How to Deal with the Next Uri -- or Mumbai

The latest Pakistani terrorist outrage in Uri has led to a predictable debate about why and how India should react.  I am a bit tired of this debate because it has been clear for quite a while that India's "strategic restraint" is neither effective nor logical.  But the usual excuse of lack of preparedness, a nice football that the military and politicians keep kicking to each other endlessly, is also frustrating.  So here are a few thoughts, not so much on how to respond to the current crisis, but the next one.  I suspect we will be as unprepared the next time as we were this time, and that's enormously frustrating.  But this is all that academics can do: at the least, no one (politician, bureaucrat or military officer) will be able to say later that they didn't receive any advice! This was published by ORFOnline two days back. 

How to deal with the next Uri -- or Mumbai

These are early days yet, but it is still difficult to overcome the impression that the Indian

system was not fully prepared to meet the Uri contingency. This is unfortunate and

surprising. Considering that Prime Minister Modi has been a strong critic of India’s lack of firm

response to Pakistan’s attacks on previous occasion, one would have thought that the Indian

system would have deliberated and decided on India’s options under various contingencies,

including such a predictable terrorist outrage. But even if India is unable to respond to the Uri

attack, there is still time for the Modi government to recover. Pakistan, after all, is not about

to stop terror attacks against India. Immediate preparation will allow the government to be

ready to respond to a future attack. 

It is possible that India’s civilian leaders, including Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar,

assumed that the military had such plans and they would be made available to the civilian

leaders whenever they were needed. This appears to have been the general approach of

previous governments, as we know from the high-level deliberations after the Mumbai attack.

If so, hopefully the current crisis will disabuse them of such assumptions and demonstrate

that they need to take a much more active role in planning for potential military

contingencies.

The most basic reason for the current state of affairs lies in the peculiar nature of India’s civil-military relations: India’s political leadership has traditionally taken a rather hands-off

approach to what appears, by civil-military consensus, to be issues of purely military

competence. Military operational matters and plans fall in this category, according to this

presumed consensus. The ‘Cold Start’ doctrine (whose actual status is uncertain, even if it has

formally been disavowed) is a good example. It is unclear whether the direction to draft such

a doctrine came from the political leadership or was purely a military decision; or indeed,

whether the political leadership was even aware that such a doctrine existed. It does appear,

to the extent it is possible to gather from the outside, that the doctrine was framed by the

Army with little specifically political input. This is not a point about the efficacy of the Cold Start

doctrine, but about whether the Indian political and military leadership communicate with

each other in some detail about what threats to prepare for, the plans to meet such threats,

the contingencies that might impact these plans, what lacunae exists in fulfilling these plans,

and the political implications of these plans.

The fact that both the IAF and Indian Army chiefs told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after

the Mumbai attacks that they were not ready for war — whatever the reasons — suggest that

these conversations do not take place in the Indian system. Early indicators from the current

crisis indicate that not much has changed. It is not clear whether the Defence Minister’s

Operational Directive, for example, goes beyond bland, generic directions that Indian military

should prepare to deter China and defeat Pakistan.

This is the root of the problem. While actual operational details might have to be framed by

the military, this should be done in consultation with and under the leadership of the political

decision-makers. Such military plans need to be discussed and finalised not under the

pressure of crises but well prior to it. The broad contours of the conditions that might require

India to use its military instrument is not very difficult to fathom: a conventional attack on

India by Pakistan or China, or both in concert; and Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attacks of

varying intensity, from attacks on border posts or bases such as Pathankot or Uri to mass- 

casualty attacks such as the Mumbai attack or, at an even higher level, an attack on the Indian

political leadership. The political leadership needs to be actively involved in the military plans

and preparations to meet each of these contingencies. In a crisis, the political leaders should

not have to task the military to come up with plans, or have to consider generic plans that

might not be suitable for the conditions they face but only have to decide which of the

specific plans that the military had already prepared, equipped and trained for, to implement.

Another fundamental problem that Indian military preparations face is determining the kind

of military equipment and training that India requires to carry out its military objectives.

