SOUTH ASIAN WAR GAMES
The Indo-Pakistani Rivalry
The major bone of contention in Indo-Pakistani relations is Kashmir, which has been partitioned since the armistice that ended the hostilities accompanying the birth of the two states in 1947. India occupies two-thirds of Kashmir; the other third, Azad
Kashmir, is controlled by Pakistan. Both countries view Kashmir as vital to their security.
Its high mountain passes look down on India and Pakistan from the north; its rivers irrigate crops in both countries. The dispute over Kashmir, however, goes beyond strategic considerations. The raison d'être for the creation of Pakistan was to unite
Muslim majority regions in a separate state to avoid domination by the Hindu majority in
India. Three-quarters of Kashmir's 13 million inhabitants are Muslims. For its part, India sees retention of Kashmir as essential to its conception of a pluralist secular state. India also fears the possible consequences of the separation of Kashmir creating a “domino effect” in predominantly Muslim sectors of India.
What began in 1989 in the Indian sector as an indigenous Kashmiri independence movement has been joined by Islamic militants from Pakistan and Afghanistan, who have turned it into a protracted guerrilla struggle.1 India has committed between 300,000 and
400,000 troops to an effort to put down the movement, and between 25,000 and 50,000 people, mostly innocent Kashmiris, have been killed in the struggle. Meanwhile, along the LOC (Line of Control) between the Indian and Pakistani sectors of Kashmir, India and Pakistan are engaged in the world's longest running artillery duel, which is punctuated with occasional dare-devil raids across the LOC by local commanders. After 2 the two sides demonstrated their nuclear capabilities in 1998, President Clinton declared the subcontinent to be “the most dangerous place in the world” (Miller and Risen, 2000).
In the winter of 2001-2002, an attack on the Indian parliament by terrorists associated with Pakistan led to a full-scale crisis, as both states prepared for war.
Three principal elements increase the risk that the weapons will be used.
First, the dangerous and unstable situation in Kashmir provides a ready precipitant to escalating hostilities. The once indigenous separatist movement has been co-opted by
Islamic militants from Pakistan and veterans of the recent conflicts in Afghanistan, who are bent on turning it into an Islamic jihad against Hindus. Pakistan faces a classic principal-agent problem in which the elements that they have nurtured for the jihad in
Kashmir have become a threat to the stability of Pakistan itself (Stern, 2000; Rashid,
1999). Islamic radicals also have become influential in the officer corps of the army, despite Musharraf’s purge of the upper ranks following his decision to ally with the
United States in its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Musharraf, who came to power via a military coup, makes no major decisions without consulting his military advisors. By the same token, the influence of Islamic fundamentalism within the population at large has grown with the impoverishment of the middle class following economic sanctions imposed for Pakistan’s violations of U.S. non-proliferation statutes and the Musharraf coup. These conditions provide a reliable supply of Pakistani teenagers seeking a way out of poverty and boredom, who are recruited, trained, and armed by militant Islamic groups promising adventure and salvation to those who join the jihad in Kashmir. 3
The second element is distrust bordering on paranoia, which began with the
communal violence accompanying partition. It has been sustained by four wars, several
instances of hostilities short of war, and numerous crises. Each confrontation has added
to the legacy of distrust and hatred. Indian leaders, who blame Pakistan for inciting and
sustaining the separatist movement in Kashmir, claim that forty percent of the guerrillas
captured in Kashmir are Pakistani volunteers. Pakistani leaders view India’s annexation
of two-thirds of Kashmir as an illegitimate power-grab, and they warily eye statements by
Vajpayee’s BJP party urging the seizure of Azad Kashmir as well. A deeper Pakistani fear is especially prevalent among military leaders, particularly those with memories of the Indian military assistance to the Bangladesh independence movement, which led to the loss of East Pakistan in the 1971 Indo-Pakistani war. Their fear is that India will use an escalation of hostilities over Kashmir as a pretext for a war to reunite the subcontinent under Hindu control.2 That fear has gained greater currency as India has used the United
States’ “war on terrorism” as a justification for a more proactive approach to terrorism associated with the struggle for Kashmir.
