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Investigating Crises
: South Asia’s Lessons, Evolving Dynamics, and Trajectories
NEW HORIZONS, NEW RISKS
A Scenario-based Approach to
Thinking
about the Future of Crisis Stability in South Asia
Iskander Rehman
------------------------------
A “tinderbox,” “ flashpoint,” or “nuclear nightmare,” no region — barring, perhaps,
the Korean Peninsula — has garnered quite as many grim headlines as
South Asia.1
In 2000, President Bill Clinton famously described the Indian
subcontinent as “the most dangerous place in the world today.”
2
Over a decade
later, New York Times reporter David Sanger recounted the Obama administration’s
frequent anxiety over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.
3
More
recently, President Donald Trump described Pakistan as being a “very, very vital
problem…because they have nuclear weapons and they have to get a hold of the
situation.”
4
Many of these concerns are tied to the “stability-instability paradox,”
or “ugly stability” that has characterized Indo-Pakistani strategic interactions
in the 21st century.5 To borrow a metaphor from the British strategist Sir James
Cable, the nuclearization of the subcontinent may have forestalled the risks of
large-scale conventional war, but it has also “provided a kind of greenhouse in
which lesser conflicts…can flourish,” and in which spurts of subconventional
violence continue to present severe escalatory risks.6
This judgement has been
borne out over the past two decades as a number of nonstate cross-border incidents
precipitated nuclear-tinged crises on the subcontinent.
Rather than a more common method of examining past crises on the subcontinent,
this essay models and probes two potential future types of South Asian
crises. The opening section of each scenario offers some of the motives
and methods for crisis modeling by teasing out a plausible trigger event,background conditions and trends, reviewing moves and countermoves within
the scenario, and considering the crisis aftermath. The essay concludes by distilling
some implications and lessons drawn from the crisis modeling.
_________________________________________
Iskander Rehman is the Senior Fellow for International Relations at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, Salve Regina University. The author is grateful to Andrew Small, Shashank Joshi, and Sameer Lalwani for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this essay. For the sake of clearer distinction, real quotes are surrounded by quotation marks while fictional quotes designed for the purpose of the scenario are in italics.
1. For a sampling of such commentary over the years, see Jessica Matthews, “Tinderbox in South Asia,” The Washington Post, March 25, 1996; “Nuclear Fears in South Asia,” The New York Times, April 6, 2015; Dan Twining, “Pakistan and the Nuclear Nightmare,” Foreign Policy, September 4, 2013; and Pakistan and India: A Rivalry that Threatens the World,” The Economist, May 19, 2011.
2. Clinton made these remarks during a visit to the region in March 2000. See Ramesh Chandran, “Clinton Finds LoC Most Dangerous Place in World,” The Times of India, March 11, 2000, 1. 3. David E. Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Random House, 2012), chap. 3.
4. See “Nuclear Pakistan is a Very, Very Vital Problem,” The Indian Express, March 30, 2016.
5. Glenn Snyder first grappled with the concept of the stability-instability paradox, whereby the Soviets could engage in a range of potentially destabilizing “minor ventures with impunity,” under the protective shield of their retaliatory nuclear capabilities. See Glenn H. Snyder, Deterrence and Defense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961). Describing essentially the same phenomenon, Ashley Tellis coined the term “ugly stability” in reference to South Asia. See Ashley J. Tellis, Stability in South Asia (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 1997)
. 6. James Cable, “Surprise and the Single Scenario,” RUSI Journal 128, no. 1 (1983): 33-38.
_________________________________________________________
Scenario Modeling and Methods
Many studies or games exploring crisis instability in South Asia follow a familiar
trajectory. A major act of urban terrorism leading to mass casualties
and widespread chaos is committed within Indian territory.7
The attack is subsequently
traced back to patrons nested within Pakistan’s byzantine security
apparatus, and New Delhi finds itself obliged — in the face of rising domestic
pressure — to respond in a visible fashion.8
In most cases, the hypothesized response
is largely terrestrial and conventional and involves a “proactive” Indian
military response in the form of a limited mechanized thrust across the Line
of Control (LoC). Pakistan then engages in nuclear signaling and/or coercion
in order to offset India’s alleged conventional superiority.9
There is good reason
to concoct and play out such scenarios. After all, considering recent patterns
of Indian and Pakistani behavior, they remain some of the most likely “screenplays”
for confrontation.10
Scenarios, however, should not only examine the most likely futures.11 As one
famed business strategist observed,
[s]cenarios serve two purposes. The first is protective — anticipating
and understanding risk. The second is entrepreneurial — discovering
strategic options of which one was previously unaware.12
If done properly, scenario building can help states and organizations refine their
anticipative thinking, manage risk, and hedge against uncertainty.13 Regularly
engaging in such mental exercises can fulfill a vital function by providing a form
of mental “wind tunneling” or “stress testing” for overly cautious and reactive bureaucracies.14 The challenge lies in devising scenarios that are both creative
and plausible.
15 As two defense analysts recently noted, scenarios are not meant
to be prescriptive so much as diagnostic,
…assisting decision-makers to better understand the security environment
by enabling them to examine a set of plausible but different futures
that capture the inherent uncertainty in planning efforts, while incorporating predetermined elements.16
This essay aims to provide such a diagnostic assessment by briefly laying out
two hypothetical crisis scenarios.
The first scenario involves an armed confrontation
between India and Pakistan that subsequently expands to include China.
The (accidental) death of a dozen People’s Armed Police (PAP) personnel in an
Indian cross-border artillery barrage into Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK)
triggers Beijing’s direct military involvement following a bloody terrorist attack
on the shores of Dal Lake at the height of the tourist season.17
The second scenario unfolds in the Arabian Sea and describes Pakistan’s decision
to engage in nuclear first use against an Indian carrier strike group steaming
toward Karachi. This action — framed by Pakistan as an attempt to “escalate
to de-escalate” — occurs amid a state of conflict, with India having conducted a
series of standoff airstrikes on Pakistani military positions. New Delhi’s offensive
occurs following months of tension during which both nations mass mobilize
forces along the LoC.
The trigger event for this particular crisis becomes
the grisly televised execution of ten Indian Para-SF commandos in a village near
the Pakistani border town of Kathai.
_________________________________________________________________
7. An exception would be the work conducted by the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, which has conducted a series of games in
partnership with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency. These workshops have drawn on a wide variety of crisis scenarios and
trigger events. For a detailed summary of the most recent game, see Feroz Hassan Khan et al., South Asian Stability Workshop 2.0: A
Crisis Simulation Report (Monterey: Naval Postgraduate School, 2016).
8. For an excellent recent overview of these dynamics, see George Perkovich and Toby Dalton, Not War, Not Peace? Motivating
Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
9. For a good discussion of these dynamics, see Evan Braden Montgomery and Eric S. Edelman, “Rethinking Stability in South Asia:
India, Pakistan, and the Competition for Escalation Dominance,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 1-2 (2015): 159-82.
10. See, for example, the useful study, Daniel Markey, Terrorism and Indo-Pakistani Escalation (New York: Council on Foreign
Relations, 2010). For a discussion of the role of “scripts” in the concoction of strategy see Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 607-31.
11. For an overview of the utility of scenario-based planning, see P. H. Liotta and Timothy E. Somes, “The Art of Reperceiving
Scenarios and the Future,” Naval War College Review 56, no. 4 (2003): 121-32. See also Gill Ringland, Scenario Planning: Managing
for the Future (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998); Kees van der Heijde, Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation (Chichester:
John Wiley & Sons, 1996); and Peter Schwartz, The Art of the Long View (New York: Doubleday, 1991).
12. Pierre Wack, “Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids: How Medium-term Analysis Illuminated the Power of Scenarios for Shell
Management,” Harvard Business Review, November 1985, 34.
13. The management of uncertainty remains at the heart of defense planning. As Stephen Fruhling notes, “[u]ncertainty and threat are
integral components of the concept of the risk, and it is in reaction to strategic risks—risks that arise from, or could be reduced by, the
use of armed force—that most countries maintain a defense force.” See Stephen Fruhling, Defense Planning and Uncertainty: Preparing
for the Next Asia-Pacific War (New York: Routledge, 2014), 1. For a broader discussion on the management of uncertainty in defense
planning, see Colin Gray, “Coping with Uncertainty: Dilemmas of Defense Planning,” Comparative Strategy 27, no. 4 (2008): 324-31.
14. See Paul de Ruijter and Henk Alkema, Scenario-Based Strategy: Navigate the Future (New York: Routledge, 2016).
15. As one military historian has noted, “[t]oday as well as in the past, wargame scenario developers draw a fine line to achieve
a proper balance of realism and educational relevance. Their conundrum is that the most realistic and detailed scenarios produce
results and lessons that are only narrowly applicable. But the broader and more high-level a scenario, the less concrete information
can be drawn from it to guide player actions.” See John M. Lillard, Playing War: Wargaming and U.S. Navy Preparations for WWII
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016), 8.
16. Andrew Krepinevich and Jacob Cohn, Rethinking Armageddon: Scenario Planning in the Second Nuclear Age (Washington, D.C.:
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2016).
17. For more analysis on Chinese perspectives on and historical role in South Asian crises, see Yun Sun and Hannah Haegeland,
“China and Crisis Management in South Asia” in this volume.
__________________________________________________________
A tripartite methodology has been utilized as a means of injecting both inner
coherence and a certain degree of plausibility. Both scenarios are thus set in
the near future (circa 2019/2020) and are grounded in what scenario designers
call predetermined elements, i.e., preexisting strategic realities that are deemed
likely to endure. They also incorporate ongoing disruptive trends and detail the
various potential implications of these evolutions for crisis stability. An overview
of the respective structures and assumptions undergirding both scenarios can
be found in the two following tables
Scenario One: The Two-Front Threat Merges into a One-Front Threat
The Trigger Event
On a balmy summer evening in Srinagar, columns of vacationers slowly thread
their way around Dal Lake. It is the height of tourist season, and crowds of middle-class
Indians seek — like their former British colonial overseers — to escape
the scorching heat of the plains for the crisp mountain air. The state of Jammu and
Kashmir, with its famed natural beauty and short flight distance from New Delhi,
provides a natural holiday destination for thousands of overworked Delhiites and
their families. Although the growing influx of tourists has somewhat dented the
valley’s pre-independence image as a Himalayan Shangri-La, it has also proved to
be a stabilizing factor and a major boon to the local economy.18 Despite spurts of
unrest pitting stone-throwing Kashmiri youth against Indian paramilitary and
police forces, summer tourism has continued to thrive, particularly in the vicinity
of Dal Lake. Dense clusters of city dwellers amble along its shores while packs of
local street food and handicraft salesmen jockey for their attention
Shortly after the call for evening prayer, a detonation echoes across the lake. In
some areas, the cries of the hawkers are so loud that survivors later report having
not heard the first explosion or having mistaken it for a firework. However,
it is soon followed by a second loud explosion and a fiery conflagration, and
the grim reality of the situation sets in. A tide of panic washes over onlookers,
leading to a frenzied stampede. Meanwhile, four men armed with assault rifles
start firing with a cold, methodical precision into the crowds. By the time local
police forces succeed in neutralizing the terrorists, over 50 civilians, including
8 young children, are dead. An additional dozen bystanders are wounded, some
grievously, in the resulting stampede.
