Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 41

Indian Politics & Policy
lationship of mutual nuclear deterrence.
Unfortunately, Pakistan is likely to keep
poking and prodding, testing India and
attempting to keep Kashmir on the boil.
Indian political leaders should continue
to resist pressures from the armed
forces, domestic political opponents,
the 24/7 media, and the public to rise
to Pakistan’s bait by retaliating with
sizable conventional military attacks.
Indian strategists should also abandon
their hopeless quest for Cold Start-style
limited war options under the nuclear
threshold. 251 Continuing to design
and publicly discuss “limited” invasion
plans that, if implemented, might spark
a Pakistani nuclear riposte is simply unwise.
There is no prospect that Indian
military planners can, in the abstract,
calculate the precise magnitude of a
limited conventional attack that is appropriately
punitive, effective in coercing
Islamabad to revise its strategy of
subconventional provocations, but not
so threatening to Pakistan’s vital interests
that it would not unleash its nuclear
arsenal in response. India’s “Cold Start”
discourse plays directly into the hands
of the Pakistan Army, which has used
it to build its case for the deployment
of tactical nuclear weapons and what it
calls “full-spectrum deterrence.” Furthermore,
were Indian leaders actually
to yield to the temptation of launching
a “limited” military offensive, Pakistanis
would rally around the flag, reinforcing
the Pakistan Army’s dominant
position in society. At the same time,
Pakistan-based terrorists would not be
put out of business; indeed, a major India–Pakistan
war is high on their list of
goals. In short, under the nuclear shadow,
any movement up the escalation
ladder is potentially catastrophic.
Notes
1 I use this terminology instead of the word “crises,” because the 2008 and 2016 cases were
arguably not actual crises. For a contrary view, see Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland,
eds., Investigating Crises: South Asia’s Lessons, Evolving Dynamics, and Trajectories (Washington,
DC: Stimson Center, 2018).
2 For an overview, see Sumit Ganguly, Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn
of a New Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). I will refer to the disputed
territory in the conventional shorthand, as “Kashmir.” While each side claims the entirety of
Kashmir, the Indian- and Pakistani-administered parts of the territory have been divided by a
line of control (LOC) since the 1972 Simla Agreement. For the sake of convenience, I refer to
these areas as “Indian Kashmir” and “Pakistani Kashmir.”
3 Detailed accounts of the Kargil conflict include: Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty, Fearful
Symmetry: India–Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2005), 143-66; Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning: The
Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage, 2000); S. Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent:
Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2007), 117-31; Peter R. Lavoy, ed., Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and
Consequences of the Kargil Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); V.P. Malik,
Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2006); Pervez Musharraf, In the
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