Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 27

Indian Politics & Policy
not a question of one explanation being
“right” and the others “wrong.” Monocausal
explanations rarely suffice when
it comes to complex national decisions
regarding the use of force. Rather, a
combination of three of the four factors
presented in the introduction—nuclear
deterrence, U.S. crisis management,
and the lack of good conventional military
options—more effectively explains
Indian forbearance in the face of Pakistani
provocations. Below, I assess their
relative importance to generate a rich
explanation. My analysis leads me to
conclude that the primary factor causing
India to demonstrate “uncommon
restraint after severe provocations” 182
has been nuclear deterrence. Two other
factors, U.S. crisis management and the
absence of good conventional military
options, were also influential across
the four conflict episodes, but less so.
The least compelling factor was the
ostensible doctrine of Indian strategic
restraint, which rests on shaky premises.
Both secondary factors are closely
tied—and subservient—to nuclear
weapons, which sparked energetic U.S.
crisis management efforts and severely
limited Indian conventional military
options. Moreover, nuclear deterrence
was the real cause of India’s “strategic
restraint.”
Each of the four cases under
examination began with aggression
against India emanating from Pakistan.
Two of the attacks—one by Pakistani
forces in 1999, the other by Pakistan-based
terrorists in 2016—involved
breaches of the LOC dividing the two
countries’ territory in Kashmir. The
other two assaults were carried out in
India’s largest cities—New Delhi in
2001 and Mumbai in 2008—by terrorist
groups with close ties to Pakistan’s
intelligence agency, the ISI. (And the
2001 onslaught was followed by another
mass-casualty attack against an
Indian military installation in Kashmir
in 2002.) Each of these strikes was severely
provocative, because of the large
number of fatalities, the audacity of the
target, or both. In every case, India’s
most senior national security officials
convened quickly in the CCS to discuss
a range of potential responses. 183
The mooted military options tended to
involve everything from very limited,
post-Uri-like ground incursions across
the LOC, to air strikes against terrorist
targets in Pakistani Kashmir or Punjab,
to a conventional ground invasion
across the international border. 184 In
each case, the Indian prime minister
chose a measured response tailored to
avoid escalation to major conventional
war, and possibly a nuclear exchange.
Nuclear deterrence was the deepest
root of Indian caution. Any analysis
of the role of nuclear deterrence on Indian
decision making must begin with a
simple truth: It is difficult, if not impossible,
to “prove” that nuclear deterrence
“worked” in any given case. In order to
do so, one would have to compile mutually
consistent, authoritative accounts
of key decision makers, to the effect
that they were primed to order military
operations but refrained from acting
because they feared nuclear retaliation
by the other side or an escalation
spiral that might lead to a nuclear exchange.
Indian leaders would naturally
be reluctant to admit either that they
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