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Conventional War in the Presence ofNuclear WeaponsManpreet SethiPublished online: 06 Jun 2009.

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Strategic AnalysisVol. 33, No. 3, May 2009, 415–425

ISSN 0970-0161 print/ISSN 1754-0054 online© 2009 Institute for Defence Studies and AnalysesDOI: 10.1080/09700160902790100http://www.informaworld.com

RSAN0970-01611754-0054Strategic Analysis, Vol. 33, No. 3, February 2009, pp. 0–0Strategic Analysis Conventional War in the Presence of Nuclear WeaponsStrategic AnalysisManpreet Sethi Manpreet Sethi

Abstract: Nuclear weapons cannot obviate wars, but can change its complexion andinfluence the manner of its conduct. In order to keep nuclear weapons from entering intoreal warfare, it is important to intelligently judge an adversary’s nuclear thresholds andto calibrate one’s own conventional strikes. For India, the exploration of this space isparticularly important in order to deny Pakistan a free hand to indulge in sub-conventional conflict even as it holds the threat of an all-out nuclear war against anIndian conventional response. This article examines the Indian experience in this regardon the basis of Kargil, 1999. It concludes that limited war – with precise, clearly articu-lated objectives, calibrated use of military force, and astute use of politico-diplomaticspace – offers scope for conduct of conventional war in the presence of nuclear weapons.

level and kind of attack large enough to be useful, but small enough to be wellbelow the threshold risking . . . nuclear retaliation’ (Albert Wohlstetter, 1964).

To find such a precise manner of applying military force that can be meaningful andyet removed from the risk of escalation to the nuclear level has remained the dilemmafor the execution of conventional war in the presence of nuclear weapons.

Countries with nuclear weapons, it is normally believed, do not go to war with oneanother. Nuclear deterrence is expected to superimpose restraint and curb militaryrisk-taking. The threat of escalation of the conflict to the nuclear level and the fear ofMutual Assured Destruction (MAD) are supposed to cast a constraining influence onthe behaviour of nations. This supposition is derived from the experience of the super-powers during the Cold War and the fact that they avoided every instance of crisis thatcould have brought them into direct conflict with one another. Of course, the nuclearstability at the level of the two rival superpowers contrasted with a more volatilesituation at the lower levels of their allies. This came to be known as the ‘stability-instability paradox’1 and was used to explain the proxy wars that happened betweenthe two ideological blocs even as they steered clear of any direct confrontation withone another.

Consequently, though conventional wars during the Cold War were fought in theshadow of nuclear weapons, they were mostly proxy wars between nations that werethemselves not nuclear, and of the kinds that never really threatened the territorialsecurity or survival of the superpowers. If that was threatened, as in the case of theCuban missile crisis, then it was expected that the breakout of any conventional hos-tility would rapidly escalate to the nuclear level. Given this presumption, the focus thenshifted to the very conduct of nuclear war itself and on issues specific to such warfighting, e.g. the use of tactical nuclear weapons, efficacy of first strike or counter-strike doctrines, calculation of numbers of nuclear weapons to prevail and claim

Manpreet Sethi is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi.

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victory in a nuclear war, etc. Caught in this maze of issues, little attention was paid tothe conduct of conventional war in the presence of nuclear weapons.

In fact, prior to 1999, the only direct conventional war between two nuclear-armedneighbours was the Ussuri river conflict between the USSR and China in 1969. Thisrevealed, to some extent, the limitations on conventional war in the presence ofnuclear weapons. However, it is only post-Kargil that many dimensions of a ‘limitedwar’ of the conventional kind between two nuclear-armed nations of unequal capabil-ities (conventional, nuclear, and of pain infliction and absorption) have been moreclosely studied.2 This interest, in fact, primarily emerged out of the apprehensionsabout the security of the region inhabited by two new nuclear neighbours with a his-tory of wars and a relationship unsettled enough to carry the risk of deterrence break-down due to routine border skirmishes. This regional reality sent analysts intooverdrive after 1998 as they predicted the certainty of a nuclear exchange. The occur-rence of the Kargil conflict within a year of the overt nuclearization of the regionseemed to justify their pessimistic prognostications. None, however, had deliberatedthe possibility of confining a conflict between the two nations to a conventional levelwithout an automatic nuclear escalation. Therefore, the manner in which operationsunfolded during the two months of the Kargil conflict served to be an eye opener formost in Pakistan, India, and beyond.

