to the first appearance of Indian tanks and infantry on unambiguously Pakistani soil since 1971, as compared to the prior vague threat of countervalue strikes against Indian cities. The Indian Army says that it has exercised to “fight through” the Pakistan Army’s Nasr strikes, but the real thing—with its unprecedented, utterly chaotic, horrifying qualities— would be a completely different story. One respected analyst argues that “nuclear use—even limited nuclear use—would almost certainly halt any Indian military advance.”112 Would an Indian Prime Minister run the risk of nuclear war in response to another Pulwama or Mumbai? He or she would have little cause to expect Pakistani restraint in the event of an Indian conventional invasion into (Pakistani) Punjab or Sindh. Would Islamabad back down or resort to nuclear strikes on Indian forces? It has signaled very clearly its intention to respond, under certain conditions, with tactical nuclear weapons.113 If Pakistan did not follow through with this deterrent threat, its trump card would be devalued forever. Indian leaders simply cannot rule out the possibility of Pakistani nuclear reprisal. It should also be remembered that Cold Start–style limited conventional ground incursions are unlikely to have the desired political effect of compelling Islamabad to stop sponsoring or abetting subconventional operations in India and Indian Kashmir. Nothing would do more to make Pakistanis rally around the flag—and the Pakistan Army—than an Indian invasion, especially since Islamabad will deny culpability, and many Pakistanis will not believe Indian allegations

94 

D. T. HAGERTY

that their own government was actually behind the Step-One attack. Not only that, but the terrorists will not be put out of business; to the contrary, this is exactly the kind of Indian response they would welcome, and their recruitment numbers would almost certainly swell.

Conclusion: Deterrence Stability in South Asia? It is useful at the outset of this concluding section to remind ourselves just how far the idea of South Asian nuclear deterrence has come since the early days of the Indo-Pakistani nuclear arms competition. The conventional wisdom in the nonproliferation community during the 1980s and 1990s was that “many of the political, technical, and situational roots of stable nuclear deterrence between the United States and the Soviet Union may be absent in South Asia, the Middle East or other regions to which nuclear weapons are spreading. There is a high risk of nuclear weapons being used.”114 Because strategic elites in such regions “perceive the stakes to be so high, some of these countries’ leaders may be ready to risk nuclear confrontation, if not even to accept a surprisingly high level of nuclear damage, in pursuit of their objectives.”115 Today, in contrast, even pessimistic analysts acknowledge that the India-Pakistan nuclear balance deters conventional invasions and nuclear attacks. For example, Krepon and Julia Thompson write: “Some pathways to conflict, such as pre-meditated, large-scale conventional warfare, as might have been contemplated in 1987, and as was the case in 1965 and 1971, now seem unlikely because of offsetting nuclear capabilities. Fears of preemptive nuclear strikes, like those plaguing Washington and Moscow during the Cold War, seem even more improbable on the Subcontinent.”116 That is not to say, of course, that South Asian nuclear deterrence is necessarily stable. As is evident from the section above on the nature of ugly stability, the India-Pakistan enduring rivalry and nuclear competition has a number of profoundly troubling aspects. Overall, I would locate it somewhere near the middle of the conceptual continuum between “pure deterrence stability” and “pure deterrence instability” but recently trending toward the latter end. The continuing “ugliness” of the political relationship between New Delhi and Islamabad is, to some degree, offset by elements of stability in the material-technological, doctrinal, and organizational attributes of the nuclear balance between them. In the political realm, future crises sparked by Pakistani or Pakistan-abetted subconventional violence seem likely. Relations between the two governments remain

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

95

toxic. Chronic political violence between the security forces and militants in Indian Kashmir threatens to flare up anytime, providing Islamabad with a fertile “opportunity environment” for maintaining pressure on New Delhi. Judging by the 2019 Pulwama attack, elements within the Pakistan Army apparently calculate that subconventional acts of violence against Indian forces in Kashmir still confer more benefits than costs. As the February crisis recedes into the past, we should not lose sight of one important fact: In the absence of such Step-One mass-casualty attacks carried out by terrorist groups based in Pakistan, there would likely be no crises, no escalation to conventional war, and little possibility of nuclear weapons being used in South Asia. Unfortunately, the state of Pakistan lacks the will to permanently shutter the operations of non-state actors that threaten to ignite warfare between two nuclear weapon states. Tellis writes, “this pervasive refusal to accept responsibility for the actions of terrorist groups that not only operate out of Pakistani territory but also enjoy the active support of its military and intelligence services in their ongoing covert war against India remains the real cause of the repeated crises in South Asia.”117 As the revisionist power in the Kashmir dispute and the India-Pakistan political conflict more broadly, Pakistan sees value in terrorist attacks that keep Kashmir in the mind’s eye of the international community, boost the morale of anti-Indian insurgents, and heighten the domestic popularity of the Pakistan Army, but stay well underneath any reasonable threshold for an Indian conventional invasion or nuclear response. The continued bifurcation of the Pakistani state between civilian and military authorities, and the Army’s compartmentalization of its links with terrorists and other militants, generates useful plausible deniability in Pakistan but extreme vexation in India. The hydra-headed nature of Pakistan’s government is the ugliest aspect of ugly stability. As Perkovich observes: “Doubts about the monopoly of the Pakistani state’s control of forceful actors and actions emanating from the state challenge the unitary rational actor assumptions on which deterrence rests. The precariousness of deterrence stability grows with each crisis.” Each one pressures India “to counterattack” and Pakistan then “to respond in an escalatory action.” The “subconventional-­ conventional-­nuclear escalation problem” is “especially problematic when subconventional actors are not operating—in fact, or according to Pakistani claims—within the unitary state apparatus on which deterrence models depend.”118 As of the February 27 Balakot airstrikes, the Indian government has also begun to dabble in “threats that leave something to chance.”119 New

96 

D. T. HAGERTY

Delhi has signaled that it is willing to use air power to punish Pakistan, and that it will no longer consider itself constrained from attacking targets beyond Kashmir, on undisputed Pakistani territory. Few experts would be surprised if, during the next crisis, the IAF was ordered to destroy JeM facilities in Bahawalpur or LeT sites in Muridke, both in Pakistan’s Punjabi heartland. In turn, it would be politically suicidal for Islamabad not to respond with equal or greater military force. Between the 2016 Uri attack and the February 2019 crisis, India and Pakistan have been tacitly bargaining their way up the escalation ladder. Under Modi’s leadership, India has moved a number of steps up the ladder. Each upward step creates expectations for even greater escalation the next time. As New Delhi demonstrates more and more resolve, Pakistan will feel compelled to match it. Meanwhile, the Indian Army continues to plan, exercise, and publicly signal its preference for Cold Start–style limited-war ground operations, which are explicitly designed to shorten the length of time needed to mount a conventional invasion of Pakistan. Unlike Islamabad, however, New Delhi practices strong civilian control over its armed forces, and Indian political leaders are skeptical of such “proactive” options. But more attacks like the one in Pulwama or—worse—the one in Mumbai, could lead the government to finally give official sanction to Cold Start. If present trends continue, future crises will move the two countries closer and closer to ground operations across the international border. As the margins for error narrow, the possibilities and consequences of inadvertent actions would rise dangerously, as would the likelihood of nuclear weapons use. Having said that, judging from their conduct during the five crises since 1998, neither India nor Pakistan wants to fight a conventional war, and both sides seem to understand that doing so would generate intolerable risks of escalation to a nuclear exchange that could cause enormous devastation to both countries. Even as New Delhi and Islamabad resorted to airstrikes in the 2019 crisis, it appears that the deterrent effects of nuclear weapons kept a lid on further escalation. Indian officials stressed that their use of air power was directed exclusively at a JeM training camp, not at Pakistani military targets, strongly implying that India wished to avoid escalation to military clashes. Pakistan’s response was limited to Kashmir and thus non-escalatory, and government officials repeatedly emphasized the dangers of further escalation. Tellis observes that the “carefully calibrated employment of force on both sides indicates that both New Delhi and Rawalpindi consciously sought to avoid a major conventional conflict, much less a nuclear crisis.”120

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

97

In the material-technological, doctrinal, and organizational realms— encompassing the nuclear weapons themselves, their deployment configurations, their operational status, and the strategies that would guide their employment—there is some cause for reassurance but not for complacency. As I argued above, both India and Pakistan deploy too many weapons, in too many different modes, for military planners on either side to reach optimistic conclusions about the prospects of a decapitating first strike. To be perfectly frank, there is no chance that either side’s nuclear arms could be used preemptively to completely destroy the other side’s nuclear forces; attempting such a deluge of nuclear strikes would go down in history as one of the unwisest decisions ever made. Deterrence stability between India and Pakistan is also promoted by their countervalue nuclear doctrines and command and control practices. Although recent analysis indicates that New Delhi is in the early stages of developing the capabilities required for a doctrinal shift to counterforce targeting, this is a future prospect with many potential downsides that are certain to be aired as Indian strategic elites assess such an evolution.121 Forswearing counterforce capabilities, at least for the time being, allows Indian and Pakistani decision-makers to act with great deliberation during crises, because neither side has to fear that it will lose most or all of its hard-won nuclear arms at a moment’s notice. Additionally, their apparent practice of keeping at least some of their weapon systems disassembled in peacetime, with the components stored separately, means that trying to target these capabilities with any precision at all would be extraordinarily difficult. Concerns about deterrence instability have risen with the advent of the Indian Army’s planning for “proactive” limited-war options, followed by the Pakistan Army’s development of the Nasr tactical nuclear weapon system. Some analysts fear that the Cold Start/Nasr dynamic could put urgent pressure on Pakistani commanders of Nasr batteries if India were to invade across the international border, especially if launch authority had been predelegated. Fearing the loss of their battlefield nuclear capabilities, might not those commanders “use rather than lose” them in an Indian conventional onslaught? While these are certainly legitimate fears, viewing this interaction from New Delhi’s perspective suggests that the inevitable uncertainties and irreducible nuclear risks are too great for Indian political leaders to initiate a conventional land war with Pakistan. Not only is there no guarantee that India would prevail in the initial battles, but if it did win, it would increasingly run the risk of threatening Pakistan’s vital interests and thus of nuclear retaliation. To reiterate a crucial point, the only

98 

D. T. HAGERTY

unambiguous Pakistani redline is the mutually accepted international border between India and Pakistan; any ostensible internal redlines are, in comparison, so hazy as to be completely unreliable. Hypothetically, after New Delhi has chosen to send ground forces across the recognized international border for the first time in nearly 50 years, why would Pakistani decision-makers assume there are any restraints on Indian conventional military operations? Choosing to launch Cold Start–type attacks into Pakistan would effectively be asking for a regional nuclear war. Nothing in Indian political leaders’ behavior during South Asia’s nuclear era points to such a rash move. That said, the challenge of Pakistan’s non-unitarity is inherently unstable and badly needs to be addressed. Mutual nuclear deterrence is a shared responsibility based on the commitment of both sides to avoiding provocative behavior. It can never be reliably stable if only one of the states acts responsibly. The next chapter will analyze this challenge, as well as several potentially negative trends in Indian and Pakistani nuclear weaponization and doctrinal developments, with an eye to moving the South Asian nuclear-strategic balance toward, rather than away from, “pure deterrence stability.”

