Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 17

Indian Politics & Policy
fices, but few militants were prosecuted.
Moreover, the leaders of JeM and LeT
were released in March and promptly
vowed to reinvigorate the Kashmir insurgency.
On May 14, terrorists attacked
the Indian military base at Kaluchak in
Jammu, killing 34 people and reigniting
a full-blown crisis. Indian leaders
promptly resumed their consideration
of military strikes against terrorist
training camps in Pakistan. 85 As one
reporter vividly described the situation
in late May, “preparations for cataclysm
advance daily along the Indo-Pakistani
frontier. About 1 million soldiers have
crowded to the long border, equipped
with missiles, tanks, and fighter jets ...
War-fevered politicians in both capitals
organize appeals for national unity ...
And in the secret military warehouses
of both countries, engineers presumably
are turning screws on doomsday’s
reserve force—two crude but functional
nuclear arsenals.” On a visit to Jammu,
Vajpayee rallied Indian soldiers:
“the time has come for a decisive battle,
and we will have a sure victory in
this battle.” In turn, Musharraf strongly
implied that “if India insists on launching
all-out war to attack Pakistan’s support
for Kashmiri militants, Pakistan is
prepared to go nuclear.” 86 Once again,
the Indian media breathlessly reported
official deliberations over military
options ranging from limited strikes
across the LOC to full-scale war. India’s
plan during the summer phase of the
10-month crisis was to “concentrate its
three strike corps in the Rajasthan sector,
so as to draw Pakistan’s two strike
corps into desert terrain and inflict
heavy attrition losses on them.” 87 The Indian
strike corps “were concentrated in
their respective assembly boxes, ready
to execute deep penetrating maneuvers
to engage and destroy Pakistan’s two
strike corps and seize the Sindh and
Punjab provinces, thus threatening to
effectively slice Pakistan in two.” 88
Foremost in the minds of decision
makers on all sides in late May
was the nuclear shadow hovering over
the Subcontinent. As one Indian diplomat
said, “the idea that Pakistan will
cooperate in a conflict and comply with
India’s wishes to fight a limited war is
ridiculous. It will naturally be in their
interest to keep any conflagration as
unlimited as possible.” 89 On May 22,
the Pakistani Minister for Railways—
and former head of ISI—Lt. Gen. Javed
Ashraf Qazi, said: “If Pakistan is being
destroyed through conventional means,
we will destroy them by using the nuclear
option.” 90 As if to underline this
message, Pakistan test-fired three nuclear-capable
ballistic missiles, which
the Indians interpreted “as a warning
... to apply brakes on India’s most ambitious
plan ever.” 91 Musharraf claimed
that the tests “validated the reliability,
accuracy, and ... deterrence value of
Pakistan’s premier surface-to-surface
ballistic missile systems.” 92 On May 29,
Pakistan’s ambassador to the United
Nations defended his country’s refusal
to adopt a no-first-use nuclear posture
by asking rhetorically: “How can Pakistan,
a weaker power, be expected to
rule out all means of deterrence?” 93 In
Washington, Secretary of State Colin
Powell and Deputy Secretary of State
Richard Armitage “worried ... about the
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