RE-BALANCING TO THE NORTH & INEVITABILITY OF AN INDO-PAK WAR
1. The recent re-balancing of forces by India towards the Northern Borders has been deliberated upon in great detail by Ajai Shukla in his commentary ‘Army’s Pivot to the North’. His opening lines; “The diversion of an Indian strike corps to the border with China is a powerful strategic signal”[1] but to whom is the question which needs to be answered with some equanimity and balance. While the signal to China would be one of belligerence and show our resolve to slug it out and not roll over as it happened in 1962, it is the signal to Pakistan or its flawed interpretation by the Deep State in Pakistan which should ring an alarm bell in the corridors of power. War between the South Asian neighbors has been a recurring theme, and like Clausewitz propounded; while nature of war has remained the same, the character of war will evolve again. The military organization re-articulation where in the Strike Corps at Mathura has now been realigned to Eastern Ladakh will surely affect the character of war between the two putative adversaries.
2. The moot question remains as to how would the two nations deadlocked into throes of conflict, especially when the decision to go to war is made by careless and irrational actors on the other side construe or mis-construe this re-balancing. Given the importance of the question and multitude of answers that may be offered it may be first essential to review the causal sources of conflict. The aim of this paper is to provide not just taxonomy of interpretations of conflict, but also some insight into the umbilical linkages between different factors that may lead to war.
3. There are two prerequisites for a war between rational actors:-
(a) The cost of war cannot be overwhelmingly high, implying that decision makers believe that the anticipated gains from a war in terms of resources, power, glory, territory, and so forth exceed the expected costs of conflict, including expected damages to property and life. Thus, for war to occur with rational actors, at least one of the sides involved has to expect that the gains from the conflict will outweigh the costs incurred. For Pakistan, Kashmir has always been the unfinished business and its recalcitrant stance on the issue has already precipitated three wars with India. The clout Deep State yields in the present political dispensation with a selected Prime Minister at helm may find this as a golden opportunity to exert its writ towards an irrational decision by rational people.
(b) As proffered by Fearon[2] , there has to be a failure in bargaining or negotiations hence an inability to reach a mutually advantageous and enforceable agreement. There can never by an agreeable resolution to the dissonance between India and Pakistan because of the revisionist stance adopted by Pakistan Army which has been the source of Christine Fair’s magnum opus, ‘Fighting to the End[3]’.
4. The Pakistan Army’s stance is perforce Pakistan’s stance too which also remains a staunchly revisionist state that it continues to assert territorial equities in Kashmir and seeks to resist India’s rise in the comity of nations. Pakistan has adopted several strategies to manage its security environment, including ideological tools, the pursuit of strategic depth in Afghanistan, and the use of proxy fighters under its expanding nuclear umbrella. Pakistan continues to pursue these strategies even though they are very unlikely to succeed but has always been careful to ensure that the cauldron doesn’t boil over but is kept simmering. Much of this behavior, however, can be explained by the strategic culture of the Pakistan Army which wishes to avoid a conventional conflict with India. The Pakistan Army controls most levers of power with respect to national security and foreign policy, as well as domestic policies that influence these domains. Moreover, this strategic culture may not endure and is likely to change, as it may be emboldened by the reduction in conventional combat power of India and its belief that the New Concept of War Fighting (NCWF)[4] and the famous Triple R have blunted the Indian Advantage.
5. Pakistan’s security perceptions are deeply entrenched within the army, which has successfully cultivated support among wide swathes of Pakistanis. India’s past efforts to induce Pakistan to be less dangerous have failed principally because Western Powers have relied on inducements that have actually rewarded the country for its reckless behavior and so called support during Global War on Terror. The challenge for the India, therefore, is to devise a suite of strategies which are aimed at Compellence and that can alter Pakistan’s cost-benefit calculus in using non-state actors. This re-balancing however is going to give Pakistan a misplaced sense of symmetry with India in conventional domain and force the decision makers to accentuate their bellicosity and further enhance use of these non-state actors along Line of Control and even on the International Border, willing to call the Indian bluff on launch of conventional operations as a response to sub-conventional terrorist actions. The re-balancing will deny the kinetic vectors to India which are a prerequisite to adopt such compellent strategies and one must accept that Pakistan will become ever more dangerous and ambitious with its goals.
6. Aforementioned causal factor of cost versus benefit may not withstand scrutiny in today’s environment but however the inability to reach a mutually beneficial arrangement is something that has been a proverbial thorn in our flesh when it comes to Pakistan. In the sub continental construct despite the reasons being endogenous, the reasons for failure of negotiations are discussed in succeeding paragraphs.
7. Asymmetric information about potential costs and benefits of war. Despite both countries having stayed on each other’s cross wires for seven decades and more, asymmetries of information persist.
(a) Be it presence of TNWs and the will to use it or even just about the relative probability of different outcomes. It is important to note that imperfect information about the opponent’s resolve or strength is a source of conflict that does not require any violation of common knowledge of rationality. If India had and could credibly demonstrate its strength that would solve the problem. Strength can be revealed peacefully and credibly even at some minor cost as was done in Surgical Strikes and Balakot Strike by IAF, there is a negotiation that could have occurred. Conversely weakness in resolve and capability is presumed unless evidence is presented to the contrary as it may not be the case today with the denuding of combat potential on the Western Borders.
