Between The Pantomime And The Real Thing

It’s been an impossible tango of polar opposites. Difficult as it may be to conceive of them as a symbiotic pair, the war impulse has mostly gone hand in hand with the desire for peace in India-Pakistan relations. Each imposes a constraint on its opposite, both tendencies sometimes polarise each other further, sometimes even show up surreptitiously in the other camp. Leaders from Nehru onwards have regularly proclaimed in public and in engagements with Pakistani leaders their commitment to good neighbourly relations. Yet, few can ignore the fact that in the past seven decades since they emerged as ind­ependent republics, India and Pakistan have already fought four wars with each other.

It’s an ominous thought that all but one of these have been over Kashmir—the issue not only continues to be hotly contested by the two nuclear-armed states, the present situation in the Valley is fraught with baleful signs. A protracted spell of heightened violence there has bled back, in a way, to the Line of Control. Increasing incidents of skirmishes along the LoC have spiralled things to the next logical level: a regular issuance of belligerent statements. Now, with the air chief asking his men to be in a state of readiness, the signs are una­mbiguous. War is a clear and present danger.

But, more important than the results of a military conflict is perhaps another question. If indeed war does break out, what will be its cost for the belligerents—economically, pol­itically and diplomatically? And how will it affect Indians, Pakistanis and the wider region beyond South Asia?

The Narendra Modi government came to power in May 2014 on the plank of bringing in development, reviving the economy and creating jobs. But equally important was the issue of security. With a tough-talking government coming in, there were promises and expectations that cross-border terrorism from Pakistan will end, or else the recalcitrant other will have to pay a heavy price.

Modi’s decision to think out of the box in inviting Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif and other South Asian leaders to his swearing-in ceremony testified to the salience bilateral ties with neighbours has for India. More than that, it showed that even a hardline BJP-led government would prefer normalised Indo-Pak ties, if managed without forfeiting any advantage.

The situation looks remarkably different now from what the summer of 2014 portended. A fresh source of attrition is a Pakistani military court trying to hang former Indian naval officer Kulbhushan Jadhav as a spy, trying to sabotage infrastructure in Balochistan, and India stoutly rejecting the charge and taking the issue to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. That played out simultaneously with the deadly rat-a-tat along the border, with both armies issuing bristling statements of intent. Officially, Modi’s initial  warmth has been replaced by a tense silence and disengagement.

A general tone of pugnacity is normal between the two sides. But this time, though opinion among experts is mixed, many of them no longer rule out the possibility of an armed engagement. What could be the course of events from here on?

“All wars and military crises between India and Pakistan have seen external interventions, diplomatic or otherwise. That will be true of the next one too,” says C. Raja Mohan, director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Delhi. Two factors have changed, he says. “One is India’s self-confidence, a sense that it can fend off pot­ential interventions. This is very different from the def­ensiveness of the past, when Delhi was deeply concerned about international pressures on third-party mediation.”

This notion, that India can now hold its ground is based on a second factor—a significant improvement in India’s global standing. “As one of the world’s largest economies with reasonably good relations with the West and expanding ties with the Islamic world, India is confident that it can manage any external pressure,” points out Raja Mohan.

Experts also point to the rising level of confidence in Pakistan. With China’s heavy investment in the country giving a major boost to its economy and stockmarket and India failing to isolate it internationally, Pakistan too feels sanguine that it now has an unbeatable armour, where even a short war with India may turn out to be in its advantage.

Some argue that the nations’ overtly martial stances are an attempt to make the other side blink—so that, if the spell of mil­­itaristic rhetoric subsides and there is a resumption of dia­logue, it will leave them in a stronger bargaining position. “I don’t see the current sabre-rattling leading to a war, if war means a military conflict with the use of land, air and naval forces,” says former Indian foreign secretary Kanwal Sibal.

Sibal presents a long list of provocations from across the border over the years—Pakistan’s support to the insurge­ncy in Kashmir, its barely disguised export of terror to Ind­ian cities and installations, the militant strikes at the army and IAF base in Pathankot and Uri, the beheading of Indian soldiers at the LoC.... The threat to hang Jadhav is the latest addition to that list.

“After Uri, we staged surgical strikes across the LOC, without going too far into the interior, but it was not repeated,” says Sibal. This is despite “Pakistan firing across the LoC as well as the international border” for several months now. So Sibal concludes that “the conflict exists but it has been contained”.