Night falls over Srinagar, and television crews descend like swarms of locusts on
the location of the attack. As guttering flames reflect off the inky blackness of the
lake, endless scenes of carnage — along with lingering shots of small bodies being
carried away on stretchers — play out on Indian television sets.19 Meanwhile,
Indian police and Intelligence Bureau officers comb through the meager possessions
of the terrorists. They find a scorched smartphone in a shredded rucksack
near one of the bombsites. The following morning, a National Technical
Research Organisation (NTRO) team dispatched from Delhi discovers that the
assailants had been communicating via an encrypted messaging system with
an individual they trace back to a Pakistani military facility in Rawalpindi.20
After demanding that the NTRO specialists reconfirm this information by running
another forensic test, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security sanctions
— as a preliminary retaliatory step — an immediate artillery barrage against
a Pakistani military outpost located thirty kilometers across the border. The
standoff strike buys India’s leadership some precious time as it determines its
next course of action.
The targeted location, assures Research and Analysis Wing officials, is a hidden
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) launchpad. Recent satellite imagery may show the
construction of what appears to be a logging camp in the forest nearby, but
this is a traditional deception method employed by the ISI — notes one veteran
Indian intelligence official — which is simply trying to hide terror camps under
the guise of civilian installations.
21 At dawn, five howitzers and two multiple
launch rocket systems open fire in a deafening barrage. Before the smoke has
even cleared, a high-altitude Indian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) confirms
that three barracks-like structures have been leveled and that several fading
human heat signatures have been detected among the ruins. India’s leadership is in a self-congratulatory mood — the LeT camp has been almost completely
destroyed, and a strong message had been sent to its patrons in Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Moreover, the UAV video footage of the strike
provides visual proof to the Indian people that their elected representatives are
not sitting idle in the wake of yet another act of sub conventional aggression.
This sense of satisfaction is short-lived, however. Only an hour or so after the
retaliatory strike, a nervous aide enters the Indian prime minister’s office clutching
a laptop. Opening the device on the prime minister’s desk, the aide proceeds
to play a segment from a Pakistani cable news show. The video shows a young
reporter gingerly stepping through the smoking wreckage of the encampment.
Her accompanying cameraman suddenly swivels to focus on a twisted cadaver,
zooming in on its Asiatic features. As the camera pans out, the Indian prime
minister realizes to his horror that the victim is wearing what appears to be a
Chinese PAP uniform. Chyrons flash across the screen in Urdu claiming that in
an act of unprovoked savagery, India has killed 12 of Pakistan’s Chinese brothers
engaged in peaceful construction activities.
For the first time since a bloody
border skirmish in 1967, Indian troops have opened fire on their Chinese counterparts.
This time, however, it is wholly accidental.
Background and Context: China’s Growing Presence in Pakistan
This scenario occurs against the backdrop of a growing Chinese presence in
Pakistan and under the aegis of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)
initiative. With CPEC constituting the flagship project of its grand design for
Eurasian connectivity — the Belt and Road Initiative — Beijing has poured
ever more resources into Pakistan.22 These resources are both financial — in
the form of vast loans — and physical, via the detachment of large contingents
of Chinese workers and paramilitary forces. While Chinese state-owned enterprises
operate somewhat differently than they do in Africa, agreeing to employ
large numbers of Pakistani workers, they still overwhelmingly prefer to hire
their own countrymen for skilled labor and mid-level managerial positions.23
This preferential treatment had already generated racial tensions on construction
sites and anti-Chinese sentiment in certain regions of Pakistan, where
hopes that CPEC infrastructure projects would more directly benefit rural communities
have been cruelly dashed. In addition to importing waves of Chinese
civilian expatriates, Beijing has decided to increase its paramilitary presence, dispatching hundreds of PAP troops to assist in construction efforts and provide
better security along key transport and communication lines. These units, often
composed of recently decommissioned People’s Liberation Army (PLA) servicemen,
are principally drawn from the PAP’s dedicated capital constructional
units or the Hydropower, Communications, and Forestry Corps.24 Although
Islamabad had repeatedly pledged that it will do its utmost to protect Chinese
equities in Pakistan — dedicating thousands of armed personnel and raising
new formations such as the Special Security Division — Beijing has grown
increasingly frustrated with its junior partner following a series of particularly
brutal attacks against Chinese engineers and workers in Baluchistan.25
After one such incident, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying
issues the following statement,
Although our Pakistani friends have made tremendous efforts in the
fight against terrorism and extremism, they will require greater assistance
from China in order to eradicate this scourge and move more decisively
toward a China-Pakistan Community of Shared Destiny.26 Following extensive
bilateral discussions, we have decided to bring our counterterrorism
cooperation to a new level. Under Article 71 of the Counter-Terrorism
Law of the People’s Republic of China, the Central Military Commission
has assigned additional Chinese personnel to assist their Pakistani counterparts
in the pursuit of antiterrorism endeavors.27
Although the statement is purposely vague, it soon becomes apparent that
China has sizably increased its military presence within Pakistan. In addition
to the aforementioned paramilitary presence, rapid-reaction units of Snow
Leopard commandos are now also stationed in areas deemed insecure for
Chinese workers.28 Meanwhile, rumors persist that Chinese unmanned systems
based in Xinjiang and Aksai Chin have begun to engage in kinetic strikes
against nonstate actors located within Pakistan. While such targeted assassinations
remain relatively rare, there have been some disquieting instances
when seemingly “nonmilitant” members of Pakistan’s Uighur community have been rounded up in raids jointly conducted by Pakistani and Chinese Special
Operations Forces (SOF).29 In late 2018, a Chinese drone strike against an alleged
Turkistan Islamic Party cell located in the Federal Administered Tribal Areas
kills two high-ranking members of the Haqqani network that had been riding
in the same pick-up convoy.30 In this case, rumors indicate the operation was
conducted on China’s own initiative with the Pakistanis only informed two
minutes before the strike. The growing frequency of such incidents begins to
generate friction between Chinese intelligence agencies and certain wings of the
Pakistani security establishment.
These tensions rise to the fore following a mass religious rally in Lahore in early
2019. Back in 2016, Hafiz Saeed, the former head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa — an outlawed
organization affiliated with LeT — had already begun vocally criticizing
Chinese government policies in Xinjiang.31 Three years later, the Islamist leader,
freshly released from house arrest, goes a step further, haranguing the crowd
and declaring it high time for Pakistan to teach our Chinese friends to respect our
Muslim brothers and sisters, here and in China and in East Turkistan. Beijing
reacts with cold fury to Saeed’s tirade. Over the course of a tense meeting,
the Ministry of State Security station chief in Islamabad quietly tells his ISI
counterparts to rein in their barking dog. Chinese officials appear particularly
incensed by the cleric’s decision to comment on developments in Xinjiang, along
with his choice of wording (East Turkistan). For Pakistan, the confrontation is
a reminder that its growing proximity with China presents certain challenges
as well as opportunities. As analysts such as Daniel Markey have noted,
Islamabad’s end goal has never been to become a “junior partner in a tighter
Sino-Pakistani alliance” but rather “to enjoy the generous affections of both
Beijing and Washington for as long as possible.”32 Unfortunately for Islamabad,
its ties with Washington — whether political, military, or financial — have
frayed over the past decade, rendering any attempt at equidistance between
the two great powers increasingly untenable.33 As a result, there is a sense in
some quarters that Pakistan has become excessively beholden and/or deferential
to Chinese interests, particularly in the counterterrorism domain. Chinese
operations against Uighurs based in Pakistan, often — but not always — with
the cooperation of Pakistani security forces, are already generating domestic backlash.34 In August 2019, an open letter is published in Dawn, a prominent
English-language newspaper. Signed by a dozen (anonymous) Pakistani military
officers, it expresses their collective concern over the increasingly unbalanced
nature of the Sino-Pakistani relationship.35
This mindset, however, is not universally shared within Pakistan’s security community.
In a much-discussed interview with The New York Times in late 2018,
a recently retired director-general of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Naveed Mukhtar, berates
the eternal fickleness of Washington before declaring that the sooner people here
realize that China is the only game in town, the better it will be. These remarks
come a few days after a meeting between President Trump and Narendra Modi
and a joint Indo-U.S. statement which calls for a new era in the struggle against
radical Islamic extremism, both in South Asia and beyond.
Many of Mukhtar’s colleagues are also of the opinion that a permanent Chinese
military presence, particularly if stationed in relative proximity to the LoC,
could act as a powerful deterrent to Indian military action in the event of a
crisis. For these strategic planners, CPEC represents more than the promise
of Pakistani economic rejuvenation. It is also an effective binding strategy
that could permanently ensnare Chinese troops within the region.36 Decision makers
in Beijing are hardly blind to the risks posed by this Pakistani line of
thinking. At the same time, many Chinese thinkers take a somewhat different
tack, suggesting for example that a deeper Sino-Pakistani relationship might
enable Beijing to exert greater control over every aspect of their troublesome ally’s
security policy — including its relationship with India. Joint Sino-Pakistani
patrols along the LoC, for example, could allow China to monitor and deter
Pakistani provocative actions against India in real time.37
_______________________________________
18. Over 130,000 tourists visited the state of Jammu & Kashmir in 2016—and this despite an extended period of unrest. See “Nearly
13 Lakh Tourists Visited JK in 2016: Govt,” Kashmir Observer, April 14, 2017.
19. For a discussion of how South Asia’s rapidly morphing media landscape could affect crisis dynamics, see Ruhee Neog,
“Self-Referencing the News: Media, Policymaking, and Public Opinion in India-Pakistan Crises” in this volume, as well as the panel
discussion, Toby Dalton, Shashank Joshi, Smita Sharma, Huma Yusuf, “Wars of Words? Media and Conflict in South Asia” (panel
held at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference, Washington, D.C., March 20, 2017), http://carnegieendowment.
org/2017/03/20/concurrent-session-ii-wars-of-words-media-and-conflict-in-south-asia-pub-67989.
20. The National Technical Research Organization is an Indian intelligence agency formed in 2004 and charged primarily with
technical and signals intelligence.
21. On the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s extensive network of facilities within Pakistan, as well as a discussion of its transnational connections,
see Stephen Tankel, Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba (London: Hurst & Co., 2011).
22. For a recent analysis of China’s Belt And Road Initiative, see Nadège Rolland, “China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Underwhelming
or Game-Changer?” The Washington Quarterly 40, no. 1 (2017): 127-42.
23. It is estimated that there are approximately one million Chinese citizens in Africa, of which perhaps one-third or more
are temporary labor migranths working for and sponsored by Chinese (and in some cases, African) companies on fixedterm
contracts of usually one to three years. African labor unions have repeatedly raised concerns over Chinese companies’
preference toward importing large numbers of low-skilled Chinese workers in Africa. When African workers are employed by
Chinese state-owned enterprises, they are often poorly treated by their foreign overseers. For a recent and nuanced discussion
of China’s economic presence in Africa, see Yoong Jung Park, “One Million Chinese in Africa,” Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies (SAIS), SAIS Perspectives, May 12, 2016, http://www.saisperspectives.com/2016issue/2016/5/12/
n947s9csa0ik6kmkm0bzb0hy584sfo.