Notes 1. Ashley J. Tellis, Stability in South Asia (Santa Monica: RAND, 1997), vii, 30–33. Also see Ashley J.  Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001), 131 and Ashley J. Tellis, Are India-Pakistan Peace Talks Worth A Damn? (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2017), 217. 2. McGeorge Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” in The Security Gamble: Deterrence Dilemmas in the Nuclear Age, ed. Douglas MacLean (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1984), 3–13. 3. Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 13–54. 4. For overviews of the debate and literature, see: Peter R.  Lavoy, “The Strategic Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: A Review Essay,” Security Studies 4, no. 4 (Summer 1995): 695–753; Devin T. Hagerty, “Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: The 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis,” International Security 20, no. 3 (Winter 1995/96): 79–114, especially p.  80, note 5; David J.  Karl, “Proliferation Optimism and Pessimism Revisited,” Journal of Strategic Studies 34, no. 4 (August 2011): 619–41;

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

99

Sumit Ganguly and S.  Paul Kapur, India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012); and Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, 3rd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012). 5. Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson, eds., Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2013); Michael Krepon, et al., Deterrence Instability and Nuclear Weapons in South Asia (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2015). 6. Allan G. Johnson, The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology: A User’s Guide to Sociological Language, 2nd ed. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000), 150. 7. Thomas C.  Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 207–29. 8. Here I am adopting Kenneth Waltz’s view regarding assumptions: They “are neither true nor false.” We judge them by their usefulness in helping to generate strong theories. See his Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), 6. 9. As George Perkovich observes: “The sending of deterrent threats and the management of potential crisis escalation, war and war termination depend on the linear connection between instruments of violence and the state authorities that order them.” “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” in Krepon and Thompson, Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, 25. 10. Perkovich notes that “irrationality cannot be excluded from a state conforming to the unitary actor model, but irrationality is much more probable in a non-unitary state. Rationality aside, disunity produces dangerous confusion and ambiguity that interfere in the management of deterrence.” “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 26. 11. Michael Krepon, “The Myth of Deterrence Stability Between Nuclear-­ Armed Rivals,” in Krepon, et  al., Deterrence Instability and Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, 16–17. 12. Michael Krepon, “Can Deterrence Ever Be Stable?” Survival 57, no. 3 (June–July 2015): 118. 13. Krepon, “Can Deterrence Ever Be Stable?” 111, 112. 14. Michael Krepon, “The Holy Grail of Deterrence Stability,” Arms Control Wonk, July 9, 2018. (https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/ archive/1205441/the-holy-grail-of-deterrence-stability/) One wonders in what sense these are “extreme cases.” After all, nuclear deterrence theory has always been about deterring nuclear attacks and conventional invasions. No reputable deterrence theorist that I am aware of has ever made the case that nuclear weapons are good at deterring subconventional conflict.

100 

D. T. HAGERTY

15. Michael Krepon, “Deterrence Stability is a Hoax. The Delicate Balance of Terror is, Too.” Arms Control Wonk, July 19, 2017. (https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1203633/deterrence-stability-is-a-hoaxthe-delicate-balance-of-terror-is-too/). 16. Krepon, “Myth of Deterrence Stability Between Nuclear-Armed Rivals,” 15. 17. Krepon, “Myth of Deterrence Stability Between Nuclear-Armed Rivals,” 15. 18. Krepon, “Can Deterrence Ever Be Stable?” 112. 19. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 26. 20. “Security Council Press Statement on Suicide Bombing in Jammu and Kashmir,” SC/13712, United Nations, New  York, February 21, 2019 (https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/sc13712.doc.htm). 21. Unless otherwise noted, the estimates in this section come from Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 74, no. 6 (November 2018): 361–66 and Hans M. Kristensen, Robert S. Norris, and Julia Diamond, “Pakistani Nuclear Forces, 2018,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 74, no. 5 (August 2018): 348–58. My main focus here is nuclear capabilities that are believed to be operational; those still under development will be discussed primarily in Chap. 5. 22. Devin T. Hagerty, “India’s Evolving Nuclear Posture,” Nonproliferation Review 21, nos. 3–4 (September-December 2014): 299–300, 304–05. The operational status of Indian and Pakistan nuclear forces will be discussed at greater length below. 23. Yogesh Joshi and Frank O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia: Forces, Doctrine, and Dangers (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019), 15–16, 19; Gaurav Kampani, “India’s Evolving Civil-Military Institutions in an Operational Nuclear Context,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, June 30, 2016 (http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/06/30/india-s-evolving-civil-military-institutions-in-operational-nuclear-context-pub-63910). 24. The Agni-III’s precise operational status is ambiguous. See Kristensen and Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 363; Joshi and O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia, 25, 39. 25. “INS Arihant Completes First Deterrent Patrol: PM Narendra Modi Lauds ‘Historic’ Moment,” Indian Express, November 27, 2018. New Delhi has plans to deploy three more nuclear-armed submarines, but will not have a fully operational, survivable, 24/7 sea-leg of its planned triad for many years. On the characteristic Indian hyperbole surrounding the Arihant, see Manoj Joshi, “INS Arihant’s Deterrence Patrol: More Hype than Necessary,” Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, November 6, 2018 (https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/ins-arrogant-deterrence-patricks-more-hype-than-necessary-45427/).

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

101

26. For a more detailed overview, see Hagerty, “India’s Evolving Nuclear Posture,” 300–06. 27. For an argument that New Delhi’s nuclear strategy may be evolving away from an NFU posture, see Christopher Clary and Vipin Narang, “India’s Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities,” International Security 43, no. 3 (Winter 2018/19): 16–21. 28. Hagerty, “India’s Evolving Nuclear Posture,” 300. 29. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 18. 30. P. Cotta-Ramusino and M. Martellini, “Nuclear Safety, Nuclear Stability and Nuclear Strategy in Pakistan: A Concise Report of a Visit by Landau Network-Centro Volta,” Pugwash Online Conferences on Science and World Affairs, Como, Italy, January 14, 2002. (www.centrovolta.it/landau/NuclearSafetyNuclearStabilityAndNuclearStrategy.aspx). 31. See Chap. 2, note 120. 32. Peter Lavoy and Khalid Kidwai, “A Conversation with Gen. Khalid Kidwai,” Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, March 23, 2015, 4–5 (http://carnegieendowment.org/files/03-230315carnegieKIDWAI.pdf). 33. “A Conversation with Gen. Khalid Kidwai,” 5. 34. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 19. 35. This paragraph draws mainly from Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 100–109; Kampani, “India’s Evolving Civil-Military Institutions;” and Gaurav Kampani, “India: The Challenges of Nuclear Operationalization and Strategic Stability,” in Strategic Asia, 2013–2014: Asia in the Second Nuclear Age, eds. Ashley J.  Tellis, Abraham M.  Denmark, and Travis Tanner, (Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2013), 99–128; and Joshi and O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia, 31–34. 36. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 102–104. For a more recent argument that India’s command and control of its nuclear forces is increasingly responsive, see Clary and Narang, “India’s Counterforce Temptations,” 36–38. 37. Kampani, “India’s Evolving Civil-Military Institutions.” 38. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 103. 39. Gurmeet Kanwal, Sharpening the Arsenal: India’s Evolving Nuclear Deterrence Policy (Noida, UP: HarperCollins, 2017), 9. Also see Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 103–104. 40. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 105. 41. Kampani, “India’s Evolving Civil-Military Institutions;” Joshi and O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia, 32. 42. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 107.

102 

D. T. HAGERTY

43. Kampani, “India’s Evolving Civil-Military Institutions.” 44. Kristensen, Norris, and Diamond, “Pakistani Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 350. 45. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 85. 46. See, for example, A.H.  Nayyar and Zia Mian, “Pakistan and the Nasr Missile: Searching for a Method in the Madness,” Economic and Political Weekly, September 26, 2015, 64. 47. David O.  Smith, “The Management of Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal,” in Nonproliferation Review 21, nos. 3–4 (September–December 2014): 283. 48. Christopher Clary and Vipin Narang, “Doctrine, Capabilities, and (In) Stability in South Asia,” in Krepon and Thompson, Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, 100. 49. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 87; Sebastien Miraglia, “Deadly or Impotent: Nuclear Command and Control in Pakistan,” Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 6 (December 2013), 856. 50. Smith, “The Management of Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal,” 288–89. 51. Smith, “The Management of Pakistan’s Nuclear Arsenal,” 278. 52. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 84. 53. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 22. Also see pp. 30, 37–38. 54. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 24. 55. My focus here is the most likely scenario for conflict escalation to the nuclear level: a Cold Start-type, limited Indian conventional invasion of Pakistan in response to future Pakistani or Pakistan-abetted subconventional aggression. As New Delhi’s February 2019 air strikes on Balakot showed, India has lesser—but still vigorous—options. For a comprehensive examination, see George Perkovich and Toby Dalton, Not War, Not Peace? Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2016), especially pp.  104–34. Because any process of escalation to the nuclear level would presumably go through some variant of Cold Start, Step Two, as discussed here, could actually come later in a sequence of events that included air strikes, special forces raids, or other lesser military options. 56. For a skeptical view of the viability of such operations, aside from the nuclear context, see Jaganath Sankaran, “Pakistan’s Battlefield Nuclear Policy: A Risky Solution to an Exaggerated Threat,” International Security 39, no. 3 (Winter 2014/15): 127–33. 57. Kanwal, Sharpening the Arsenal, 89–91. 58. As Clary and Narang argue, “two critical assumptions underlie any proactive strategy option: (1) that India actually has the capability to succeed and (2) that Pakistan Army commanders will be forgiving of Indian offen-

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

103

sives that penetrate 30 to 50  km into Pakistani territory and that they would not contemplate using nuclear weapons to slow the Indian offensive. Both assumptions are probably false….” “Doctrine, Capabilities, and (In)Stability in South Asia,” 98. 59. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, eds. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 119–21. Clausewitz writes on p. 119: “Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war…. Countless minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee—combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls far short of the intended goal…. Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper.” 60. “A Conversation with Gen. Khalid Kidwai,” 8–9. 61. Clary and Narang, “India’s Counterforce Temptations,” 14. 62. For a detailed discussion of the Nasr’s operational status, uncertainties surrounding its potential use, and the related possibility of inadvertent escalation, see Joshi and O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia, 67–72. 63. Vipin Narang, “India’s Nuclear Strategy Twenty Years Later: From Reluctance to Maturation,” India Review 17, no. 1 (March 2018): 162. 64. Few analysts seem to believe Gurmeet Kanwal’s contention that “in response to a nuclear attack on its forces [on Pakistani territory], India will execute its nuclear doctrine of massive retaliation and Pakistan will cease to exist as a functional nation state.” See his Sharpening the Arsenal, 84–85. 65. At Kargil, Robert Jervis writes, Indian and Pakistani leaders “seem to have … concluded that nuclear weapons would indeed cast a significant shadow over any clash that occurred even if—or rather because—there was no way to be sure what levels and kinds of force would lead to uncontrolled escalation.” See his “Kargil, Deterrence and International Relations Theory,” in Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and Consequences of the Kargil Conflict, ed. Peter R.  Lavoy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 394. 66. For an insightful examination of the inhibitions against the Indian Army’s development of feasible limited-war options vis-à-vis Pakistan, see Shashank Joshi, “India’s Military Instrument: A Doctrine Stillborn,” Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 4 (May 2013): 512–40. 67. “Statement by Foreign Secretary on the Strike on JeM Training Camp at Balakot,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi, February 26, 2019. (https://mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements. htm?dtl/31089/Statement+by+Foreign+Secretary+on+26+February+ 2019+on+the+Strike+on+JeM+training+camps+at+Balakot). 68. “Time for India to Wait for Our Response,” Dawn, February 26, 2019.

