Nuclear Strategy in South Asia: A Facade of Peace between India and Pakistan

Paper No. 6612                       Dated 3-July-2020

By Aviral Goenka 

How has nuclear weapons influenced India-Pakistan crises since the late 1990s?

The overt nuclearisation of India and Pakistan in 1998 has altered the spectre of warfare and stability in South-Asia. The two historical adversaries proliferated in the pursuit of minimum deterrent capabilities, but since then, India and Pakistan have pushed the boundaries of the legitimacy of this minimum restraint. In the decades ensuing the mutual nuclearisation, Pakistan has continuously provoked India by launching armed insurgencies and supporting terrorists. The attacks culminated into conventional deadlocks and strained Indo-Pak relations. Contrary to the wars and crisis before this mutual proliferation, Indian policymakers and politicians manifested notable forbearance by not escalating the conflict to avoid a conventional war and cross Pakistan’s nuclear red lines. This restraint was significant during the Indo-Pak crisis in 1999, 2001–2002, 2008, and 2016. However, India adopted a more aggressive stance to retaliate against the terrorist attacks in Pulwama 2019 by launching airstrikes.

Thus, the objective of this essay is threefold: 1) To examine how nuclear weapons have influenced India-Pakistan crises since the late 1990s 2) To analyse how Pakistan’s nuclear posture has successfully deterred conventional Indian attacks 3) And to examine the future implication of the Balakot airstrikes on stability and nuclear deterrence in South Asia. To achieve the ends this essay would answer pertinent questions such as— How did nuclear proliferation by India and Pakistan affect stability in the region? Why does India maintain a policy of forbearance against Pakistani attacks and insurgency? How did Pakistan’s adoption of asymmetric escalation help it overcome conventional inferiority vis a vis India? What implications do Indian overt but limited attacks have on this nuclear adversity? However, to answer these questions it is necessary to set the context.

Context: Nuclear Postures

The nuclear crises in the present era represent a shift in paradigm from bipolar superpower nuclear arms race to regional nuclear powers. These nuclear powers have small nuclear arsenals, weak domestic political institutions, engage in multiple active conflicts, and have historical animosities like India and Pakistan[i]. The literature on nuclear conflicts has been centred around drivers of proliferation, nuclear arsenals, and delivery systems but to unfold the complexities of nuclear conflicts it is pertinent to acknowledge and examine the salience of nuclear postures in crises. The strategies are explicitly identifiable and determine the ability of nuclear powers to deter crisis. Furthermore, these choices provide insight into the significant complexities of international stability and nuclear proliferation[ii].

Vipin Narang uses the “posture optimisation theory” to promulgate that states choose nuclear postures to optimise the structure of their forces to meet the external security and internal threats given their financial capabilities. A state’s relative power position, structural variables, and global dynamics determine what a nation must deter with its nuclear force[iii]. Narang draws his theory from neoclassical realism which elucidates that the state’s security environment can explain the choice of different nuclear postures — “The freedom that a state has to manoeuvre within the system is a direct function of how binding that security environment is[iv].” The argument is simple— structural necessities coerce countries that face acute security threats into engaging in security-seeking behaviour to reduce the seriousness of the threat. While, countries with minimal security threats or conventional advantage have a greater room to manoeuvre, and do not exhibit purely security-seeking behaviour. Thus, unit-level variables such as domestic political conditions might determine a state’s security policy[v].

This article contends that the respective nuclear postures of India and Pakistan adheres to the aforementioned theoretical framework and further maintains that Pakistan adopted the “asymmetric retaliation”; in contrast, India adopted the “assured retaliation” nuclear posture. “The former develops capabilities and procedures that credibly enables the rapid and first use of nuclear weapons in the event of a conventional attack” while, “the latter involves the development of secure second-strike nuclear capabilities that enable a state to threaten certain nuclear retaliation[vi].” A State chooses the first use of nuclear weapons to deter the conventional superiority of its proximate adversary, especially when it lacks the territorial depth to mitigate the impact of a large-scale conventional attack[vii]. Thus, in this security environment, Pakistan was constrained to adopt asymmetric retaliation to offset its conventional inferiority. However, the Indian posture could be ascribed to a less stringent security environment, since it enjoys conventional and numerical superiority against Pakistan, At the same time geographical buffers like terrain and climate reduce China’s larger conventional superiority[viii].