Indian defence acquisition process has become notorious for its inefficiency, but a larger

problem is deciding what military equipment India should even seek. Currently, this is left to

the military services, who determine their needs based on what the market officers and what

their doctrine and service interests dictate. The requirements are justified as either

replacements for obsolescence or to match what China or Pakistan have. This process

requires some modification to, at least, also reflect what specific Indian plans of the type

above require. For example, a deep infantry assault into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK)

would require heavy-lift helicopters, which India lacks. India only has a couple of Mi-26

helicopters, and the fifteen CH-47 Chinooks it has ordered from the US will be insufficient for

transporting significant number of forces. Other plans might require different capabilities.  The point is that unless specific equipment needs — as well as training — is considered ahead

of time, Indian political leaders will find that they have no appropriate military response plans

when they need them. 

Coordination between the different departments is equally important, and is another serious

lacuna in the Indian system. Even the three Indian military services do not coordinate as they

should. It is difficult to read the published doctrines of the three services and not come to the

conclusion that they are planning to fight three different wars rather than one. It is obvious

that the army and air force, in particular, need to coordinate to carry out any significant

offensive against Pakistan. This means that the two services be tasked to present joint plans

rather an army plan and an air force plan. But this can happen only if the political leadership

insists that the two services present such joint plans, which will take time to develop.

These plans also require coordination with the intelligence services and other departments

such as the Ministry of External Affairs and Home. For example, without such coordination

from higher political levels, intelligence agencies cannot be tasked to produce the

information that is needed to make or operationalise plans. But without political leaders

pushing it, these departments will not coordinate.

The Indian political leadership also needs to get over the fear of nuclear escalation,

assiduously pushed by probably well-meaning analysts and commentators. The idea of a

Pakistani nuclear escalation is to a large extent a strategic myth but a myth that has been

useful for Pakistan because it paralysed India from responding to Pakistan’s attacks.

The idea that Pakistan will reach for its nuclear weapons as soon as Indian forces enter

Pakistan makes no logical sense. If Pakistan does use nuclear weapons, it has to expect that

India will retaliate. Even if India does not let loose with everything in its arsenal — as the

Indian nuclear doctrine implies — it would be a very foolish Pakistani planner who would base

her assessment on the assumption that India would not respond. The expectation of an Indian

nuclear retaliation should suffice to ensure that Pakistan will hold back its nuclear weapons

(unless Indian military ambitions are to undo the Pakistan state, which clearly is not the case).

The important point here is that no proponent of the escalation thesis has so far explained

how Pakistan calculates it will get away with using nuclear weapons. This is the event horizon

at which all analysis stops because the entire focus is on not reaching this point. 

But pushing beyond this point is essential because getting to the point of escalation requires

understanding Pakistan’s calculus beyond this point. To get to this point of escalation

requires assuming that Pakistan has thought beyond this point and has calculated the Indian

response and their counter-response and that it has decided to launch a nuclear attack on the

basis of this calculation. What might Pakistan’s calculations be? That India will not act as its

doctrine suggests and launch a massive retaliation? That India will not retaliate with even a

proportional attack? That India will simply pull its forces back, ignore that it was subjected to

a nuclear strike and normality returns? And unless the Pakistan Army leaders make the

absolutely absurd assumption that India’s response will be non-nuclear, how would they

calculate a positive outcome after their nuclear attack? And if they cannot, why would they go

down the nuclear path in the first place? There is a logic to Pakistan’s nuclear threats. But

there is no logic to a Pakistani nuclear attack.  

The problem is that much of the nuclear escalation argument has been shrouded in

unexamined assumptions about Pakistan’s first use nuclear doctrine, which have conflated first use with early use. Pakistan will use nuclear weapons first if the survival of the Pakistani

state itself is threatened, if Indian conventional forces have destroyed much of Pakistan’s

military and is rushing towards Islamabad. Under similar circumstances, no nuclear power —

including India, despite its No First Use doctrine — will hold back. It would still be first use, but

it would be as a last resort. This would be an understandable escalation, but entirely

irrelevant in the current context because the discussion is about punishing Pakistan, not

eliminating it. 

If India had prepared to respond to Pakistan’s attacks after the Parakram crisis, it might not

have been so helpless at Mumbai. If India had prepared after Mumbai, it could have

responded to Pathankot. India’s choice is simple: prepare now or get back to hand-wringing

when the next attack takes place, as it surely will.