Abstract
Since the early 1980s when Pakistan-sponsored cross-border terrorism became a constant factor undermining India’s security environment—starting with Khalistani terrorists in Punjab, graduating to a full blown Islamist insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and followed by outrageous terror attacks in rest of India—Indian policymakers have been unsuccessfully grappling with the issue of coming up with a suitable menu of responses that will not just deter Pakistan but also punish it for any hostile act against India. In all these decades, neither has India developed a defensive shield that would protect Indian citizens, nor has it managed to develop an offensive capability—overt and/or covert—that will pay back Pakistan in full measure for any act of terrorism against India. As a result, every time there is a terror attack anywhere in India, apart from twiddling thumbs, screaming blue murder and finally retaliating by threatening to retaliate (don’t do it again otherwise…), India has not really been able to do anything to counter the Pakistani policy of bleeding India by a thousand cuts. There have been a few occasions when India did make a show of taking the war to the enemy—Operation Parakaram, for instance—but never followed through on the threat. The result of India’s apparent impotence in the face of unremitting export of terrorism from Pakistan is that it has emboldened Pakistan and convinced it that it can keep bleeding India with impunity.
Clearly, this is not a justifiable, much less a sustainable, situation for any length of time. Already, public opinion in India is on a short fuse, something that is reflected in the outpouring of outrage after every terror strike, which in turn pressurises the government of the day to respond forcefully to the Pakistani dare. The absence of a kinetic response undermines the government of the day, more so because the TV studios have talking heads cavalierly laying out the various options that can be exercised to ‘teach the Pakistanis a lesson’. And then there is the Social Media which adds to the shrill demands for action that goes beyond the usual verbal missiles directed against Pakistan. But while talk comes cheap and easy for TV talking heads and Social Media soldiers, the real life is a little more, actually a lot more, complicated when you start thinking things through. How complicated is what Perkovich and Dalton’s book is all about.
In a cold, clinical manner, Perkovich and Dalton take all the various options that India can possibly exercise to force compellence on Pakistan, break these down into their component pieces and examine in great detail by gaming the viability, effectiveness, implications and possible repercussions of each of the options—Cold Start, air strikes, covert operations (including supporting separatists and conducting decapitation strikes against terror heads)—that are bandied about in the media. The conclusion they reach is essentially that there are no good options available. The recommendation they make—non-violent compellence—is also one that for better or for worse, and in one form or another, is precisely what India has been doing for all these years, albeit with very limited success. As far as the authors are concerned, the bottom line is that India will largely have to work on the same old wages—depending on influential external actors like the US to impose penalties and continue making ‘demonstrations of goodwill’ to influence Pakistani opinion—but just a little more effectively.
Disagreements with the prescriptions offered by the authors aside, this is a book that must be read carefully not just by every strategic and security policy wonk but also by politicians, policymakers and most of all by TV anchors. Rooted as it is in the domain of real policy choices that face actual policymakers, the book is not just an academic or theoretical assessment of the absence of good options available to India against Pakistan; rather, it is based on actual and practical dilemmas that confront political leaders and officials in exercising any of the kinetic options. The book, in fact, starts with a description of a meeting of the top national security officials in the Prime Minister’s House following the 26/11 attacks to discuss options for retaliation. One by one, every option was discarded—mass mobilisation was the first to be taken off the table keeping the Operation Parakaram experience in mind; air strikes were discussed, but intelligence agencies were not in a position to provide precise coordinates; limited ground operations were rejected because they entailed the risk of escalation; covert operations were considered, but the capability of carrying these out had not been developed by the R&AW; commando operations were possible but risky because any setback or casualty would be a political disaster. The end result was to do nothing kinetic and depend on diplomatic tools to isolate Pakistan. Six years later a similar confabulation by former officials pretty much reached the same conclusion, namely, India lacked the level of capacity and capability in terms of force differential or overwhelming conventional superiority to carry out offensive retaliatory action against Pakistan.