Nuclear Stability in South Asia

Since India and Pakistan crossed the nuclear threshold in 1998, scholars have highlighted multiple reasons to show that deterrence does not stabilise South-Asia and geographical adversaries are likely to engage in a conventional war which might escalate to the nuclear level. Scott Sagan argues that countries such as Pakistan where the army wields discretion over its nuclear arsenal exhibit unpredictable behaviour which might be counterproductive for deterrence[ix]. Michael Krepon uses the Cold-War notion of stability-instability paradox and the lack of escalation control mechanisms to emphasise the weak deterrence stability in the region. He argues that the two adversaries can misjudge the signals which might culminate into a nuclear war[x]. Moreover, Paul Kapur’s assessment exhibits that nuclear weapons shield Pakistan against an all-out conventional retaliation by India. This has allowed Pakistan to adopt an aggressive stance and engage in low-intensity conflicts and insurgencies[xi]. Contrarily, Sumit Ganguly argued that nuclear weapons have stabilised the region, even though the resultant status-quo favours Pakistan as it has continued to wage sub-conventional war against India by employing terrorists[xii]. However, Kapur emphasises that this status-quo is volatile since further provocations by Pakistan could result in an aggressive conventional retaliation by India, which would increase the dangers of the first-use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan[xiii].

Since the introduction of nuclear weapons in the region, India has struggled to deter Pakistan’s sub-conventional military attacks. Indian policymakers would have preferred to retaliate by utilising its conventional superiority, but the latter has managed to deter India. New Delhi has been constrained by Pakistan’s nuclear red lines and has been coerced to devise retaliatory strategy below their nuclear threshold. Despite the Indian efforts Pakistan has managed to continue its proxy war, and support militancy in Kashmir. To make the forthcoming arguments more robust, it is necessary to acknowledge that Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence and redlines are not constants and they vary with Indian actions and the Indo-Pak conflict dyad[xiv]. For example, Pakistan has reduced its nuclear threshold by introducing tactical nuclear weapons and exhibiting the intent to employ against a low-scale conventional attack. Thus, the forthcoming sections would analyse the implications of nuclear proliferation in the Indo-Pak crisis since the late 1990s.

1999: The Kargil Conflict

The first major crisis after the overt nuclearisation of South-Asia was the Kargil conflict of 1999. The crisis emanated due to the long-standing dispute over the region of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan launched a secret sub-conventional attack on the Himalayan peaks in Indian Kashmir. The Indian military struggled to find a concerted military solution, but the continuous ground and air attacks triumphed against the intruders[xv]. It was primarily contended that the balance of nuclear posture encouraged Pakistan’s intrusion as it shielded them against possible Indian retaliation. Indian stance was not significantly different from its pre-1998 posture, but Pakistan’s shift to a more aggressive posture invigorated its capability to deter conventional Indian retaliation[xvi]. Pakistan’s posture had explicitly impacted BJP’s (the incumbent party) political-military considerations since the latter fearing the former’s legitimate nuclear threats restricted forces from operating on or above Pakistani soil even though it defied military logic and inflicted more casualties[xvii]. The Kargil War implied that the asymmetric escalation posture could successfully deter, even a nuclear state, from retaliating conventionally, and assured retaliation posture cannot always deter a nuclear adversary from waging a sub-conventional or conventional war[xviii].

2001-02: Twin Peaks Crisis— Operation Parakram

The previous notion had profound implications for the crisis in 2001-2. Akin to Kargil, nuclear deterrence shaped the Indian response to the attack on the Indian parliament on 13 December 2001, by Pakistani-supported Kashmiri militants, believed to be the members of Jaish-e-Mohammad[xix]. The assured retaliation policy failed to deter Pakistan’s sub-conventional attacks and proxy wars. The Indian government (BJP) which was deterred from escalating horizontally in Kargil due to Pakistan’s nuclear threats endeavoured to devise a more robust reaction. Subsequently, India launched Operation Parakram on 18 December 2001, which entailed the mass mobilisation of Indian forces along the international border and LOC. Unlike Kargil, the Indian strike corps were mobilised for action, both sides repositioned their nuclear missiles closer to the Punjab border, and tested their nuclear ballistic missiles[xx].

