INTER DOMAIN DETERRENCE : INDIA AND PAKISTAN
India Pakistan relationship since inception in 1947 has been predicated on mistrust and hatred; having fought three and a half wars and a prolonged sub-conventional slugfest. The traditional concepts of deterrence formulated by theorists in the Cold War paradigm fail miserably in the sub-continental context. Nuclear deterrence may be a valid excuse for preventing a full-fledged conventional conflict between both nations but a window of conflict has opened up under the nuclear threshold which both nations have tried to capitalize on. Pak has exploited its plethora of non-state but state sponsored actors and India has found the use of kinetic conventional vectors in sub-conventional domain as the panacea for creating a response matrix which it displayed post Uri and Pulwama terrorist attacks. Pakistan on the other hand has enunciated a concept of ‘Full Spectrum Deterrence” as its military strategy against India which pirouettes on maintaining deterrence across the spectrum of conflict from sub-conventional to nuclear. The focus on Pak’s military shopping list has been on developing asymmetries in conventional war fighting and hence the focus on Air Defense Systems, PAF and ground based long range vectors. While deterrence has always been about the battle in the cognitive domain by vectors in other domains, as it is about convincing adversaries to refrain from certain behaviour through the prospect of costs that outweigh the benefits.[1] This is the basic premise of Pakistan which vectors on its irrationality and India’s rationality in the cognitive domain to achieve deterrence.
2. An important characteristic of our age is the multitude of ways and means by which operations can be perpetrated. Six domains of military activity has reinforced the old adage of actions in one domain generating effects in the other domain or what one can call Inter Domain Deterrence. Having explained multi-domain operations in my previous blog it was important to focus on the concept of Inter Domain Deterrence (IDD). The shift in attention to IDD can be explained by two principal challenges. The first challenge relates to the progressive integration and synchronization of military operations across different domains (land, air, sea, cyber, cognitive and space) and the inherent disharmony between different levels of war (strategic, operational and tactical)[2]. This is because armed forces aspire to better integrate physical, social and network technology in their ability to apply violence in the pursuit of political objectives, leading to strategic compression and multi domain operations (MDO)[3]. MDO concepts are being developed to synchronize actions both horizontally across domains and vertically across levels of war[4]. In light of the inter-domain nature of the challenge, military practitioners are prophesying analogous responses, including IDD.
3. The second challenge relates to the increased salience of “hybrid” or “grey zone” strategies that feature the simultaneous employment of military and non-military instruments, typically below the conventional military threshold, in an ambiguous fashion in order to evade attribution, with the goal to exploit adversary’s vulnerabilities, in the pursuit of political objectives[5]. While the analytical value of the labels as such has caused considerable debate the real-world impact of these strategies poses a serious strategic challenge. Their increased salience stems from the enormous costs associated with interstate wars, which makes major powers and putative adversaries despite all the provocation disinclined from waging actual hot wars against each other. Pakistan has always tried and found alternative ways to achieve its political objectives — in line with the original tenets of the asymmetric conflicts. Furthermore, the increased salience of grey zone strategies is also derived from the opportunities offered by new avenues to hurt India due to technological and societal re-engineering because of global wiring of societies over the past quarter century. Strategically innovative Pakistan has been making frequent use of these avenues over the past seven decades to considerable effect be it the tribal raiders in 1947, Op GIBRALTAR in 1965 or Op KOH-E-PAYIMA in 1999 and for that matter the attacks on Parliament and in Mumbai. These developments should have forced us to start thinking about the use and utility of IDD in dealing with adversaries employing such strategies also outside the traditional military domains. The articulation of Proactive Strategy by India in early 2000s was an attempt on achieving deterrence in sub-conventional domain by doctrinal coercion, the same may have met with success till 2008 but the failure to execute the strategy under gave provocation sounded its death knell as Pakistan realized the capability and aspiration mismatch and in cognitive domain was no more deterred from activating the sub-conventional domain with gay abandon.
