India’s Sisyphean Dilemma – Analysis
The Operation Sindoor, launched as a retaliation against the Pahalgam terror attack, is the latest in the series of military responses undertaken by India against Pakistan in the last decade. The 2016 attack in Uri led to a surgical strike by India across the Line of Control, while the 2019 Pulwama attack provoked a more heightened response in the form of Operation Bandar in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
India’s reliance on increasingly intense kinetic measures as a response to an attack on its soil is based on the assumption that more punitive measures against Pakistan will coerce its military establishment to do a course correction and deter them from using terrorism as a form of proxy warfare against India. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in his address to the nation, that any future terror attack on India emanating from Pakistan will generate a punitive response, this doctrinal codification begs the question of the utility of armed action in altering the India-Pakistan dynamics from an Indian perspective.
The ‘Pakistan’ Problem
From an Indian standpoint, Pakistan’s use of terrorism as a state policy stems from Pakistan’s attempt to offset India’s conventional military superiority and the nuclearization of South Asia in 1998, which freezes the scope of a traditional war between two nuclear-armed neighbors. The combination of these two vectors gives the Pakistani military establishment the impunity to use proscribed organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed to advance its strategic objectives against India. Prime Minister Modi’s declaration that India would not be bending to Pakistan’s nuclear blackmail is India’s attempt to break this logjam by creating a kinetic response in the sub-conventional domain.
However, this policy response is not cost-free and contains its inherent risks given the complexities of the India-Pakistan equation and the geopolitical landscape of South Asia. Although the tangible cost of a punitive damage incentivizes the Pakistan military establishment to curb its support to anti-India terror organization, Pakistan’s military traditional quest for parity with India requires a tit-for-tat response to any attempted military aggression thus India’s attempt to impose a ‘new normal’ is likely to generate a military response from Pakistan, irrespective of the cost to maintain its domestic political legitimacy.
Hence, India’s declared policy of a kinetic response becomes a double-edged sword for the Pakistan military. In the past, the Pakistan military has used the bogey of ‘threat from India’ to consolidate its position among the masses and used it as a pretext to overthrow civilian rulers. Also, the proscribed organization like Lashkar-e-Taiba enjoys a symbiotic relationship with the Pakistan army establishment and provides them significant leverage in domestic and external maneuverings.
In 2016, the military used the pretext of the ‘Dawn leaks’, where the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was concerned about Pakistan’s isolation due to its support for terror groups, to engineer the ouster of the Nawaz Sharif government. Thus, in Pakistan’s domestic political sphere, militarized response from India provides Pakistan’s army the necessary legitimacy for its overarching role in the body politic of Pakistan as a defender of Pakistan’s sovereignty.
The Diplomatic Dilemma
Diplomatically, a sub-conventional crisis in the nuclear neighborhood of South Asia inevitably attracts international intervention. In the current crisis, reports suggest that despite the initial prevarication of the Donald Trump administration, the sharp escalation of conflict led to American intervention, with Donald Trump even offering mediation between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, which was immediately welcomed by Pakistan. This was in sharp contrast to the Kargil conflict of 1999, where, for the first time, the internationalization of the Kashmir issue worked in favor of India, partly due to the self-control exercised by the Indian leadership, reflected in India’s decision not to cross the line of control.
India, after its bitter experience of taking the Kashmir issue to the United Nations, had traditionally resisted any offer of external mediation on Kashmir. One of the objectives of Indian diplomacy in recent years is the de-hyphenation of India and Pakistan in the Western power corridors and reimagining India as an Indo-Pacific power rather than being confined to South Asia. Thus, a declared policy of armed retaliation carries a risk of tying India to Pakistan in the regional theatre in sync with its principal competitor, China’s geostrategic objective in South Asia. It further put India’s regional partners like Iran and Russia into a diplomatic tight spot for having to make a choice between India and Pakistan at a time when their preferred option would be to keep the United States at bay from regional dynamics.
Doomsday Detente
Militarily, an ample literature is available on the scope of a limited war under the nuclear shadow. After the nuclearization of South Asia in 1998, Indian strategic planners have constantly pondered over the question of a conventional response to Pakistan’s asymmetric warfare under the nuclear shadow.
In January 2000, the then Defense Minister of India, George Fernandes, outlined India’s posture when he held that conventional war remained feasible under nuclear overhang, although with certain limitations. So, Prime Minister Modi’s declaration of calling Pakistan’s nuclear bluff is India’s attempt to explore the wedge between Pakistan’s de jure nuclear threshold, outlined by General Khalid Kidwai in 2002, and its de facto red lines, outlined by General Jehangir Karamat in 2004. However, the ability of a limited conflict waged on the assumption of not disturbing the nuclear equilibrium, in moderating the behavior of the Pakistan military establishment, is very limited.
However, from a Pakistani perspective also, India’s attempt to impose a ‘new normal’ is disquieting. From 2016 surgical strikes onwards. India’s kinetic action shows a concentric pattern, with the strikes on Bahawalpur and Muridke targeting the Pakistani heartland of Punjab. This is a major reputational loss for an army that draws its major recruits from Punjab. Further, even a limited kinetic operation by India can prove devastating for Pakistan’s economy, which is structurally dependent upon IMF bailouts and external support for its viability.
From an internal security perspective, Pakistan is engaged in a fierce battle with Baloch and Pashtun insurgent groups on its western front, which has resulted in more than 6000 casualties since 2021. So, an increase in threat perception at the eastern border requires a force mobilization from its western frontiers, which in turn would aggravate the internal security situation. For the Pakistan army, which is witnessing a sustained erosion of its popularity after the jailing of ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan, the restoration of the status quo at both the strategic level vis-à-vis India and at the policy level of its support to militant proxies is a costly affair.
Tango at the Twilight
Consequently, India-Pakistan bilateral dynamics are caught in a fix where a return to the status quo ante is improbable, and imposition of a new normal is prohibitive. From an Indian perspective, Pakistan posed both a tactical and strategic challenge to its objective of restoring ‘normalcy’ in Kashmir and its desire to acquire a seat at the global high table, transcending its colonial legacy and South Asian geography.
India’s past Pakistan policy of unconditional engagement and occasional estrangement has failed to yield the desired result of a course correction by the Pakistani security establishment. With the cross-border terror attacks being unacceptable to the Indian state, it doesn’t have enough maneuvering space to evoke a positive response from Pakistan. Thus, Operation Sindoor and the subsequent codification of a declared punitive response are a bold move whose results depend upon not only the political will of the Indian state but also the domestic political compulsions of Pakistan and the interest of external actors in the region. However, one thing is certain: a new era has dawned in South Asia, whose contours are yet to be illuminated.
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