BackDeterring the next 26/11
Some tweaks to India's nuclear doctrine may help in making its nuclear posture more deterrence-effective
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Earlier this month, Vishnu Som of NDTV reported, based on exclusive access to some documents of the Indian Air Force, that on “June 13, 1999, at the height of the Kargil War, Indian Air Force fighter pilots were minutes away from launching a full-fledged air attack deep inside Pakistan". But the massive operation planned was never launched. The reason, says Som, “remain(s) a closely guarded secret". A 2014 book by Vipin Narang Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict offers some clues. Like two previous crises—Brasstacks (1986-87) and the 1990 Kashmir compound crisis—India did consider crossing over the line of control (LoC) or opening another front along the international border. But unlike those two previous episodes, India chose not to exercise any of those options.
In an interview to Narang, Brajesh Mishra, national security adviser during the Kargil War, said that crossing the LoC would have risked the use of nuclear weapons. Narang goes on to argue that similar fear of escalation to nuclear levels stopped India from responding effectively to the attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and after the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008 (also known as 26/11). He provides robust arguments in defence of his hypothesis in all cases. For example, in a 2010 report in The Indian Express, Pranab Dhal Samanta wrote that while India’s conventional response to 26/11 was being considered, the then prime minister, Manmohan Singh, “wanted to know if there was a chance Pakistan could misjudge a conventional strike by India and trigger a nuclear response".
This explanation would sound similar, at least partly, to the theory of Sumit Ganguly, a nuclear optimist, who believes nuclear weapons helped in not letting India-Pakistan conflicts escalate. But Narang makes a careful distinction—which Ganguly doesn’t—between nuclear postures. India was less constrained before 1998—the year in which Pakistan credibly shifted from a catalytic nuclear posture to an asymmetric escalation posture. Catalytic posture involves using the threat to break out of the nuclear threshold to “catalyze" assistance from a third-party patron state (the US in Pakistan’s case). And asymmetric escalation involves deterring a conventional attack by threatening first use of nuclear weapons. India’s posture through 1974 to present, Narang contends, has remained one of “assured retaliation". The latter involves the use of survivable second strike forces after sustaining the first damage.
Through extensive and impressive data work, Narang has further proved that asymmetric escalation is the best posture when it comes to deterring conventional attacks, as one can also see in India’s muted response to Pakistan’s provocations—Kargil, Parliament attacks, Mumbai 26/11 and Pathankot (2016), since 1998. Assured retaliation posture is hardly effective and catalytic posture may, in fact, be counter-productive in deterring conventional or sub-conventional conflicts. I have only one minor issue with his theory. Narang’s model overpredicts the level of conflict even during Brasstacks and the 1990 Kashmir crisis when India was best suited to escalate given Pakistan’s catalyst posture. There is a case, therefore, to be made that probably India errs on the side of caution irrespective of Pakistan’s nuclear posture.
The conclusion, however, is clear. Threat of escalation to nuclear levels forms an important factor in India’s decision-making and inhibits New Delhi from retaliating conventionally to Pakistan’s conventional and increasingly sub-conventional provocations. In a piece for The Wire in June this year, Toby Dalton and George Perkovich say: “Nuclear weapons are not suited to deter terrorism." They are useful, the duo says, “for deterring large-scale military invasions". This puts India in a quandary. India’s nuclear weapons and posture are not suited to deter Pakistan-initiated sub-conventional warfare, but Pakistan’s nuclear posture is perfectly suited to deter India’s conventional retaliation. Since sub-conventional retaliation is a no-go area, the only option available to India is deterrence by denial rather than deterrence by punishment.
The problem is that deterrence by denial is not foolproof. And making it foolproof—in other words, to bring the probability of another 26/11 or Pathankot down to zero—will involve infinite cost. So, let us come back to deterrence by punishment. Shifting to asymmetrical escalation also seems out of the question for India. The primary reason is, as Narang points out, the desire of India’s political establishment to retain control over nuclear weapons and not delegate it to the military establishment. Asymmetric escalation inevitably requires some level of delegation.
Some tweaks to India’s nuclear doctrine may help in making India’s assured retaliation posture more deterrence-effective. The doctrine professes “massive" nuclear retaliation to a first strike. This promise is not credible. The casualties after Pakistan’s first use of tactical nuclear weapons may not be enough to justify the use of a strategic nuclear weapon (see Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Operational Myths and Realities (2015) by Jeffrey McCausland). Changing this to either “proportionate" or “proportionate-plus" retaliation will signal India’s intent to respond credibly to Pakistan’s sub-conventional provocations—at least to provocations of the level of Parliament attacks, 26/11 and Pathankot. This change in the doctrine will need to be backed by building up the appropriate capabilities to deliver the retaliation and a parallel investment in deterrence by denial measures. The latter is important and cannot be entirely substituted by deterrence by punishment.
Kunal Singh is staff writer (views) at Mint.
Comments are welcome at theirview@livemint.com
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