4. Inter domain deterrence involves the use of threats in one domain to deter activities in (an)other domain(s). For a military mind IDD is exclusively in the military domains land, sea, air, cyber, cognitive and space albeit at different levels of intellection and also seems to focus exclusively on deterrence by punishment rather than denial. In India-Pakistan context, the value of deterrence has boiled down to a quantitative analysis of numbers, more tanks or more missiles means added deterrence value, the idea of qualitative deterrence is just about germinating and procurement of S-400 would be a qualitative response to a failed Pak Air Force “Op Swift Retort”. While it is necessary to understand that warfare is no more a military turf and a ‘whole of nation approach’ is key to realizing the End State. IDD must therefore refer to deterrent efforts on land, at sea, in the air, in space, in cyberspace and in cognitive domain through non-violent vectors. Our tools of deterrence today should include an array of non-military means to detect, deter and respond in a tailored way. IDD must thus be “the use of threats of one type, or some combination of different types, to dissuade a target from taking actions of another type to attempt to change the status quo”[6]. Important requirements of deterrence are attribution, threat credibility and proportionality, signaling and escalation management. Attribution depends on the ability and the willingness to ascribe responsibility for a particular act to an actor. Without the possibility of attribution, transgressors can act undetected and therefore escape allocation of blame. Credibility is rooted in the perceived capability and willingness to act. It is crucial for deterrence to work because adversaries have to believe they will suffer negative consequences for their wrongdoings. Threats that are not credible are irrelevant for deterrence purposes. In general, threats which are proportional to their triggers are likely to be perceived more credible than disproportionate ones. Signaling refers to the process of communicating one’s willingness and capabilities to act to instill that belief in the adversary. Attribution, credibility, threat proportionality and signaling together are prerequisites for escalation management, which is the regulation of the intensity and scope of the conflict.
5. In order to deter across both old and new domains, concepts such as cumulative and punctuated deterrence have been introduced. The concept of cumulative deterrence is based on Israel’s strategic experience and may help us to draw parallels in our context. Israel has defended itself against a diverse spectrum of attacks conducted by state and non-state actors over a long period of time, partly by “attacking the rival repeatedly in response to specific behaviour, over a long period of time, sometimes even disproportionally to its aggressive actions”[7]. In the context of hybrid conflict, “cumulative deterrence conceptualizes deterrence as a continuous, longer term process in which a one-off transgression does not spell failure but adversarial behaviour is shaped by the deterrer in a concerted effort.” Within the framework of cumulative deterrence, deterrers understand the necessity of absorbing some attacks in order to prevent others. This marks a clear departure from a more absolutist notion encapsulated in traditional deterrence approaches aimed at deterring all attacks. The concept of cumulative deterrence may indeed be better suited to the less impactful but more frequent and ambiguous amalgamation of contemporary security threats and actors rather than to deterring the threat of a nuclear attack.
6. Another alternative is punctuated deterrence, which conveys punishment to address a series of actions and cumulative effects. The difference between cumulative and punctuated deterrence is that within the framework of cumulative deterrence, deterrers respond continuously over long time periods to single attacks, while in the case of punctuated deterrence they respond gradually over time and in a punctuated manner. Irrational and unpredictable response by India is key to enforcing deterrence on the adversary where in responses can be calibrated for level of violence, vector of choice, spatial and temporal stretch however the target profile must always conform to jus-ad-bellum. While Pakistan has always resorted to plausible deniability to terrorist actions perpetrated by state sponsored non-state actors, the Indian response must be scaffolded by a strong and robust communication strategy which drives home the message to the adversary; loud and clear.
7. In trying to come to terms with the nature of today’s strategic challenges, India must seek to to expand on traditional concepts of deterrence by denial and punishment, even merging the two into one systemic response. Tactical denial refers to denying the adversary the prospect of attaining the direct impact of a particular hostile action. Tactical denial may sound as a benign response and may not satiate the blood lust of the nation; it has been significantly expanded by including offensive pre-emptive action. The complexity and the opportunities presented by today’s sub-continental strategic landscape, offensive non-kinetic non-contact action can be used to deny the adversary the means to conduct offensive action. The underlying logic is that actions in every other domain in which offensive means can degrade the adversaries’ capabilities to fight before the actual hostile kinetic interaction takes place. It is possible to conceive of denial in more traditional domains as encapsulating pre-emptive or preventive strikes against adversarial military capabilities[8]. Like Israel India must develop competencies to execute a strategy of cumulative attrition in order to deter its enemies from carrying out immediate attacks by denying them the capability to do so. These capabilities in other domains tend to rely on cyber measures to varying degrees hence the use of offensive denial may impact land, naval, air, cognitive and space domains as well. Overall, this approach recognizes the fact that the adversaries’ capabilities and their will to fight may be dependent upon each other and thus by denying the opportunity to use those capabilities is also likely to degrade their will to fight.
