THE INDIA PAKISTAN CONFRONTATION
The Pakistani military strategists rely
on its nuclear arsenal as a main counter-measure against the possible Indian
aggression. On October 19, Foreign Secretary of Pakistan Aizaz Chaudhry
officially confirmed that Islamabad has plans to use low-yield nuclear weapons
to impede advancing Indian troops in case of a military conflict. The Pakistan’s
attitude is a response to a new Indian military doctrine, named “Cold Start”.
New Delhi denies the existence of Cold Start as a concept, attributing the
terminology to off-the-cuff remarks by Indian officers. Nonetheless, India has
been implementing a strategy that has greatly alarmed Pakistan, driving
Islamabad to invest in tactical nuclear weapons and alter its own nuclear
posture.
Indeed, it’s nothing new in a new
Indian military doctrine. New Delhi started to develop it after the conflict
between countries in 2011. After the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian
parliament building in New Delhi by suspected Kashmiri militants, India
launched Operation Parakram which failed. It took India’s strike corps nearly
three weeks to reach the Pakistani border, by which time Pakistan had
effectively mobilized its own defenses. The very same time, international
pressure on India became acute and India was pushed to abandon the plans of
intervention.
Subsequently, the Indian military
has adopted a far more proactive strategy relying on immediate offensive
operations against Pakistan. The offensive will be spearheaded by eight
cohesive operational maneuver groups with significant artillery and immediately
air support. They are deployed close to the Pakistani border at a higher level
of readiness and able to launch operations within 96 hours. The strategy aims
to achieve shallow territorial penetrations in Pakistan — not exceeding 80
kilometers. If this occurs, Islamabad will be in a complicated situation to use
nuclear weapons at own territory amid the knowledge that Indian battle groups
would not aim to advance deeper into Pakistan.
Islamabad is aware of the widening gap
in conventional military capabilities between itself and India and has taken
an asymmetric approach to the new threat, building up and relying on an arsenal
of tactical nuclear weapons, lower yield nuclear weapons designed for direct
use on the battlefield against enemy forces. Pakistan is calculating that
tactical nuclear weapons would essentially counter India’s conventional
military superiority. Although it is a nuclear power, India does not operate or
plan to develop tactical nuclear weapons. So, Pakistan will have an advance. In
turn, this situation is conducting additional risks of a wider escalation into
a strategic nuclear exchange that might include non-military targets such as
cities.
Thus, India has adopted a quick-launch
posture which will be hardly de-escalated by international diplomacy’s
measures. It won’t be enough time for this. In turn, the Pakistani defense
and deterrence capabilities are grounded on a usage of the tactical nuclear
weapons. This is raising the possibility of a full-scale nuclear war on the
South Asia in case of a potential conflict between Pakistan and India.
Furthermore, India’s rapid response
doctrine can be triggered by a terrorist attack as, for instance, the
Lashkar-e-Taiba’s 2008 Mumbai attacks. Considering the fact that India and
Pakistan actively use militant groups against each other, any terror attack
could conduct a full-scale conflict.
Separately, Saudi Arabia is financing a
major part of the Pakistani nuclear program. The Saudi authorities likely
consider the Pakistani asymmetric strategy as a useful approach for themselves.
Considering a low combat potential of the Saudi military forces, tactical
nuclear weapons could become the only security guarantee for the current regime
in Riyadh. At a later stage, the nuclear cooperation between Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan will probably lead to the Riyadh’s attempt to become a nuclear state
without any additional exploration in the sphere.
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