24. On the role and composition of the People’s Armed Police, see Xuezhi Guo, China’s Security State: Philosophy, Evolution and
Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Zi Yan, “The Chinese People’s Armed Police in a Time of Armed Forces
Restructuring,” China Brief 16, no. 6 (2016).
25. In May 2015, the Pakistani Parliament announced that a special budgetary allocation was being devoted to the raising of a new
“special security division” of nine battalions protecting routes and facilities along the CPEC. This was followed in June 2016 by an
announcement that recruitment was underway to raise a force of up to 17,820 personnel to ensure better security. See “PakistanArmy,”
Jane’s World Armies, April 7, 2017; and “Special Security Division Established to Secure CPEC,” The Express Tribune, January
22, 2017.
26. This is a formulation often employed by Chinese officials when discussing CPEC. See, for example, “Congratulatory Messages
from H.E. Xi Jinping, President of People’s Republic of China to H.E. Mamnoon Hussain, President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan
on the Occasion of the 78th Pakistan Day,” Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, March 23,
2017, http://pk.chineseembassy.org/eng/zbgx/t1448456.htm.
27. On the implications of China’s new Counter-Terrorism Law, which entered into effect in 2016, see Mathieu Duchatel, “Terror
Overseas: Understanding China’s Evolving Counter-terror Strategy,” European Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Brief, October 26,
2016, http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/terror_overseas_understanding_chinas_evolving_counter_terror_strategy7160.
28. The Snow Leopard Commando Unit is an elite counterterrorism unit of the People’s Armed Police. They have been assigned
to embassy protection in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq and are increasingly slated to engage in cross border or overseas
operations. See Ojavsi Goel, “China Seeks to Counter Militancy in Central Asia,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, November 22, 2016.
29. Over the past few years, Pakistan and China have intensified cooperation between their respective special operations forces units,
with a particular focus on counterterrorism-related activities. See Fahran Bokhari, “China, Pakistan Complete Seven-Week Special
Forces Drills,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, September 18, 2015.
30. On the Turkistan Islamic Party and its ties to South Asia terrorist groups, see Uran Butabekov, “China’s Nightmare: Xinjiang
Jihadists Go Global,” The Diplomat, August 17, 2016. On China’s approach to the issue, see Martin Purbrick, “Maintaining a Unitary
State: Counter-terrorism, Separatists and Extremism in Xinjiang and China,” Asian Affairs 43, no. 2 (2017): 236-56.
31. For Hafiz Saeed’s critiques on Chinese government practices in Xinjiang, see “Hafiz Saeed Slams China after President Xi Jinping
Asks His People to Shun Islam,” India Today, May 31, 2016.
32. Daniel Markey, “The Strange Tale of Sino-Pakistani Friendship,” Asia Policy, no. 21 (2016).
33. See Ismail Dilawar, “China, Not US, Is Pakistan’s New Best Friend If You Go by These Investment Numbers,” The Economic Times,
April 13, 2017; and Pamela Constable, “Pakistan Pivots to China Amid Fresh Concerns over U.S. Ties with India,” The Washington
Post, June 30, 2017.
34. For concerns amongst Pakistan’s Uighur community that such policies might materialize in the near-future, see Yuji Kuronuma,
“Uighurs Wary as China’s Vast Aid Influences Pakistan,” Nikkei Asian Review, November 16, 2016.
35. For a masterful overview of the various strains Uighur-related issues have put on the Sino-Pakistani relationship, see Andrew
Small, The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 170-79. For a sense of the scope of
China’s CPEC-related ambitions, see Khurram Hussain, “Exclusive: CPEC Master Plan Revealed,” Dawn, June 21, 2017
36. For an academic discussion of some of these dynamics within asymmetric alliances, see James Morrow, “Alliances and
Asymmetry: An Alternative to the Capability Aggregation Model of Alliances,” American Journal of Political Science 35, no. 4 (1991):
904-33; and Patricia A. Weitsman, “Intimate Enemies: The Politics of Peacetime Alliances,” Security Studies 7, no. 1 (1997): 156-92.
37. This counterintuitive point was raised by Indian military officers during conversations with the author. Pointing to the possibility
of such patrols becoming a matter of routine, one colonel told the author that, “while it would certainly be of concern for us, it could
also have a positive effect. The Pakistanis may behave better if the Chinese are watching.” Author’s interaction with Indian Army
officers at the Center for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi, April 4, 2017.
___________________________________________________________________________
A Downturn in Sino-Indian Relations
Even as China strengthens its security ties with Pakistan, its relations with
India steadily deteriorate. The downward plunge in Sino-Indian relations can
be explained by a variety of factors. First, certain broader geopolitical evolutions
draw attention to widening fault lines in the Indo-Pacific region and exacerbate
tensions between both rising Asian powers. India’s growing military proximity
to fellow Asian democracies has become a major source of irritation to Beijing,
as has its increasingly vocal public stances on freedom of navigation. The revival of the so-called “quad,” or quadrilateral security dialogue, between Australia,
Japan, India, and the United States has been greeted with seething hostility by
the Chinese state-owned press, which denounces it as little more than a blueprint
for China’s containment.38 Tensions reach a head in early 2019 when all
four nations decide to engage in extended antisubmarine warfare exercises in
the South China Sea. Beijing reacts by dispatching a surface task group from its
South Sea Fleet base on Hainan island. The Chinese flotilla aggressively shadows
the quad’s naval assets for the duration of the exercise. At one point, a PLA Navy
destroyer trains its fire-control radar on an Indian frigate, triggering an official
protest from India’s Ministry of External Affairs.39
Meanwhile, India’s government grows increasingly frustrated with China’s sustained
campaign to deny India’s membership in the Nuclear Suppliers Group,
as well as its refusal to label certain Pakistani jihadi groups as terrorist organizations.40
The most sensitive bilateral issue, however, remains that of the SinoIndian
border, or Line of Actual Control (LAC). As relations with China become
more openly confrontational, Indian security managers point to a marked recrudescence
of PLA incursions along certain portions of the LAC, in Ladakh
and Arunachal Pradesh in particular. These incursions, which have occasionally
led to protracted standoffs involving hundreds of troops on each side, seem to
follow a certain pattern and are timed during diplomatically charged moments.
For example, one standoff in the Chumar district, which almost devolves into a
minor skirmish, occurs during Prime Minister Modi’s trip to Japan in October
2018. Another large-scale incursion occurs in the middle of Chinese Premier Li
Keqiang’s visit to New Delhi in early 2019. These staged confrontations appear,
according to one observer, designed to impress upon the Indians China’s dominance
along the border.41
Indeed, China’s growing military strength along the LAC has become a major
source of anxiety for Indian defense planners.42 Concerns were already
voiced in 2016 following Beijing’s decision to fold the former Chengdu and
Lanzhou military regions into a unified Western Theater Command, with observers
noting that these sweeping organizational reforms could enhance the PLA’s combat performance in the event of a border conflict.43 Retired Indian
intelligence officials remarked that these evolutions could not be viewed
in isolation from CPEC and from China’s heightened military presence in
Pakistan.44 Indeed, many of the highest-ranking military officials stationed
in the Western Theater Command have jointly trained or exercised with their
Pakistani counterparts.
Over the past two to three years, “mass incidents” — a Chinese euphemism for
widespread unrest — became ubiquitous throughout China’s western border regions.
By mid-2019, the few Western journalists with access to Xinjiang describe
the climate in ominous terms and as moving toward a Chechnya-like situation.
45
Meanwhile, China’s repression in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) grows
ever more severe, and smuggled videos of self-immolating monks inundate
Indian social media networks.46 These videos, along with a steady stream of
reporting on the deteriorating human rights conditions throughout ethnic minority
regions in China, cause widespread outrage in India, where many retain
a deep attachment to the Tibetan cause. The Indian media’s increasingly vociferous
coverage of the situation in the TAR is deemed deeply offensive by the
Chinese, however. During one cocktail reception held at the Chinese Embassy,
the Chinese ambassador pulls India’s foreign secretary aside and quietly exhorts
him to crack down on the Tibetan splittist elements in Dharamsala influencing
the Indian media and perturbing the harmony of the India-China relationship.
When the foreign secretary, somewhat startled, explains that the Indian government
has little control over the nation’s media, the ambassador walks off in
a huff, muttering that India is playing dangerous games.
47 Indeed, the Chinese
have become increasingly convinced that New Delhi is being duplicitous in its
dealings with Beijing over Tibet and that it wishes to exploit the uncertainties
surrounding the 14th Dalai Lama’s succession in order to weaken Chinese control
in the Himalayan border regions.48 These suspicions grow as the octogenarian
monk’s health falters in late 2018. They reach a crescendo following his
decision to dispatch envoys to several monasteries in India — including Tawang
Monastery in the contested state of Arunachal Pradesh — in order to begin the complex process of identifying his successor.49 In a tersely worded statement,
China’s Foreign Ministry reiterates that
[t]he Dalai Lama’s reincarnation has never been purely a religious matter
or to do with the Dalai Lama’s individual rights; it is first and foremost an
important political matter in Tibet and an important manifestation of the Chinese central government’s sovereignty over Tibet. For this reason, since
historical times, the central government has never given up, and will never
give up, the right to decide the reincarnation affairs of the Dalai Lama.50
A follow-up statement warns foreign and domestic hostile forces…not to meddle
in mass incidents in order to intensify contradictions.51 At the same time, Indian
intelligence reports point to a growing influx of heliborne and mechanized PAP
units in Tibet and to a series of “shock and awe” demonstrations of strength
in and around Lhasa.52 These displays of paramilitary strength, while aimed
primarily at domestic audiences, raise eyebrows within India’s security establishment.
Indeed, these heavily armed and mobile units could easily be tasked
elsewhere in the event of a cross-border conflict. In April 2019 during the 22nd
round of Sino-Indian boundary talks, India’s representatives tentatively broach
the topic, along with the issue of Chinese paramilitary troop deployments in
Pakistan. An Indian proposal to exchange better information on the deployment
of each nation’s respective paramilitary forces, including in border regions outside
the LAC, is politely rebuffed by the Chinese, who nevertheless concede that such
a proposal might provide a good additional building block in future negotiations.
_______________________________________
38. On the “quad” and prospects for its revival, see Prashanth Parameswaran, “Return of Asia’s Quad Natural: US Defense Chief,”
The Diplomat, April 9, 2016.
39. It is worth noting that such incidents involving Chinese and Japanese vessels have occurred in the past. See Martin Fackler,
“Japan Says China Aimed Military Radar at Ship,” The New York Times, February 5, 2013.
40. For recent Sino-Indian tensions over India’s bid for Nuclear Suppliers Group membership, see “India, China Trade Barbs
over NSG,” The Wire, January 19, 2017. On China’s refusal to blacklist certain Pakistan-based militant groups, see “Why Is China
‘Protecting’ the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad Militant Group?” Deutschwelle, February 8, 2017.