Ten years after Kargil, a lot more thought has been devoted to the conduct ofconventional war in the presence of nuclear weapons. Given the fragile nature ofIndo-Pak relations on account of Pakistan’s revisionist ambitions, coupled with its useof nuclear deterrence as a defence for its offensive strategy of sub-conventionalconflict,3 the challenge for India’s security rises several fold. In fact, India is requiredto build the credibility of its nuclear deterrence in such a way that it is able to counterthe adversary’s attempt to blur the lines between conventional and nuclear war. WhilePakistan threatens to lower the bar for breakdown of nuclear deterrence, India mustnot only raise the nuclear threshold, but also devise adequate conventional responsesthat can be safely executed in the situation of a nuclear overhang.

How is this possible? How can India respond to sub-conventional warfare withconventional tactics that operate in the presence of nuclear weapons without bringingthem into the calculations? What new rules must be followed? How does the nature ofwarfare change in the presence of nuclear weapons? This article examines these ques-tions in the backdrop of the sub-continent’s experience in Kargil in 1999 and seeks tosuggest some policy options for the future.

Kargil, 1999In May 1999, barely one year after going nuclear, Pakistan infiltrated approximately5,000 of its regular soldiers in the guise of mujahideen across the Line of Control(LoC) separating the Indian and Pakistani controlled regions of Kashmir. Their mis-sion was to seize strategic pieces of territory and then compel the Indian Governmentto negotiate the status of Kashmir. Pakistani leaders, military as well as civilian,believed that their recently demonstrated nuclear capability would deter India fromusing its conventional military superiority against Pakistan even as they pursue a pro-vocative strategy of cross-border terrorism. According to one analyst, ‘Islamabad is con-vinced that the mere threat of approaching the nuclear threshold will prevent India fromseizing the strategic initiative and military dominance of events, permitting Pakistan toescalate the crisis at will without the fear of meaningful Indian retribution’.4 Even

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amidst fighting in Kargil, Pakistan military leaders insisted ‘there is no chance of theKargil conflict leading to a full-fledged war between the two sides’.5 Interestingly,this was similar to the advice given by senior US military officers to PresidentKennedy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. They urged a limited Americanattack on Cuba because the USSR would not dare counter-attack in Germany.Pakistani military counsel too was based on the belief that nuclear deterrence affordedit near-assured immunity, and the predominant view was that ‘The Indians cannotafford to extend the war to other areas in Kashmir, leave aside launching an attackacross international boundaries [because of the] risk of nuclear conflagration’.6

This assumption was based on the Pakistani projection of a carefully cultivatednuclear strategy that escalation to the nuclear level was inevitable if India were tolaunch a major conventional attack. By suggesting this linkage, the army was sure itcould continue its proxy war to raise the military and economic costs for India withoutendangering its own security. In Western literature, this has been described as the‘risk maximizing approach’ that relies on the enemy’s fear that pressure exerted fromhis side could ‘provoke a viscerally violent response rather than a rationally restrainedone’.7 By suggesting a low nuclear threshold, Pakistan has banked on uncertainty orirrationality about its actions as a means to impose deterrence.

Pakistan’s plan in Kargil was premised on this logic that India would find itsmilitary options checkmated by the presence of a nuclear overhang and would becompelled to negotiate despite facing the prospect of losing a slice of its territory.Also, given that ever since May 1998, an anxious United States had consistentlydescribed South Asia as a dangerous nuclear flashpoint, Pakistan surmised that Wash-ington would immediately intervene to resolve the crisis and formalize a new statusquo in Kashmir. This internationalization, it was naturally believed, would work inPakistan’s favour and hand it a military victory. The Pakistan Army was convinced ofthe ‘brilliance of [its] military strategy’.8

