Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 32

India’s Ways of (Non-) War: Explaining New Delhi’s
Forbearance in the Face of Pakistani Provocations
briefly on alert, and the PAF carried
out and loudly advertised exercises of
its fighter aircraft. Ultimately, though,
India refrained from launching military
strikes, again demonstrating its dilemma
in South Asia’s overt nuclear era:
meaningful military operations against
Pakistan run the risk of catastrophe,
while lesser ones have little chance of
bringing about desired changes in Pakistani
policies.
The September 2016 Uri attack
and India’s response again demonstrated
the effects of nuclear deterrence on
Indian decision making. Prime Minister
Modi had repeatedly criticized New
Delhi’s weakness in not standing up to
Pakistani provocations, often calling
out his predecessor, Manmohan Singh,
by name for not retaliating against Pakistan
after the 2008 Mumbai slaughter.
Modi’s senior national security aides
had pledged on many occasions that
Indians could expect him to respond to
Pakistani aggression with much greater
resolve than had his predecessors. Then
the gruesome Uri attack sparked the
onset of a familiar cycle—full-throated
calls for revenge in the Indian media, a
cross-border war of words including a
very precise nuclear threat by the Pakistani
defense minister, both armies
put on alert in Punjab and Kashmir, an
emphatic show of force during PAF “exercises,”
and India’s evacuation of border
villages in Punjab. After the usual
Indian discussion of military options,
Modi then picked one with little potential
for escalation to a conventional
war and, possibly, a nuclear exchange.
As a longtime Indian defense journalist
put it, Modi “chose the option that was
least likely to escalate to an all-out war.”
More robust choices “were ruled out as
they raised the specter of a nuclear conflict.”
208 Overall, after 20 years of an
overtly nuclear South Asia, there is a
broad consensus that Indian and Pakistani
nuclear weapons deter major war
between New Delhi and Islamabad.
Stephen Cohen calls this the “reality of
[nuclear] deterrence” on the Subcontinent.
Ashley Tellis writes: “Pakistan’s
construction of a large, diversified,
and ever-expanding nuclear arsenal ...
serves to prevent any significant Indian
retaliation against Pakistan’s persistent
low-intensity war for fear of sparking a
nuclear holocaust.” This represents an
“insidious kind of ‘ugly stability’ over
the past few decades.” After the 2008
Mumbai episode, Kenneth Waltz wrote:
“Both countries know that a serious
conventional conflict risks a resort to
nuclear weapons. Given that neither India
nor Pakistan can know whether its
opponent will resort to nuclear use, either
inadvertently or on purpose, both
are disincentivized from beginning a
conventional conflict at all as the anticipated
result is simply disastrous.” Also
after Mumbai, Krepon wrote: “Nuclear
weapons have played a significant part
in previous crises on the subcontinent.
As deterrence optimists argue, nuclear
weapons may well have reinforced
caution and helped to forestall escalation
across the nuclear threshold.” For
Narang, the Kargil, Twin Peaks, and
Mumbai episodes “reveal that Pakistan’s
asymmetric escalation posture means
that major conventional war—even in
retaliation—is no longer a viable option
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