Pahalgam: To War or Not to War is the Question

https://thewire.in/security/to-war-or-not-to-war-indias-military-options-after-pahalgam; https://www.thecitizen.in/opinion/to-war-or-not-to-war-is-the-question-1136345

Twenty years since the Cold Start doctrine was trotted out, there has been no Cold Start-like operation in wake of the dastardly terror attack near Pahalgam, though Cold Start was designed to address just such contingencies.

It is possible that it may have figured in the options the military top brass presented to Raksha Mantri (RM) Rajnath Singh at their two-and-half hours long meeting.

The RM may have taken the options with him for the Cabinet Committee on Security that met soon after. The CCS opted instead for some tame measures to signal intent.

A guard commander at the border retreat parade will not shake hands with his opposite number, while the Indus water flow is to be tapered off, though no meaningful capacity to do so exists.

The time lapse has put paid to Cold Start as an option for a timely retribution for terror acts that go beyond Indian tolerance threshold.

The defence minister has set the Indian threshold of tolerance in the decade since the Uri episode at ‘0’.

Rhetoric boxes Indians into chancing the military option.

Since Pakistan has also had its sitting of its national security committee, it can be reckoned that the Pakistan army is geared up for taking on an Indian Cold Start of any proportion: Cold Start lite or the whole hog.

It has already broadcast its intent, considering diversion of river waters an ‘act of war’ warranting response with ‘full force across the complete spectrum of national power.’ The good part of such belligerence is that it is against a non-existent threat.

With a reflexive offensive ruled out, and Pakistan’s army likely sitting in anticipatory mode, a deliberate offensive at a higher echelon of violence gets ruled in.

A general has advised, ‘revenge is a dish best eaten cold.’

Another general has it that the dish would be cold enough by the time the snows melt along the Line of Control (LC). Pakistan’s rescinding the Simla Agreement temporarily suggests an effort on its part to direct Indian attention to the LC as a prospective scene of the forthcoming action.

The author thinks taking out all launch pads there, while threatening Pakistan’s core national territory, might keep well below the nuclear threshold, an awning that Pakistan would pretend to draw down and wrap around itself at the first shot.

The advice is seemingly apt.

There is just about time for troops to get reacquainted with their hot war objectives and logistics staged forward. It had taken all of three weeks during Operation Parakram, which one chief since assured had been reduced to but a few days thereafter.

The preparation would be necessary now that the Pakistan army is forewarned by no less than Prime Minister going ballistic - in English at that - while kicking off his Bihar election campaign.

Analysts have it that the moment is propitious for a military blow. Pakistan is tottering, finally. A case for ‘ek dhakka aur do’ is being built.

The military-backed government is unpopular. The army chief consigned its most popular politician to jail. Army Chief Asim Munir’s recent diatribe proves that it is wary of terrorism besetting Pakistan.

Externally, with Trump at its helm, there is no love lost between the United States (US) and Pakistan. The Chinese, besides being diverted in a trade war with the US, have lately been cozying up to India, as part of their counter-containment strategy. The war on Gaza has demonstrated that the Muslim world is comatose. Its leading light, the Saudis, are understanding of Indian predicament, witness as they were to Modi’s hurried departure from their shores.

With world opinion behind India, a former Indian army chief opines that it could get away with using the Israeli rationale for its war on Gaza - self-defence. Such advocates miss the disparity between the death toll in the two cases – 7 October and 22 April.

They also betray a misunderstanding of international law, which is permissive of self-defence in the singular case of a real-time response to an armed attack. Both Israel - and earlier the US in Iraq - were afoul of the law.

Internally, the regime has lately landed up with egg on its face, with the Supreme Court’s embarrassing it over the Waqf amendments and over one of its governor’s dilatory antics. And there is the Bihar election, the prospective results of which are open - compelling a Pulwama-like maneuver on part of the regime.

Even so, the military is no doubt already taking surreptitious preparatory steps.

Egged on by media and social media, it might want to retrieve lost ground in public esteem in for allowing the terror attack to go through in first place.

It may want to make for its repositioning of forces to Ladakh from areas south of Pir Panjals, whence likely sprang the terror attack.

It also has to live down the Ladakh intrusions, later partially vacated more by talk than walking the talk.

Its leadership, with ‘deep selection’ as incentive, may well fall in line with regime compulsions.

