Nukes, generally, are weapons of last resort, but may well be used much earlier in a conflict due to our incapacity to fight a conventional war. Fearing domination, Pakistan may find itself pressed to go for the big one. Is it what deterrence is all about?
FIVE years ago around this time of the year, both India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests — India, followed by Pakistan. These tests moved both nations from the category of ‘fence-sitters’ to countries with pronounced capability. The summer of 1998, thus, was not just an end to almost ten years of ambiguous nuclear deterrence, but it was also the beginning of a new era of security and strategic planning for the two South Asian nuclear rivals.
The fact, however, is that India and Pakistan now have to step into another phase in which both countries have to evaluate their strategic objectives and layout the force structures and operational and tactical plans regarding the use of nuclear deterrence.
Indeed, part of the explanation for India’s recent interest in talking to Pakistan is to ensure nuclear CBMs and a level of communication that would help India sort out the problem of how to operationalize its nuclear weapons.
Experts are of the view that deterrence cannot be calculated unless weapons become operational, and the nuclear warheads mated with the delivery systems. Without getting into a debate on the worth or risks of keeping nuclear warheads de-mated from the delivery systems, an approach advocated by the international community for South Asia, what is certain is that both countries have to review their nuclear deterrence plans.
As it is, there are a number of factors that make the strategic environment highly unstable such as the lack of communication and signalling between the two neighbours that would allow them not to misinterpret each other’s moves during crisis, the variation in the command and control culture (while it is the political leadership that is dominant in India, it is the military that calls the shots in Pakistan), ambiguity regarding objectives, and absence of a clear doctrine.
While India announced its nuclear doctrine that suffers from huge gaps, Islamabad has not announced a doctrine at all. Thus, one is left to observe the moves made by both sides to interpret where is this development leading to. For instance, India’s aim to develop a nuclear triad with weapons being developed for the three services is an indicator that New Delhi is considering a more potent role for itself as a nuclear weapons state that could deal with a larger China and a smaller Pakistan. Pakistan, on the other hand, remains primarily focused on India.
Hence, it is not surprising that unlike India, Pakistan’s goal is to develop and maintain a leaner, but meaner force structure to support its peculiar concept of deterrence that, in turn, draws heavily upon the geographical proximity factor.
Given Islamabad’s serious resource constraints and limited ambitions, the general understanding amongst the strategic community is that Pakistan must ensure its capacity for ‘counter-value’ targeting, meaning the ability to take out India’s population centres.
Furthermore, the understanding is that the Indian leadership would not be able to take the political decision to launch a conventional attack against Pakistan as long as it was worried about its neighbour’s capacity to drop nuclear weapons on two or three of its major population centres. The carnage that would occur would be phenomenal, and this is exactly that would work as a deterrent.
Besides, the presence, or interest of the international community in warding off the threat of conflict escalation, is part of the nuclear equation in the region. Both countries bank upon international intervention during conflict. This not only explains Pakistan’s approach towards nuclear deterrence, but also its behaviour during the Kargil crisis and the military standoff in 2001-02.
If one were to subscribe to the notion that Pakistan Army’s objectives in launching the operation was purely military, especially to raise tension in Kashmir to a level that would force India to consider negotiating a solution, the nuclear deterrence approach that flows out from this is that Islamabad eventually wanted to keep tension at a manageable level through using the nuclear umbrella. The assumption was that India would never muster enough will to pull the trigger.
According to Lt-General (retd) Kamal Matinuddin, who had spoken to General Pervez Musharraf after the Kargil crisis, the latter believed that had it not been for the hawkish element in the Indian government, New Delhi would have invited Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to India to sign some sort of an agreement on Kashmir.
The assumption was that even if India was to escalate tension, the threat of a conflict resulting in a nuclear exchange would force the international community to intervene. The world, it was hoped, would force India, instead of Pakistan, to back down and accept Islamabad’s demand to negotiate a resolution of the Kashmir issue.
Experts would term this plan Pakistan’s bid at ‘salami slicing’ whereby it wanted to solve a bigger issue through making some tactical moves. While one would challenge the efficacy of this approach, it clearly exhibited the army high command’s appreciation of a belligerent reaction from India such as the early deployment of the Indian Air Force in the conflict.