In subsequent chapters, the authors explain in detail why on balance none of the options that India could exercise are good. Given the challenges of controlling escalation dominance, especially in the backdrop of a nuclear environment, the options available and exercisable will entail significant risks and costs (both of which political leaders want to avoid). What is more, the utility of these options in terms of deterring Pakistan or forcing compellence on it is extremely iffy. In a very meticulous manner, the authors deconstruct the structure of decision-making in both India and Pakistan, the differences in the security orientation and priorities of the two countries (Pakistan being a national security state puts a premium on developing capabilities that makes its military doctrines more robust) and the strategic culture that has developed in both countries which comes into play in taking decisions of war and peace. According to the authors, ‘the various shortcomings… in the institutions and processes of devising national security strategy and acquiring means to implement it are well understood by the Indian security establishment’.
Fixing these problems is not rocket science. And yet, despite commission after commission being set up, precious little has been done at the practical level to set things right. Perhaps if the Pakistani export of terrorism was something new, the absence of an effective strategy to counter it would be understandable. But if after nearly four decades of unremitting imposition of terrorism, India has still not been able to come up with an effective and implementable counter strategy, then there is something seriously wrong with the way the entire national security strategy is being handled. In the words of a member of the Naresh Chandra Task Force on National Security, the problem is that ‘politicians take the lazy, easy way out…. They say we need a consensus. But there will never be a consensus’.
Based on not just extensive interviews with officials who have been involved in one capacity or another with issues of national security, but also on comprehensive study of India’s conventional military capabilities, effectiveness of its intelligence agencies, robustness of its decision-making processes, the conclusions arrived at by the authors are compelling. At the same time, these conclusions are not necessarily written in stone. The book certainly needs to be read to understand why, as things stand, India’s options are limited. But more importantly this book must be read to figure out how the conventional wisdom guiding policy and the hoary assumptions that impose restraint on India and as a result close the available options can be turned on their head to break the bind in which India finds itself. History, after all, is replete with examples where doing the unthinkable and upending the set assumptions (of both the home side and the enemy side), which hinder exercise of options, has actually changed the paradigm and yielded results that were otherwise considered unachievable.
The book reflects a mindset, not just in India but also in other parts of the world, that has allowed Pakistan to get away with murder. This mindset has accepted that rationality demands that India desist from any offensive action that could spiral out of control. In other words, India needs to roll with the terror blows that Pakistan administers. The reason for this is that Pakistan has managed to convince India and rest of the world that it is perfectly rational for it to play irrational. This means that Pakistan will not only continue to export terrorism but is also entitled to escalate any retaliation from the Indian side. Clearly, if this proposition has to be challenged and debunked, then India needs to turn the rationality argument on its head and call Pakistan’s bluff. Of course, doing this involves being prepared to accept all the costs and the risks of escalation that the authors so competently and comprehensively underscore in the book. But it is also important to understand that there are also costs and risks attached to not doing anything.
Rethinking rationality—after all playing the responsible role hasn’t really helped in ending Pakistani-sponsored terrorism—and changing the strategic posture from defensive to offensive is however only a necessary condition to thwart the undeclared war imposed by Pakistan. But in order to not only convince the enemy of the credibility of the threat but also build the sinews to make good on the threat, India will require developing the necessary capabilities and capacities for achieving the objective. This will not be possible without ending the criminal neglect of military modernisation, enhancing intelligence capabilities and increasing the conventional and non-conventional power differential in both quality and quantity to a point where Pakistan would shudder to even think of provoking India.
The good news is that some of this might already be starting to happen. The surgical strikes following the Uri terror attack and the steely resolve in the top national security circles to not back down if Pakistan escalates is just one indication of this. Obviously, one surgical strike isn’t a magic bullet. India will have to do many more such strikes and also figure out other such offensive measures in order to take the battle to the enemy. While taking such offensive measures, India must be prepared for setbacks—not every mission will be successful and there will be occasions when India will suffer heavy casualties—and not baulk over the possibility of media criticism and political point scoring. If India is not prepared to do this, then it should take solace in ‘Not War, Not Peace’ and reconcile itself to impotently lamenting about the lack of good options to stop the terror flow from Pakistan.