The third element is the unstable relationship between the strategies of the two sides and their comparative military capabilities. The status quo party, India, enjoys a significant advantage in conventional military forces: a 2-1 edge in ground and air forces, and a 3-1 naval advantage. To challenge what it sees as an illegitimate status quo, irredentist Pakistan has resorted to low intensity hostilities to destabilize the situation and encourage the diplomatic intervention of major powers. Consequently, Pakistan has offered encouragement and support to guerrilla and terrorist forces whose activities it can no longer control. For its part, the Indian government, which holds Pakistan responsible 4 for the activities of the Kashmiri militants, is sorely tempted to use its conventional military advantage to punish or neutralize the other side.
Deterrence and Indo-Pakistani Perspectives
Deterrence theory assumes that at least one of the parties prefers the status quo to an outcome that would be created by a challenge to the status quo by the other party.
Assuming two rational parties, successful deterrence depends on the ability of the status quo party to communicate a threat that causes an opponent to prefer the status quo to the perceived consequences of challenging it. That ability is dependent on the opponent’s perception of the capability of the deterring party and the credibility of the threatened action (see Zagare, 1987:33-39). The deterring party has a capable threat if its opponent views the status quo as preferable to the threatened action. The deterrent threat is credible if the opponent believes that the deterring party prefers carrying out the threat to accepting the opponent’s challenge to the status quo, that is, that the threat will be carried out. Stripped to its essentials, deterrence theory rests on the twin pillars of Realpolitik: carefully calculated estimates of comparative interests and capabilities. But it also is dependent on the ability of statesmen to make those estimates and, more difficult still, to calculate how their opponents are making those estimates.
Arguments for nuclear deterrence are based on the devastating destructive capabilities of nuclear weapons. In a dispute between two states with rudimentary nuclear forces, neither side can be certain that it has the capability to completely eliminate the second strike capabilities of the other in a first strike; therefore the possibility exists of suffering a devastating second strike, even if the other party has only a few remaining 5 nuclear weapons. The nuclear deterrence argument is extended to conventional war on the grounds that neither side wants to run the risk that a conventional war will escalate to a nuclear war (Waltz, 1981; Hagerty, 1995/96). A counter-argument is that each party’s awareness of the other’s concern with the costs of a nuclear war raises its perception of the other’s provocation threshold and neutralizes nuclear deterrence of conventional war
(Snyder and Diesing, 1977:453-57; Leng, 2000:12-13). In a dispute of such pronounced asymmetry in conventional forces as exists between India and Pakistan, the stronger party
(India) may believe that its nuclear second-strike capabilities will allow it to escalate limited hostilities to full-scale conventional war without a high risk of a nuclear first- strike from the other party. Conversely, the weaker party (Pakistan) may use the same logic to attempt to blur the line between conventional war and strategic nuclear war by employing tactical, or battlefield, nuclear weapons to redress the imbalance in conventional forces. Moreover, once a conventional war is underway, there is an incentive for both parties to attempt to “decapitate” the other’s nuclear forces in a first- strike with either conventional or nuclear weapons.
The logical places to gauge the relative validity of the two sides of the nuclear debate in South Asia would be in the performance records of the two states and the stated views of their leaders. But there, too, the information is ambiguous. When Indian troops fired into a crowd engaged in a separatist demonstration in Kashmir on January 20, 1990,
Pakistan entered the dispute on the side of the separatists, and the resultant militarized crisis raised the possibility of nuclear war. American intelligence put the possibility of an
Indo-Pakistani conventional war at fifty percent and worried about escalation to nuclear war (Hagerty, 1995/96:106). Hersh (1993), in fact, claims that Pakistan had placed its 6
nuclear arsenal on alert. The extent of the threat of nuclear war in 1990, and Hersh’s
assertions in particular, have been the subject of considerable debate. Hagerty
(1995/96:101-107) argues that the potential threat of nuclear war was a key factor in
preventing the outbreak of conventional war.
When India, and then Pakistan, broke the informal nuclear test ban in 1998, both
sides claimed that the tangible demonstration of their mutual nuclear capabilities would
induce caution and reduce the risk that low-intensity hostilities across the LOC in
Kashmir would escalate to full-scale war. As an Indian officer stationed along the LOC
put it, the nuclear risk made war “unthinkable” (Burns, 1998). Knowledgeable students of
the Indo-Pakistani rivalry agreed that future conflicts would be limited to low-intensity
cross-border clashes and probes (Hagerty, 1995/96; Ganguly, 2001).