104 

D. T. HAGERTY

69. Amy Kazmin and Farhan Bokhari, “Pakistan Says It Has Shot Down 2 Indian Air Force Jets,” Financial Times, February 27, 2019. 70. “All Wars Are Miscalculated, No One Knows Where They Lead To: PM Khan,” Dawn, February 27, 2019. 71. As Narang tweeted on February 26, 2019, “no nuclear analyst ever thought or believed that nuclear weapons deter air strikes. There is a wide berth for conflict in the stability-instability paradox world—the question is escalation, and whether ground forces get involved where nuclear weapons ∗can∗ matter.” Also see his March 12 comments at the 2019 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference, where he observed that the Indian and Pakistani air operations were “way below” the “so-called nuclear threshold.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmcXwwEllVg) 72. Jack Gill estimates that the number of Indians and Pakistanis killed during the Kargil fighting was roughly 921, less than the 1000 figure traditionally used by political scientists as the minimum number for a conflict to be considered a war. John H. Gill, “Provocation, War, and Restraint under the Nuclear Shadow: The Kargil Conflict 1999,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42 (March 2019): 18. 73. As one account puts it, Pakistan’s Kargil gambit “combined elements of guerilla operation, a holding operation, a covert operation, a mountaineering expedition, and an expedition to test human endurance. The troops in the field, having to negotiate with one of the world’s harshest terrains and most vicious climates, were … far more in direct and constant combat with nature than with Indian troops.” Nasim Zehra, From Kargil to the Coup: Events that Shook Pakistan (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel, 2018), 131. 74. Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage, 2000), 103. 75. Feroz Hassan Khan, Peter R. Lavoy, and Christopher Clary, “Pakistan’s Motivations and Calculations for the Kargil Conflict,” in Lavoy, Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia, 69. Ashley J. Tellis, C. Christine Fair, and Jamison Jo Medby also use this terminology in Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis (Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 2001), x–xi. 76. Michael Krepon, “The Stability-Instability Paradox, Misperception, and Escalation Control in South Asia,” in Escalation Control and the Nuclear Option in South Asia, eds. Michael Krepon, Rodney W. Jones, and Ziad Haider (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2004), 23. 77. Krepon, “Can Deterrence Ever Be Stable?” p.  123. Also see: Peter R.  Lavoy, “Introduction: The Importance of the Kargil Conflict,” (pp.  8–9), John H.  Gill, “Military Operations in the Kargil Conflict,” (p. 123), Timothy D. Hoyt, “Kargil: The Nuclear Dimension,” (p. 156), and Rajesh M.  Basrur, “The Lessons of Kargil as Learned by India,” (p.  327), all in Lavoy, Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia; Stephen

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

105

P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Arming without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2010), 105; Neil Joeck, “Prospects for Limited War and Nuclear Use in South Asia,” in Krepon and Thompson, Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, 112; Christopher Clary, “Deterrence Stability and the Conventional Balance of Forces in South Asia,” in Krepon, et al., Deterrence Instability and Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, 136; Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Annex B. India’s National Security Perspectives and Nuclear Weapons,” in The Strategic Chain Linking Pakistan, India, China, and the United States, eds. Robert Einhorn and W.P.S.  Sidhu (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2017), 27. 78. Devin T. Hagerty, The Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: Lessons from South Asia (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 61. 79. Vipin Narang, “The Lines That Have Been Crossed,” The Hindu, October 4, 2016. 80. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 24. 81. McGeorge Bundy, “To Cap the Volcano,” Foreign Affairs 48, no. 1 (October 1969): 1–20; McGeorge Bundy, “The Bishops and the Bomb,” New York Review of Books, June 16, 1983, 3–8; Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” 3–13. 82. Bundy, “To Cap the Volcano,” 12. 83. Bundy, “Bishops and the Bomb,” 4. 84. Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” 8–9. 85. For important and illuminating exceptions, see Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 171–77 and Lawrence Freedman, “I Exist: Therefore I Deter,” International Security 13, no. 1 (Summer 1988): 177–95. 86. Gaurav Kampani, “From Existential to Minimum Deterrence: Explaining India’s Decision to Test,” Nonproliferation Review 6, no. 1 (Fall 1998): 12; Victor D.  Cha, “North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Badges, Shields, or Swords?” Political Science Quarterly 117, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 216–17; Tom Sauer, “A Second Nuclear Revolution: From Nuclear Primacy to Post-Existential Deterrence,” Journal of Strategic Studies 32, no. 5 (October 2009): 149–51; Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 3, 6, 34, 223. 87. Kampani, “From Existential to Minimum Deterrence,” 12; Sauer, “A Second Nuclear Revolution,” 751. 88. Cha, “North Korea’s Weapons of Mass Destruction,” 217. 89. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 34. Also see Gaurav Kampani, “Is the Indian Nuclear Tiger Changing Its Stripes? Data, Interpretation, and Fact,” Nonproliferation Review, 21, nos. 3–4 (September–December 2014): 383–98.

106 

D. T. HAGERTY

90. Kampani, “From Existential to Minimum Deterrence,” 12. 91. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 6. 92. Marc Trachtenberg, “The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Security 10, no. 1 (Summer 1985): 139. 93. Bundy, “Bishops and the Bomb,” 6. 94. Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” 12. 95. Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” 8. 96. Hagerty, Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation, 48. 97. I have defined first-strike uncertainty as “the planting of a seed of doubt in the minds of the potential attacker’s leaders about whether it is possible to destroy all of the victim’s nuclear weapons before it can retaliate.” Hagerty, “Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” 85. 98. Bundy expressed to me his agreement with my argument that existential deterrence dampens the prospects for conventional or nuclear war in South Asia: “I generally agree with your view of the nuclear standoff in the subcontinent … as I listen to officials from nuclear-weapon states I find an implicit acceptance of existential deterrence. I don’t think it guarantees against all smaller conflict, but it does afford a thickening deterrent to acts of escalation. I find this line of thought consistent with my own assessments of existential deterrence between the superpowers.” Correspondence with the author, December 30, 1993. Given that New Delhi and Islamabad have many more nuclear weapons and a greater variety of delivery options 25 years later, existential deterrence is even stronger today. 99. Thomas Schelling defines tacit bargaining as “bargaining in which communication is incomplete or impossible.” Strategy of Conflict, 53. The two competitors’ positions are not communicated directly but rather through behavior that signals expectations, assurances, threats, consequences, and other messages. Each party displays its “proposals” in the “pattern of its action rather than in detailed verbal statements.” Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 137. 100. Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, 263. 101. Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, 112. 102. Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” 9. 103. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 4. 104. Krepon, “The Holy Grail of Deterrence Stability.” 105. Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” 8. 106. Kristensen, Norris, and Diamond, “Pakistani Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 351. 107. For a superb analysis of the numerous factors weighing against the successful implementation of India’s “proactive strategy,” see Perkovich and Dalton, Not War, Not Peace?, 73–103.

4  DETERRENCE STABILITY IN SOUTH ASIA TODAY 

107

108. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 29. 109. Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era, 93; David O. Smith, “The U.S.  Experience With Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Lessons for South Asia,” in Krepon and Thompson, Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, 65–92; Jeffrey D. McCausland, “Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Operational Myths and Realities,” in Krepon, et  al., Deterrence Instability and Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, 149–75. 110. It is commonly heard that Islamabad’s deployment of the Nasr system has lowered the India-Pakistan nuclear threshold. In effect, however, the Indian Army initiated this process by devising and loudly publicizing what came to be known as “Cold Start.” Pakistan’s response—tactical nuclear weapons—was so predictable as to be inevitable. Nuclear weapon states that plan, exercise, and tout conventional war strategies against their nuclear-­armed neighbors are themselves essentially lowering the nuclear threshold. 111. Smith, “The U.S. Experience With Tactical Nuclear Weapons,” 84. 112. Christopher Clary in Clary, Gaurav Kampani and Jaganath Sankaran, “Correspondence: Battling over Pakistan’s Battlefield Nuclear Weapons,” International Security 40, no. 4 (Spring 2016): 169. 113. Lavoy and Kidwai, “A Conversation with Gen. Khalid Kidwai,” 6, 8–9. 114. Lewis A.  Dunn, Containing Nuclear Proliferation, Adelphi Paper No. 263 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1991), 4. 115. Lewis A. Dunn, Controlling the Bomb: Nuclear Proliferation in the 1980s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 70. 116. Krepon and Thompson, “Introduction,” 9. 117. Ashley J.  Tellis, “A Smoldering Volcano: Pakistan and Terrorism after Balakot,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,” March 14, 2019. 118. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 30, 37–38. 119. Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, 187–203. 120. Tellis, “A Smoldering Volcano.” 121. Clary and Narang, “India’s Counterforce Temptations,” 38–47.

