Foreign diplomats returning from Islamabad have been asking the Indian strategic community what they make of recent Pakistani claims that they have now effectively deterred India in the conventional arena too.
How have the Pakistanis come to this erroneous and dangerous conclusion? The story goes back to the Kargil episode and the wrong deductions the Pakistani army drew from the Indian restraint in not crossing the Line of Contril LoC.
But make no mistake: nations learn more from defeats than they do from victories, and for India, Kargil was a victory. So while the Subramaniam committee did a magnificent job of investigating events leading up to Kargil, the strategic conduct of the war was never analysed. In Islamabad, the tactical defeat at Kargil was sought to be glossed over by high level fancy footwork, firstly because the architect of Kargil soon became the President; secondly because the Strategic Planning Directorate SPD put out the comforting thesis that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons deterred India from crossing the LOC and the IBL.
India was not unaware that Pakistani perceptions were descending a dangerous staircase. Dangerous, because the inference was that Pakistan’s latitude for action against India was now unlimited. In early 2000 a couple of statements were made in Delhi, but meant obviously to put Pakistan back into a box.
One was by the defence minister who acknowledged that conventional war was possible in the sub-continent, but only with limited objectives. The second was by the army chief who said there existed ‘‘space’’ for conventional war despite the presence of nuclear weapons.
Pakistan’s nuclear strategy had been achieved: India had acknowledged that its conventional superiority was useable only in a limited manner, upto the nuclear threshold. Now Islamabad began to jockey to push the threshold to lower limits.
So came the starling message from Islamabad through two Italian researchers, who were, in fact, given a detailed briefing by the chief of the SPD.
The message: Pakistan had defined four nuclear thresholds — a territorial one, an economic destruction one through Indian air action, an economic one through naval action, and the fourth, a political disintegration threshold. These thresholds were greeted by emotions varying from amazement to mirth in Delhi.
Then came the December 13 attack on the Parliament and the consequent forward deployment of Indian armed forces. The Pakistanis were initially apprehensive that a war might result. Their apprehension would have been far greater if Indian troop mobilisation had proceeded step by step instead of taking the last step first.
Each of the service mobilisations could have proceeded in an ascending escalatory manner, possibly leading to greater compliance from Pakistan. India was now in the embarrassing position of having to either ‘do’ something or make it plain that what Musharraf had conceded was acceptable.
Part of the reason why Islamabad was able to weather the mobilisation storm without conceding much was the mistaken belief that a conventional army is a good tool for extracting compliance. It never is. The Chinese Army of 200 divisions managed to penetrate Vietnamese defences held by civil defence militias and 14 divisions, but the campaign rapidly turned messy and the international verdict was a bloody nose to the Chinese. So India wisely withdrew forces after the Jammu and Kashmir elections.
Why didn’t India do ‘something’? Pakistan may never guess the correct answer, but it is enough for them to have deducted that India decided it was better not to.
Why do nations go to war anyway? Because their ‘vital’ interests are threatened. Perhaps, India’s vital interests weren’t threatened, but we told Islamabad that they were when we mobilised the troops. So if we intended to go to war and didn’t, it must be because we were deterred by Pakistan’s conventional forces.
In this a sensible deduction? Of course not. Nations make catastrophic mistakes in misperception. Japan declared war on US when its Gross Domestic Product GDP was one-tenth of that of the United States. Adolf Hitler attacked the USSR knowing Stalin had 250 divisions and the world’s best main battle tank. Mostly dictators get it all wrong.
But Islamabad’s misperception is serious, and a bad legacy to hand over to successive Indian leaders, heads of services and senior officials. Pakistan’s ridiculous overconfidence in 1965 is to be attributed to watching India’s defeat in 1962. A more sensible analysis would have been that the 1962 humiliation would result in a major overhaul of the Indian army.
If New Delhi sits comfortably in the belief that the troop mobilisation was a success, and that it is unpatriotic to say otherwise, we are headed for trouble in the future, because rightly or wrongly, we have been instrumental in Islamabad’s dangerous delusions. But this game is not yet over.
The jehadi elements in Pakistan occupied Kashmir PoK will most likely make one last attempt before Jammu and Kashmir settles down to solving its travails democratically. The Indian state will get another chance to reply and that chance will probably come in May 2003.
Will the Indian armed forces and politico-military apparatus be ready? Not a chance, if the smugness that prevails at the apparent ‘success’ in mobilisation persists.
Except for some low level equipment deficiencies brought to light by Kargil, not one weapon system has been acquired relevant to striking the terrorist camps in PoK. All these systems are useable only in joint operations. The abrupt termination of higher defence reform has left the Integrated Defence Staff IDS with lots of ideas, responsibilities and no money.
If the establishment feels we are ready, why not let ARTRAC or IDS run a simulation of a cross-border strike referred by those outside the system with no requirement to toe any party line?
The writer is a retired Rear Admiral
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