However, things did not go exactly according to Pakistani plans. India’s response,hesitant in the first two weeks while the military still believed that the action in thearea was by unusually well-armed irregulars and terrorists, became far more resoluteas soon as greater clarity about the ground situation emerged. The army and the airforce coordinated their actions with a clear objective of dislodging the Pakistaniforces. But the political leadership imposed on them the constraint of confining theirmilitary operations to the Indian side of the LoC. While this imposition came with itsoperational challenges and a higher rate of military casualties, it did widen ‘thefirebreak between the Indian conventional military action and the Pakistani nucleartripwire’.9

Meanwhile, two factors worked in India’s favour. Firstly, having already claimedthat the intruders were not really its own troops but independent mujahideen, Islamabadcould not provide its troops with any reinforcements to fight the Indian military offen-sive that came in the form of infantry, artillery, as well as air attacks. Secondly, oncethe international community knew of the subterfuge, Pakistan was established as theaggressor and was pressured, even by its traditional friends Washington and Beijing,to withdraw from the occupied heights. In fact, the United States, which in previousIndo-Pak wars had shied away from assigning blame to a particular party for the cri-sis, squarely condemned Pakistan’s incursions and intentions across the LoC. Chinatoo counselled the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to abandon the venture. A moresympathetic response from its allies might have emboldened Pakistan to carry on. Butfaced with diplomatic isolation, escalating casualties, and economic losses, Sharif was

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compelled to reconsider continuing military operations, even in the face of advice tothe contrary by his own military commanders.10

The conflict ended in July 1999, roughly two months after it began, as an ill-thought out misadventure by Pakistan. However, it illustrated the limits that nuclearweapons cast on actions of nations. Pakistan realized that the acquisition of nuclearweapons had not provided it with a carte blanche on disruptive actions across the bor-der. Rather, it placed clear limits on how far it could, or should go, so as not to breachthe limits of Indian tolerance. There can be no denying that the presence of nuclearweapons certainly raises the threshold of provocation, and therefore Pakistan is ableto exploit far greater space at the lower level of conflict to indulge in acts to destabi-lize India. Yet there is a threshold that must not be breached, and sensing that,Pakistan found it prudent to abandon action in response to Indian eviction operationsin 1999. Meanwhile, India too felt the weight of nuclear weapons and exercised cau-tion on its possible courses of action. Nevertheless, it also discovered and displayedscope for retaliatory military action that had to be intelligently exploited and astutelymeshed with politico-diplomatic measures. The entire episode, in fact, brought outseveral lessons for the major assumptions that underlie Pakistan’s nuclear strategy,India’s options, and overall conduct of war in the presence of nuclear weapons.

Limited war: new forms, new dimensionsIn January 2000, the then Defence Minister of India, George Fernandes, proclaimeda doctrine of limited conventional war under nuclear conditions, thereby signallingthat there was room for India to conduct a military riposte against Pakistan’s sub-conventional conflict. He said, ‘Nuclear weapons did not make war obsolete; theysimply imposed another dimension on the way warfare was conducted . . . conven-tional war remained feasible, though with definite limitations, if escalation across thenuclear threshold was to be avoided.’11

The same thought had been echoed in the early 1990s by Martin van Creveld, awell known analyst on war: ‘From central Europe to Kashmir, and from the MiddleEast to Korea, nuclear weapons are making it impossible for large sovereign territo-rial units, or states to fight each other in earnest without running the risk of mutualsuicide.’12 Of course, a number of factors other than nuclear weapons are alsoresponsible for changing the nature of warfare from total to limited wars in contem-porary times.13 The most important limitation on war where adversaries possessnuclear weapons is cast by the presence and impact of these weapons. Their shadowimposes constraints on the range of military options and the nature of coercive useof force that nations can indulge in. It demands greater caution so as to avoid poten-tial cost of miscalculation. Leaders of nuclear-armed nations must be constantlyaware of the risks involved, especially in the show of force. While the desire to winthe dispute requires a demonstration of resolve and a willingness to fight, anyunrestrained coercive manoeuvring could, however, end up committing countries toa war neither of them wanted in the first place and whose results could becatastrophic for both. For instance, despite the widely expressed civilian and militaryopinion to strike against Pakistan once the identity of the mujahideen as regularPakistani soldiers was established beyond doubt, the Indian political leaders stillimposed upon the military to undertake operations in such a way that the threat ofescalation was minimized. Therefore, in an unprecedented gesture, the use of airpower was limited to the Indian side of the LoC. No strikes were authorized across

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the border, not even at the terrorist infrastructure known to exist in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).