CHAPTER 5

Enhancing India-Pakistan Deterrence Stability

Abstract  This chapter recommends policies that India and Pakistan can pursue to help stabilize the condition of mutual nuclear deterrence between them. I begin by laying out several foundational premises that guide my thinking. I then outline several political and military measures that the two sides can take to move their nuclear arms competition in the direction of deterrence stability. The most significant of these involve steps that can be taken to address the “ugly” side of ugly stability. After Pakistan makes a fundamental decision to prevent terrorist groups from operating on its soil, New Delhi and Islamabad should jointly forswear the pursuit of subconventional violence on the other side’s territory. At the appropriate juncture, when political conditions are more promising, India and Pakistan should revisit efforts to resolve their dispute over Kashmir. I end the chapter by describing how the United States can help to promote deterrence stability between the two governments. Keywords  Deterrence stability • Kashmir • Cold Start • China • No first use (NFU) • Massive retaliation • United States Building on the analysis in Chaps. 2, 3, and 4, this chapter discusses how India and Pakistan might move toward pure deterrence stability and away from pure deterrence instability. It addresses one central question: What measures can New Delhi, Islamabad, and—to a lesser extent—external © The Author(s) 2020 D. T. Hagerty, Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5_5

109

110 

D. T. HAGERTY

actors such as the United States take to help prevent India-Pakistan crises from erupting and escalating to major conventional war and, possibly, the use of nuclear weapons? My perspective is that, while tempting, devising grand solutions to the challenges of “ugly stability” will be fruitless, not only because of the deep mistrust between New Delhi and Islamabad but also because India’s main aspirational peer in nuclear weapons development and sophistication is China, not Pakistan. I also take the view that, while perhaps helpful at the margins, the long history of Indo-Pakistani confidence-building measures (CBMs) provides little reason for optimism that such incrementalism can fundamentally enhance regional deterrence stability.1 My approach, instead, is to put forward a handful of big, important, pragmatic things that can be done to lessen the ugliness and promote the stability of the South Asian nuclear arms competition.2 None will be easy to accomplish. My thinking is guided by a number of basic premises. First, despite its indisputably ugly qualities, nuclear deterrence is and will continue to be an important contextual factor in India-Pakistan relations. As two analysts put it: “The specter of nuclear warfare on the subcontinent has, to date, succeeded in deterring the least likely but most consequential contingencies: a major conventional war and a crossing of the nuclear threshold in conflict.”3 This observation is not, however, grounds for reassurance. Deterrence can always fail, and the ugly side of South Asia’s nuclear standoff makes that prospect worrisome. My second premise is that, while outside parties can help shore up stability and navigate through crises, only Indian and Pakistani decision-makers can ensure that they will never fight a nuclear war. The leaders of two nuclear weapon states embroiled in an intense security competition have no greater responsibility than to establish and institutionalize a relationship of mutual nuclear deterrence. Ultimately, what this means is accepting the counterintuitive idea that it is vital for both sides—not just one’s own—to have assured, second-strike nuclear capabilities, as well as to avoid actions and policies that will undermine the other side’s confidence in the security of those forces. In other words, India and Pakistan should want each other to have the reassurance of robust, survivable second-strike nuclear arsenals. Third, building momentum toward deterrence stability also requires avoiding violent behavior that is clearly provocative and which might spark uncontrollable escalation up the ladder of armed violence. Over the last three decades, New Delhi and Islamabad have tacitly bargained their way into a strategic stalemate that effectively limits “acceptable” armed conflict to subconventional

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

111

operations and, as of February 2019, limited airstrikes. Either can support subconventional violence on the other’s territory (or part of Kashmir), but only Pakistan has chosen to do so in a significant and regularized fashion. This is extremely frustrating for Indian strategic elites, who search in vain for plausible ways to punish Pakistan enough to make it stop supporting jihadi operations in India, without overreaching beyond nebulous redlines and inciting a nuclear response. Unable or unwilling to accept that they have no good options, they continue to plan and publicly discuss the transformation of their forces to enable Cold Start–type operations in the hope that the political authorities will eventually sanction them. In turn, this stiffens Pakistan’s resolve to use nuclear weapons first in case of an Indian conventional invasion. For deterrence stability to be enhanced, both states will have to make fundamental, difficult, and politically risky changes in their standard ways of operating. The remainder of this chapter is organized in the following way. In the first section, I briefly overview several important trends in the nuclear arms competition between New Delhi and Islamabad, some of which have significant potential to increase deterrence instability. The second section discusses concrete steps India and Pakistan can take to enhance deterrence stability between them. I argue that (1) after Islamabad makes a firm and sincere decision to curtail the operations of terrorists on its territory, the two sides should agree that they will not sponsor, support, assist, or condone subconventional operations in the other country, including territory administered by the other side in Kashmir; (2) India should abandon its inevitably futile effort to create space for itself under the nuclear threshold to conduct limited conventional ground operations in response to Pakistani or Pakistan-abetted subconventional aggression; (3) New Delhi and Islamabad should agree not to deploy tactical nuclear weapons, which are especially destabilizing and prone to dangerous nuclear security lapses; (4) India should undertake to clarify its declaratory nuclear doctrine, reinforcing its no-first-use (NFU) policy and replacing “massive” retaliation with the threat of “calibrated” retaliation to Pakistan’s first use of nuclear weapons; (5) rather than conducting an expensive and unending competition in escalation dominance, New Delhi and Islamabad should strive to align their nuclear deployments and doctrines with the realities of the nuclear revolution. The enormous destructive potential of nuclear weapons and their mutual, assured second-strike capabilities mean that military victory is now impossible in a war between India and Pakistan. That being the case, the significance of their relative nuclear capabilities is sharply

112 

D. T. HAGERTY

­ iminished. As Robert Jervis framed this issue toward the end of the Cold d War, “short of huge advantages leading to a first strike capability, the details of the strategic nuclear balance should not have much influence.”4 India and Pakistan have strategic sufficiency vis-à-vis one another, if only they will embrace it; and (6) India and Pakistan should eventually—at the right time—resume negotiations aimed at resolving the Kashmir dispute, which is not the sum total of the underlying India-Pakistan political conflict but which constitutes a large portion of it. Although the prospects for Kashmir conflict resolution are remote today, they need not be forever, especially if New Delhi and Islamabad can manage to reorient their strategic thinking so as to envision mutual nuclear deterrence as a foundation for conflict resolution. The third section concludes the chapter—and book—with some thoughts on the U.S. role in promoting deterrence stability in South Asia.

Trends A number of recent trends have generated fears among some analysts that India and Pakistan are gradually but inexorably abandoning “credible minimum deterrence” and moving down a slippery slope of increasing nuclear weapons readiness, the development of counterforce capabilities, and nuclear postures that embody escalation dominance strategies and warfighting arsenals. In order to make sense of these concerns, it is necessary to bring India’s strategic relationship with China into the analysis.5 As noted in Chap. 1, India is in the unenviable position of having not one, but two, nuclear-armed rivals in Pakistan and China. This makes planning and implementing a coherent, reliable, well-calibrated nuclear posture a difficult and complex undertaking. Ideally, such a posture would deter nuclear attacks by either China or Pakistan; minimize the likelihood of conventional war (which might escalate to nuclear war) with either China or Pakistan; maximize the probability of India winning a war with either adversary, should one erupt; promote India’s goal of emerging as a fully autonomous and sovereign great power; and do all of these things without provoking countervailing responses in Beijing and/or Islamabad that would undermine India’s net security. To date, New Delhi has achieved its core nuclear-deterrent objectives with respect to Pakistan but not yet with China.6 In all likelihood, India will not acquire an assured, survivable second-­strike capability vis-à-vis China until sometime well into the 2020s. The ranges of India’s nuclear-capable bombers, the most reliable leg of its

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

113

aspirational nuclear triad, are too limited to pose a credible second-strike threat to high-value Chinese targets. New Delhi is striving to address this deficiency through airborne refueling, but this in turn complicates the challenge of evading defensive surface-to-air missiles. Indian scientists are also giving high priority to extending the ranges of their land-based ballistic missiles, in particular the Agni-V, a solid-fueled, mobile platform with a range exceeding 5000 kilometers.7 If and when they become operational, these missile systems will be able to target cities in eastern China. Also, as mentioned in Chap. 4, New Delhi is developing submarine-­ launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) for future deployment on a small fleet of nuclear-powered submarines, the second of which—the Arighat—is scheduled to be commissioned in 2020–2021.8 India’s first nuclear-­ capable submarine, the Arihant, can be armed with the K-15 Sagarika SLBM, with a range of only 700  kilometers. A reliable source indicates that the Arihant is likely to “serve as a training vessel and technology demonstrator” and that the K-15 “should primarily be seen as an intermediate program intended to develop the technology for more capable missiles.” A successor SLBM, the K-4, will have a range of roughly 3500 kilometers, but its deployment and operationalization at sea remains far in the future.9 There have also been many reports that the Indian nuclear-scientific community is intent on mastering multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology for its land-based missiles.10 Some analysts are skeptical of New Delhi’s purported MIRVing plans: “There is good reason to doubt that India can or will add MIRVs to its missiles in the near future. There are no official reports that the Indian government has approved a MIRV program, and loading multiple warheads on the Agni-V would reduce its extra range—a key purpose of developing the missile in the first place.” This source also notes that “it took the Soviet Union and the United States hundreds of nuclear tests and 25  years of effort to develop reentry vehicles small enough to equip a ballistic missile with MIRVs,”11 indicating that India will not be able to deploy reliable MIRVed missiles soon. Although the Indian government does not say this publicly, New Delhi seems to be emulating key aspects of Beijing’s nuclear posture and trajectory. The air leg of China’s nuclear triad is very modest, as is India’s. Both countries have recently invested a large proportion of their military-nuclear resources in the development of increasingly sophisticated land-based missiles, and further refinement of the Agni series should eventually allow India to narrow the sizable gap between the two sides’ abilities to threaten

114 

D. T. HAGERTY

each other’s largest and most important cities with severe devastation. China and India are also pursuing more ballistic-missile mobility and deception options, and each state now deploys the rudiments of an operational SLBM capability.12 Both sides are moving gradually into multiple-­ warhead and MIRV technologies, which will considerably increase their missile delivery systems’ potency and targeting options. While New Delhi seems not to seek overall nuclear parity with Beijing, it is probably accurate to say that it seeks qualitative parity, consistent with the imperative of achieving great-power status and heightened prestige. Judging by its ambitions for a robust nuclear triad, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and SLBMs, its interest in MIRVing its ballistic missiles, and its ongoing research and development of ballistic missile defense (BMD) capabilities,13 Indian strategic elites believe that these technological achievements will allow it to join a very exclusive club of nuclear weapon states. But India is one link in a global chain of nuclear-­ technological attainment, in which China is motivated mainly by the need to maintain survivable second-strike forces against the United States. This means that the United States and China, both now embarked on extremely expensive nuclear modernization programs, exert a strong upward pull on India’s nuclear aims. If recent trends are any guide to the future, New Delhi will spend an enormous amount of money chasing a fast-moving target with much greater resources—China—while unintentionally putting increasing pressure on Pakistan, which already evinces a deep sense of vulnerability due to its resource inferiority to India. In the long term, India’s eventual acquisition of an operational nuclear triad, perhaps accompanied by MIRV and limited BMD capabilities, would severely test Pakistan’s ability to “keep up.”14 India’s technological strides have been accompanied by a renewed debate among New Delhi’s strategic elites over the suitability of its nuclear doctrine. Three aspects of that doctrine have attracted the most scrutiny in recent years: India’s NFU pledge, its stated commitment to “massive retaliation” in case of an adversary’s first use of nuclear weapons, and its presumed countervalue targeting strategy, all of which were put into place in the five years following New Delhi’s 1998 nuclear explosive tests. As Rajesh Rajagopalan encapsulates the ongoing debate, it divides “those who largely support the current doctrine, the moderates,” from “those who would revise it significantly to make it more aggressive, the expansionists.”15 For critics of India’s NFU policy, not only does it fail to deter conventional invasions, but it leaves the country vulnerable to enormous

