Dangerous strategy
http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/dangerous-strategy/216492.html
In his inaugural statement
at a seminar on nuclear security at a think tank in Islamabad, the Nuclear
Development Adviser to Pakistan’s National Command Authority, retired general
Khalid Kidwai, made sure to get the deterrence message across to India.
He warned that ‘Cold Start or no
Cold Start’, Pakistan’s adoption of ‘full spectrum deterrence’ had brought about ‘retention of strategic equilibrium in
South Asia’ by seriously neutralising any propensity in India for the ‘use of
the military as an instrument of policy’.
For their contribution to ‘peace
and stability in the region’, he was inclined to echo the title of a book on
India’s nuclear weapons by Raj Chengappa,
calling Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, ‘weapons of peace’.
Is Khalid Kidwai right?
On return from Islamabad where Sushma
Swaraj had gone for the ministerial meeting of the Heart of Asia conference on
Afghanistan, Swaraj
in briefing parliament acknowledged as much, saying: “war is not an option”.
Whereas she did not specify why this was so, the nuclear factor also figures
among other reasons to avoid war, such as the economic one.
Since both states are close to
embarking on a ‘bilateral comprehensive dialogue’ brokered by Swaraj during her
Pakistan visit last December, it would appear that Khalid Kidwai is at least
partially right. However, since the promised dialogue has not taken off three
months on since its announcement indicates the pitfalls.
The terror attack on Pathankot
airfield early in the year resulted in the foreign secretary talks scheduled
for mid January
being postponed.
Even if talks finally take off in wake of the visit of the joint investigation team
from Pakistan to the site of the terror attack in Pathankot, the hiatus
indicates a continuing fragility that cannot be wished away.
This is compounded by India’s
Pakistan strategy, likened by a former Indian ambassador
to that country as ‘manic pirouetting’.
Since the strategy is controlled by National Security Adviser, Ajit Doval, his
views are worth probing.
Immediately prior to
parliamentary elections in which Doval had a major hand in generating the Modi
wave, Doval laid out his strategic world
view at a talk in
Sastra University. He called for a shift from a defensive strategy to one of
‘defensive offence’. Since this was not an offensive strategy, the nuclear threshold was not of
consequence. He preferred ‘intelligence led’, ‘covert’, operations to military
action against Pakistan’s ‘vulnerable’ areas, such as its ‘internal security’.
Deeming ‘strategy without tactics
is noise before defeat’, it can be expected that Doval as NSA is practising
what he preached. Pakistan’s recent nabbing of an alleged Indian spy, former
naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav, is perhaps evidence of this.
Alongside, in another preview of
his Pakistan strategy, Doval as head of the Vivekananda International
Foundation had instigated a press statement
by 41 members of the strategic community. The statement had effectively tied
down UPA II from contemplating a resumption of talks with Pakistan. It called
for terrorism as being the sole agenda of talks.
Today the promised ‘comprehensive
bilateral dialogue’ continues in abeyance, held hostage to terrorism. This
explains Sushma Swaraj’s briefing
to parliament: “We have decided that through talks we will resolve
the issue of terrorism as talks is the way forward so that the shadow
of terror is removed.”
The upshot is that India’s
Pakistan strategy appears to have two prongs. One is to condition Pakistan to
its underside by exposing it to Indian intelligence operations, while engaging
in a dialogue restricted to terrorism.
The strategy is not without its
dangers.
Firstly, while Indian interests
are sought if not quite met this way, over time Pakistan’s national security
estabishment’s interest in the dialogue
would lag. It is currently not averse to Sharif’s outreach to India that
relies on personal equations reinforced with Indian Prime Minister Mr. Modi’s
brief stop over at Sharif’s Raiwind
residence. However, a status quo in India’s favour could prompt counter action
by the Pakistan army to once again use its tried and trusted instrument, the
ISI.
Secondly, the Pathankot terror
attack and Pakistani NSA’s tip off to his Indian counterpart of infiltration of
ten terrorists on Mahashivratri
eve into India suggests that terrorist forces can act autonomously. They can
trigger off another crisis by a mega terror attack.
During his Sastra University
address, Doval had weighed in favour of an intelligence driven response to
26/11. In effect, the intelligence game would now heat up, increasing
propensity for either side eventually going military. It is then that the
nuclear threshold, so cavalierly dismissed by both Doval and Khalid Kidwai,
would kick in.
Given such escalatory possibilities,
the contrasting policies of the two states appear delusional. Whereas Pakistan
loses no opportunity to foreground
nuclear dangers to reinforce deterrence, as done most recently by Kidwai, India
for its part has taken care to omit any mention of nuclear weapons in relation
to military exercises since 2013.
Foregrounding nuclear dangers
thus continues to be important, if only to compel the two states to remain at
the table.
