The Fate of India's Strategic Restraint
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“Managing New Delhi’s participation in the Afghan endgame will be critical, and it will require a review of US-India policy in Washington.” The Fate of India’s Strategic Restraint SUNIL DASGUPTA n February 2012, India selected a French jet, a 2010 book, Stephen P. Cohen of the Brookings the Rafale, as the new mainstay fighter for its Institution and I called this phenomenon “arming Iair force. A month earlier, the country had without aiming.” We found that the disconnect leased a nuclear submarine from Russia. The ac- between strategic purpose and military planning quisition of the fighter aircraft and submarine is is both shaped by and reinforces military-strategic part of an ambitious military modernization that restraint in India’s foreign policy. has made India the number one arms importer in Today, notwithstanding growing uncertainty the world. in South Asia and the recently accelerated arms This rearmament effort, riding on the nation’s buildup, New Delhi appears unlikely to abandon unprecedented economic growth, has prompt- this military restraint. Certainly, fears of American ed some observers to wonder whether India has withdrawal from the region are making Indians jit- decided to balance Chinese power in Asia or is tery about a resurgence of terrorist threats. At the seeking to correct the anomaly of strategic parity same time, New Delhi likely will strive to wield its with Pakistan, a country one fifth its size. Indians growing economic and international influence in themselves want their country to act more assert- Afghanistan as US troops pull out. Although In- ively, and India’s primary rival, Pakistan, has never dia’s engagement probably will not rise to the level bought into neighborly restraint. of military intervention, it might be sufficient to So, could we be witnessing the start of an India- fuel another dangerous rivalry with the Pakistanis China arms race in Asia that would become the in Afghanistan. defining global conflict of the twenty-first centu- Outside of an unlikely new war, however, In- ry—as the United States returns to its traditional dia’s political leaders will not want to spend the role of offshore balancer, reduces its overseas pres- political and monetary capital necessary to trans- ence, and husbands resources for domestic recov- form growing resources into military power and ery? Could we also be standing on the precipice of purpose sufficient for a reordering of their coun- a nuclear confrontation with Pakistan? try’s strategic condition. The answer is: Probably not. India’s rearma- This is not a pessimistic view of India’s prospects ment efforts are unlikely to turn the nation into in the world. To the contrary, military-strategic re- an aggressive power, seeking military balance with straint has paid off handsomely despite the result- China and upending the existing balance with ing inefficiencies in defense planning. Restraint has Pakistan. Indeed, not only have India’s political contributed to greater accommodation of India’s leaders traditionally hesitated to use force as an rise as a great power in the international commu- instrument of foreign policy even when the con- nity. The rise of China led Singapore, for example, ditions were right for it, they have neglected to to exhort India to become more engaged in South- provide clear strategic guidance to the military. In east Asia. Today, even the Russians hesitate to sell advanced weapons to China, but Western firms want to be part of India’s military revival. They are SUNIL DASGUPTA is director of the political science program at the Universities at Shady Grove, part of the University motivated by profit, of course, but also by the rec- of Maryland–Baltimore County, and a non-resident senior ognition that India is unlikely to become hostile to fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution. their own nations’ interests. He is co-author, with Stephen P. Cohen, of Arming Without Aiming: India’s Military Modernization (Brookings Institu- Most notably, the US-India Civil Nuclear Coop- tion Press, 2010). eration Agreement, based on a framework agreed 129 130 • CURRENT HISTORY • April 2012 to by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh bloodiest and most demoralizing wars fought by and then-US President George W. Bush in 2005, the Indian army. has legitimized India’s status as a nuclear weapons In an October 2011 speech, when it was clear power, making it the only country to be accom- that the United States was going to withdraw from modated this way since 1968, when the Nuclear Afghanistan sooner rather than later, Indian Na- Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was concluded. tional Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon sought Would a militarily aggressive India have received to highlight the importance of armed force in in- the same