(b) A second information-based reason for a negotiation failure is inconsistent beliefs. For example, Pakistan was convinced or at least some of its protagonists were that OPERATION KOH-E-PAIMA would be to their advantage. Wars would erupt again in case of such misnomers and inconsistency of beliefs is large enough to compensate for the cost of war with weakened military of India.
8. Incentives of leaders/polity differ from those of the populations that they represent. Even when decision makers are fully informed and have perfectly consistent beliefs, conflict may still be rationally chosen when there are differences in preferences between decision-makers and the rest of their country.
(a) A classic case of 1999 OPERATION VIJAY where in The Kargil clique, Gen Pervez Musharraf, the Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Aziz Khan, Commander 10 Corps Lt Gen Mahmud Ahmed, and Commander Force Command Northern Areas (FCNA) Brigadier Javed Hassan hatched a nefarious plan while the politicians were trying to barter peace. This plan was basically premised on the waning combat power of Indian Armed Forces and a sense of bravado amongst the military cabal of Musharraf that even if this conflict expanded spatially it would be able to handle the consequences and manage to achieve their notion of victory.
(b) The process in which a leader comes to power defines the extent to which they represent the population as a whole. According to the selectorate theory in Bueno de Mesquita[5], democratic leaders need a larger coalition to support them relative to non-democratic leaders. Keeping a larger coalition satisfied is more costly and hence losing a war is relatively more costly for democratic leaders, and generally makes them less prone to war, however the corollary may be seen in recent times where war can be seen as the ticket to poll victory and ratcheting up nationalism to be translated to electoral success. An embattled Imran Khan seeking re-election may also fall prey to the prodding of the Deep State which would ratchet up this re-balancing of forces by India as a sign of weakness and complacency.
9. Although both countries are discussed as unitary actors, it is clear that they are composed of many actors with different objectives. As we know from the basics of collective decision making, an organization that is comprised of many agencies and specifically so in the case where the military, the mullahs are also stake holders who may not necessarily act to maximize similar objective functions. Epiphany of contrarian interests can lead to irrational actors exhibiting intransitivity and other inconsistencies in its decision making. Clauswitz meanwhile in his magnum opus “On War” alludes to the reasons for going to war as “instinctive hostility” or “hostile intent”; it is here in the paradigm of “instinctive hostility” lies the inevitability of conflict due to irrationality between the neighbours, with Pakistan tethering it’s national narrative on a three legged stool of religious nationalism, anti-Indianism and existential threat as alluded to by Hussain Haqqani in his book “Military and the Mosque” and further elaborated upon in his most recent articulation; “Re imagining Pakistan”.
10. India and Pakistan interact with each other in ways that are fundamentally different from the way a scientist works with chemicals or formulas or the way an artist works with paints or musical notes. It may thus be fortuitous to conclude that Indo-Pak war in theoretical construct is inevitably a clash of interests. Leaders, each steeped in his or her culture and religion decided upon or allowed violence to become the ultimate arbiter and to escalate with the idea of destroying the opponent. Much of the contest was and remains some personal competition between Indian and Pakistani leaders. Territory, culture, religion, partition, and leaders living worlds apart in their outlooks merged with fundamentalist sub-state movements to create conditions that required cool heads and not the confrontational extremities displayed by leadership. The societal, national and regional issues that Pakistan and India have to resolve are complex and divisive[6].
11. Before I close the argument on India-Pak conflict, it would be inappropriate not to discuss the issue of Sino-Pak collusion, is this not a classic case of indirect approach by PLA where the adversary has been unhinged and unbalanced without even fighting. One wise senior told me it was a classic case of “ Robbing Peter to pay Paul” but in this case both end up being below the poverty line and in debt. How this re-balancing would change the equation on the Northern Borders is a discourse in it self and may be some other time ‘when mind is without fear’ (pun intended).
[1] https://www.ajaishukla.com/2021/01/armys-pivot-to-north.html accessed on 14 Jan 2021.
[2] Fearon, J. (1995). Rationalist explanations for war. International Organization, 49(3), 379–414. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-organization/article/rationalist-explanations-for-war/E3B716A4034C11ECF8CE8732BC2F80DD accessed on 07 Jan 2019.
[3] Shaikh, Farzana. International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-), vol. 91, no. 3, 2015, pp. 665–667., www.jstor.org/stable/24539181. Accessed 15 Jan. 2021.
[4] Meenakshi Sood, “Pakistan’s(Non Nuclear Plan) to Counter India’s Cold Start. Published in The Diplomat (25 Mar 2017) at https://thedipomat.com/2017/03/pakistans-non-nuclear-plan-to-counter-cold-start accessed on 13 August 2020.
[5] Bueno de Mesquita, B., J.D. Morrow, R.M. Siverson and A. Smith : Logic of Political survival, MIT Press. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/gov2126/files/bueno_mesquita_2003_logic.pdf. Accessed on 13 Jan 19.
[6] Vrey, Francois. (2011). Why Nations Go To War/John G. Stoessinger. Scientia Militaria — South African Journal of Military Studies. 38. 10.5787/38–2–96 accessed on 13 Jan 19.