As nuclear clouds shadowed the region, India’s compellent strategy was aimed at inducing Washington to diplomatically engage with Pakistan to end the lengthy insurgency in Kashmir and to stop harbouring terrorists behind the LOC. The international community feared that this dual mobilisation was highly volatile, and the leaders on both sides could trigger an unintentional war which might escalate to the nuclear level[xxi]. Therefore, American pressure coerced President Musharraf to restrict the activities of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed and subsequently halt its support for Kashmiri terrorists[xxii]. Consequently, Pakistan initiated a crackdown on terrorists as it arrested 2000 militants, and shut 300 offices. However, on 14 May, terrorists attacked the Indian military base in Kaluchak, Jammu where 34 people were killed[xxiii]. This incident reinvigorated the showdown and resulted in the continuance of nuclear threats. To deter India from retaliating offensively, Pakistan signalled New-Delhi that an invasion of Pakistan would warrant a nuclear response[xxiv].

PM Vajpayee had come close to authorising conventional operations in June 2002, but the nuclear threats had encouraged the ensuing forbearance. Vajpayee’s National Security Adviser, Brajesh Mishra reinforced the crucial role played by Pakistan’s asymmetric escalation posture as he claimed that Islamabad would have threatened the use of nuclear weapons and the threat would have been more credible had India crossed the international border[xxv]. Similarly, President Musharraf in an interview with Michael Cohen had explained that an Indian invasion would have triggered a nuclear response[xxvi]. This crisis manifests how nuclear deterrence contained India’s eschewing military options, and the threat of nuclear weapons became more explicit.

The analysis of the two crises and the strategic environment emphasis that an unstable nuclear environment encourages stability at lower levels of conflict. Similarly, limited conventional conflict is unlikely to provoke a nuclear conflict. However, if this limited conventional conflict culminates into a large scale war, escalation to the nuclear level would become more probable[xxvii]. This peril of nuclear weapons allows regional powers to engage in minimal conflicts. Thus, Pakistan can continuously launch sub-conventional attacks against India to achieve its primary objective of the territorial reorganisation of Kashmir while employing its nuclear posture to restrain India’s conventional retaliation[xxviii].

2008: Mumbai Attacks— 26/11

The analysis of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks follows a similar narrative. On 26 November 2008, 10 armed Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists annihilated Mumbai as they killed 166 and injured more than 300 people in their assault at multiple populated places that included— luxury hotels— Oberoi-Trident and Taj Mahal Palace, a major railroad station— the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, and a popular tourist cafe— the Leopold Cafe[xxix]. From the onset of this crisis, the government under Manmohan Singh (Indian National Congress) grappled with finding an appropriate military response since they did not want to cross Pakistan’s low nuclear threshold. The Indian leaders considered limited ground assaults across the Punjab border and surgical strikes against terrorist strongholds in Pakistani Kashmir[xxx]. Despite this option, the leaders were apprehensive as they lacked complete and reliable information about the terrorist infrastructure. Furthermore, any significant strikes could have provoked a Pakistani nuclear retaliation. Pakistan’s aggressive posture and low nuclear threshold deterred Delhi from authorising airstrikes against possible terrorist camps in Pakistan[xxxi].

Pakistan’s aggressive nuclear posture was central to India’s strategic restraint; however, it might be a fallacy to overemphasise its vitality. American intervention due to coercive India diplomacy played a fundamental role in de escalating the crisis. Moreover, the Indian forbearance could also be attributed to the Indian doctrine of  “strategic restraint” which was based on the Nehruvian principles of resolution of conflict through communication and disengagement[xxxii]. Shivshankar Menon, who was India’s foreign secretary at the time of Mumbai terror attacks emphasised that aside from nuclear considerations India decided against an attack as it would have weakened the civilian government in Islamabad which endeavoured to improve relations with India[xxxiii]. Moreover, an attack in 2008 would have imposed an economic setback.