No scenario is foreseeable in the immediate future, he says, where the existing level of conflict will be raised to a point involving troop movement,   where forces will be put on war alert. But this assurance comes with a caveat. “The only scenario in which India could retaliate vigorously would be in the event of a 26/11 type attack. I can’t see Pakistan taking that risk,” adds Sibal.

Despite the confidence Sibal and Raja Mohan show in India’s global clout and its standing vis-a-vis key players like the US, Russia and China, sections in the Indian foreign pol­icy establishment doubt if New Delhi will get the kind of support it got in the past from many of these countries if it were to have another armed conflict with Pakistan.

A recently-retired Indian diplomat argues, alluding to Ind­ian army action across the LoC, that given the nature of the Pakistani army, even “small miscalculations” could lead to events—and such action could actually widen into a war. Omi­nously, he does not rule out Pakistan using tactical nuclear weapons to counter India’s numerical superiority. “Diplomatically, any armed conflict with Pakistan will imp­act India adversely,” he argues.

According to him, in the event of an all-out conflict, both China and the US may act as they did in 1971. “There is no reason to believe they will act differently, given their investments in Pakistan, including in its ‘deep state’, which presumably will be prosecuting the war with India,” he says. It is also important to assess how long Pakistan expects any war with India to last, he adds. If attacked, India may go into war prepared for a long haul—to  Pakistan’s immense disadvantage. Hence, to preclude such an eventuality, the Pak­istan army may use tactical nuclear weapons, or threaten its use, to make sure big powers intervene to stop the war.

The deeply intertwined interests of China and Pakistan means Beijing will come to Islamabad’s aid if it feels cor­ne­red—perhaps not get involved militarily but use its growing diplomatic clout and leverage with the US to stall India. The Donald Trump presidency, already disinterested in any foreign involvement, may limit itself to playing the role of a mediator, trying to bring an end to a war, nudging them to the talks table.

In such a scenario, how Russia responds becomes ext­remely crucial. It had come to India’s aid during past crises, mostly famously during the 1971 war when the US sent its nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India. Will Moscow show the same alacrity now?

Two factors have raised serious questions about that. Russia’s dependence on China has gone up over the years and only gets stronger, offering a contrast to Moscow’s uncertain ties with Washington. Two, despite enjoying a long cordial relation with India and being its major arms supplier, Russia has been losing out to the US and its European partners when it comes to new Indian defence procurements. The fact that it wants to build a meaningful relation with Pakistan, both as a market for its arms and also to help its role against the US in Afghanistan, may lead Russia to be more circumspect in a future Indo-Pak conflict.

According to analyst and military scholar Srinath Raghavan, India-Pakistan tension is unlikely to escalate to a major crisis. He feels both sides are carrying out tit-for-tat actions along the LoC, but are trying to keep it limited. Both sides, he says, are acting with an eye to their domestic audiences. But, he prophesies, the situation could get complicated in the event of another terrorist strike from Pakistan.

Raghavan says that “the Indian government is grappling with the old dilemma: how to engage with Pakistan when it is using terrorism against India”. He argues that India is “currently in the ‘don’t engage’ phase of the relationship. If the past is anything to go by, this will at some point give way to engagement”.

So what do we expect in the coming days? Another war? A derailment of India’s single-track pursuit of development? Hundreds of deaths on both sides of the border? Or will the leadership of the two countries exhibit some finesse and pull back? Maybe even return to dialogue?

In the coming days, Prime Minister Modi and his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, will both be in Astana for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit, where the two countries will both be formally admitted as full members of the regional grouping. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin will also be present. So a goad towards resumption of dialogue too is not unlikely.

“The move towards engagement is usually the result of both external and domestic considerations. The former inc­ludes actions by Pakistan as well as the attitude of other major powers,” says Raghavan.

Despite lusty war-mongers on both sides, the public will surely pray that better sense prevails and, instead of meeting each other on the battleground, the two neighbours try to resolve their long-outstanding issues through dialogue. It would not seem to be the natural, default instinct at present, but it’s obvious that absence of war is not peace by itself, and peace needs to be worked at.

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India-Pakistan: Who stands where

Source: World Bank, IMF, UNDP HDI 2015, NSSO, FAO

1. Total enrolment in primary education, regardless of age, expressed as a percentage of the population of official primary education age
2. A GINI index of 0 represents perfect income equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality
3. Gross Enrolment Ratio can exceed 100% due to the inclusion of over-aged and under-aged students due to early or late school entrance andgrade repetition