The political leadership might want an escape valve from pressures on its falling short in Kashmir.

The magnitude of the impending operation being unknown, is - to General Naravane - useful in keeping the enemy on ‘tenterhooks’.

To be fair to the general, his book that promised to be a tell-all was not allowed to be published, else we’d have known why the south of Pir Panjals was denuded and a gap in recruiting numbers – per a general familiar to TV audiences - allowed to be opened.

Instead, tenterhooks will goad the enemy on. He gets time to practice all contingencies. The longer the wait for the revenge dish to cool, the better poised he gets.

No doubt the army has followed Russia’s Ukraine campaign intimately. It knows that getting into a scrap is easier than getting out of the resulting muddle.

It has read its Clausewitz, who had it that defence is the stronger form of war. Taking on an enemy in deliberate defence, as would be the case hereon, would hardly be a repeat of Kargil. China would be on trial as friend, and Turkey and Iran – both avid manufacturers of drones – might not allow India a cake walk.

Finding the going tougher than anticipated, it may be tempted to reinforce failure, with an ‘escalate to deescalate’ rationale. This being also true for the opposite side, it would set up an escalatory tango.

Even success has its underside: witness the rush for Dacca in a departure from the original war aim in 1971.

Both scenarios reduce credibility of the sanguine advice that the nuclear threshold is high enough for a conventional joust below it.

The only thing going for the argument that the nuclear threshold is but a red-herring is that India does not have the ability to provoke such resort by Pakistan.

The army by not taking off already on a Cold Start offensive shows itself as sluggish. Air power is reportedly at its lowest ebb. Taking the war to the seas will only reduce the world’s most significant waterway to a Red Sea-like situation, rapidly losing India friends and sympathy.

Pakistan would not have a third party on hand to bail it out this time round. The onus on de-escalation thereafter will mostly be on the two belligerents, who might find it as difficult a proposition as does Putin in Ukraine.

Asim Munir could turn out a Zelensky. The recently returned Indian military adviser might add that Munir will make up with fanaticism what he patently lacks in professionalism. Munir is not a product of Pakistan’s military mainstream, coming from a seminary background without benefit of conditioning at Kakul.

For its part, the political leadership this side may not be able to get off the bellicose tiger it’s been riding for over a decade.

Consequently, any military contemplation of war places a heavy premium on its professional advisory responsibility at the grand-strategic level.

To be sure, fall in line it must, but let retrospect show it served its political masters well and the nation fully.

It bears reminding wars are not only about the military meeting political aims by delivering on military objectives.

The upcoming war is not only about Pakistan, as one commentator wishfully has it.

The regime will use a war and war’s instrument, the military, for its purposes, that are not necessarily the national interest, traditionally defined.

Politically, a war – more so one that is won – will lead to heightened authoritarianism. There would be no end to Narendra Modi’s narcissism if he were to overtake Indira’s Durga image.

Economically, even if only another face-off, the aftermath will see a greater thrust towards crony capitalism, riding as it already on the creation of a military-industrial complex, betrayed by the distracting argument that the defence sector is leading Indian manufacturing revival.

Socially, war or no war, the communal divide will only deepen. That would be useful when Bengal comes up for elections soon after, for which the pieces are already being marshalled.

Lastly, this heinous act closely resembles the one at Chattisinghpora. Both timed with visits of American dignitaries. The latter had fingerprints of a false-flag operation, while Pakistan – as is its wont - claims Pahalgam is one too.

The laboured communal turn to the Baisaran killings and the benefits – albeit perverse – that accrue to India’s majoritarian extremists suggest a pause.

It would not do to go to a war just because tit-for-tat intelligence operations of the two sides – the train incident in Balochistan and Baisaran – have gone out of control.

A hypothetical war at this stage can only have a communal aim, collapsing the Pakistani Muslim with the Indian Muslim.

It would decisively vindicate Munir’s infamous reiteration of the two-nation theory, coincidentally held by India’s right-wing mothership. Worse, it would set the stage for the One Nation of the latter’s imagining.

Military leadership at the apex level is not about shifting paintings around in the office and renaming sprees.

It is about ability to think one-up: to appreciate political factors and how these impinge on the grand-strategic. They must be able to credibly remind Modi of his own mantra: this is not the time for war.

Can the current-day top brass professionally shoulder a juncture manifestly more fraught than one that confronted Manekshaw in April ’71?