Nonetheless, India managed to organise the international community in making counterterrorism against LeT effective and isolating Pakistan[xxxiv]. Devin Hagerty argues that India’s strategic frustration is centred around its failure to devise a robust military response to compel Pakistan to halt the provocations[xxxv]. The previous crises show that a conventional Indian offence would have provoked a nuclear response; thus this paper seeks to examine if the Indian response changed after 2008 and if Pakistan nuclear aggression played a role in India’s military calculus.

2016: Uri and Surgical Strikes

On 18 September 2016, four armed Pakistani terrorists attacked an Indian Army camp in Uri. The jihadists killed 19 and injured 20 soldiers before they were shot down in a 3-hour long firefight. The Uri attack was the largest mass-casualty attack since 26/11 and the deadliest raid on an army camp since Kaluchak (2002)[xxxvi]. The aftermath was similar to the previous crises— demands for retaliation, the continuance of cross border hostilities, increased state of readiness for the armies in Kashmir and Punjab, evacuation of bordering villages, and explicit nuclear threats from Pakistan’s defence minister[xxxvii]. This onslaught had enraged the jingoistic government of  Narendra Modi who had openly criticised the former PM Manmohan Singh for not retaliating after 26/11. India still lacked retaliatory options to achieve its primary objective of deactivating anti-India militant groups. Punitive actions which could harm Pakistan’s military would discourage the latter from eradicating terrorists from Pakistan, while if Indian forces operated on Pakistani territory, it could have yielded a nuclear response[xxxviii].

On 29 September, Indian DGMO Ranbir Singh announced that the army had conducted successful surgical strikes against terrorist launch pads on the Pakistani side of the LOC. These stealth operations were conducted by trained commandos overnight without any involvement of conventional apparatus. These strikes had profound implications since they were below the threshold of a low-level-conventional attack,  and secured a new space of warfare in this rivalry[xxxix]. Delhi believed that the strikes were unlikely to cross Pakistan’s low nuclear threshold and had limited potential to provoke a conventional war[xl]. Nonetheless, India had accomplished its primary goal of dislodging the terrorist infrastructure across the LOC. However, the pertinent question remains if India had successfully deterred Pakistan from launching sub-conventional attacks.

Akin to 2016, Pakistan can deny the episodes of surgical strikes. This denial could allow India to launch repetitive strikes on terrorist bulwarks without provoking retaliation; however, it would not impact Pakistan’s historical support of insurgents and proxies in Kashmir and India proper. For instance, a month after the strikes, the chief of Jammat-ud-Dawah, Hafiz Saeed, announced that the Mujahideen would retaliate by striking Jammu and Kashmir[xli]. Noteworthily,  the covert surgical strikes conducted in the past manifest that asymmetric conventional attacks have limited military utility since they do not inflict high costs on the adversary. However, the government’s attribution in 2016 added political weight and increased the low potency of the strikes[xlii].

Moreover, it is difficult to argue that attacks that do not cross Pakistan’s red lines would be sufficient to restrain sub-conventional attacks. Ganguly argues that there is a lack of causal relation between Pakistan’s development of a nuclear program and its continued support for terrorists. The nuclear regime did embolden Pakistan, but the increment in sub-conventional attacks could be ascribed to the end of the Cold War which freed military resources form Afghanistan that allowed Pakistan to launch similar proxies in Kashmir[xliii]. By and large, the strikes did not fundamentally alter Pakistan’s behaviour or the legitimacy of its nuclear deterrence postures; it did question its efficacy in the presence of asymmetric warfare options.

2019: Pulwama Attack

In the current spectre of Indian domestic politics with jingoism as its zeitgeist, Modi has established himself as a muscular leader by depicting his ability to respond to his adversaries militarily. In this context, the attacks in Pulwama (2019) deems merit as it manifests a change in Indian policies which could have implications for nuclear deterrence stability in South-Asia. On 14 February 2019, JeM under Masood Azhar killed over forty Indian paramilitary personnel in a suicide attack in Pulwama. This mass casualty attack strained the improving Indo-Pak relations and presented Delhi with a complicated political-military challenge. The limited strikes after Uri did not eliminate the persistent problem of Pakistan sponsored militancy in Kashmir; therefore, a more muscular response was demanded. Moreover, Modi had to send a message to Islamabad and his domestic audience to exhibit his strength before the general elections. Thus, India responded by launching airstrikes on a JeM camp in Balakot, in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. Pakistan hit back with an airstrike which engaged the two adversaries in aerial combat and resulted in the capture of IAF pilot, Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman[xliv].