Moreover, the ground had not been sufficiently prepared to cater to New Delhi’s military and diplomatic onslaught that eventually forced Pakistan to step down the escalation ladder by withdrawing its forces that were a mix of Pakistan Army regulars and Mujahideen.
A similar strategy could be observed even during the force mobilization between the two countries that started in December, 2001. The continued support to the militants in Kashmir, despite mobilization on the borders, was considered a possibility by the high command. The expectation was that the presence of nuclear deterrence would not allow India to initiate a conflict.
This perception was encapsulated quite succinctly by the Commandant of the National Defence College, Lt-General Javed Hassan, during a talk in Washington. According to him, Pakistan would not take any military action, but force India to escalate to a point where Islamabad could justify the use of its nuclear weapons in its protection.
Tension during force mobilization represents another scenario in which it is India, rather than Pakistan, that may be forced to become an aggressor. Aggression by the adversary, it is believed, would justify any extreme response that Islamabad might decide to take. In this case, Pakistan would have to prove to be extremely vigilant in its defence in order to prove to the adversary that hurting Islamabad would have serious consequences.
It was in this context that the PAF responded sharply to the air space incursion by India on June 7 last year, when a remotely-piloted vehicle (RPV) was shot down near Lahore by an F-16.
What the military command also understood after Kargil was that India might underestimate Islamabad’s will to secure its territorial integrity and decide to withdraw in the face of mounting military pressure and diplomatic arm-twisting by the international community. While Pakistan might opt for compromising on political issues, it may not do the same if its territorial security was impinged upon.
The air chief very aptly explained the difference between Kargil and the post-December escalation when he said that while India was justified in protecting its territory during the Kargil crisis, it did not have a similar claim in 2001. Hence, if New Delhi ventured to launch a military operation without a direct provocation by Islamabad, Pakistan’s military would respond by any means possible. This includes using nuclear weapons.
One got a better sense of Islamabad’s nuclear deterrence during the 2001-02 tension, particularly from the interview that the Director-General of the Strategic Plans Directorate (SPD works as the secretariat of Pakistan’s national command authority), Lt-General Kidwai, gave to a couple of Italian experts. He spelt out four scenarios in which nuclear weapons could be launched:
* India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part of its territory (space threshold)
* India destroys a large part either of its land or air forces (military threshold)
* India proceeds to the economic strangling of Pakistan (naval blockade)
* India pushes Pakistan into political destabilization or creates a large-scale internal subversion in Pakistan (domestic destabilization)
What is suggested here is that nuclear weapons, which are considered weapons of last resort, would be used much earlier in a conflict due to the lack of capacity to fight a conventional war. Fearing domination in a conventional war, Pakistan’s option would be to ‘use it or loose it.’
Thus, Pakistan insists upon the first use of nuclear weapons as opposed to India’s no-first-use strategy. Adopting India’s approach would tantamount to loosing the initiative during a conflict. A conventional conflict, it is clearly understood, would be dominated by the adversary. In order to avoid conflict escalation to a degree where India’s dominance of the war theatre would become obvious would be an unfavourable condition that can only be avoided through the threat of the use of nuclear weapons.
During the post-December 2001 military standoff, Pakistan’s deterrence calculation largely depended upon the presence of US forces in the region. Moreover, the understanding seemed to be that the US, in order not to compromise its war against Al-Qaeda forces, would force New Delhi to reduce the pressure on Pakistan and keep tension at a manageable level.
This thinking has had an impact on the design of the nuclear force that mainly comprises land-based missiles or devices delivered by aircraft. In fact, the army has the most prominent role in nuclear operations. Islamabad recently raised a strategic command for the army that would be responsible for operating the various categories of missiles. The Hatf-II (300km), Hatf-III (600km) and Shaheen (Hatf-IV) belong to the category of short-range missiles that are capable of targeting Delhi.
In addition are the longer range Ghauri-I, II and III that have a reported range of about 3,000km. This category of missiles could reach almost any city in India, hence minimizing India’s second-strike capability. Most of these missiles could be launched from transporter-erector-launcher systems that Pakistan is capable of manufacturing indigenously. In fact, the tests of Ghauri conducted at the height of tension in May, 2002, were to convince the other side of Pakistan’s enhanced capability of striking targets deep inside India.
