How India should respond to Pakistan’s nuclear sabre-rattling

The Pakistani briefing to the world maintains that the principal objective of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability is to deter Indian conventional as well as nuclear aggression. In case deterrence fails, then its aim is to deny India victory in war. But the world remains unconvinced because Pakistan has not adopted the No First Use (NFU) policy.

A former director general of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, had more candidly listed four parameters for use of nuclear weapons:

• India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part of its territory (space threshold)

• India destroys a large part of Pakistan’s military forces/ assets (military threshold)

• India strangulates Pakistan economically

• India destabilises Pakistan politically or through internal subversion.

This gives Pakistan a large menu of flexibility, a carte blanche to react with the nuclear option as per its determination. Or, to give a practical example, Pakistan would have reached for the nuclear button, under General Kidwai’s parameters, had it been subjected by India to a 1993- or the 26/11-type terror attack.

To this should be added Pakistan’s declared policy of ‘Full Spectrum Deterrence’, which covers threat perception at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. This was in evidence during the Balakot crisis in February 2019, when the Pakistani army spokesperson repeatedly stressed that it was ready to bring into play its ‘Full Spectrum Deterrence’. The danger with such a declaration is that it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. This kind of bravado is doubly dangerous when two countries lie next to each other.

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In the other possible confrontations, for instance, between the US and Russia, the US and China or the US and North Korea, the country under nuclear attack would have a few minutes warning of a missile heading its way because of the physical distance between them. Since India and Pakistan have zero distance between them, the luxury of the vital few minutes warning will not be available to them in a nuclear situation.

Add to this the fact that there are mobile platforms at play and tactical nuclear weapons, which can be deployed with army units close to the border. The use of either of these would reduce the warning time to seconds, turning this South Asian theatre into an inferno.

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In May 2017, the US’s director of national intelligence, Daniel Coats, released its Worldwide Threat Assessment report. Among other aspects, the report addresses Pakistan’s nuclear threat: ‘(A)dvances in Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities could risk further destabilization along the India-Pakistan border…“Pakistan’s pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons potentially lowers the threshold for their use…Increasing numbers of firefights along the Line of Control…might exacerbate the risk of unintended escalation between these nuclear-armed neighbours.”’

This is not all. On an even graver note, it warns, ‘Even a small nuclear war between India and Pakistan could trigger a nuclear winter that could send the planet into a mini ice age and starve an estimated 1 billion people.’

A billion! Once again, it is about a billion people!

Shift in Strategy

Pakistan and India have survived at least five nuclear scares since 1987, giving both sides the misplaced confidence that they will survive the next one as well. This leads to a lessening of political restraints on the militaries of both countries and increases greater nuclear brinksmanship. The attitude that somehow the next crisis, too, shall pass, misses the basic point that on all previous occasions, it was the intervention of powers like the US that brought them back from the brink. The situation is different now.

The US is a tired superpower, keen on staying away from other people’s squabbles, and other powers like China may have the motivation to watch the situation unfold. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, flawed as they are, may not be effective on their own. Therefore, the course of the next India-Pakistan shooting war could be different. A former Pakistani Air Force officer maintains, ‘Pakistan, relatively a small country with a deep sense of insecurity, developed nuclear weapons mainly to deter military aggression from India, and therefore nuclear weapons continue to play the central role in Pakistan’s military strategy.’

It could still be argued that in the event of a nuclear attack, there would only be a graduated escalation through limited strikes of tactical nuclear weapons on India’s forces. But where is the guarantee that this would be so? Contrarily, the first-strike nation, be it Pakistan or China, might launch a massive first strike. Its aim could comprehensively be to eliminate India’s command and control systems, destroy its nuclear retaliatory capability, reduce the conventional offensive capability and strike at important industrial targets and some major population centres.

In fact, their strategic calculus could be such that India may not get a second chance. The possible use of sophisticated cyberattacks to cripple a country’s command and control system, and disable missile launches, raises serious concern about the reliability of the second strike option. Either of these possibilities would place India in a nightmarish state. Over time, these dreads have been increasing. In March 2015, after Pakistan tested the Shaheen III missile, Pakistan’s National (nuclear) Command Authority adviser, Khalid Kidwai, said the 2,750 km capability of the Shaheen III missile is meant to reach India’s strategic bases at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. ‘The purpose,’ he said, ‘is to deny India a second-strike capability.’

Pakistan’s first-use option has never been put to serious question internally. Rather, many of its political leaders have added their weight to the strategic voices in favour of using the first-strike option. With the army, the fundamentalists and the politicians as well in unanimous mode, there is a triad of powerful voices within Pakistan that could make the decision-making in a war situation readily aggressive.

In anticipation, there is recognition in India that a response to first use requires a very effective early warning system and a high degree of efficiency. This is even more necessary when the adversary is as opaque as China or as unpredictable as Pakistan. Rather than move in a cautionary direction, Pakistan has, in recent times, lowered the threshold of nuclear use options. There is also some speculation to suggest that Pakistan’s non-deployed, de-mated nuclear arsenal may be reconfigured to be deployed and ready to use.

Worryingly, as a Pakistani expert Sadia Tasleem maintains, both its short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and sea-based systems may involve delegated control over warheads, ‘The country’s ongoing arms buildup, continuing fissile material production, and investment in sea-based second-strike capabilities suggest a shift toward a complex deterrence posture…Pakistan might… move away from the non-deployment of its weapons. Its evolving sea-based capabilities, as well as its short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), may also necessitate a shift from centralized to delegated command and control.’

This shift in strategy will further complicate the situation. Delegated command and control of tactical weapons means that it is up to a relatively young brigadier to take the decision about lobbing a nuclear shell across the border. What then is the guarantee that the hot blood of an indoctrinated middle-aged army officer will keep flowing with equanimity in a war situation, and that his angry finger will not move impulsively towards the trigger? As two well-regarded Pakistani scholars put it:

“Even the finest diplomacy may not work in the midst of a storm strong enough to knock over the pieces on the South Asian nuclear chessboard. With an emboldened army in Pakistan sooner or later seeking once again to push India to the brink—this time determined to escalate rather than back down if things go badly—staving off nuclear warfare on the subcontinent may be a race against time.”

That Pakistan may not back down in the next one may also be due to its assessment that bad generalship had plagued the Indian Army during the Kargil War, and that India’s military wisdom had taken over a month to mobilise troops for Operation Parakram. The issue then, for India, or for any other country placed in such a dire situation, is of preservation and the best way of preventing the unthinkable. For that to happen, the resolve of a democratic country must be firm and appear to be so for the adversary. Successful deterrence relies on being able to demonstrate a military threat that is credible and realistic.

The Indian language of denial and its grammar should be straightforward: if Pakistan or China aggresses, it will be defeated. Either of them will not achieve its military or political objectives under any circumstances. Should there be an escalation, the costs will be far greater than any benefit. What this means is a pre-emptive option that sidesteps the NFU question. It may or may not involve the use of nuclear assets, but it clearly aims at striking at the enemy’s offensive facilities.

The above article is an edited extract from Rajiv Dogra’s book ‘War Time’ (Rupa Publications). The article gains renewed relevance in the wake of Field Marshal Asim Munir’s nuclear sabre-rattling in the United States. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.