8. For strategic denial, resilience is a key component which is the ability to absorb the direct impact of the hostile activity in question without suffering any long-lasting impact. While originally proposed in the context of deterring terrorist attacks, resilience can be a strategic asset across multiple domains of cooperation-competition-crisis-confrontation-conflict (C5) and may be effective against both state and non-state actors.[9] Ultimately, strengthening resilience is envisaged as multi domain efforts because its objective is to prepare the whole society in inter- sectoral approach to withstand adversarial activities. Once attained, resilience then signals to the adversaries the futility of carrying out potential attacks by nullifying the potential benefits to be derived from a broad spectrum of hostile measures.
9. Deterrence by punishment concept has expanded to encompass deterrence through norms and de-legitimization. Punishment through norms seeks to convince potential transgressors not to engage in certain behaviour by presenting them with the prospect of social costs[10]. It seeks to alter the cost calculus of those who do not abide by the positive standards of behaviour, while deterrence by taboos seeks to do the same to those who engage in hostilities that are generally seen as off-limits. Breaking any of these two standards risks incurring loss of international prestige and ostracization which is detrimental to vital interests of both state and non-state actors as it has been the case with Pakistan as it continues to languish in the Grey List of FATF despite much effort by its allies and partners. Deterrence by association expands on that logic. It constitutes “a political mechanism in order to ‘call-out’ poor behaviour and strongly condemn such actions publicly, by those with the right authority, because it acts as a clear signal to others in the community of actors what is right and wrong behaviour”[11]. This extended version of deterrence by punishment is increasingly being discussed in the context of deterrence in new domains and in relation to both state and non-state actors but is equally applicable to any other domain.
10. An alternative strategy, de-legitimization, is loosely based on the logic of punishment as it aims “to raise the costs of participating in terrorism by challenging the normative, religious, and socio-political rationales individuals rely upon when participating in violence”[12].This strategy allows for the classification of both particular instruments and particular targets as unacceptable. In the multi-domain context, this approach makes it possible to channelize the conflict into more manageable domains. In some cases, such as with nuclear threats, the focus on the stigmatization of particular weapons may be more effective. For instance, the stigmatization of biological weapons would be pronounced after the COVID pandemic due to the destructive nature of these weapons. This logic may be applicable to space deterrence too if it is accepted “that encouraging behavioural norms regarding the peaceful use of space — and thereby increasing the political stigma of using weapons in space — is desirable” because “even relatively weak political stigmas can deter attacks in space for players with something to lose[13].” It is plausible, for example, that attacks against satellites should be discouraged by the development of an appropriate normative framework. Deterrence through norms may thus adhere to the original logic of deterrence by violent punishment but certainly stretches its scope. It relies on a broader concept of punishment by including the social and psychological costs in order to deter actions from engaging in certain behaviour.
11. Deterrence of contemporary threats by a near peer adversary requires expansion of classical concepts of deterrence not just in terms of the ways and means but also in its very nature. Deterrence will have to focus both on persuasion and dissuasion and include both positive and negative incentives in order to prevent adversaries from engaging in undesired behaviour. Dissuasion, for example in case of India’s engagement with Pakistan, can be seen within a broader approach to deterrence as a form that includes both threats and inducements but also “reassurances and benefits that make a world without aggression more attractive”[14]. The advantage of dissuasion is that it can be pursued “through international institutions, treaties, economic sanctions, raising reputation costs, soft balancing and diplomatic engagement”.[15] Dissuasion, a subset of what can be termed “compliance seeking efforts’’, is supposed to include not only negative but also positive measures and it can work both by increasing the attractiveness of particular options and by decreasing the desirability of others.