The role of nuclear deterrence in de escalating the crisis is ambiguous. Srinath Raghavan, a senior fellow at Carnegie India, argues that India had breached the threshold for the first time since 1971, and was not deterred by Pakistan’s nuclear posture[xlv]. In previous crises, restraint was driven by Pakistan’s clear red lines— the international border from Jammu to the Arabian Sea and an aggressive nuclear posture. However, despite a certain degree of forbearance, the Balakot strikes manifested India’s higher threshold for risk acceptance. This perhaps depicts that Pakistan’s asymmetric posture was unable to curtail Indian retaliation. However, Hagerty challenged the credibility of this argument. New-Delhi recognised Pakistan’s low nuclear threshold thus, was cognisant of the fact that a conventional riposte, coercive enough to change the Pakistani attitude would escalate hostilities, perhaps to the nuclear level. Literature does suggest that the Indian leaders expected limited military utility from the strikes and perhaps believed that it would not sanction a Pakistani retaliation since India’s primary objective was to strike JeM basecamps preemptively[xlvi]. Moreover, domestic-political considerations were a driving factor behind the airstrikes. With the advent of hyper-nationalism in India, the Modi government deemed the strikes a political necessity to influence the public before the elections. Furthermore, a conspicuous shift in America’s crisis posture that approved Indian aggression on the pretext of self-defence made the threat of confrontation more apparent[xlvii].

However, the threat of nuclear deterrence does deserve merit in this crisis when we analyse the role of American diplomacy in de escalating the crisis. The examination of the evidence suggests that American diplomacy was less engaged and more tentative than the previous crises. Raghavan contends that the United States’ response was less apparent and voluble than in the past. America urged restraint from both adversaries only after India had launched the airstrikes, but in previous crises such as 2001-02 or 26/11 America engaged at early stages. After the Pulwama attack, the US National Security Adviser John Bolton reaffirmed America's support for Indian efforts in the war against terrorism. After the Balakot strikes, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Pakistan to exercise restraint and avoid further escalation of the crisis[xlviii].

Furthermore, it is still early to ascertain if it was American diplomacy that encouraged Pakistan to release the captured pilot or if it was Pakistan offering an olive branch. Despite American diplomatic efforts, nuclear deterrence played an indisputable role in de escalation. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that he would summon the National Command Authority, the military-civilian committee charged with governing the use of nuclear weapons as a part of the country’s response to India’s airstrikes against Balakot[xlix]. Therefore, it can be argued that this nuclear signal prevented India from further escalating the conflict.

What needs consideration is how the reduction of Pakistan’s nuclear threshold has increased the probability of the escalation of a conventional conflict to the nuclear level. In this context, any misjudgment by the two nuclear adversaries could be cataclysmic. The growing disparity between India and Pakistan’s conventional capabilities poses a severe threat of a nuclear riposte.

Conclusion

The analysis of the Indo-Pakistan conflicts have made it crystal clear— achieving strategic dominance for India in a nuclear South-Asia is nearly impossible. Pakistan’s asymmetric retaliation posture would deter India from launching substantially aggressive conventional attacks. As the precedence dictates, this has emboldened Pakistan and has allowed it to launch sub-conventional attacks on India. However, surgical Strikes in Uri and Balakot airstrikes exhibit a higher risk tolerance by New-Delhi, and its willingness to employ asymmetric escalation to achieve its objective would threaten the volatile status-quo of nuclear stability in the region. Despite the de escalation efforts, terrorists based and harboured in Pakistan can ignite the conflicts between the two nuclear powers. In the absence of command and control mechanisms, the threat of a nuclear war would become highly probable, especially if India would endeavour to cross Pakistan’s extremely low threshold. Furthermore, terrorists would have to be eliminated and restricted to freely operate in Pakistan, because as long as Pakistan could extract strategic utility in maintaining proxy militants capable of sub-conventional attacks in India, escalation is inevitable. To avoid nuclear or further conventional escalation diplomatic measures between the two adversaries would have to be strengthened.

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