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

115

devastation in the event of Pakistan’s first use of nuclear weapons, providing New Delhi with no means of limiting the damage.16 Furthermore, NFU allows for the possibility of significant attrition of India’s own nuclear weapons, threatening New Delhi’s ability to retaliate effectively.17 Some analysts argue that the government should give serious consideration to simply renouncing NFU. Others advocate at least injecting more ambiguity into New Delhi’s nuclear-use intentions, arguing that creating greater uncertainty in the minds of Chinese and Pakistani strategic elites would bring enhanced deterrent benefits. Whatever the exact solution, this perspective holds that NFU is a “formula for disaster.”18 A second thread of the expansionist critique argues that India’s commitment to respond “massively” to a rival’s first use of nuclear weapons lacks credibility and thus may fail to deter that first use. This line of thought stems directly from Pakistan’s deployment of the Nasr missile system and its pledge to respond to an Indian conventional invasion by using tactical nuclear weapons against Indian forces, on either Pakistani or Indian territory. Not only would the “massive” employment of Indian nuclear weapons against Pakistan in retaliation for its use of battlefield nuclear missiles be completely out of proportion to the provocation, this argument goes, but it would also invite Islamabad to unleash its remaining nuclear forces against Indian cities.19 At that point, what would there be to lose? Rajagopalan notes the “almost unanimous rejection” of massive retaliation by “analysts in both camps [who] fear the threat to be empty,” and he terms this “one of the rare areas of agreement between the moderates and the expansionists.”20 The third element of debate concerns the possibility of New Delhi introducing elements of counterforce targeting into its nuclear doctrine.21 Perhaps the most forceful proponent of doing so is Lt. Gen. (Ret.) B.S. Nagal, a former head of India’s Strategic Forces Command (SFC). Nagal advocates the adoption of a strategy of “escalation control and dominance, and, if required preemption,” which would put New Delhi in “the driving seat rather than reacting to the adversaries.” By not allowing “destruction of the nation and strategic forces at the commencement of a nuclear war,” a policy of “first use” would afford “a superior range of options to launch decapitating and/or disarming strikes to deal with the adversary leadership/arsenal.” Such a policy “must also include a strategy to negate the adversary’s second strike capability to the maximum extent by adopting a damage limitation strategy”; toward this end, “India should develop MIRV capability at the earliest.”22

116 

D. T. HAGERTY

All in all, the expansionists’ critique of the Indian nuclear doctrine and their program for revision would move New Delhi far afield from its long-­ standing position of credible minimum nuclear deterrence. Some analysts fear that the inevitable result would be a South Asian nuclear arms competition that replicates, in microcosm, the “familiar path” pioneered by the Cold War superpowers as they sought “advantage in nuclear war-fighting scenarios.”23 Moderates in the Indian doctrinal debate downplay the influence of expansionist arguments.24 Rajagopalan observes that “any first-­ strike or even first-use strategy would require India to have a nuclear arsenal far larger than Pakistan’s, whereas what exists is a significant nuclear imbalance in Pakistan’s favor. Not only do we not see any dramatic growth in Indian nuclear forces, we have not even heard any expression of concern by any Indian official about this imbalance, which suggests that Indian officials are not particularly concerned about it.”25 Except for the “massive” in India’s second-strike retaliation posture, the moderates by and large defend the existing nuclear doctrine, arguing that the changes envisioned by the expansionists would lead to steady—and expensive— increases in Indian and Pakistani nuclear stockpiles, as each side abandons minimum deterrence in favor of more unrestrained arms racing. They also point out that New Delhi has gained substantial political mileage from its traditional conception of nuclear forces as weapons of absolute last resort. Dhruva Jaishankar captures the sustaining rationale of the “stay-the-­ course” camp: “No first use, credible minimum deterrence and the associated strategic logic have served India well, and it is important to underscore the benefits. India has managed to rejoin the nuclear mainstream, eventually attaining access to international sources of civilian nuclear technology, fuel and equipment. India has been able to occupy the moral high ground. And it has avoided a potentially expensive nuclear arms race with either China or Pakistan, without truly compromising its security.”26 For the moment, the bottom line is that the “basic philosophy” underlying India’s nuclear doctrine remains unchanged27; “there is little public indication that there is any effort at the official level to respond to criticisms from either the moderates or the expansionists.”28 That said, India’s technological pursuit of qualitative parity with China and the increased nuclear deployment options that will create for Indian strategic planners are likely to generate pressures on Pakistan to develop countermeasures that may push South Asia’s nuclear balance toward more intense arms racing and greater deterrence instability.29

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

117

Measures to Enhance Deterrence Stability India and Pakistan have it within their power to take steps to prevent deterrence failure and promote deterrence stability. None of these will be easy, and all will involve high-level political risk-taking. Needless to say, however, the stakes could scarcely be higher. A nuclear war in South Asia could kill hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people. It would cause enormous and long-lasting environmental damage and public health consequences. The tradition of nuclear non-use, nearly 75  years old, would be shattered, and mutual nuclear deterrence would forever be discredited as a force for peace between adversaries. New Delhi and Islamabad owe their 1.6 billion citizens, their neighbors, and the world at large nothing less than exceptional statecraft in the promotion of deterrence stability. Unfortunately, Jaish-e-Mohammed’s (JeM’s) February 2019 attack in Pulwama shows that, at a minimum, Islamabad’s continued negligence allows anti-Indian terrorists to operate openly on its soil. At a maximum, the tragedy indicates that Pakistan is still committed to its long-standing strategy of subconventional warfare against India. Pakistan must cease and desist. Without a fundamental decision by Islamabad to prevent terrorists from operating on its soil, deterrence stability in South Asia will be elusive. One way forward would be for New Delhi and Islamabad to negotiate an agreement not to sponsor, support, assist, or condone subconventional operations on the other state’s territory, including territory administered by each side in Kashmir. This agreement could apply to terrorist attacks, cross-border support for insurgents, Special Forces raids like the Indian so-called surgical strikes of 2016, and other acts of low-intensity political violence defined by the two countries. It could also incorporate, and perhaps formalize, the May 2018 resumption of the 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control (LOC), which has come under increasing pressure in recent years. Of course, it is mainly Pakistan that has made a regular practice of abetting subconventional operations in India and Indian Kashmir, rather than the reverse,30 but a mutual arrangement to forgo such operations would be less difficult to reach than a unilateral renunciation by Islamabad, because it would not require an admission of past culpability. It is easier for a government to say “we will refrain from these practices if you do the same,” rather than “we will stop these practices (which we have always denied carrying out).” The imperative for concluding a deal along these lines is clear. As Perkovich writes: “The risks that subconventional uses of force could escalate to conventional and perhaps nuclear war

118 

D. T. HAGERTY

c­ reates a clear interest for Pakistanis, Indians, and the international community to treat the uncertain quality of Pakistani state sovereignty as a fundamental strategic problem… If the military does in fact retain control over organized perpetrators of violence, its ongoing support or toleration of them poses a grave threat to deterrence stability.”31 If verifiably implemented, the accord I am suggesting would dramatically lessen the probability of India-Pakistan crises, and thus escalation to conventional and/or nuclear war. An agreement to refrain from subconventional provocations against India would greatly benefit Islamabad in its efforts to be treated as a “normal” nuclear weapon state.32 For New Delhi, such a compact would provide a low-cost way to put Pakistan’s protestations of innocence to the test moving forward. As a second measure to enhance South Asian deterrence stability, India should once and for all end its unwise pursuit of a “Cold Start”type proactive, limited war strategy. There is no prospect that Indian military planners can, in the abstract, calculate the precise magnitude of a ground invasion that is appropriately punitive, effective in coercing Islamabad to revise its strategy of subconventional provocations, but not so threatening to Pakistan’s vital interests that it would not unleash its nuclear arsenal in response. Limited or not, a conventional invasion is a conventional invasion. The first Indian ground operation across the established international border in nearly five decades would be seen by Pakistan—justifiably—as a national emergency of the highest order. The resulting air and ground war would be bloodier and more devastating than those of 1965 and 1971, putting New Delhi in a no-win situation. If India were to lose or be fought to a draw in initial engagements, it would be humiliated. But if India were to win such engagements or turn the tide after early losses, it would run the risk of Pakistan operationalizing its Nasr missile systems in preparation for potential use. If Pakistani authorities came to believe that Indian forces were targeting Nasr batteries for destruction, or that they were inadvertently threatening to overrun them, Pakistani decision-­ makers would face severe pressures to employ the Nasr against Indian armor. As two analysts summarize the peril: “launching even a limited Indian ground and air campaign would pose risks of nuclear use and uncontrolled escalation due to accidents, pressures on command and control networks, and the possibility of inadvertent detonations by warheads without adequate safety measures.”33 In short, continuing to seek punishment options below Pakistan’s nuclear threshold is a dangerous game, because nobody can say in the abstract

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

119

what that threshold actually is. The only reliable threshold or redline is the international border. New Delhi should accept that, no matter how deadly the next terrorist attack or cross-LOC provocation, its costs will pale in comparison to conventional retaliation that escalates to nuclear war. Under the nuclear shadow, any movement up the escalation ladder is potentially catastrophic. As a third measure to promote deterrence stability, India and Pakistan should reach an agreement not to deploy tactical nuclear weapons against each other. India has already shown little inclination to do so, probably reflecting the fact that in this area, the China factor in Indian calculations is not significant. Given its reliance on what it views as the high deterrent value of the Nasr missile, Pakistan would naturally be more hesitant to conclude an agreement banning or limiting battlefield nuclear weapons, as a number of analysts have suggested.34 However, previous proposals have typically been framed as mutual nondeployment restraints in which Islamabad would give up what it perceives to be a highly valued asset in exchange for India’s assent not to do something it already had no intention of doing. In my conception, following on from the first two measures outlined above, India would already have agreed to shelve its proactive limited war strategy, thereby sharply reducing Pakistan’s need and rationale for a tactical nuclear capability on the NATO Cold War model.35 Here again, Islamabad’s desire for “normalization” as a nuclear weapon state would be served, in this case, by its recognition that “short-range, nuclear-­weapon delivery vehicles and tactical nuclear weapons raise extremely difficult command and control problems, and pose a greater risk of theft or, worse, accidental, inadvertent, or unauthorized use.”36 Removing such weapons from the equation would distinctly enhance regional deterrence stability. Fourth, New Delhi should take steps to clarify and reinforce elements of its declaratory nuclear doctrine, which arguably lacks credibility. Despite the concerted efforts of Indian strategic elites over the years to convince their rivals that India would respond massively to a nuclear attack of any size, tactical or strategic, on Indian territory or forces, the intended audiences do not seem to take this threat seriously. Partly this is due to India’s history as a “reluctant” nuclear power and its leaders’ tendency to view nuclear weapons as distinctly political, rather than military, tools. Adversaries’ skepticism also stems from the absence of proportionality implied in the adjective “massive,” especially as it relates to Pakistan’s potential use of tactical nuclear weapons in response to an Indian conventional invasion. It seems patently unlikely that an Indian prime minister