12. Strategic concepts emerge in particular strategic contexts to deal with specific challenges in a given period. Some strategic concepts wither away once the strategic environment evolves; others persist but need to be adapted. IDD is about the use and utility of deterrence in the context of today’s multi-domain challenges. Deterrence has been inter-domain in character since its early beginnings, prompting some to pose the question whether IDD is nothing more than old wine being served in new bottles. IDD provides additional analytical traction beyond classical notions of deterrence as it dabbles with different vectors of military across the C5 spectrum with different nuclear, conventional and unconventional weapons, together with various diplomatic, economic and cultural instruments of CNP. The continuities with traditional deterrence literature are indeed considerable: traditional concepts of deterrence by punishment and denial are still part and parcel of the strategic lexicon; as conditions of successful deterrence including the communication of credible threats of cost imposition which is rooted in robust capabilities and will.
13. The practical application of key tenets of deterrence theory in the context of contemporary strategic challenges demands inter-domain interaction by armed forces. This has created a calculus of attribution, threat credibility and proportionality, signaling and escalation management which is more robust and dynamic. In light of these refinements and expansions of the concept of deterrence, the question is warranted whether this enlightened notion of deterrence is still in fact about the act of deterring an opponent or whether it in effect constitutes a reconceptualization of the essence of deterrence by making it about dissuading but also persuading instead of deterring. After all, this expanded concept of dissuasion implies a more diverse range of instruments, both military and non-military, which can be used both as a stick and a carrot, both to compel and to deter, both to persuade and to dissuade, which brings it back to the broader coercive diplomacy literature from which it originally emerged.
14. In my considered view; dissuasion in the present context with Pakistan, rather than deterrence, is more fitting as an overarching concept which encompasses the various means and ways by which one can dissuade the adversary to abstain from the action.[16] As such it includes both positive inducements and negative threats. Dissuasion with Pakistan can thus work as an umbrella term for deterrence by denial and punishment (if required), norms and resilience. Given the salience of the hostilities conducted below the legal thresholds of international law as well as the inability or reluctance of states to respond to varied intrusion across all domains. This broader concept of dissuasion may be more appropriate in the context of the strategic challenges in today’s world for India.
[1] Austin Long, Deterrence” From Cold War to Long War: Lessons from Six Decades of RAND Research. Rand Corporation, 2008.
[2] E Luttwak (2002) Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, London.
[3] Johnson D E (2018) Shared Problems — The Lessons of AirLand Battle and the 31 Initiatives for Multi-Domain Battle. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica
[4] This is an evolutionary change, which has been long time in coming, and builds on earlier historical military strategic concepts such as Combined Arms Warfare, Joint Warfare, and Network Centric Warfare.
[5] HR McMaster, Battlegrounds, The Fight to Defend the Free World, William Collins Books, Dublin, 2021, pg 26
[6] Lindsay J R, Gartzke E A (2019a) Introduction: Cross-Domain Deterrence, From Practice to Theory. In: Lindsay J R, Gartzke E A (eds) Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pg 1–26
[7] U Tor (2015) Cumulative Deterrence’ as a New Paradigm for Cyber Deterrence. Journal of Strategic Studies 40:92–117, pg 112.
[8] James J Wirtz. “How does nuclear deterrence differ from conventional deterrence?.” Strategic Studies Quarterly 12, no. 4 (2018): pg 58–75.
[9] Ryan, N. J. “Five kinds of cyber deterrence.” Philosophy & Technology 31, no. 3 (2018): pg 331–338.
[10] Ibid, pg 337.
[11] Nye J S (2017) Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace. International Security 41: pg 44–71
[12] Wilner A (2011) Deterring the Undeterrable: Coercion, Denial, and Delegitimization in Counterterrorism. The Journal of Strategic Studies 34: pg 3–37
[13] Triezenberg B L (2017) Deterring Space War — An Exploratory Analysis Incorporating Prospect Theory into a Game Theoretic Model of Space Warfare. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica
[14] Mazarr, Michael J., Jonathan Blake, Abigail Casey, Tim McDonald, Stephanie Pezard, and Michael Spirtas. Understanding the Emerging Era of International Competition: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives. RAND Corporation Santa Monica United States, 2018.
[15] Paul T V (2018) Reimagining Deterrence: New Security Threats and Challenges to the Deterrence Paradigm. In: Wasser et al. (eds) Comprehensive Deterrence Forum. RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, 31–36
[16] De Spiegeleire S, Holynska K, Batoh Y, Sweijs T (2020) Reimagining Deterrence: Towards Strategic (Dis)Suasion Design. The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies, The Hague.
