Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 33

Indian Politics & Policy
for India ... Pakistan’s ... posture inhibited
Indian leaders from executing militarily
effective retaliatory options that
might have otherwise been on the list
of choices for fear of triggering Pakistani
nuclear use.” In George Perkovich’s
view, expressed just after the Uri
attack, “mutual nuclear deterrence has
made leaders on both sides conclude
that major warfare between the two
states would be suicidal.” But, the Pakistan-generated
“low-intensity conflict
can escalate,” leading to what he calls
an “unstable equilibrium.” The bottom
line, however, is that: “The leaders of
India and Pakistan understand that
they have more to lose than to gain by
military conflict. They both have interests
in avoiding escalation, in part due
to the shadow of potential nuclear war
if escalation did occur.” Perkovich and
Toby Dalton write: “Reviewing the record
of conflicts and crises in South
Asia since 1990 through a prism of escalation
dominance indicates that the
threat of any conflict becoming nuclear
has had a dampening effect on Indian
strategy and decisionmaking ... The
possibility of escalation drove India to
limit the geographic scope of its airstrikes
during the 1999 Kargil crisis. It
was also a major element of the decision
calculus that led India to mobilize forces
but not cross the border during the
2001–2002 crisis, and to limit responses
to economic and diplomatic means following
the attacks in Mumbai in 2008.”
Rajesh Rajagopalan observes that the
“fear of nuclear escalation prevented
India from responding to terror attacks
on ... the Indian Parliament [2001], on
Indian military establishments, and on
Mumbai, as well as many other less serious
attacks.” 209
Another significant factor in
New Delhi’s choices to respond to Pakistani
aggression in ways that would
not escalate out of control was the crisis
management role of the United States.
U.S. initiatives to dissuade Indian decision
makers from carrying out more
punishing military operations were
most important during the Kargil and
Twin Peaks episodes. In the aftermath
of the Mumbai attacks, U.S. intervention
was significant, but less so than
in 1999 and 2001–02, mainly because
Prime Minister Singh decided very
early on that India would not mobilize
its armed forces, which in turn sent a
strong signal to Pakistan and the world
that New Delhi would not mount a robust
military reprisal. U.S. crisis management
was notably less pronounced
during the 2016 Uri aftermath, with
senior Obama administration officials
seeming implicitly to condone India’s
right to respond proportionately. 210
If it is difficult to show that nuclear
deterrence has “worked” in a given
situation, it is too easy to show that
U.S. suasion “worked” in the same context.
While deterrence is invisible and
plausibly deniable by the deterree, crisis
intervention is typically highly visible,
with senior U.S. officials embarking on
whirlwind tours of South Asia at critical
junctures, activity that is highly
visible via the media and for which the
intervening government is always willing
to take credit. Particularly salient in
this regard were trips to the region by
CENTCOM commander Zinni in June
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