41. Former Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon has hypothesized that the seemingly deliberate timing of past largescale
incursions (in September 2014 and April 2015) could be explained by China’s desire to establish “psychological dominance”
over a new Indian government. See Shivshankar Menon, Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution Press, 2016), 25-26.
42. On the evolving Sino-Indian military dynamic along the Line of Actual Control, see Iskander Rehman, “A Himalayan Challenge:
India’s Conventional Deterrent and the Role of Special Operations Forces Along the Sino-Indian Border,” Naval War College Review
70, no. 1 (2017): 104-42.
43. On the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) most recent reforms, see Dennis Blasko, “Integrating the Services and Harnessing the
Military Area Commands,” Journal of Strategic Studies 39, no. 5-6 (2016): 685-708. For a sampling of Indian concerns, see Monika
Chansoria, “There’s a Military Fallout of China-Pak Corridor,” The Sunday Guardian, March 11, 2017.
44. Author’s interview with Jayadeva Ranade, New Delhi, April 3, 2017.
45. On China’s ironfisted policies in its western border regions, see “China’s Far West: A Chechnya in the Making,” The Economist,
August 9, 2014; and Ben Hillman and Gray Tuttle, Ethnic Conflict and Protest in Tibet and Xinjiang: Unrest in China’s West (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2016).
46. These videos are often sent clandestinely from Tibet via WeChat, the Chinese social messaging system. Tibetans caught sharing
such videos with family members or friends located outside of Chinese-controlled territory are severely punished by local authorities.
Author’s conversations with Tibetan refugees, Darjeeling and Ghoom, April 7 and 8, 2017.
47. China frequently relays its distaste of India’s vibrant media in the course of bilateral discussions with New Delhi.
48. For a good recent analysis, see Ranjit S. Kalha, “The Politics of Reincarnation Will Be the Next Crisis in Sino-Indian Relations,”
The Wire, April 14, 2017. Following a recent visit by the Dalai Lama to Arunachal Pradesh, China’s Foreign Ministry castigated New
Delhi for “obstinately arranging” the visit, warning that it had caused “serious damage” to bilateral ties. See Ellen Barry, “Dalai Lama’s
Journey Provokes China, and Hints at His Heir,” The New York Times, April 6, 2017.
49. On the complexities surrounding reincarnation politics, and its implications for future Sino-Indian relations, see Iskander Rehman,
Reincarnation Politics and the Tibetan Issue in Sino-Indian Relations (forthcoming, 2017).
50. This quote is drawn verbatim from a statement made by a Chinese official on the issue in 2015. See, “China Sticks to Right to
Decide Reincarnation of Dalai Lama,” Reuters, November 30, 2015.
51. For a discussion of China’s tendency to link ethnic tensions with foreign attempts at subversion, see Jonathan Walton, “China
Plans for Internal Unrest: People’s Armed Police and Public Security Approaches to Mass Incidents,” in The People’s Liberation Army
and Contingency Planning in China, ed. Andrew Scobell et al. (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 2015), 55-85.
52. For one such “shock and awe” demonstration, see “China Stages Another Mass Show of Military Force in Restive Xinjiang,”
South China Morning Post, February 19, 2017.
53. On the potential role of the newly formed Central National Security Committee, and on China’s approach to crisis management in
general, see Alastair Iain Johnston, “The Evolution of Interstate Security Crisis-Management Theory and Practice in China,” Naval War
College Review 69, no. 1 (2016): 29-71
________________________________________
The Crisis Unfolds
Beijing’s first reaction to the death of a dozen of its servicemen occurs half an
hour after the footage of the incident hits international cable news channels.
In a short one-paragraph statement, China announces that it is recalling its
ambassador in New Delhi and convening the Politburo Standing Committee
in order to devise a suitable response based on the recommendations provided
by the newly revamped Central National Security Committee.53 Indian officials’
feverish attempts to reach their counterparts in Beijing prove unsuccessful,
and their concerns grow when the recently established hotline between
the Indian director-general of military operations and his PLA equivalent is abruptly disconnected.54 Meanwhile, the Chinese media and blogosphere go
into nationalistic overdrive. As images of the 12 PAP members, along with their
bereaved families, play in a continuous loop on China Central Television, a
growing number of angry netizens call on their government to teach India a
lesson. The young men had been part of the PAP’s Hydropower Corps, assigned
to provide protection on a hydroelectric power station construction site of the
China Gezhouba Group Co. Ltd.55 One hour after the artillery strike goes public,
India’s Ministry of External Affairs issues a formal apology for the Chinese loss
of life in this regrettable incident, assuring the international community that
New Delhi had intended to strike at a group of state-backed mujahedeen and
had no prior knowledge of the PAP troops’ presence in the area.
Within the Zhongnanhai compound, however, it is determined that such an
action — even if unintended — cannot go unpunished. The Chinese people
have reacted with intense anger, and Beijing police begin to report a crowd of
nationalist protesters streaming into Liangmaqio Road, overturning some of
the barriers the police had placed near the Indian Embassy.56 Over the past few
years, mass protests have grown ever more frequent in China, especially following
a series of corruption scandals involving high-ranking party officials.57 The
Politburo Standing Committee is eager to see some of that seething frustration
redirected elsewhere. Meanwhile, a new crop of hardliners within the party’s
ruling elite argue that even though China’s response should be just, advantageous,
and restrained, India’s recent actions should not be viewed in isolation
from its hegemonic tendencies in South Asia or from its recent playing of games
with China’s core interests, especially in places such as Tibet. This crisis, they
argue, provides China with an opportunity to enhance the strength of its overall
situation vis-à-vis its trans-Himalayan neighbor. Once certain punitive actions
have been undertaken, high-level contacts could be reinitiated with New Delhi,
with the aim of defusing the crisis from a situation of strength.
58
Chinese security managers are confronted with some additional challenges
pertaining to the management of their proto-alliance with Pakistan. Chinese
intelligence officers have already begun to question why Rawalpindi had seemed
so eager to host the PAP detachment in such a sensitive area and in such close
proximity to the LoC. Some have even ventured that the ISI voluntarily put
Chinese lives at risk in the hope of drawing China into an Indo-Pakistani border
conflict. Moreover, Beijing has been made aware that shortly before the terrorist attack in Srinagar the Pakistan Army’s X Corps in Rawalpindi discreetly issued
orders to heighten the military forces under its command.59 Meanwhile, a battalion
of SOF from the Special Services Group is forward-deployed to a forested
area in POK abutting India’s Poonch District. While it is common practice for
Pakistan to strengthen its military presence along the LoC in the event of a
terrorist attack on Indian soil, the timing of these movements raises Beijing’s
suspicions over the Pakistan military’s complicity in the Srinagar killings.60 In
private, Chinese officials had previously begun to more forcefully urge Pakistan
to abandon its “policy of a thousand cuts” against India, partly out of a fear that
the People’s Republic of China (PRC) could get sucked into a conflict not of its
choosing.61 Now that these fears have finally materialized, China is intent on
asserting itself as the senior partner in the Sino-Pakistani axis and on exerting
a great degree of control over the mechanics of the crisis. Pakistani military
leaders are told in no uncertain terms that their troops — including the SOF
positioned outside Poonch — are not to engage in cross-border operations unless
the situation so warrants it. Military pressure could and should be applied
by moving troops closer to the LoC, but now is not the time to jeopardize the
future of the CPEC by turning it into a warzone. Furthermore, China wishes
this crisis to remain nuclear free — a not-so-subtle means of dissuading
Pakistan from engaging in potentially destabilizing nuclear signaling. When
the Pakistanis point to the fact that India had also begun to move a strike corps
out of Mathura, China assures them that their deterrence would be buttressed
by other additional conventional means.
In the early morning hours of the following day, units from the PLA’s 52nd and
53rd Mountain Infantry Brigades enter Arunachal Pradesh.62 Accompanied by
small heliborne detachments of SOF from the Tibet Military District, they attack
several lightly defended Indian forward outposts, rapidly overcoming their small
garrisons.63 After razing the structures to the ground, Chinese forces continue
to advance an additional 15 kilometers into Indian territory before setting up a
series of makeshift fortifications. The images of PLA troops — some of whom
have affixed GoPro cameras onto their helmets — advancing triumphantly into
“Southern Tibet” are immediately broadcast on Chinese cable news channels. Set against stirring Maoist anthems with Chinese flags fluttering on dawn-lit mountain
ridges in the background, the footage engenders mass enthusiasm in China,
with citizens applauding their government’s decisive actions.
In the sandstone buildings of Lutyens’ Delhi, officials are still reeling under
the impact of the past day’s events. In the space of a few hours, they have gone
from deliberating how best to calibrate their response to an act of terrorism to
planning for a full-fledged war against two highly capable adversaries.64 Early
reports suggest that up to 30 Indo-Tibetan Border Police jawans had been killed
in the early morning assault.65 Meanwhile, India’s satellite imagery reveals that
Pakistan has begun enhancing its border defenses and fueling an armored division
in Multan. Even more alarming is the news that the PLA’s Hotan-based
mechanized infantry division is speeding along the expanded Karakorum highway
into northwestern Pakistan. It is followed by Chinese S-300 air-defense batteries,
which are being strategically positioned around Pakistani airfields and
military installations. On the eastern front, the first troops from the PLA Air
Force’s 15th Airborne Corps have already landed via Y-20 heavy airlifters at the
Lhasa Gonggar Airport, and Indian military planners project that an additional
four divisions of ground forces could surge into the theater via high-speed rail
within the next few days.66
Confronted with such a grim and rapidly evolving security situation, India orders
its 17 Mountain Strike Corps, which recently moved its headquarters from
Ranchi to Panagarh, to prepare its troops for immediate hostilities. Pointing to
the large influx of PLA forces expected to soon arrive in theater, India’s Air Force
chief urges India’s civilian authorities to conduct targeted standoff strikes as soon
as possible on select Chinese transportation nodes within the TAR. India’s leadership,
however, hesitates to sanction early cross-border air or missile strikes for
fear of irredeemably expanding the geographic scope of the conflict. Attention
focuses, first and foremost, on how to prevent further enemy advances within
Indian territory. In past wars, India had managed to swivel a portion of its
forces from one theater to reinforce the other. In 1971, for example, the Soviets
had pledged to initiate diversionary attacks against China if Mao decided to
intervene directly in support of West Pakistan. This, along with the time of
year and weather conditions (India initiated its large-scale military operations
in East Pakistan when certain key mountain passes were still snowbound) had
led New Delhi to — correctly — assess that the PLA was unlikely to come to West Pakistan’s aid.67 The situation presently faced by India’s decision-makers,
however, is wholly unprecedented. Troops cannot be swung from one sector to
buttress forces in another — the Indian military is facing what appears to be
a unified, one-front threat spanning hundreds of miles. Moreover, it cannot
rely on an external security guarantor in the vein of the Soviet Union in 1971.
Although it has grown closer in recent years to the United States, the relationship
remains far short of a formal alliance. The U.S. ambassador has made clear
that while Washington would do its utmost to help defuse the crisis by engaging
vigorously with all parties involved, its assistance to India — for the time being
at least — would be limited to intelligence sharing.