But the new nuclear equation did not discourage Pakistan from a high-risk
military attempt to redraw the border along the Himalayan peaks in the Kargil region a
year later. Pakistan’s Kargil adventure came just months after a seemingly successful attempt to build mutual confidence in a meeting between Pakistani President Sharif and
Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee at Lahore. The Kargil hostilities escalated to a limited
war, with high casualties on both sides. India, however, exercised restraint by not
attacking across the LOC into Azad Kashmir. Pakistan’s General, now President,
Musharraf (2000) attributed the Indian restraint to Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent. A more
direct explanation is that India refrained from escalating the war horizontally because it
was able to do so vertically, that is, by using its air power to drive the Pakistani-supported
troops from their positions. If the use of air power had not been effective, it is hard to
imagine that the Indian government would have accepted the Pakistani gains without 7
striking elsewhere. Like the 1990 crisis, the performance record in the Kargil War is
ambiguous. The presence of nuclear weapons did not deter a conventional war, but the
war did remain limited in space.
Ironically, leaders in both India and Pakistan believe that the threat posed by their
nuclear forces raises the other’s provocation threshold. Senior Pakistani officers claim
that the new balance-of-terror will deter “deep thrusts” into enemy territory and that low-
intensity hostilities will be the “fashion of the day.”3 That is not the view of Indian
Interior Minister Advani, who is perhaps Vajpayee’s closest confidant. Immediately following India’s tests, Advani warned Pakistan that it now would be “costly” if Pakistan did not end its intervention in Kashmir (Advani, 1998a). Advani suggested that the nuclear umbrella would allow India, with its superior conventional forces, to pursue more
“proactive” military tactics -- conventional attacks across the LOC -- in response to
Pakistani attempts to destabilize Kashmir. It is hard to know how seriously one should take pronouncements like Advani’s, which are directed primarily at the nationalist rank- and-file in the BJP, but they do suggest that the Indian government has considered the option. For their part, Pakistani military leaders believe that their ability and willingness to launch a nuclear response offset India's two-to-one advantage in conventional forces, thus allowing them to continue to pursue “low-intensity” raids across the LOC and to export terrorists and military material to sustain the insurgency in Kashmir (Lodi, 1999).
General Musharraf (2000) also has argued that the Kargil War could be credited with U.S. President Clinton’s willingness to attempt to mediate the Kashmir dispute in the following year. Deliberately creating crises to obtain Western diplomatic intervention, in the hope that it will lead to mediation of the Kashmir dispute, is a time-honored, if not 8
success-honored, Pakistani strategy (Leng, 2000: ch. 5). In 1965, India and Pakistan fought a brief conflict over a desolate piece of land in the Rann of Kutch area, where
Pakistan gained a modest amount of territory after the international community stepped in and the dispute was submitted to a panel of arbitration. The cautious Indian response and the international concern generated by the Rann of Kutch hostilities emboldened Pakistan to try the same strategy in Kashmir a few months later. This time, however, India responded in force and the dispute escalated to a full-scale war in which India attempted to capture Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city, and Pakistan attempted to gain control of all of Kashmir. Neither effort was successful. A military stalemate led to a mediated peace settlement, which left the Kashmir issue unresolved. Today, as the weaker but dissatisfied party, Pakistan continues to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir.
It is not hard to design a plausible scenario that ends in nuclear war on the subcontinent. Different versions have become the nuclear games of choice at American war colleges and universities. One such scenario starts with a particularly outrageous terrorist attack against Hindus in Kashmir by Islamic militants. India responds with a full- scale military attack across the LOC. Fearing Indian occupation of all of Kashmir,
Pakistan commits its own regular forces. The fighting escalates to full-scale conventional war when Indian troops cross the international border into Pakistan proper. The Indian offensive succeeds to the point where Pakistani leaders are faced with the choice between resorting to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, or a defeat that, in their minds, could mean the loss of statehood. According to informed Pakistani sources, that fateful choice would come with the loss of a strategically critical city, such as Lahore, which is situated 9
close to the border.4 If Pakistan crosses the nuclear threshold, the pressure on India to
respond with a strategic strike will be enormous.