This decision was in stark contrast to the Indian response to Pakistan’s OperationGibraltar in 1965 when General Ayub Khan’s military regime sent Pakistani regularforces disguised as Kashmiri dissidents into the region. This operation too was prem-ised on the belief that India would not have the stomach to spread the conflict beyondthe disputed territory, thus enabling Pakistan to succeed in its revisionist plans ofterritorial occupation. At the time, India, despite its weak military position so soonafter its defeat by China in 1962, had not hesitated to extend the conflict beyond theinternational boundary.

The case with Kargil was just the opposite. Despite its position of conventionalsuperiority, India imposed limits on its own ability to wage war. This proved to be asmuch a revelation to Pakistan as to the larger international community that haddescribed this region as the most dangerous flashpoint. The sense of responsibilityand maturity displayed by India helped shape a range of perceptions across severalcapitals.

Kargil highlighted the criticality of the politico-diplomatic dimension of limitedwars in a situation of nuclear overhang. Even as the Indian military moved on theground to oust the infiltrators, attempts were simultaneously mounted to diplomaticallyisolate Pakistan and expose its offensive designs to alter the status of the LoC. In fact,Kargil, for the first time, made India reap the benefit of ‘internationalization’ of theKashmir issue, a ploy often used by Pakistan and desisted by India. In this instance, USintervention sought by Pakistan turned to India’s advantage for two reasons. Firstly, asthe Indian Army routed enemy forces and moved closer to the LoC, the risk of exten-sion of war increased and New Delhi was willing to accept US intervention to controlPakistan. Secondly, following the show of Indian maturity and self-control in handlinga provocative situation, the US perception of India and its nuclear status underwent achange. This enabled the blossoming of a strategic relationship that was far moreunderstanding of the Indian security environment and its compulsions. Therefore, theUnited States, who earlier never tired of straitjacketing its nuclear policies into thesame mould for India and Pakistan, is today willing to treat the two differently.

For the future too, India needs to understand the role of external players in a bilateralrelationship between two nuclear-armed neighbours. An adept use of growing Indianinfluence with the United States could certainly help to keep Pakistan from playing thegame of nuclear brinkmanship. This is not to suggest that India should depend on theUnited States or other states to deal with its security concerns vis à vis Pakistan. But tohighlight that in the Indo-Pakistan relationship, especially in the presence of nuclearweapons, the role of external powers would be greater given their own apprehensions ofnuclear use that could break the existing norm of non-use which would have widerimplications for international security. India can exploit this to its own advantage.

Yet another important dimension of limited war is that it can only have limitedobjectives and, therefore, does not have the ability to resolve problems forever. Themost it can hope to achieve is to restore and reinforce the status quo because the threatof escalation would prevent the enforcement of a permanent solution unless it is accept-able to both sides. In fact, for this reason, it may be said that in the presence of nuclearweapons, Pakistan can never hope to militarily resolve the issue of Kashmir with India.It will have to ultimately find a political solution. It is a different matter, though,whether Pakistan is really interested in resolving the issue of Kashmir or whether itonly uses this to further its military strategy of bleeding India through proxy war.

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Limited war: operational issuesGiven that the nature of limited conventional war is different, it is natural that itsoperational conduct must also follow a different set of rules. At one level, nuclearweapons mean the end of classical conventional war of the kind envisaging acquisitionof large swathes of territory, or a blitzkrieg effort to cause high military attrition. Anysuch measure is certain to breach the threshold of an adversary’s levels of tolerance,especially one with weaker conventional capabilities, thereby increasing its depend-ence on use of nuclear weapons. Therefore, if nuclear deterrence is to be maintained,the war needs to be fought differently at the conventional level, so that the risk ofescalation to the nuclear level is minimized.