120 

D. T. HAGERTY

would order a large-scale nuclear salvo in retaliation for Pakistan’s firing of four Nasr missiles on the battlefield. Indian decision-makers contemplating a nuclear strike against Pakistan would almost certainly choose a less destructive option, out of concerns for both proportionality and the need to curtail nuclear operations at the earliest possible juncture. My preferred term would be “calibrated” retaliation, which is inherently more credible, balancing proportionality, flexibility, and restraint. New Delhi would also be wise to reinforce, in no uncertain terms, its NFU posture. The argument that NFU leaves Indian territory and nuclear forces vulnerable to nuclear first use by its foes is accurate, but also irrelevant. It is all but impossible to imagine a plausible scenario in which China would initiate a nuclear war with India. As for Pakistan, the only scenario that might cause Islamabad to launch substantial numbers of nuclear weapons against India is one in which New Delhi has already unleashed an all-out conventional invasion of Pakistan that fundamentally threatens its survival—again, virtually unimaginable. Moreover, while it is true that abandoning NFU would signal an intent to deter a Pakistani conventional invasion, such an attack is vanishingly unlikely given the asymmetry in overall military power between the two countries. India’s NFU pledge has served it well, acting as a modest CBM that highlights the last-resort nature of India’s nuclear deterrent and its abhorrence of warfighting machinations. As a fifth stabilizing measure, New Delhi and Islamabad should recommit themselves more broadly to nuclear postures of credible minimum deterrence, aligning their deployments and doctrines with the realities of the nuclear revolution—namely, that outright military victory is now impossible in a war between them. Both countries, in recent years, have exhibited an unfortunate quest for capabilities that would exceed any reasonable definition of “minimum” deterrence. They deploy, or are planning to deploy, a wide variety of ballistic and cruise missiles that will enable an increasing number of distinct nuclear missions. Each side has expressed an interest in MIRVing some of its land-based missiles. Pakistan has introduced tactical nuclear weapons into the regional deterrence calculus, and India is generating the capabilities (and possibly the intentions) for damage-­limiting, counterforce targeting strategies. They are both resolved to develop sea-based nuclear strike options and thus full-blown nuclear triads. India is seeking to develop a BMD system that, while said to be limited in scope, would undoubtedly increase Pakistani concerns about the second-strike effectiveness of its ballistic missiles, leading to inevitable countervailing measures. In sum, we may be witnessing the gradual but

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

121

inexorable transformation of the India-Pakistan nuclear balance from a minimalist, countervalue, mutual-deterrence standoff, based on assured, survivable second-strike capabilities, into a more combustible competition in escalation dominance. Such an evolution, particularly the MIRVing of missiles and adoption of counterforce doctrines, would generate a reciprocal fear of surprise attacks,37 preemptive temptations, competitive warfighting strategies, and intensified arms racing—all of which would move New Delhi and Islamabad toward pure deterrence instability. Their initial nuclear instincts were the right ones. India and Pakistan should return to their original notion of deploying capabilities that give them a truly minimum credible nuclear deterrent, defined as possessing nuclear forces that are sufficiently redundant and diverse to survive a first strike by their foes (including China for India) and then retaliate with destruction of such a magnitude that no rival’s political objective could possibly be worth the punitive cost. Remaining on the path of credible minimum deterrence will be particularly difficult for New Delhi as it strives to match China’s nuclear developments, at least in qualitative terms. If Indian nuclear planners do not proactively resist China’s upward tug, they will effectively succumb to it, thereby pressuring Pakistan to an arms race in turn. New Delhi would do better to emulate China’s own nuclear posture of accepting Sino-U.S. nuclear asymmetry and seeking credible deterrence via the deployment of nuclear forces smaller than those of its aspirational peer competitor. Indian strategic elites should renew their commitment to understanding the requirements of credible minimum deterrence by determining what combination of redundancy and diversity of nuclear arms would suffice to deter first strikes by its adversaries. Apart from being exorbitantly expensive, chasing Sino-Indian qualitative nuclear parity has the side cost of increasing Indo-Pakistani deterrence instability. Theoretically, at least, the whole point of credible minimum deterrence is that it is not necessary to maintain parity with one’s adversaries, because even a modest, survivable second-strike nuclear arsenal is sufficient to deter nuclear attacks. As a sixth and final measure to promote deterrence stability, India and Pakistan should eventually reengage in direct talks to resolve the Kashmir dispute, but only at the appropriate time. Enhanced deterrence stability will remain elusive until the two countries’ relationship is normalized.38 In turn, normalization requires that New Delhi and Islamabad resolve the dispute over Kashmir, which has divided the two governments since independence and partition in 1947. Political conflict and violence in Kashmir are a potent recruiting tool for jihadi terrorists who wish to undermine

122 

D. T. HAGERTY

efforts at Indo-Pakistani amity. The Kashmir dispute is not the sum total of the India-Pakistan political-military rivalry, but it is the beating heart of that rivalry. Less well appreciated is that nuclear deterrence based on mutual second-strike capabilities can provide a foundation for the two countries to address the Kashmir dispute and normalize their relations. The nuclear overhang makes conventional war—almost certainly a necessary step toward nuclear war—prohibitively costly and possibly catastrophic. It provides the weaker party, Pakistan, with assurance that it cannot be overrun by its much larger, faster-growing neighbor. Instead of toying with national suicide, New Delhi and Islamabad can, theoretically at least, embrace the war-inhibiting role of nuclear weapons and use mutual deterrence as the bedrock on which to build a more normal relationship. Unfortunately, the current political climate between the two countries and within Indian Kashmir itself is not conducive to productive talks. The February 2019 Pulwama tragedy and the crisis it ignited have plunged Indo-Pakistani relations into their deepest valley since the Mumbai carnage of 2008. Indian Kashmir continues to simmer, with hundreds of thousands of security personnel attempting to impose an uneasy calm while a restive population chafes against New Delhi’s militarized presence. Indian and Pakistani forces regularly engage in gunfire and shelling duels across the LOC. Most fundamentally, it is not a propitious time for negotiations because Islamabad has yet to make a decision to end its support for, or at least tolerance of, subconventional operations across the international border and the LOC. No government likes to negotiate at the barrel of a gun, and India is no exception. As Ashley Tellis points out, “the Pakistan Army’s strategy of bleeding India would be vindicated by such a discussion, permitting the generals to turn the tap of terrorism on and off as appropriate to secure those concessions that might otherwise not be forthcoming at the diplomatic table.”39 This is why New Delhi insists that Islamabad end its jihadi campaign against India before any peace negotiations begin, and also why the only reasonably successful talks over Kashmir in recent times—the back-channel dialogue between the governments of Pervez Musharraf and Manmohan Singh from 2005 to 2007—took place after Musharraf “had curbed the cross-border infiltration of terrorist groups into India, froze[n] the infrastructure that sustained them in Pakistan, and tacitly accepted that India would not be coerced into negotiating with Pakistan so long as Rawalpindi wielded the instruments of terror.”40 As for the content of negotiations over Kashmir, the

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

123

­ ingh-­Musharraf initiative holds out at least some hope that diplomacy S might one day yield a meaningful resolution of the conflict.41 The tentative compromise reached by negotiators in 2006 would have retained the LOC as the formal boundary between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir but created “open borders” to allow the movement and intercourse of Kashmiris across the LOC. Both sides would have reduced their security forces “to the minimum required for border security and law and order” and created a “joint mechanism” for Kashmiri self-governance.”42 Although finalizing and implementing the 2006 agreement would have posed tough challenges, if such an agreement was thinkable then, there is reason to believe that a variant of it might be hashed out in the future, especially if New Delhi and Islamabad adopt the measures proposed above. Such a settlement would not eliminate the enmity between India and Pakistan, but it would substantially reduce it. That, in turn, would enhance South Asian deterrence stability.

The U.S. Role How can the United States help to promote Indo-Pakistani deterrence stability? The main public role played by Washington to date has been one of crisis manager. As described in Chaps. 2 and 3, senior U.S. officials undertook vigorous diplomatic interventions during the crises of 2008, 2001–2002, and 1999. In 2016, public U.S. influence on Indian and Pakistani leaders was less pronounced, and official statements were most notable for their strong condemnation of Pakistan and empathy for India.43 This tone also characterized the early days of the February 2019 crisis, with U.S. national security leaders sharply criticizing Islamabad, endorsing New Delhi’s right to self-defense, and saying nothing about the dangers of escalation or the need for restraint. When asked directly about India’s right to self-defense, President Donald Trump responded: “India is looking at something very strong. And I mean, India just lost almost 50 people with an attack. So, I could understand that also.”44 It seems that either by design or by neglect, Washington in the early stages of the crisis was both condoning an Indian retaliatory response to the Pulwama assault and signaling to Islamabad that the United States could not be counted on any longer to buffer Pakistan against the consequences of attacks by terrorists who enjoy the freedom to operate on Pakistani territory. It was only after the Indian and Pakistani airstrikes of February 26–27 that senior U.S. officials began to emphasize in public statements and phone calls to

124 

D. T. HAGERTY

their South Asian counterparts the need for military restraint and de-­ escalation. While it is much too early to fully assess the U.S. crisis management role and reach definitive conclusions, it may be that India and Pakistan can no longer count on the United States operating along the lines of a predictable crisis management “playbook,” developed over years of helping India and Pakistan to navigate their way peacefully through crises.45 New Delhi and Islamabad would be wise to explore the development of their own crisis management mechanisms, including a reliable, real-time communications link—a hotline—between the two prime ministers. Here, instead of focusing on conflict management after crises have erupted, I discuss how the United States can help to mitigate the “ugly” aspects of ugly stability by proactively working to promote conflict prevention. The timeframe of interest to me is the period before a potential slide to war. While Washington’s role should be to encourage the two sides to adopt all of the measures suggested above, and to facilitate their implementation in any way that India and Pakistan deem helpful, its primary focus should be on measures one, two, and six outlined above. As a first step, Washington can make it clear to Islamabad that its subconventional jihadi campaign against India is the single greatest threat to regional deterrence stability, as well as the single biggest hindrance to normalization of relations with India, improved ties with the United States, and any momentum toward Pakistan being accepted by the international community as a “normal” nuclear weapon state.46 At the same time, the United States can quietly encourage New Delhi and Islamabad to begin discussions about an agreement not to sponsor, support, assist, or condone subconventional operations on the other state’s territory, including in Kashmir. Such an agreement could include cross-border and cross-LOC support for terrorism, insurgency, and any other forms of political violence the two sides may wish to include. Whatever the specific form and content of an accord to mutually refrain from subconventional operations targeting the other side, it should be made unambiguously clear to Pakistan that ending such activities is a precursor to discussions on a wider range of issues. Of course, “Pakistani efforts to curtail the operations of violent actors could prompt these actors to undertake retaliatory attacks in Pakistan or against India that could challenge deterrence stability.”47 But India, the United States, and other external actors would understand that this is a possibility, and the investigation of attacks would soon unearth evidence as to the attackers’ identity and affiliations. As Perkovich argues,