With further developments of land-based systems, Islamabad’s dependence on the PAF, which at one time was considered the mainstay of the nuclear weapons delivery system, would come down. In any case, Pakistan Air Force is believed to have only 93 aircraft that can carry nuclear devices. Interestingly, only 16 of PAF’s top-of-the-line F-16s were available for combat during the entire phase of heightened tension and force mobilization, as the remaining 16 were grounded due to lack of spares!
In any case, with about 353 aircraft comprising different variants of French and Chinese fighters, the PAF has limited combat capability, a situation that is extremely discomforting for the service. However, given the financial resource constraints, the military high command considers it a better option to invest in missiles that require comparatively less financial investment than fighter aircraft, and meet the tactical requirements as well.
According to Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, Dr Maleeha Lodhi, missiles represent a far cheaper option. The cost factor is also one of the explanations for not investing any resources in developing a sea-based capability. Currently, the Navy has hardly any role in nuclear operations of the country.
Pakistan Navy’s top management believes, and rightly so, that the PN is the only option that Islamabad has in terms of a second-strike capability. More importantly, unlike the Pakistani diplomats and army personnel, naval personnel believe that nuclear technology will proliferate in the region. They tend to take more seriously the threat of India developing a sea-based nuclear capability. In case of an escalation of threat, especially at sea, the navy could acquire more prominence in nuclear planning. This would also mean more financial allocation to the PN and weapons acquisitions for the service.
It was in anticipation of a future role that the navy insisted on being assigned a place in nuclear operations, and was formally given a nuclear role in May, 1999. The role, however, is limited to participation in the control of ballistic missile units to be based on naval on-shore, not sea-based, facilities. The future does not appear to be any different.
An added problem with the military’s approach towards deterrence is that it views escalation as a ‘one-rung’ ladder where there is no real space between low-intensity and high-intensity conflict. In fact, any move to escalate the conflict from low to medium intensity would necessarily result in the outbreak of a nuclear war. This is certainly the conclusion that one is forced to draw from the statements emanating from Islamabad after January, 2002.
The military high command, it is obvious, is not willing to prepare for an eventuality where India would escalate tension in pursuance of its political objectives. As per Pakistan’s plan, such an escalation would necessarily lead to a nuclear catastrophe, and, hence, annihilation of both nations, which, in any case, denotes breakdown of the deterrence doctrine.
Clearly, the military is not interested in the multiple ladders of escalation. At least this is not an impression one gets through looking at the conventional capabilities that seem to have dwindled rapidly over the last ten years. The current war planning is mainly focused on fighting land-air battle of a limited duration.
The general assessment within the army is that a conflict would not prolong beyond fifteen days, a timeframe for which the armed forces are prepared. The other scenario is of a limited warfare between India and Pakistan, with New Delhi launching a hot-pursuit operation at the Line of Control. Such a situation would, at best, call for a defensive response from Islamabad. However, if India were to expand the area of operation to other sectors, it would cause much problems for Pakistan.
A three-sector war, for instance, would be an extremely worrisome scenario. The three sectors would include the LoC, an armoured corps onslaught towards Pakistan’s main artery in the South, and a naval blockade. In such a situation, the PAF would have serious problems in sustaining operations beyond a few days.
Similarly, military planning has not included the possibility of a naval blockade. Not only that the navy has no role in a nuclear force, but it also has limited conventional fighting capabilities. Primarily due to the lack of strategic planning, the military establishment insists on its approach of a one-rung ladder of escalation and first use of nuclear weapons. However, the understanding, thus far, is that New Delhi would not take the conflict across the international boundary or even launch aggressive military operations.
The army does not consider the threat as being unmanageable as long as it can ensure a capability of delivering a few weapons. Here, the issue of a second-strike capability does not arise. Therefore, Pakistan’s nuclear force does not have to be comparable in size to India’s.
In addition, what, it is hoped, would ensure the achievement of this tactical objective is a swift command and control system. Notwithstanding the detailed system laid out under the National Command Authority (NCA), the fact is that it is the military that would ultimately exercise the final authority to use these weapons. Greater authority in the hands of the military management and a ‘uniformed’ president, it is feared, would make decision-making during any crisis militarily expedient.
Nukes, generally, are weapons of last resort, but may well be used much earlier in a conflict due to our incapacity to fight a conventional war. Fearing domination, Pakistan may find itself pressed to go for the big one. Is it what deterrence is all about? 