It may be said with some certainty that for a rational and reasonable leadership,the use of nuclear weapons can only be a measure of last resort, taken only when thesurvival of the state is at stake. If that is so, then it follows that as long as conventionalwar does not pose a threat to state survival, it would not breach the nation’s nuclearthreshold. But if state survival were at risk, then even the threat of a massive nuclearretaliation may not prove an effective enough deterrent. An illustration of this is foundin the Chinese behaviour in the Korean conflict in early 1950, when despite beingnon-nuclear, China was not deterred by the threat of American nuclear use when itperceived that General MacArthur’s offensive towards the Yalu River threatenedManchuria, and hence the security of the Chinese state. Disregarding the blatantAmerican threat, Beijing entered the war. However, the same China was deterred in1953 when the issue at stake was the unification of Korea and not a threat to its exist-ence as a state. Drawing a lesson from this, it may be concluded that any conflict withPakistan must be conducted with a clear limited objective of not threatening its funda-mental existence or survival as a nation-state.

An assessment of Pakistan’s red lines, therefore, becomes critical. In 2002, Gen-eral Khalid Kidwai of the Strategic Plans Division, the organization in charge ofPakistan’s strategic assets and policy, had spelt out four generic thresholds forPakistan.14 These were: loss of large parts of territory; destruction of a large part ofland or air forces; large-scale economic strangulation; and large-scale internal subver-sion or political destabilization. Evidently, the broad areas covered by this articulation(made only that one instance) are clearly meant to indicate a low nuclear threshold forPakistan’s nuclear use. However, it is imperative that the Indian national securityestablishment draws up its own estimation of the credibility of these thresholds. Forinstance, on the space threshold, it can be determined that Pakistan could bear adeeper penetration by India into the barren desert areas than a similar depth in thepopulated areas of Punjab. Similarly, air strikes against terrorist infrastructure andassets in PoK are likely to evoke less response than targeting military assets elsewherein Pakistan.

Such assessments are necessary in the case of every threshold if India is not to beself-deterred from undertaking punitive action against provocative conduct of sub-conventional war by Pakistan. In this regard, the views offered by Abdul Sattar, AghaShahi, and Zulfikar Ali Khan in an article in October 1999 appear far more credible.In their essay ‘Securing Nuclear Peace’, they argued that Pakistan would be forced toconsider nuclear use in case of ‘national contingencies’ which would arise if Indiathreatened the existence of the Pakistani state by ‘(1) inflicting a major defeat on thePakistani military; or (2) occupying or threatening to occupy Pakistan’s vital urban,population, economic centres or communication nodes’.15 Except for these, other

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‘local contingencies’ could be met with conventional means. General Karamat tooexpressed a similar viewpoint when he stated that Pakistan’s ‘nuclear and missileforces will respond to a nuclear or missile attack, or for a response if aggressionthreatens survival, that is in extremis as a last resort’.16 If that is so, and it does appearmost logical, then the trick for India lies in creating only ‘local’ and not ‘national’contingencies.

This could be attained through a restrained, calibrated use of force instead of anall-out employment of military capabilities. Normally, militaries do not welcome con-straints on the use of their resources. For them, the achievement of victory in war isthe final and singular objective and the entire military might is meant to be effectivelyused as a tool in the pursuit of this goal. However, if an all-out war was to be foughtwith nuclear weapons, then victory at the cost of losing a nation, or even a part of it,would turn out to be self-defeating. Therefore, the very definition of victory anddefeat changes. In an all-out conventional war, the difference between the victor andthe vanquished is clear, based on the evidence of which side has suffered greaterlosses and damage. But in limited conventional wars fought in the presence of nuclearweapons, this distinction is blurred. As explained by Jasjit Singh, ‘as war starts tomove down the intensity spectrum, victory and defeat shift more into political andpsychological dimensions’.17 Indeed, considerations such as perceptions and publicmood (created by the ubiquitous media), economic costs, and diplomatic pressuresdetermine the victor and loser in such warfare, which might be very different frompurely military results.

