Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 6

India’s Ways of (Non-) War: Explaining New Delhi’s Forbearance in the Face of Pakistani Provocations Devin T. Hagerty Indian Politics & Policy • Vol. 1, No. 2 • Fall 2018 Professor of Political Science University of Maryland, Baltimore County [email protected] Abstract This article examines four India–Pakistan conflict episodes during South Asia’s overtly nuclear era (1998–2018), asking why New Delhi has consistently chosen temperate, measured responses to significant Pakistani and Pakistan-abetted provocations. It argues that, in combination, three of the most common explanations— nuclear deterrence, U.S. crisis management, and a lack of favorable conventional military options—best account for Indian forbearance. Of these three causes, the nuclear factor is most important, because the other two are both linked and subservient to it. The Indo-Pakistani nuclear competition generates the urgent need for crisis management and sharply diminishes New Delhi’s favorable options for conventional retaliation. While successive Indian leaders from different political parties have often been criticized for their unwillingness to launch more sizable punitive responses against Pakistan, they should instead be lauded for their strategic moderation. Indian decision making is the chief firebreak against major, possibly nuclear, war in South Asia today. Keywords: nuclear deterrence, nuclear proliferation, crisis behavior, India—nuclear weapons, Pakistan—nuclear weapons, Kashmir, terrorism Resumen Este artículo examina cuatro episodios de conflicto entre India y Pakistán durante la era abiertamente nuclear del Sur de Asia (1998- 2018), preguntándose por qué Nueva Delhi ha elegido consistentemente respuestas moderadas a importantes provocaciones paquistaníes. Sostiene que una combinación de tres de las explicaciones 3 doi: 10.18278/inpp.1.2.2