Several factors explain the Trump administration’s reluctance to come out in
stronger support for New Delhi. Unlike in 1962 when President Kennedy had
not hesitated to provide military aid to a country he viewed as a democratic
counterweight to Chinese communism, it is not immediately apparent that
Beijing is the aggressor.68 For many in Washington, the situation appears a tad
murky. After all, this particular crisis has been triggered by India’s attack (albeit
inadvertent) on a Chinese paramilitary installation. Although a bipartisan
grouping of U.S. Senators led by John McCain issue a statement urging that
the United States stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our great democratic partner
in Asia and provide immediate logistical support, the White House remains
reluctant to more overtly side with India. Having adopted a somewhat transactional
and value-neutral approach to the conduct of statecraft, the Trump
administration is less inclined to view the U.S.-India partnership as something
that should be valued and nurtured for its own sake.69 Progress had certainly
been made on key issues — ranging from counterterrorism to naval cooperation
— but there is a sense that the bilateral relationship has lost some of its former
momentum. Meanwhile, rumors persist that the 45th president is frustrated by
India’s reluctance to rapidly commit to several multibillion-dollar arms deals
and by New Delhi’s decision to purchase additional French (rather than U.S.)
fighter jets. Certain senior foreign policy advisors in the White House also hold
out the hope that Beijing could be persuaded to more actively cooperate with
Washington on thorny regional issues such as North Korea. They are reluctant
to durably jeopardize the Sino-U.S. relationship in favor of some hypothetical
grand strategic alignment they never placed much stock in to begin with.70
Meanwhile, in New Delhi, stress levels are rising. As India’s service chiefs —
looking increasingly nervous and haggard — struggle to formulate a list of
viable military options, the phone rings. India’s ambassador in Beijing reports
that he just had a conversation with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi. In
the course of the conversation, Councilor Yang relayed the PRC’s terms for an
immediate ceasefire. First, India must issue another apology for the deaths of
the PAP soldiers. Second, its leaders must pledge to restate India’s support of
the one-China policy at each bilateral meeting. Third, India should never again
allow leading Tibetan splittists like the Dalai Lama to visit contested territory
such as Southern Tibet. Last but not least, India should cancel its projected export
of BrahMos cruise missiles to Vietnam.71 Provided New Delhi accedes to all
these conditions, Beijing is willing to withdraw all its forces from the occupied
ridges in Arunachal Pradesh. In addition to this, Beijing pledges to increase
private pressure on Pakistan and to exhort it to crack down on the various
groups within Pakistan that continue to perturb harmonious regional ties and
socioeconomic stability. Following brief deliberations amongst the members of
the Indian Cabinet Committee on Security, India’s ambassador is instructed to
inform Yang Jiechi that New Delhi accepts China’s demands on the sole condition
that its details are never made public.
Aftermath of the Crisis
Although a major conflict involving three nuclear-armed powers has been averted,
India views its leadership’s acceptance of China’s ceasefire terms as a humiliating
display of weakness. Indeed, despite the Indian government’s best efforts to conceal
the agreement from the broader Indian public, its details are revealed barely
six months later in a sensationalistic and best-selling memoir. Penned by the recently
retired Indian Air Force chief and entitled Kowtow — The Day Our Great
Nation Bowed to China, the book savages India’s civilian leadership for its alleged
cravenness in the face of Chinese aggression. This lingering sense of humiliation,
along with the feeling of powerlessness experienced by the beleaguered democracy
during the two-day crisis, have a significant effect on New Delhi’s security
policy. In response to the accusations levied by the air force chief, India’s national
security advisor reveals that the consensus view within the Cabinet Committee
on Security had been that waging a protracted two-front war was an untenable
proposition in light of India’s circumstances. Army generals point to critical ammunition
shortages and to the parlous state of Indian air defenses. It is rumored
that the most recent annual report on Indian military readiness estimates that the
Indian Army only has enough ammunition for a week of high-intensity conflict.72 { Subsitute with DOKLAM- and now take into account the urgency & anxiety of Mr Modi on being forced by circumstances not attending the BRIC conference at BEIJING -- Vasundhra }
Meanwhile, Indian Air Force officers take issue with their former chief’s bluster,
arguing that due to chronic delays preceding the signing of a new medium multirole
combat aircraft deal, India’s remaining active fighter squadrons are simply not
up to the task of prosecuting a two-front air campaign.73
In the months following the crisis, leading Indian foreign policy pundits question
certain traditional tenets of India’s post–Cold War foreign policy, arguing
in the columns of the Indian Express that the pursuit of strategic autonomy
should not be equated with a dangerous form of strategic solitude. Although
India continues to reject formalized alliance structures, it begins to draw much
closer to Japan, Australia, France, and the United States and to entertain the
notion of informal security guarantees. Meanwhile, certain aspects of India’s
nuclear doctrine are questioned.74 In 2022, an updated summary of India’s nuclear
doctrine is issued to the public. The document makes a few amendments to
the 2003 press release, the most noticeable of which regards India’s no-first-use
policy, which is now qualified in the following terms:
India’s Nuclear Doctrine is characterized by a posture of “no first use.”
Nuclear weapons will be used in retaliation against a nuclear attack on
Indian territory or on Indian forces elsewhere… However, in the event
of a major attack against India, or Indian forces elsewhere, by biological
or chemical weapons, or in the event of a major attack deep within Indian sovereign territory, India will retain the option of retaliating
with nuclear weapons.
The addition of a major attack deep within Indian sovereign territory is immediately
seized upon by both Indian and foreign analysts and portrayed as a major
dilution of India’s no-first-use pledge. When pressed on the matter a few years
later at an international nuclear policy conference in Washington, D.C., a retired
Indian Strategic Forces commander grudgingly concedes that while India
remained committed to no first use, such a change had been deemed necessary
due to the transforming nature of the two-front threat.75
__________________________________________________________________
54. See “China Positive on India Military Hotline Proposal,” Reuters, April 18, 2016.
55. China Gezhouba Group Co. Ltd is already involved in a number of CPEC-related infrastructure projects. See “Pakistan Taps
Chinese Firm for Dam Construction on Indus,” Business Standard, March 9, 2017.
56. On the role of nationalism and popular protests in Chinese foreign policy, see Jessica Chen Weiss, Powerful Patriots: Nationalist
Protest in China’s Foreign Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).
57. On the pervasive nature of corruption in contemporary China, see Minxin Pei, China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime
Decay (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).
58. China has often proven reluctant to initiate high-level communication in the early stages of a crisis, particularly when it pertains
to perceived territorial issues. See Michael Swaine and Zhang Tuosheng, Managing Sino-American Crises: Case Studies and Analyses
(Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2006)
59. The X Corps headquarters in Rawalpindi commands units along the Line of Control (LoC) and in Siachen. An elite rapid reaction
formation, the 111 Brigade, is placed under its direct command and tasked with countering internal threats or reinforcing frontline
units.
60. Since 2012, the Pakistani Army has mandated that 25 percent of its reserves mobilize along the LoC in the event of a large-scale
terror attack on Indian soil. See Pranab Dhal Samanta, “New Pak Doctrine: Deploy at Border If Terror Attack in India,” The Indian
Express, January 8, 2012.
61. According to some press reports, China has “indicated a preference for a change of course by Pakistan” in its handling of
anti-India jihadi groups. See Tom Hussain, “Has Chinese Pressure Forced Pakistan U-turn on Anti-India Terror Groups?” South China
Morning Post, October 16, 2016.
62. The 52nd and 53rd Mountain Infantry Divisions are based in Nyingchi in close proximity to Arunachal Pradesh. For a good
overview of Chinese forces currently placed under the Western Theater Command, see Kevin McCauley, “Snapshot: China’s Western
Theater Command,” Chinafile 17, no. 1 (2017).
63. Although India deploys a large number of troops along the “forward edge” of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), they are dispersed
across a vast area, often in small “penny packet” units that cannot easily be reinforced in a timely manner due to the continued
paucity of all-weather infrastructure. For “penny packets” and Indian defense officials’ concerns over this “LoC approach” to “LAC
defense,” see Sushant Singh, “China Border Roads Hobbling, 12 Years Later, 21 of 73 Ready,” The Indian Express, June 11, 2017.
64. On the tendency by some analysts to underestimate Pakistan’s conventional capabilities, see Walter Ladwig, “Indian Military
Modernization and Conventional Deterrence in South Asia,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 5 (2015): 729-72.
65. The Indo-Tibetan Border Police, which has a total sanctioned strength of 89,340, currently mans 169 border outpost all along the
LAC. Ministry Of Home Affairs Annual Report (New Delhi: Government of India, 2016), 175.
66. The Y-20, China’s indigenous heavy airlifter, entered service in 2016. See Charles Clover, “China’s Chubby Girl Transport Aircraft
Enters PLA Service,” Financial Times, July 6, 2016. On the potential role of the PLA Air Force’s 15th Airborne Corps in a Sino-Indian
conflict, see Iskander Rehman, “A Himalayan Challenge: India’s Conventional Deterrent and the Role of Special Operations Forces
along the Sino-Indian Border,” Naval War College Review 70, no. 1 (2017): 111.
67 See Anwar Hussain Syed, China and Pakistan: Diplomacy of an Entente Cordiale (London: Oxford University Press, 1974),
152; and Richard Sisson and Leo Rose, War and Secession: India, Pakistan and the Creation of Bangladesh (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1990), 233-34.
68. On the Kennedy administration’s actions during and immediately after the 1962 India-China War, see Bruce Riedel, JFK’s
Forgotten Crisis: Tibet, the CIA, and the Sino-Indian War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2015).
69. On the 45th U.S. President’s transactional approach to statecraft, see Thomas Wright, “Trump’s 19th Century Foreign Policy,”
Politico Magazine, January 20, 2016. On the recent de-emphasis of human rights and value promotion in U.S. foreign policy, see Ted
Piccone, “Tillerson Says Goodbye to Human Rights Diplomacy,” Brookings Institution, Order from Chaos, May 5, 2017, https://www.
brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/05/05/tillerson-says-goodbye-to-human-rights-diplomacy
.
70. On the uncertainties surrounding the U.S.-India relationship in the Trump era, see Dhruva Jaishankar, “Making Sense of
Uncertain India-U.S. Relations,” in “The Advent of the New Administration in the USA: Global and Bilateral Ramifications,” Indian
Foreign Affairs Journal 12, no. 1(2017): 1-41; and Kanti Bajpai, “Redraw the Triangle,” The Indian Express, June 30, 2017.
71. Both countries reportedly recently held talks on the possibility of New Delhi supplying Akash surface-to-air and Brahmos
supersonic cruise missiles to Hanoi. See “India, Vietnam Hold Talks on Sale of Akash, Brahmos Missiles,” The Economic Times,
February 3, 2017.
72. On India’s severe ammunition shortages see Surya Gangadharan, “Indian Army Fraught with Shortage of Arms, Ailing Fighter
Planes,” The Quint, September 23, 2016; and Vivek Raghuvanshi, “India Looks to Fast-Track Ammo Purchases Worth $1 Billion,”
Defense News, November 10, 2016.