As far as actual military operations in such a war are concerned, the followingcaveats must be honoured:

(a) Maintaining control over escalation and de-escalation. In such a war, itwould be prudent to place the onus of escalation on the adversary while retain-ing the initiative with oneself. This may be enabled through the effective utili-zation of those arms of the military that offer the maximum possibility ofhighly calibrated escalation and, even more importantly, the ability tode-escalate. Therefore, use of such instruments as special forces (speciallyraised and trained for the purpose), or air power, or even maritime power withthe requisite capabilities would be preferred options because they enjoy, invarying measure, the advantage of flexibility of employment, calibrated con-trol over military engagement, and hence over escalation. Air power providesobvious benefits in this regard while land forces have little advantage interms of escalation control. Once engaged in combat, the army cannot bedisengaged unless one side either concedes defeat or a ceasefire is agreedupon. The use of air power demonstrates resolve while simultaneously offer-ing flexibility of disengagement, thereby facilitating retention of control.Therefore, for the effective, precise application of force, it is necessary thatobjective analysis be made of the advantages and limitations of every servicein different scenarios. Such issues need to be adequately considered anddeliberated upon in peacetime in order to provide rapid and ready optionsduring a period of crisis.

(b) Crafting options for military action. In order to keep below the adversary’snuclear threshold, military strikes must be tailored to undertake short,shallow strikes/thrusts into adversary territory in areas that would make a dif-ference. In fact, the military strikes would either need to be restricted in depth

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into enemy territory and spread over a wider geographical expanse, or limitedin geographical scope as deeper but narrow thrusts into adversary territory.Speed is also of the essence. The April 2004 Cold Start doctrine of the IndianArmy proposes some fresh military options to address these issues. Drawingupon the Warsaw Pact strategy of ‘swift advance [with] the ability to attackfrom a standing start’,18 the basic idea of Cold Start is to have a ready, mobilelethal force (eight integrated battle groups) with integral logistics capable ofmounting an offensive, with air cover. The idea behind this plan is to avoid along preparation time to advance quickly into enemy territory for shallowpenetration attacks so as to present him with ‘impossibly difficult choices atevery turn’.19 This would place the onus of escalation of hostilities on theadversary while retaining India’s upper hand in both conventional and nuc-lear exchange.

(c) Clear articulation of political and military objectives. A limited conventionalwar has specific objectives. In fact, Henry Kissinger had once aptly describedsuch a war as an ‘attempt to affect the opponent’s will, not to crush it’.20

Premised on certain precise goals, the exact objectives of the war must beclearly articulated for the adversary and the domestic audience. This wouldserve two essential purposes: one, it provides a clear indication to the adver-sary that the goals of the operation are strictly limited, and hence there is nointention to breach, or even reach anywhere near, its stated or perceivedthresholds of tolerance. This obviously reduces potential for miscalculationsand misperceptions. Two, it would enable better management of domesticexpectations, thereby providing the much-needed legitimacy and support forthe operations. In a democracy, it is imperative that the popular mood sup-ports the ‘action’ and this can go a long way in earning international supportand legitimacy too.

(d) Display of political resolve. Along with military preparedness, it is critical toshowcase firm political resolve and determination to achieve the articulatedobjectives. In fact, display of military preparedness in the absence of politicalresolve sends wrong signals to the adversary, thereby degrading deterrence atevery level. Therefore, the politico-military action must together exhibitenough decisiveness from the beginning of the action when conventionaloperations are still at lower levels so that a miscalculation of resolve by theadversary does not tempt him to take escalatory actions. If that happens, thenescalation would be far quicker, and more difficult to control. For example, inthe case of the Ussuri river conflict, the Soviets put up with minor skirmishesof the Chinese during 1959–1969. But the surprise major Chinese attack onChen Piao Island evoked a strong Soviet counter-attack causing considerableChinese casualties. This was quickly followed up by the threat of use ofnuclear weapons against China. This show of resolve helped to de-escalatethe situation far more easily than if the Soviets had shown themselves to beless decisive at an early stage.

(e) Identification of thrust areas of modernization. The presence of nuclear weap-ons makes it all the more necessary to have strong conventional capability sothat nuclear defence ‘becomes the last and not the only recourse’.21 But giventhe nature of military strikes that can best be carried out in the presence ofnuclear weapons, it becomes imperative that India must consistently build upits conventional capability that is best suited to cater for such operations.

