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
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doi: 10.18278/inpp.1.2.2