73. On the current challenges facing the Indian Air Force, see Ashley J. Tellis, Troubles, They Come in Battalions: The Manifold Travails
of the Indian Air Force (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2016); and Rahul Bedi, “IAF’s Depleting
Assets Preclude Two-Front War Option,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, March 17, 2016.
74. For a detailed analysis of India’s current nuclear doctrine, see Shashank Joshi, “An Evolving Indian Nuclear Doctrine?” in
Deterrence Instability and Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, ed. Michael Krepon, Joshua T. White, Julia Thompson, and Shane Mason
(Washington, D.C.: Stimson Center, 2015), 69-95.
75. As S. Paul Kapur has provocatively noted, “India’s NFU policy is well suited to a conventionally strong party that can deter, and
if necessary defeat, its adversary without resort to nuclear weapons. It may, however, be less well suited to a conventionally weaker
party that might need nuclear weapons to blunt a stronger opponent’s conventional attack.” S. Paul Kapur, “Possible Indian Nuclear
Options in 2030,” in Defense Primer 2017, ed. Pushan Das and Sushant Singh (New Delhi: Observer Research Foundation, 2017)
_____________________________________
Scenario Two: Nuclear First Use at Sea
The Trigger Event 76
The online video is slickly edited and excruciatingly long. Bloodied, seemingly
dazed, and with their hands bound behind their backs, eight Indian Para-SF
commandos are forced to their knees. An equal number of masked and black garbed
executioners line up behind them and read out a long diatribe in Urdu
accusing the infidels of having desecrated the sacred soil of the land of the pure.
Brandishing long knives, they then proceed to decapitate their captives. The
ghoulish production — which clearly draws inspiration from the “torture porn”
produced by the Islamic State — hits the Indian public like a sledgehammer.
Despite New Delhi’s best efforts to scrub it from India’s most trafficked social
media websites, the gory footage continues to resurface. Meanwhile, many
Indian news channels, refusing to abide by government instructions or the pleas
of the victims’ families, continue to show unedited segments of the execution,
arguing that such troubling images need to be shown in the interest of truth.
This cross-border incident occurs amid an already volatile climate. Over the
past three years, relations with Pakistan have reached their lowest ebb in almost
two decades. Although this downward plunge could be attributed to a variety
of factors, its principal driver has been the dismal state of affairs in Jammu and
Kashmir. Indeed, after months of mass demonstrations and unrest, things begin
to spiral out of control, with some commentators warning that the situation is
sliding back into late 1980s and early 1990s levels of violence.77 With a growing
number of young Kashmiris trading stones for AK-47s, New Delhi has repeatedly
lambasted Pakistan, accusing it of fomenting chaos, infiltrating militants,
and providing arms to the young insurgents. Pakistan, on the other hand, has
systematically rejected all responsibility, arguing that New Delhi brought the
situation on itself through its heavy-handed treatment of the local population
and repeated human rights violations. This war of words is accompanied by
ever-more-frequent artillery exchanges across the LoC. After one particularly
intense shelling kills 10 Indian Army soldiers, a platoon of men from the 9th
Para-SF battalion is sent across the border and charged with destroying the
Pakistani artillery unit that martyred their fellow servicemen. Their operation
proves a resounding success. Photos of Indian special forces standing over
the smoking debris of three Pakistani howitzers are displayed the following
day by India’s director-general of military operations, who proudly states that
these images provide indubitable proof that India has, once again, carried out a successful strike against the enemy: a Mandhol 2.0.
78 Although both countries
had long used their SOF to engage in cross-border raids, the Indian government
has grown particularly fond of publicizing such operations — provided they are
successful — following the post-Uri “surgical raid” of 2016.79 Despite some analysts’
warnings over of the perils of leveraging sensitive operations for political
gain, India’s civilian leadership has come to view such public communication
campaigns as an effective and low-cost means of satisfying their electorate’s
rawest retributive impulses.80
The staging of the eight Para-SF commandos’
public execution, barely two weeks after Mandhol 2.0, provides a stark and
humiliating reminder of the perils of excessively relying on SOF for punitive
thrusts across the LoC. Moreover, suspicions have already begun to grow over
the identity of the soldiers’ killers after an intense examination of the footage
reveals a small patch of colored cloth peering out from under one of the executioner’s
black robes. The pattern of the fabric — in mottled green and light
brown — appears almost identical to that of a Pakistan Special Services Group
uniform. Panels of discussants and alleged “imagery analysis experts” materialize
on Indian news shows, with many shouting that the Pakistani Army should
be directly punished for what amounted to a serious war crime. A spokesperson
for the Pakistani Army dismisses these accusations, claiming that second-hand
army uniforms can be purchased in almost every bazaar from Gilgit to the Kyber
Pass and that Indian soldiers should not have been violating Pakistani territory in
the first place. Some Pakistani journalists even go as far as to claim that the entire
video production is an elaborate false-flag operation by India’s intelligence
agencies, which supposedly staged the executions in order to justify its cycle of
aggression against Pakistan and the people of Kashmir.81
For the Indian government, it is clear that something needed to be done.
Reluctant to send in any more SOF — for fear of another public relations debacle
— the Cabinet Committee on Security approves a series of standoff airstrikes
on “terror launchpads” in POK. An additional option of strikes against
targets located deeper within the Pakistani heartland is presented to the Indian
leadership and briefly considered before being rejected.82 As night falls over
Srinagar, three Su-30MKI aircraft take off from Halwara airfield in the Punjab.83
Fitted with the air-launched variant of the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile,
they are instructed to conduct standoff strikes on two positions in Pakistan’s
Bagh district from the edges of Indian airspace. Cruising at high altitude above
the range of many of Pakistan’s shorter-range air defense missile systems, the
three aircraft unleash a volley of missiles at their targets before turning to head
back south. Suddenly, one of the Su-30MKI experiences a mid-air engine failure,
obliging it to begin a precipitous descent in an attempt to land at Srinagar
airport on its one remaining engine.84 As it descends to an altitude of 18,000
feet, it is hit by a surface-to-air missile (SAM), and its two pilots eject from the
aircraft. Drifting with the wind currents, they are blown a few hundred meters
into POK, where they are promptly shot by Pakistani Rangers. The SAM fires
from a SPADA 2000 battery located one kilometer within Pakistani territory.85
Even though an aircraft and two ground targets are destroyed and accompanied
by the loss of several additional human lives, neither country has yet violated
its neighbor’s airspace. Although both countries begin mass mobilizing their
armored forces along portions of the LoC, neither wishes to trigger actions that
could lead to a full-scale ground conflict. Shortly after India begins moving
its strike corps from the Indian interior toward its western border, Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Public Relations department issues a statement warning India
that any armored columns crossing the border will be immediately incinerated
and that Pakistan will not hesitate to use all the means at its disposal — both
conventional and strategic — to prevent India from fulfilling any hegemonic
designs on our country.
86 The heightened, nuclear-tinged rhetoric alarms the international
community, and both Washington and Beijing dispatch high-ranking
envoys to the region. In their conversations with their Chinese and U.S.
counterparts, Pakistan’s military leaders indicate a willingness to explore the
terms of a ceasefire.
For Indian security managers, however, it is still too early to call it quits. The
nation is still up in arms over the execution of the eight special operatives. And
with the loss of an aircraft and two pilots, the airstrikes can hardly be framed
as a success.87 While the Indian Army Chief has thundered that it is time to call
Pakistan’s bluff and cross the LoC, there remains another, seemingly more limited,
punitive option. Both during the 1999 Kargil War and during Operation
Parakram in 2001-2, the Indian Navy had engaged in coercive maneuvering in the Arabian Sea, surging elements from its Eastern and Western fleets in a
show of force outside Pakistan’s portuary hub of Karachi. The Indian Navy had
subsequently argued that its “silent role” during the Kargil War demonstrated
that it could translate its conventional superiority into coercive power and had
provided it with the following precious insights:
Firstly, there will be space and scope to conduct conventional maritime
operations below the nuclear threshold. Secondly, a window of opportunity
would exist to influence the land battle.88
For Pakistani planners, on the other hand, India’s blunt naval signaling is a grim
reminder of their resource-starved nation’s vulnerability to blockade and strategies
of commodity denial.89 Pakistan’s growing energy shortages in particular
have led to mass protests and widespread concern within the nation’s leadership.90
An unseasonably warm spring has already triggered riots in both Karachi
and Islamabad. Only one month prior, angry mobs surrounded the Ministry of
Petroleum and Natural Resources, decrying incessant power cuts in the middle
of a major heat wave. On the Indian side, there is an under appreciation of the
gravity with which Pakistan views these issues. In 2013, a crisis simulation exercise
involving both Indian and Pakistani participants was held in Colombo. Following
a mass terrorist attack in India, subsequently traced back to Pakistan, the Indian
players decided to implement a maritime exclusion zone (MEZ) off Pakistan’s
Makran coast. They considered this action to be “limited” and “restrained and
justified.” The Pakistanis, on the other hand, perceived the enforcement of the
MEZ as being tantamount to an “act of war.”91 In order, perhaps, to address this
lingering perceptual mismatch, Pakistan made a point of reemphasizing the redline
first drawn by Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai — then director of Pakistan’s Strategic
Plans Division — when he had declared in 2002 that “economic strangulation of
Pakistan” would constitute one of the conditions under which the nation would
consider nuclear use.92 In 2018, following the designation of two Agosta-90B
submarines as strategic assets, a Pakistan Inter-Services Public Relations press
release thus described the diesel-electric submarines — both equipped with nuclear-tipped
cruise missiles — as being the maritime guarantors of Pakistan’s
full-spectrum deterrence policy and as the protectors of its most vital economic interests.93 For many Indian observers, however, Pakistan’s first use threats were
only deemed credible in the event of a large-scale land war. A former Indian naval
chief writing in The Times of India scoffs over the possibility that Islamabad would
be willing to break the nuclear taboo simply in order to break a blockade.
________________________________________
76. For more analysis on triggers and patterns of crisis onset, see Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland, “The Anatomy of a Crisis:
Explaining Crisis Onset in India-Pakistan Relations” in this volume.
77. At the time of writing, even retired Indian Army generals recognize that the situation in Kashmir is cause for grave concern. See,
for example, former Northern Army Commander Lt. Gen. Panag’s commentary in H.S. Panag “Criticism is Needed in Order to Reform
the Army,” The Quint, April 18, 2017; and Bhanu Mehta, “Sinking Valley,” The Indian Express, April 15, 2017. For an early warning of
the risks of major unrest, see Sameer Lalwani, “Valley of the Brawls: Tensions Rise in Kashmir,” Foreign Affairs, February 11, 2016.
78. Operation Mandhol was a successful Indian commando raid on a Pakistani artillery unit during the 1971 war. See Ajay Sural,
“Operation Mandhol Forced Pakistan to Change War Plan,” The Times of India, December 16, 2013. On the 2016 “surgical” strike, see
Sushant Singh, “Inside the Surgical Strike: Choppers on Standby, 70-80 Soldiers,” The Indian Express, October 1, 2016.