accommodation? ternational politics, yet he described his country’s approach to the use of force almost entirely in EXCEPTIONAL INDIA terms of strategic restraint. Historically, India’s nationalist leaders have Menon pointed out that India had set clear lim- steered away from using force in pursuit of politi- its on the use of military force even against insur- cal goals, a strategy that is rooted in their choice gencies that received foreign assistance. The na- of nonviolent struggle to press for freedom. This tion’s defense spending had exceeded 3 percent approach has deemphasized security threats and of GDP in only a single year since independence. the role of military power, even though a war with India returned territory it won in war and has not Pakistan over Kashmir accompanied Indian inde- sought to project power overseas. Indian troops pendence. have gone abroad only when invited by other gov- India’s boldest military decisions—its 1971 ernments and usually under the United Nations invasion of East Pakistan and its 1998 nuclear flag. Menon argued that India’s history made cred- tests—were far more reactive than widely believed. ible its no-first-use commitment on nuclear weap- In 1971, millions of Bengali refugees poured into ons. India to escape the Pakistani army’s genocidal vi- olence in the eastern wing of the country. India CONTROLLED ESCALATION won a quick and easy victory in the east and took With Pakistan, nuclear weapons have rein- 90,000 prisoners, but it did not attack West Paki- forced Indian restraint. As the country with the stan, which was the true source of anti-India senti- smaller military capacity, Pakistan has threatened ment in Pakistan. the first use of nuclear weapons and India has In 1998, the Indian government conducted backed down four times—in 1986, 1990, 1999, nuclear tests in response to American efforts to and 2001–02. New Delhi has succeeded in con- close down the nuclear option for India through trolling escalation even as proxy conflicts with Is- the indefinite extension of the NPT and the im- lamabad have grown worse. position of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban In 1990 and 1999, India was careful to limit its Treaty—an agreement New Delhi rejected. India military responses to Pakistani provocations. In had conducted nuclear tests in 1974 but had put 1990, New Delhi responded to Islamabad’s sup- its nuclear program into a deep freeze until the port for rebels in Kashmir not with war but with mid-1980s. Indeed, public reports suggest India a counterinsurgency campaign inside Kashmir. has not pursued the development of a nuclear ar- The disputed territory has remained violent for senal with vigor since the 1998 tests, even at the two decades now, yet India has not expanded the risk of falling behind Pakistan. conflict by crossing into Pakistan. In 1999, Indian In practice, when India has tried to be militar- armed forces responded to Pakistani incursions ily assertive—such as when Jawaharlal Nehru pur- into the Kargil district of Kashmir with a hard- sued a forward policy against China in the 1950s, fought clearing operation that took pains not to and when Nehru’s grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, sent enter Pakistan. Both campaigns cost India greatly the Indian army to police a peace deal in Sri Lan- in dead and wounded, but India did not escalate ka—the results have been disastrous. Prime Min- the fighting. ister Nehru’s forward policy resulted in a humiliat- In 1986 and 2001–02, India’s military maneu- ing defeat in a war against China in 1962. In 1987, vers produced standoffs from which the country India sent four army divisions to monitor and stepped back when presented with Pakistani nu- enforce a peace agreement between the separatist clear threats. In 1986, New Delhi conducted mili- Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan government, but tary exercises on the Pakistan border that General the peacekeeping mission turned into a conflict Krishnaswami Sundarji, who was then chief of In- that has been called “India’s Vietnam,” one of the dia’s army, later called the last chance to resolve The Fate of India’s Strategic Restraint • 131 the Pakistan problem. But India did not go to war. fused visas to two Indian officials on the grounds In 2001–02, India deployed hundreds of thou- that they are Chinese citizens by virtue of their sands of troops to the border in an effort to coerce birth in territory claimed by China. New Delhi in Pakistan to stop supporting terrorism in India. But 2008 approved two new army divisions for use on the effort failed. The Indian government was sim- the Chinese border and ordered the reopening of ply not ready to go to the nuclear edge. some forward airfields. In the years since the failure of coercive diplo- Even so, neither government appears to have an macy in 2001–02, the Indian army has sought to interest in exacerbating their mutual challenges.