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

125

what interlocutors “most want is for Pakistani leaders to demonstrate not only in words but also in constant deeds a determination to delegitimize violence against India and arrest and prosecute actors who violate the law. Perfection in accomplishing this objective would not be expected, but clear and uncompromising effort would be.”48 No other measure would have as dramatic an effect on deterrence stability. U.S. strategic elites should also impress upon their Indian counterparts that pursuing Cold Start–type limited conventional invasion options is unwise and potentially catastrophic. For all of the expert discussion of the South Asian “nuclear threshold,” the simple fact is that there is only one reliable redline: the universally recognized international border between India and Pakistan, across which there has been no land warfare since December 1971. When analysts speculate as to Islamabad’s perception of “how far is too far?” for Indian forces to intrude into Pakistani territory or Pakistani Kashmir, there is no reliable alternative to the international border. The LOC and its predecessor, the cease fire line (CFL), have been regularly violated by both countries since the latter’s creation in the Karachi Agreement of 1949. Although tacit bargaining between the two sides has over time institutionalized norms of behavior along the CFL/ LOC, these are nowhere near as clear, authoritative, or sacrosanct as the international border. As for ostensible internal redlines within Pakistan itself, these have even less clarity for Indian decision-makers, especially with Pakistan’s deployment of tactical nuclear weapons and its ambiguous doctrine for their first use in case of an Indian invasion. Indeed, Pakistani strategists may not even know in the abstract what their actual internal redlines would be in case of war. No matter how “limited,” Indian conventional aggression into Pakistani Punjab or Sindh would perilously elevate the risk of nuclear war, either purposive or inadvertent. The more successfully such an operation were to be executed in military terms, the greater would be the likelihood of Nasr missiles raining down on Indian forces. Washington should find appropriate opportunities to reiterate that the likelihood of New Delhi achieving any meaningful political objective, such as inducing Pakistan to end its support for subconventional provocations, would be very low. In the longer term, once Indo-Pakistani relations have improved to a certain extent and political conditions are more promising, Washington can nudge both sides to resume discussions about resolving the Kashmir dispute. This might be done in a back-channel fashion similar to the 2005–2007 talks or as part of a more comprehensive process. Over the

126 

D. T. HAGERTY

years, Washington has come to accept that New Delhi will not allow any form of third-party mediation between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. India holds that the 1972 Simla Agreement is the operative mechanism for conflict resolution in Kashmir. In that accord, the two sides pledged that they “are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them.”49 The tentative agreement between the two sides during the Musharraf-Singh initiative is an indication of strides that could be made between New Delhi and Islamabad when the political and strategic context of their relationship is more hopeful. Supporting Simla and respecting Indian sensitivities on third-party intervention over Kashmir should not preclude U.S. diplomats from privately raising the desirability of a Kashmir settlement with their Indian counterparts. As the status quo actor in the dispute, India feels less urgency to negotiate over Kashmir, which suggests that the occasional quiet nudge from Washington would not be misplaced. If and when bilateral talks over Kashmir begin, the United States can support them in any fashion desired by the two sides. The U.S. ability to play a productive role in India-Pakistan conflict resolution is contingent on U.S. leaders working energetically to build, nurture, and sustain strong official relationships with their opposite numbers in both countries. While U.S.-India links continue to deepen, Washington’s ties with Islamabad have been profoundly troubled in recent years. A number of U.S. South Asia watchers have called for the United States to disengage itself from Pakistan after years of frustration, but that would undermine U.S. influence and prevent Washington from being seen as an honest broker with respect to one of the world’s most significant bilateral relationships. The easing of the February 2019 crisis after U.S. officials stepped up their engagement with Indian and Pakistani interlocutors late in the day suggests that this is still a realistic, useful role for the United States to play. Given the imperative of deterrence stability in South Asia, remaining fully engaged with both New Delhi and Islamabad over time is a vital U.S. interest. Lastly, U.S. officials and other analysts can urge Indian and Pakistani leaders to accept that they have achieved strategic sufficiency vis-à-vis one another. Each country has the number and variety of nuclear weapons to ensure that its forces can survive an attempted first strike and retaliate with a devastating nuclear response. Because they are in a condition of mutual nuclear deterrence, a war between India and Pakistan is in neither side’s interest. There is simply no conceivable political objective that would be

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

127

worth the huge costs of a South Asian nuclear war, in which there would be no “winner” in any conventional sense. New Delhi and Islamabad have both made the successful, decades-long transition to the point where they have acquired reliable last-resort insurance against overwhelming military defeat and national humiliation. As I have argued above, while this mutual-­ deterrent standoff has its dangers, it can also constitute a basis for India and Pakistan to eventually make peace with one another. Two experts observe that “to achieve their fundamental long-term interests, there is no plausible alternative for the two countries except direct talks and negotiations.”50 Though well-intentioned, American analysts sometimes do a disservice to the cause of South Asian nuclear deterrence by arguing that it can never be reasonably stable until New Delhi and Islamabad fundamentally resolve all of their conflicts to the extent that they have little or nothing to fight about. This approach strains credulity. Deterrence is a psychological construct. Words matter. To a great extent, we create what we describe. It does not promote the cause of deterrence stability to continually argue that it is fatally flawed. Because India and Pakistan are not going to reverse their nuclear trajectories, deterrence is the best alternative we have to promote regional stability. Wisdom lies in accepting and trying to strengthen India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence. We should, by all means, analyze it, point out its deficiencies, and offer potential solutions, but claiming that it simply does not—and cannot—work is both ineffective and counterproductive.

Notes 1. For a realistic and insightful examination of the prospects for what might be termed an “incrementalism-plus” strategy, see Toby Dalton, “Beyond Incrementalism: Rethinking Approaches to CBMs and Stability in South Asia,” in Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, eds. Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2013) 187–208. Dalton advocates supplementing CBMs with the symbolism of “high-visibility, leadership-driven, risk-laden measures,” or “leaps of trust.” See p. 188. 2. For an alternative recent examination of regional deterrence stability, see Yogesh Joshi and Frank O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia: Forces, Doctrine, and Dangers (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2019), 197–206. 3. Michael Krepon and Liv Dowling, “Crisis Intensity and Nuclear Signaling in South Asia,” in Investigating Crises: South Asia’s Lessons, Evolving

128 

D. T. HAGERTY

Dynamics, and Trajectories, eds. Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2018), 187. 4. Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), 105. 5. The remainder of this section draws on Devin T. Hagerty, “India’s Evolving Nuclear Posture,” Nonproliferation Review 21, nos. 3–4 (September-­ December 2014): 301–03. 6. For an overview of China’s nuclear capabilities, see Hans M.  Kristensen and Robert S.  Norris, “Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2018,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 74, no. 4 (June 2018): 289–95. 7. Hans M.  Kristensen and Matt Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 74, no. 6 (November 2018): 363–64. 8. Kristensen and Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 365. 9. Kristensen and Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 365. For a range of views on the deterrence-stability implications of Indian SLBM plans, see Yogesh Joshi, “Angles and Dangles: Arihant and the Dilemma of India’s Undersea Nuclear Weapons,” War on the Rocks, January 14, 2019 (https:// warontherocks.com/2019/01/angles-and-dangles-arihant-and-thedilemma-of-indias-undersea-nuclear-weapons/); Diana Wueger, “India’s Nuclear-Armed Submarines: Deterrence or Danger?” Washington Quarterly 39, no. 3 (Fall 2016): 77–90; and Gaurav Kampani, “Is the Indian Nuclear Tiger Changing Its Stripes? Data, Interpretation, and Fact,” Nonproliferation Review 21, nos. 3–4 (September-December 2014): 388–91. 10. Kristensen and Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 364. 11. Kristensen and Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 364. 12. Kristensen and Norris, “Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 292–93; Kristensen and Korda, “Indian Nuclear Forces, 2018,” 365. 13. For an examination of India’s BMD intentions and activities, see Joshi and O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia, 34–38. 14. For example, Pakistan is emulating India’s pursuit of a sea-based nuclear deterrent by trying to arm its diesel-electric Agosta-class submarines with the Babur-3 cruise missile, with a range of roughly 450 kilometers. Hans M.  Kristensen, Robert S.  Norris, and Julia Diamond, “Pakistani Nuclear Forces, 2018,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 74, no. 5 (August 2018): 355–56. For discussions of the potential effects on South Asian deterrence stability, see Christopher Clary and Ankit Panda, “Safer at Sea? Pakistan’s Sea-Based Deterrent and Nuclear Weapons Security,” Washington Quarterly 40, no. 3 (Fall 2017): 149–68; and Abhijnan Rej, “Pakistan’s Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent and Its Asymmetric Escalation Strategy,” Observer Research Foundation, Issue Brief No. 240, New Delhi, May 1, 2018 ­( https://www.orfonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/ORF_

5  ENHANCING INDIA-PAKISTAN DETERRENCE STABILITY 

129

Issue_Brief_240_Pakistan_Sea-based.pdf). Pakistan also has plans to develop MIRVed missiles. 15. Rajesh Rajagopalan, “India’s Nuclear Doctrine Debate,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, June 30, 2016 (https://carnegieendowment.org/2016/06/30/india-s-nuclear-doctrine-debate-pub-63950). Also see Dhruva Jaishankar, “Decoding India’s Nuclear Status,” The Wire, April 4, 2017 (https://thewire.in/diplomacy/ decoding-india-nuclear-status). 16. Joshi and O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia, 151–54. 17. B.S. Nagal, “India’s Nuclear Doctrine and Strategy,” in Military Strategy for India in the 21st Century, eds. A.K. Singh and B.S. Nagal (New Delhi: KW Publishers, 2019), 202. 18. Nagal, “India’s Nuclear Doctrine and Strategy,” 216–17. 19. Joshi and O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia, 154–55. 20. Rajagopalan, “India’s Nuclear Doctrine Debate.” 21. Christopher Clary and Vipin Narang, “India’s Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities,” International Security 43, no. 3 (Winter 2018/19): 7–52. 22. Nagal, “India’s Nuclear Doctrine and Strategy,” 217, 220. 23. Michael Krepon and Julia Thompson, “Introduction,” in Krepon and Thompson, Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, 10. 24. Jaishankar, “Decoding India’s Nuclear Status;” Abhijnan Rej, “India is Not Changing Its Policy on No First Use of Nuclear Weapons,” War on the Rocks, March 29, 2017 (https://warontherocks.com/2017/03/india-isnot-changing-its-policy-on-no-first-use-of-nuclear-weapons/). 25. Rajesh Rajagopalan, “India’s Nuclear Strategy: A Shift to Counterforce?”, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi, March 30, 2017 (https:// www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/india-nuclear-strategy-shift-counterforce/). 26. Jaishankar, “Decoding India’s Nuclear Status.” 27. Joshi and O’Donnell, India and Nuclear Asia, 157. 28. Rajagopalan, “India’s Nuclear Doctrine Debate.” 29. Clary and Narang, “India’s Counterforce Temptations,” 38–47. 30. For an account suggesting that Indian subconventional operations have been less rare than typically assumed, see H.S. Panag, “As Indians Watch ‘Uri,’ Time for Army to Talk about Other Daring and Unsung Operations,” The Print, January 25, 2019 (https://theprint.in/opinion/as-indianswatch-uri-time-for-army-to-talk-about-other-daring-and-unsung-operations/182638/). 31. George Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” in Krepon and Thompson, Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, 30–31.