79. On the long and often brutal history of special operations forces cross-border raids, see Shashank Joshi, “Everything That We
Know about India’s Cross-LOC Strikes before Uri,” Scroll.in, October 5, 2016. For a firsthand account of one such raid, see H.S. Panag
“The Lost Operation Against Pakistan in Chorbat LA,” Newslaundry, September 14, 2016.
80. For one such warning, see Abhijit Singh, “Why ‘Surgical Strikes’ Are a Slippery Slope for India,” The Diplomat, September
30, 2016. For an example of the enthusiasm expressed in some quarters for surgical strikes, see Arka Biswas, Surgical Strikes and
Deterrence Stability in South Asia (New Delhi: Observer Research Foundation, 2017).
81. South Asia has long been a fertile ground for all sorts of conspiracy theories. On their prevalence in the Pakistani media, see
Huma Yusuf, “Conspiracy Fever: The U.S., Pakistan and Its Media,” Survival 53, no. 4 (2011): 95-118.
82. On the differences between how Indian Air Force strikes against targets in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and in the heartland
might be perceived, see Perkovich and Dalton, Not War, Not Peace, 104-34.
83. The Su-30MKI remains the Indian Air Force’s prime “deep strike” asset. A portion of India’s Su-30MKI are slated to be fitted with
air-launched variants of the BrahMos missile for standoff strike missions. See Rahul Udoshi, “Indian Su-30MKI Makes Maiden Flight
with BrahMos Missile,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, June 27, 2016.
84. See “Sukhoi Fighter Jets Have Faced Mid Air Engine Trouble, Says Parrikar in Lok Sabha,” The Indian Express, May 6, 2016.
85. The SPADA 2000, developed by Italy’s Alenia Marconi Systems, has a range of approximately 24,000 meters. The Pakistani Air
Force selected the MBDA Spada 2000 for its medium air-defense requirements in 2007. See “SPADA,” Jane’s Land Warfare Platforms:
Artillery and Air Defense, March 1, 2017.
86. For recent, similarly worded, warnings from the Pakistanis, see Kiran Stacey and Farhan Bokhari, “Pakistan Vows Nuclear
Retaliation if India Attacks,” Financial Times, January 19, 2017.
87. Research in the field of psychology has demonstrated the tendency of decision-makers to escalate commitment to previously
decided courses of action even when this may prove unwise and/or irrational. This is commonly referred to as the “theory of sunk
costs” in psychology or “escalation commitment” in management theory. See Hal R. Arkes and Catherine Blumer, “The Psychology
of Sunk Cost,” in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 35 (1985): 124-40; and Theresa F. Kelly and Katherine
L. Milkman, “Escalation of Commitment,” in Encyclopedia of Management Theory, ed. Eric H. Kessler (Thousand Oaks: Sage
Publications, 2013), 257-59.
88. See Freedom to Use the Seas: India’s Maritime Military Strategy (New Delhi: Integrated Headquarters, Indian Navy, 2007), 23.
89. See, for example, Moeed Yusuf, “Pakistan’s View of Security in the Indian Ocean,” in Deep Currents and Rising Tides: The Indian
Ocean and International Security, ed. John Garafano and Andrea J. Dew (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2013), 142.
90. See, for example, Aamir Yasin, “PPP to Launch Countrywide Protest Against Energy Crisis,” Dawn, April 19, 2017; and Michael
Kugelman, Pakistan’s Interminable Energy Crisis: Is There Any Way Out? (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, 2015).
91. See the summary of the game in Feroz H. Khan and Ryan W. French, South Asian Stability Workshop: A Crisis Simulation Exercise
(Monterey: Naval Postgraduate School, 2013).
92. The conditions under which Pakistan would envisage first use were presented by Khidwai in the following terms: “Nuclear
weapons are aimed solely at India. In case that deterrence fails, they will be used if a) India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part
of its territory, b) India destroys a large part of either its land or air forces, c) India proceeds to the economic strangling of Pakistan, or
d) India pushes Pakistan into political destabilization or creates a large-scale internal subversion in Pakistan.” Quoted in Paolo CottaRamusino
and Maurizio Martellini, Nuclear Safety, Nuclear Stability, and Nuclear Strategy in Pakistan: A Concise Report of a Visit by
Landau Network Centro Volto (Como: Landau Network Centro Volto, 2002).
93. A number of Pakistani strategists have directly established a linkage in-between Pakistan’s embrace of nuclearized naval
platforms and their larger neighbor’s exercises in naval coercion. For one recent example, see Feroz H. Khan, “The India-Pakistan
Nuclear Rivalry at Sea,” University of Nottingham, Institute of Asia & Pacific Studies (IAPS), IAPS Dialogue, June 16, 2017, https://
iapsdialogue.org/2017/06/16/india-pakistan-nuclear-rivalry-at-sea.
_________________________________
Nuclear First Use at Sea
There are a number of drivers behind Pakistan’s establishment of a sea-based
deterrent centered around the “Israeli model” of air-independent propulsion diesel-electric
submarines (SSKs) equipped with nuclearized Babur cruise missiles.94
First, it provides a means of offsetting India’s growing conventional superiority
at sea. Indeed, according to some metrics, India’s Navy now possesses a five to
one quantitative advantage over its smaller South Asian neighbor.95 With its
historic focus on sea denial and anti-access, the Pakistan Navy still possesses
the ability to blunt its Indian adversary’s capacity to project naval power in
certain limited quadrants of the Arabian Sea.96 This ability, however, is rapidly
diminishing over time. The threats posed by Pakistan’s maritime nuclear threat
in being along with the strategic ambiguity induced by the systematic commingling
of nuclear weaponry with conventional naval platforms could help remedy
this situation by eroding the Indian Navy’s coercive edge.97 Forced to operate
under a constant nuclear shadow, India’s mariners might thus find themselves
less inclined toward aggressive action in the event of a crisis.
Second, it buttresses Pakistan’s doctrine of “full-spectrum deterrence” by
providing additional “second- or third- strike” platforms at sea.98 Finally,
Pakistan’s concerns have grown over certain aspects of India’s nuclear doctrine
(with some former Indian officials seeming to have intimated that India
might be moving toward a launch-on-warning posture) and over purported Indian advances in ballistic missile defense.99 New Delhi’s growing closeness
with Washington has also generated anxiety in Rawalpindi’s Strategic Plans
Division, where some are convinced that the United States is providing India
with geospatial intelligence on the location of its nuclear assets. Sea-based
vectors of attack — in the form of low flying, submarine-launched cruise
missiles (SLCMs) — thus began to appear increasingly appealing to Pakistani
nuclear planners.100
By the time India steams the vanguard of its naval armada, composed of one aircraft
carrier, the INS Vikramaditya, six destroyers, two frigates, and one nuclear
attack submarine, into the waters surrounding Karachi, two Agosta 90B SSKs
and one newly acquired Chinese-designed Yuan class SSK are lying in wait.
All three undersea platforms have been recently fitted with Babur SLCMs by
Pakistan’s Naval Strategic Forces Command. Pakistani decision-makers grow
increasingly concerned that India is moving toward escalation dominance.
The Indian Army chief’s statements on the need to call Pakistan’s bluff cause
anxiety, as does China’s decision to begin evacuating its forces from Pakistan.
Despite Islamabad’s entreaties, China refuses to commit military forces to any
large-scale confrontation with India and limits its aid to supplies in weaponry
and ammunition. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s nuclear-veiled threats are not met with
any reduction in Indian troop presence along the border. To the contrary, India
continues to mass its heavily armored strike corps along the areas of the LoC
most conducive for mechanized assault.
A consensus emerges within Pakistan’s National Command Authority. India
needs to be sent a strong signal — one that will restore the preexisting deterrence
equation and eternally dissuade India from any attempt at dismembering
Pakistan. A nuclear demonstration shot at sea, argues the Pakistani army chief,
would be a form of localized escalation enabling a more generalized de-escalation
of the situation. He is staunchly supported by the head of the Pakistan Navy, who
is eager to see his traditionally overlooked service take on a greater role.101 Both
men argue that such a move will revive the credibility of Pakistan’s nuclear posture
while avoiding some of the terrible collateral and fratricidal effects of nuclear weapons use on Pakistan’s own soil.102 This strike, the army chief adds, could be
both devastating and tailored to prevent the mass loss of civilian life.103
At 10:30 a.m. the following day, the Pakistan Navy issues a final ultimatum to the
Indian armada, demanding that it lift its blockade within half an hour or face
the consequences. At 11:01 a.m., a multi-azimuth cruise missile saturation strike,
cued by Uqab II UAVs, is directed at the INS Vikramaditya and its two closest
Rajput destroyer escorts. The Vikramaditya’s Barak-I missile defense system is
rapidly overwhelmed by the flurry of missiles and within five minutes the flagship
suffers its first hit from a shore-based C-802 missile.104 Then, at 11:07 a.m.,
amid a dense cluster of Harpoon missiles launched from two Pakistani frigates,
the nuclear warhead of a Babur class SLCM detonates above the Vikramaditya’s
prow in a blinding flash of light.105
Aftermath
The effects of Pakistan’s nuclear strike are devastating. Although Indian defense
planners have long recognized that a continental struggle could escalate
beyond the nuclear threshold, they only had just begun to ponder the battlefield
ramifications of Pakistan’s naval nuclear program. Much of their planning for
maritime combat was still predicated on the notion that a future naval conflict
would remain conventional in its application. As a result, the Indian Navy
had insufficiently exercised in simulated chemical, radiological, biological, and
nuclear environments, and their capital ships — in many cases not fitted with
any radiation-hardened electronic circuitry — failed to engage in the levels of
“battlespacing” deemed suitable for operations against an opponent armed with
tactical nuclear weapons.106
In a fraction of an instant, the nucleus of the densely concentrated Indian
fleet formation is neutralized — with its ships either directly destroyed or rendered combat incapable through the irradiation of their electronics.107 Only
the Akula class attack submarine loitering outside of the Pakistani submarine
base of Ormara further along the Makran coast remains operational. The INS
Vikramaditya, the pride of the Indian Navy, is at the bottom of the ocean along
with its wing of Mig-29K fighters and its crew of over 1,000 men. India’s shellshocked
leaders begin to debate their nuclear options. After much deliberation
and handwringing, New Delhi realizes that it has no good options. India’s
nuclear doctrine calls for massive retaliation and for counter-value strikes on
enemy metropolises in the event of Pakistani first use. India’s leadership cannot
countenance responding to limited — albeit devastating — nuclear use against
purely military targets with the mass slaughter of Pakistani civilians. Moreover,
such an action immediately opens its own population to an equally apocalyptic
Pakistani counterstrike. The infirmities built into the nation’s nuclear doctrine
have already been scrutinized by Indian thinkers such as the late P.R. Chari,
who had argued a few years prior that,
The current nuclear doctrine dictates that nuclear retaliation against
a first strike would be “massive” and designed to inflict “unacceptable
damage upon the attacker.” This is an unrealistic certitude because,
ethically, punishing large numbers of noncombatants contravenes the
laws of war. Besides, threatening massive retaliation against any level of nuclear attack, which would inevitably trigger assured nuclear annihilation
in a binary adversarial situation, is hardly a credible option. No
doubt, it raises a ticklish question: would India then favor a counterforce
or counter-city strategy? India’s stated adherence to an assured and massive second strike suggests the latter.108
If India had built greater flexibility into its nuclear posture and force structure,
it could have chosen to engage in a somewhat proportionate and equally “limited”
strike against a set of Pakistani military targets in a geographically circumscribed
area (maybe in a mountainous region so as to limit the blast effects
and radioactive fallout or at sea). Its arsenal, however — whether in terms of
delivery platforms or low-yield nuclear ordnance — is not configured for such
a response. India is in effect stuck in a strategic impasse, teetering precariously
on the highest rung of the escalation ladder.109
Meanwhile, the international community, appalled by the first use of nuclear
weaponry since World War II, exhorts India to back down before the subcontinent is vitrified and turned into a radioactive wasteland. Washington,
Moscow, and even Beijing all privately promise New Delhi that Pakistan will be
“hit with crippling sanctions” for having broken the nuclear taboo. Islamabad,
they insist, will be the eternal pariah and India the responsible power. Short of
options and fearful of the terrible consequences of what few choices remained,
New Delhi reluctantly agrees to enter a negotiated ceasefire.