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Therefore, the thrust areas for modernization must include reconnaissance,surveillance, and intelligence capabilities that can enable precise targetacquisition and attack, as well as air attack capabilities with precision guid-ance in order to minimize the risk of collateral damage. This would not onlyreduce chances of escalation but also garner greater acceptance from majorpowers that could then be counted upon to bear down upon the adversary tosee reason and temper its responses accordingly.

(f) Maintenance of high nuclear threshold. It is imperative that India continu-ously works at enhancing the credibility of its nuclear deterrence. Thisdemands moving towards a survivable counter-strike capability. Given itsNo First Use posture, India has to increase the survivability of not just thewarhead or the delivery vehicle but also the entire command and controlstructure, communication networks, and above all ensure the survival of thepolitical will to retaliate. Survival of the weapon would mean little if thepolitical leadership is not adequately prepared to understand the demands ofnuclear deterrence. Also, it must be appreciated that political will in ademocracy depends a great deal on the perceived legitimacy of action.National will arises from, and can be built by, articulating and encouraginga clear understanding of national interest and policy options to pursue them.These are challenging issues and must be accorded the attention theydeserve.

ConclusionIt is obvious that nuclear weapons cannot obviate wars. However, they do changeits complexion and influence the manner of its conduct. In fact, in order to keepnuclear weapons from entering into real warfare, it is important to intelligentlyjudge the thresholds and calibrate conventional strikes. For India, the explorationof this space is particularly important in order to deny Pakistan a free hand toindulge in sub-conventional conflict even as it holds the threat of an all-out nuc-lear war if India was to respond with a conventional strike. Describing the secur-ity challenges faced by India, Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee had said in2005, ‘Few other countries in the world face the full spectrum of threats to theirsecurity as India does, from low intensity conflicts to an unfriendly nuclearizedneighbourhood.’

In such a situation, the important challenge for the country is to manage the riskof conventional conflict so that it does not graduate into an unwanted nuclearexchange. Even though theoretically any conventional war could escalate to thenuclear level, if India were to be self-deterred by this thought it would mean com-plete erosion of both its conventional and nuclear deterrence capabilities. The con-duct of limited war – with precise, clearly articulated objectives, calibrated use ofmilitary force, and astute use of politico-diplomatic space – offers an alternativeform of conventional war in the presence of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, in orderto minimize any risk of escalation, India must on the one hand keep the use of itscoercive force well below the assumed red lines of the adversary, and on the otherillustrate its ability to handle the adversary’s nuclear use by retaliating withenough capability and resolve to inflict damage that would impose a cost far bey-ond the value of the stake that made the first use of nuclear weapons against Indiathinkable.

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Notes1. First articulated by Liddell Hart in 1954, the concept was further fleshed out by Glenn Snyder

in 1965 in the wake of the Cuban missile crisis in ‘The Balance of Power and the Balance ofTerror’, in Paul Seabury (ed.), The Balance of Power, Chandler, San Francisco, 1965,pp. 185–201.

2. The issue of inequality of nations is interesting because much of the Cold War literature waspredicated on both sides being roughly comparable in nuclear war fighting capabilities. Thisprompted analysts such as Herman Kahn to identify not less than 44 steps in the escalationladder. He opined that both sides could exchange blows of equal intensity at each step of theladder as they steadily climbed up to higher levels of destruction. This situation obviously doesnot apply to India and Pakistan.

3. Pakistan’s strategy of fomenting cross-border terrorism has been variously described as ‘proxywar’, ‘asymmetric warfare’, or ‘low intensity conflict’. While these are co-terminus, this article,however, uses ‘sub-conventional conflict’ because the author considers this term bestdescribes the gravity of the activity. It is a kind of warfare that uses asymmetric means andproxy players, but is certainly not low intensity given the number of casualties it has caused tothe Indian armed forces. Yet, it is pitched below the level of regular, conventional warfare andhence is sub-conventional. By the same logic, India’s ‘limited war’ is above sub-conventionalconflict, but still below conventional warfare. Some arguments expressed in this article on thelinkages between sub-conventional and nuclear warfare draw upon the chapter ‘The ShadowDance’ written by the author for her forthcoming book Nuclear Strategy: India’s MarchTowards Credible Deterrence, Knowledge World, New Delhi (forthcoming).