130 

D. T. HAGERTY

32. Toby Dalton and Michael Krepon, “A Normal Nuclear Pakistan,” Stimson Center, Washington, DC, 2015. 33. Krepon and Dowling, “Crisis Intensity and Nuclear Signaling in South Asia,” 213. 34. Dalton and Krepon, “A Normal Nuclear Pakistan,” 31–32; David O. Smith, “The U.S. Experience With Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Lessons for South Asia,” in Krepon and Thompson, Deterrence Stability and Escalation Control in South Asia, 87. 35. Sadia Tasleem and Toby Dalton, “Nuclear Emulation: Pakistan’s Nuclear Trajectory,” Washington Quarterly, 41, no. 4 (Winter 2019), 135–55. 36. Dalton and Krepon, “A Normal Nuclear Pakistan,” 32. 37. Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, 207–29. 38. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 35. 39. Ashley J. Tellis, “Are India-Pakistan Peace Talks Worth a Damn?,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, 2017, p. 64. 40. Tellis, “Are India-Pakistan Peace Talks Worth a Damn?,” 65. 41. In addition to Tellis, “Are India-Pakistan Peace Talks Worth a Damn?,” 57–61, see Steve Coll, “The Back Channel: India and Pakistan’s Secret Kashmir Talks,” New Yorker, March 2, 2009. 42. Tellis, “Are India-Pakistan Peace Talks Worth a Damn?,” 57–58. 43. Joshua T. White, “The Other Nuclear Threat,” The Atlantic, March 5, 2019. 44. PTI, “Trump Says India Looking at Something ‘Very Strong’ after Pulwama Attack,” The Hindu, February 23, 2019. 45. Essential readings include: Moeed Yusuf, Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018); Lalwani and Haegeland, Investigating Crises; and Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, The Unfinished Crisis: U.S.  Crisis Management after the 2008 Mumbai Attacks (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2012). 46. For a succinct discussion of Pakistan and nuclear normalization, see Mark Fitzpatrick, Overcoming Pakistan’s Nuclear Dangers (London: Routledge, 2014), 159–65. 47. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 38. 48. Perkovich, “The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia,” 32. 49. See https://www.stimson.org/simla-agreement. 50. Toby Dalton and George Perkovich, “Is a Pakistan-India War Just One Terrorist Attack Away?” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, January 24, 2017 (https://carnegieendowment. org/2017/01/24/is-pakistan-india-war-just-one-terrorist-attack-awaypub-67783).

Index1

A Advani, L.K., 18 Ahmad, Shamshad, 14 al-Qaeda, 19 Antony, A.K., 24 Armitage, Richard, 21, 22, 52 Asif, Khawaja Muhammad, 29 Azhar, Masood, 73 Aziz, Sartaj, 15 B Balakot, viii, 5, 12, 83, 84, 86, 95, 102n55 Ballistic missile defense (BMD), 3, 114, 120 Barbora, P.K., 26 Berger, Sandy, 16 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 4, 12, 28, 47, 55 Bolton, John, viii, ix Bundy, McGeorge, 86–89, 91, 106n98 Bush, George W., 19, 24, 52

C Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), viii, 13, 14, 25, 45, 66n58 Cease-Fire Line (CFL), 33n12, 125 Central Command (CENTCOM), 16, 52 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), vii China, 2, 3, 5, 13, 15, 33n12, 55, 57, 110, 112–114, 116, 119–121 Clinton, Bill, 15–17, 52, 53 Cold Start, 25, 39n120, 54, 76, 80, 83, 90, 93, 96–98, 102n55, 107n110, 111, 118, 125 Congress Party, 4, 12 D Dhasmana, Anil, xiin13 Doval, Ajit, viii, ix, 28, 30

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 D. T. Hagerty, Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21398-5

131

132 

INDEX

E Existential deterrence, 7, 68, 69, 86–91, 106n98

Jaitley, Arun, 28 Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), 26 Jammu and Kashmir, see Kashmir

F February 2019 (crisis), x, 5–7, 12, 59, 68, 73–74, 79, 82, 84, 85, 96, 102n55, 111, 117, 122, 123, 126 Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), 27 Fernandes, George, 18, 19

K Kargil conflict, 6, 13–17, 19, 35n40, 52, 53, 55, 57, 82 Kashmir, vii–ix, xin1, xin2, 4–8, 12, 13, 15–20, 22–24, 26, 27, 29, 33n12, 36n65, 45–47, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 59, 64n38, 68, 73, 74, 79, 82–85, 93, 95, 96, 111, 112, 117, 121–126 Kayani, Ashfaq Parvez, 25, 27 Kerry, John, 29 Khan, Imran, vii–ix, 5, 83 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, viii, 84 Kidwai, Khalid, 18, 75

G Ghafoor, Asif, 83 Gilani, Yousuf Raza, 25 Gujarat, 15, 18 H Hizbul Mujahideen, 27 I Indian Air Force (IAF), ix, 5, 13, 14, 26, 27, 76, 83, 96 Indian Army, 14, 18, 19, 25, 27, 55–57, 80, 83, 93, 96, 97, 103n66, 107n110 Indian Navy, viii, 14 International border, 14, 15, 18, 25, 35n40, 37n79, 45, 47, 48, 54, 57–59, 80, 82, 85, 86, 90, 91, 96–98, 118, 119, 122, 125 Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), ix, 21, 45 J Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), vii–ix, 5, 7, 12, 17, 19, 20, 68, 73, 79, 83, 96, 117

L Ladakh, 13 Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), 12, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 49, 79, 96 Leh, 13 Line of Control (LOC), vii–ix, xin1, 4, 5, 12–18, 21–23, 27–31, 33n12, 35n40, 37n79, 45–49, 54, 57, 58, 60n6, 74, 82–85, 90, 117, 119, 122–125 M Madhav, Ram, 28 Major, Fali, 23 Malik, V.P., 14, 15, 47 Manmohan Singh, 12, 23, 26, 49, 50, 52, 55, 122, 123, 126 McCain, John, 25 McLaughlin, John, 19 Menon, Shivshankar, 26, 66n58 Mishra, Brajesh, 16, 48

 INDEX 

Modi, Narendra, vii–ix, 4, 5, 12, 28–31, 41n158, 50, 56, 59, 79, 96 Mubarakmand, Samar, 24 Mukherjee, Pranab, 25 Mullen, Michael, 25, 52 Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV), 2, 113–115 Mumbai crisis, 49, 51 Munir, Asim, ix, xiin13 Muridke, 25, 39n126, 96 Musharraf, Pervez, 15, 16, 19–22, 48, 49, 62n16, 122, 123, 126 N Narain, Yogendra, 21 Nasr missile, 2, 77, 81, 115, 118–120, 125 National Command Authority (NCA), ix, 78, 83 No-first-use (NFU), 7, 75, 92, 101n27, 111, 114–116, 120 Northern Light Infantry (NLI), 13, 32n8, 61n9 Nuclear Command Authority (NCA), 77 O Obama, Barack, 24, 52 Operation Parakram, 18, 23, 49, 55, 57 P Padmanabhan, S., 19 Pakistan Air Force (PAF), ix, 26, 29, 50, 63n29, 77, 83 Pakistan Army, 4, 5, 15, 18, 23, 30, 31, 50, 55, 63n29, 75, 77, 80,

133

81, 83, 84, 90, 93, 95, 97, 102n58, 122 Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), 5 Parrikar, Manohar, 28 Pompeo, Mike, ix Powell, Colin, 21, 37n87 Pulwama, vii–x, xin2, 5, 7, 12, 68, 73, 79, 85, 93, 95, 96, 117, 122, 123 Punjab, viii, 3, 15, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27, 30, 45, 48–50, 52, 55, 57, 93, 125 Pure deterrence instability, 68, 69, 71, 72, 94, 109, 121 Pure deterrence stability, 68–72, 94, 98, 109 Q Qazi, Javed Ashraf, 21 Qureshi, Shah Mahmood, 25 R Rajasthan, 14, 15, 18, 21, 27 Rice, Condoleezza, 20, 25, 52 Rice, Susan, 30 Rocca, Christina, 22 Roemer, Timothy, 23 S Saeed, Hafiz, 26 Saudi Arabia, 5 Sharif, Nawaz, 15–17, 29 Sharif, Raheel, 29 Siachen Glacier, 13, 33n12, 57 Simla Agreement, xin1, 4, 33n12, 126 Sindh, 18, 21, 52, 93, 125 Singh, Jaswant, 14, 15, 23, 26 Singh, Rajnath, 28

134 

INDEX

Singh, Ranbir, 28, 29 Singh, V.K., 55 Srinagar, vii, 13, 17 State Department, 15, 19, 20, 22 Strategic Forces Command (SFC), 77, 115 Strategic Plans Division (SPD), 18, 75, 78 Submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), 74, 113, 114 Surgical strikes, 4, 12, 24, 25, 27–31, 41n159, 49, 57, 83, 117 Swaraj, Sushma, 29 T Tactical nuclear weapons, 2, 7, 41n159, 75, 81, 82, 91–93, 97, 107n110, 111, 115, 119, 120, 125 Talbott, Strobe, 15 Taliban, 19 Trump, Donald, 123 Twin Peaks crisis, 6, 12, 17–23, 25, 49, 52, 66n58, 82

U Ugly stability, 6, 7, 51, 67–69, 78–86, 94, 95, 110, 124 United States (US), viii, ix, 2, 4–6, 8, 14–17, 19–26, 29, 30, 39n120, 44, 52–53, 55, 58, 59, 64n34, 66n58, 72, 80, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 94, 110, 112–114, 121, 123–127 Uri attack, 5, 27–31, 50, 51, 83, 96 V Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 15–17, 19, 20, 22, 36n79, 47–49, 55 Varthaman, Abhinandan, ix W Wani, Burhan, 27, 29 White House, viii, 41n160, 87 Working Boundary, viii Z Zardari, Asif Ali, 25 Zinni, Anthony, 16, 52