____________________________________
94. Pakistan recently conducted a successful test of the Babur-3 SLCM. For a succinct overview of some of its implications, see Ankit
Panda and Vipin Narang, “Pakistan Tests New Sub-Launched Nuclear-Capable Cruise Missile. What Now?” The Diplomat, January 10, 2017.
95. The 5:1 comparison is made in “Pakistan — Navy,” Jane’s World Navies, March 24, 2017.
96. On the Pakistan Navy’s sea denial and anti-access capabilities, see Iskander Rehman, “Tomorrow or Yesterday’s Fleet? The Indian
Navy’s Emerging Operational Challenges,” in India’s Naval Strategy and Asian Security, ed. Anit Mukherjee and C. Raja Mohan (New
York: Routledge, 2016), 40-45.
97. For more on the commingling challenges posed by Pakistan’s quest for a sea-based deterrent, see Iskander Rehman, Murky
Waters: Naval Nuclear Dynamics in the Indian Ocean (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2015); and
Rory Medcalf and Brendan Thomas-Noone, Nuclear-Armed Submarines in Indo-Pacific Asia: Stabilizer or Menace? (Sydney: Lowy
Institute for International Policy, 2015), 8-10.
98. Diesel-electric submarines could prove difficult for the Indian Navy to detect and prosecute, particularly if they loitered within
Pakistan’s cluttered littoral waters. For more on the difficulties innate to antisubmarine warfare in India’s underwater environment, see
Iskander Rehman, “The Subsurface Dimension of Sino-Indian Maritime Rivalry,” in India and China at Sea: Strategic Competition in the
Maritime Domain, ed. David Brewster (forthcoming, 2017).
99. These concerns were first mooted in the wake of a heated controversy surrounding passages of a book written by a former
Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon. On said controversy, see the remarks made by the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology’s Vipin Narang at the 2017 Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference, video footage available at http://
carnegieendowment.org/2017/03/20/plenary-beyond-nuclear-threshold-causes-and-consequences-of-first-use-pub-64779; the debate
and prepared remarks on SAV, “#NukeFest2017 Hot Takes: Potential Indian Nuclear First Use?” South Asian Voices, March 20, 2017;
and Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland, “The Debate Over Indian Nuclear Strategy Is Heating Up,” War on the Rocks, April 5,
2017. For a different perspective on the issue, see Dhruva Jaishankar, “Decoding India’s Nuclear Status,” The Wire, April 3, 2017.
On recent purported advances in India’s tiered ballistic missile defense shields, see Rahul Bedi, “Indian Interceptors Complete Latest
Trials,” Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, March 7, 2017.
100. High-speed cruise missiles may succeed in penetrating missile defense systems designed to counter more conventional
ballistic missile threats. Low-flying cruise missiles pose a greater challenge for radar detection and can rapidly maneuver in order
to dodge interception. For a good overview, see Thomas G. Manken, The Cruise Missile Challenge (Washington, D.C., Center for
Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2005).
101. The Pakistan Navy has historically been the most neglected of Pakistan’s armed services. Although its financial allocation
has marginally increased over the past few years, it still only captured 10.8 percent of the overall defense budget in 2017. Author’s
calculations derived from the data compiled in Craig Caffrie, “Pakistan: Defense Budget,” Jane’s Defense Budgets, June 20, 2017.
102. For a discussion over whether the potential collateral effects of Pakistan’s reliance on tactical nuclear weapons renders their use
less likely in a conflict, see Christopher Clary, Gaurav Kampani, and Jaganath Sankaran, “Battling Over Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons,”
International Security 40, no. 4 (2016): 166-77.
103. Both Soviet and U.S. strategists frequently made this argument during the Cold War, assessing that limited nuclear war was
more likely to occur at sea. See, for example, Henry Kissinger, “Limited War: Conventional or Nuclear? A Reappraisal,” Daedalus 89,
no. 4 (1960): 800-17, and Desmond Ball, “Nuclear War at Sea,” International Security 10, no. 3 (1983): 3-31.
104. At the time of writing, the INS Vikramaditya has only been fitted with the Barak-1, a short-range, point defense system that most
Indian naval officers deem highly inadequate to protect such a high-value target. See Rahul Bedi, “Indian Navy Launches Barak-1
From Carrier,” Jane’s Missiles and Rockets, March 30, 2017.
105. Military operations analysts have referred to such saturation strikes as “haystack attacks,” whereby an adversary with relatively
few nuclear weapons but a robust missile inventory could threaten even well-defended targets with nuclear strikes. By mixing
nuclear-tipped weapons among a salvo of conventionally armed missiles of similar design, the adversary complicates the defender’s
ability to prioritize targets for interception. See Ryan Boone “Appendix A: Haystack Attack,” in Krepinevich and Cohn, eds., Rethinking
Armageddon. For a detailed and still relevant overview of the effects of tactical nuclear weapon use, including at sea, see Samuel
Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, The Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department
of Energy, 1977), available at http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a087568.pdf.
106. For a good overview of the complexities of naval combat in the nuclear age, see Gordon H. McCormick, Problems of Sea Control
in Theater Nuclear War (Arlington: System Planning Corporation, 1980), available at http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a090489.pdf.
For a discussion of these issues within a South Asian context, see Rehman, Murky Waters, 25-33.
107. For a summary of the various chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear survivability levels levied on U.S. surface
combatants, see Department of the Navy, “OPNAV Instruction 9070. 1A: Survivability Policy and Standards for Surface Ships
and Craft of the U.S. Navy,” 2012, https://doni.daps.dla.mil/Directives/09000%20General%20Ship%20Design%20and%20
Support/09-00%20General%20Ship%20Design%20Support/9070.1A.pdf.
108. See P.R. Chari, “India’s Nuclear Doctrine: Stirrings of Change,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 4, 2014,
http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/06/04/india-s-nuclear-doctrine-stirrings-of-change-pub-55789.
109. During the Cold War, strategists famously dubbed this quandary the “suicide or surrender” dilemma. For more on this issue, see
Stephen D. Biddle and Peter D. Feaver, eds., Battlefield Nuclear Weapons: Issues and Options (Boston: Harvard Center for Science and
International Affairs, 1985).
_________________________________
Conclusion
It is this author’s hope that both of these scenarios will provide policymakers —
whether in South Asia or beyond — with food for thought and hopefully not too
many nuclear nightmares. Due to a desire for concision and limitations of space,
they are both naturally somewhat circumscribed in their depictions of potential
escalation dynamics. Furthermore — and to paraphrase Shakespeare — man
cannot look into the seeds of time and determine which particular grain may
grow and which may not.110
This exercise should therefore be viewed first and foremost as a point of departure
for further reflection and as an attempt to grapple with two major evolutions in
South Asia’s security architecture. The first is China’s rapidly enhanced presence
and involvement in Pakistan via the implementation of CPEC. The second is the
advent of rudimentary sea-based nuclear forces. As seen here, these two trends will
have major ramifications for China’s management of its complex ties with Pakistan,
Pakistan’s relationship with certain nonstate actors, India’s own relationship with
China, and last but not least, regional nuclear doctrines and force postures.
Scenarios and wargames are used to develop insights rather than provide readymade
answers, and as a manner to escape the “intellectual tyranny of the present.”111
The future is a river with an almost endless flow of tributaries, and one
could naturally conceive of a number of “minority reports” in which one of the
state actors depicted in this essay chooses to behave differently. One could certainly
argue that if something approaching one of these scenarios were to materialize,
India’s political leadership may well prove to be a lot less conservative in its
decision-making and much more willing to incur escalatory risks. As specified in
the introduction, the vignettes presented here are intended to be diagnostic rather
than prescriptive and as forming a set of equally plausible yet different futures.
And indeed, the two futures presented in this essay were markedly different in
many ways. One scenario presented a Kashmir that was still afflicted by terrorism
but that remained stable enough to accommodate mass tourism, another
depicted a state that had fallen into an endless spiral of violence and unrest. At
the time of writing, both futures, sadly, seemed equally likely. The first scenario
depicted a Sino-Pakistani axis that had morphed into a military proto-alliance,
while its successor portrayed a Beijing somewhat less ensnared in the daily
dysfunction of the Indo-Pakistani relationship. Both narrative efforts, however,
point to a set of wider questions: will greater third-party security commitments
in the form of an enhanced Chinese military presence reduce Pakistan’s incentives
for relying on the threat of nuclear first use, intensify Sino-Indian rivalry,
or both? And what of the role of nonstate actors and proxies within this rapidly
morphing regional security environment? As one Asia hand recently noted in
an insightful study, the use of traditional militaries,
activates instrumental logics of either deterrence or battlefield efficiency between competitors. Intermediaries (in the form of proxies) by contrast,
do not activate such logics as readily, which…is one of the reasons their
presence can both “stack the deck” of interaction in favor of defender restraint
and can generate distinct risks of miscalculation and blowback.112
As Beijing becomes increasingly enmeshed — both economically and militarily
— within India’s near-abroad, will it still be willing to tolerate such risks of
miscalculation and/or blowback? Or will it add greater pressure on the Pakistani
security establishment and more vigorously urge it to abandon its support of various
malevolent nonstate actors? Will Pakistan’s pursuit of sea-based deterrence
lower its threshold for nuclear first use even further? Will it deter the Indian Navy
from pursuing coercive strategies in times of conflict and/or crisis? How will naval
friction play out in a newly nuclearized domain? How would another humiliating
defeat against China along the LAC affect India’s future conventional and nuclear
force posture and planning? In each of these cases, it is impossible to provide any
definitive answer. At best, one can aim to carefully think through some of the
more likely — and in some cases troubling — possibilities.
In the course of the essay, different forms of escalation were thus explored —
inadvertent, intentional, horizontal, and vertical. In one scenario, the nuclear-conventional
firebreak was preserved, in the other it crumbled. In this author’s
mind, none of these differences render either of these potential futures
somehow less likely or less worthy of examination
At the end of the day, though, Yogi Berra had it right. It’s tough to make predictions,
especially about the future.