4. Yossef Bodansky, Pakistan’s Nuclear Brinkmanship, Freeman Centre for Strategic Studies,Israel, at http://www.freeman.org.

5. Ihtasham ul Haque, ‘Peace Linked to Kashmir Solution’, Dawn Weekly Wire Service, June 26,1999. As cited in Peter Lavoy, Scott Sagan, and J. Wirtz (eds.), Planning the Unthinkable,Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2000, pp. 248–249. The section on Kargil, 1999 is arevised version of the author’s earlier published paper entitled ‘Nuclear Deterrence and Con-ventional War: A Test of India’s Nuclear Strategy’, Air Power Journal, 3(3), Monsoon 2008,pp. 99–118.

6. Quoted in Zahid Hussain, ‘On the Brink’, Newsline, June 1999, pp. 24–25. It is a differ-ent matter that in 2007, Lieutenant General (Retd.) Asad Durrani admitted at an interna-tional conference that despite having nuclear weapons in 1999, Pakistan withdrew fromKargil because in crisis ‘countries are self deterred because caution and fear of conse-quences take over’. As quoted in Bharat Karnad, India’s Nuclear Policy, Pentagon Press,New Delhi, 2008, p. 131.

7. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Oxford University Press, London, 1960. For moreon Pakistan’s nuclear strategy see Manpreet Sethi, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Doctrine and Strategy’,Air Power Journal, 2(3), Monsoon 2007.

8. These are the words of Benazir Bhutto who has stated that the Army had shared the planwith her when she was Prime Minister, but that she had vetoed it even though she hadsensed that the army chief was taken in with the ‘brilliance of military strategy’. SeeSamina Ahmed, ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Kargil Crisis’, in Lowell Dittmer (ed.), SouthAsia’s Nuclear Security Dilemma: India, Pakistan and China, East Gate, London, 2005,pp. 137–149.

9. Bharat Karnad, n. 6, p. 110.10. There has been a war of words between Pakistan’s political and military leadership of the time,

with each blaming the other for the Kargil debacle. General Musharraf has never tired ofrecounting the ‘political mishandling’ of the situation and their attempts to ‘spin the events dis-ingenuously’. See Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, Free Press, New York,2006, pp. 95–98. On the other hand, Nawaz Sharif has maintained that he was never briefed onthe military operations in Kargil.

11. George Fernandes, ‘The Challenges of Limited War: Parameters and Options’, inauguraladdress at the National Seminar organized by IDSA, January 5, 2000.

12. Marin van Creveld, On Future War, Brassey’s, London, 1991, p. 194. (emphasis added).13. For a detailed analysis of the many factors that are leading the trend to limited wars,

see Jasjit Singh, ‘The Dynamics of Limited War’, Strategic Analysis, 24(7), 2000,pp. 1205–1220.

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14. These were stated in an interview to Paulo Cotta Ramusino and M. Martinelli, Nuclear Safety,Nuclear Stability and Nuclear Strategy in Pakistan, report by Landau Network, Centro Volta,January 21, 2002.

15. As cited by Gaurav Kampani, Placing the Indo-Pakistani Standoff in Perspective, MonterreyInstitute of International Studies, California, 2002.

16. Jehangir Karamat, ‘Missile Acquisition by Pakistan: Military Strategic Imperatives’, SouthAsian Survey, 11(2), 2004, pp. 169–176.

17. Jasjit Singh, n. 13. The 2007 Israel–Lebanon war presents a good illustration of this point.18. Bharat Karnad, n. 6, p. 115.19. Ibid., p. 126.20. G.V. Vaidyanatha, ‘Conventional War in the Nuclear Age’, at http://www.members.

tripod.com/jnu-matrix/conv-war.html (emphasis added).21. Henry Kissinger, ‘Limited War: Nuclear or Conventional? A Reappraisal’, in Donald G.

Brennan (ed.), Arms Control, Disarmament and National Security, George Braziller, Inc.,New York, 1961, p. 146. Italics in original.

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