Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 52

India’s Ways of (Non-) War: Explaining New Delhi’s
Forbearance in the Face of Pakistani Provocations
182 Michael Krepon, “Crises in South Asia: Trends and Potential Consequences,” in Crises in South
Asia, ed. Krepon and Cohn, 8.
183 See the table in Sameer Lalwani and Hannah Haegeland, “Anatomy of a Crisis: Explaining
Crisis Onset in India–Pakistan Relations,” in Investigating Crises, ed. Lalwani and Haegeland,
35.
184 The exception, of course, was India’s Kargil response, because the aggressors were on the
Indian side of the LOC.
185 Devin T. Hagerty, The Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: Lessons from South Asia
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 163.
186 Robert Jervis, “Kargil, Deterrence Theory and International Relations Theory,” in Asymmetric
Warfare, ed. Lavoy, 390.
187 There is a great deal of confusion in the literature about the nature of Pakistan’s aggression at
Kargil in 1999. Narang refers to Pakistan’s “conventional aggression,” arguing that “India was
unable to deter Pakistan from launching a relatively aggressive conventional attack.” Nuclear
Strategy in the Modern Era, 253. Also see pp. 7, 11, 296. Elsewhere, Narang notes India’s failure
to deter “high-level conventional conflict, such as the Kargil War” (297) and India’s inability
to deter “high-intensity wars, such as the 1999 Kargil War” (11). Other analysts use terms
like “asymmetric operation,” Gill, “Military Operations,” 123; “limited military exercise,”
Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning, 236; “limited war,” Krepon, “Crises in South
Asia,” 27; “low-intensity conflict,” Rajesh M. Basrur, Minimum Deterrence and India’s Nuclear
Security (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 73-74; “sub-conventional” conflict,
Yusuf and Kirk, “Keeping an Eye on South Asian Skies,” 11-12; “unconventional” conflict,
Tellis, Fair, and Medby, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella, xi, etc. Pakistan’s covert
infiltration of the Kargil area was not a conventional invasion. The territory was claimed by
both countries, with the dispute between them unresolved. The NLI intruders were “lightlyequipped”
paramilitary forces, “not designed for major offensive operations,” who relied on
“pack mules and human porters” for logistical and other needs. Gill, “Military Operations,” 97-
98; Khan, Lavoy, and Clary, “Pakistan’s Motivations and Calculations for the Kargil Conflict,”
67. They fought in local civilian garb, i.e., shalwar kameez. The terrain was “highly glaciated
and avalanche-prone, a desolate, uninhabited desert waste of serrated, knife-edge ridges
piercing the sky” at altitudes of 13–18,000 feet. This was “not a very major operation either in
terms of size or capability.” Government of India, From Surprise to Reckoning, 17, 103-4. With
its forceful response, it was India that “conventionalize[d] the unconventional conflict.” Lavoy,
“Introduction,” 4-5. Also see pp. 8-9, 26. Pakistan’s Kargil incursion did not represent a failure
of India’s nuclear posture to deter a conventional invasion. (Emphases added.)
188 Samuel Black, The Changing Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons: Nuclear Threats from 1970 to
2010 (Washington, DC: 2010), 17-18. These signals consisted of three menacing statements by
Pakistani civilian and military leaders, as well as the suggestive but ambiguous nuclear-related
activity discussed in the Kargil section above.
189 Devin T. Hagerty, “The Kargil War: An Optimistic Assessment,” in Nuclear Proliferation in
South Asia, ed. Ganguly and Kapur, 110. Also see: Cohen, When Proliferation Causes Peace,
138; Dalton and Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Options and Escalation Dominance, 7; Gill, “Military
Operations,” 124; Jervis, “Kargil, Deterrence Theory and International Relations Theory,” 395-
96; S. Paul Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability:
Why Nuclear South Asia Is Not Like Cold War Europe,” in Inside Nuclear South Asia, ed. Scott
D. Sagan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 197; Lambeth, Airpower at 18,000', 2;
Lavoy, “Introduction,” 33; Sagan, in Sagan and Waltz, eds., Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 145-46;
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