War Games
We employ a series of two-by-two games to demonstrate the weaknesses inherent in the strategic thinking of the two sides by illustrating the potential for war at three levels of intensity: limited war, full-scale conventional war, and nuclear war. Each player chooses between two strategies. One strategy is to accept the status quo; the other is to depart from it by escalating the conflict. The pay-offs for each player, which are associated with the four outcomes representing the intersection of the strategies of the two players, are ranked from four to one, with four being the most desirable pay-off and one representing the least desirable pay-off.
The games are played according to the Theory of Moves (Brams, 1994:24-28):
(1) Play starts at an intersection of row and column, called the initial state, which
represents the status quo. (2) Either player can depart from the initial state by unilaterally
changing its strategy and moving the game to a new state. The row player can change its
row; the column player can change its column. (3) The other player can either remain at
the current state, or it can change its strategy and move the game to a new state. (4) The
game proceeds in this strictly alternating sequence of moves until the player whose turn it
is decides to remain at the current state, which becomes the outcome of the game. (5)
Brams’s fifth rule, which he calls “rational termination,” assumes that a player will not
depart from the initial state if so doing would either lead to a less preferred final state, or
if it would return play to the initial state. The first part of the rational termination rule 10 describes the condition that would exist if the other player possessed a capable and credible deterrent threat. The second part assumes that a player would not accept the costs of the departure from the status quo only to return to it.
(6) The final TOM rule is based on the assumption that the players are non- myopic, that is, that they can see beyond the immediate consequences of their actions (a strategy change creating a move to a new state) to consider the likely reaction of the other party and the subsequent sequence of strictly alternating moves. Brams bases this rule on the assumption that the players have complete information about each other’s preferences. In the games that follow, we relax the requirement of complete information to include situations where players lack complete information, but act on their best estimates of the other party’s preferences. We hasten to add, however, that the performance records of India and Pakistan have not been impressive in that respect. The
Pakistani leadership’s failure to anticipate the forceful Indian response to Pakistan’s incursion in Kashmir in 1965 is one dramatic example; the Indian failure to anticipate
Pakistan’s response to India’s “Brasstacks” exercise in 1986-87 is another. Thus, in the conventional war and nuclear war games presented below, we have presented separate versions of the games based on how they might be viewed by the leaders from each state.
The Theory of Moves, or TOM, has several advantages over the standard theory of simultaneous play for the analysis of deterrence. Beginning the game at an initial state, as opposed to from scratch, is closer to the reality of real-world foreign policy-making, which must be incremental. The alternating moves are closer to the sequencing of the bargaining moves of states in international disputes more generally (Leng and Wheeler,
1979), and to deterrence in particular, where the essence of the deterrent threat is the 11
implied statement that if you do x, then we will do y (George and Smoke, 1974:48). TOM
also provides an intuitively more appealing means of considering the horizons of non-
myopic real-world decision-makers, who consider how the other party is likely to
respond to their moves.
In each of the following games we consider the capability and credibility of
deterrent threats in situations facing non-myopic Indian and Pakistani leaders.
Limited War: Kargil. We begin with an example of limited conventional war, based on the Kargil War of 1999. There are several ways in which a limited war could be triggered between India and Pakistan. Besides the example of domestic pressure resulting from an outrageous terrorist attack, growing insurgency in Kashmir or Pakistani provocations across the LOC could prompt India to send its militarily superior forces on a punitive expedition across the LOC into Azad Kashmir. By the same token, Pakistani
forces could cross the LOC in an attempt to support the insurgents through an escalation
of border raids, or, as in the Kargil case, in an attempt to improve their strategic position.
The Kargil dispute began in early April, when approximately 400 mujahideen
fighters, moving under the cover of the Pakistan army, secretly crossed the LOC and
holed up in bunkers on Indian territory. Control of the Kargil area would enable Pakistan
to cut off a strategic overland link, Rt. 1A, between Srinagar, the capital of Indian-
controlled Pakistan, and an Indian military base in Leh. Without access to Rt. 1A, Indian
troops stationed on the Siachen Glacier would perish without supplies. On May 9, India
launched “Operation Vijay” (victory) to evict the infiltrators. Pakistan, which initially
denied its participation in the Kargil infiltration, used covering fire from heavy artillery to 12 respond to Indian artillery attacks. Indian air strikes finally forced the infiltrators to retreat.
Several factors motivated the Pakistani government to support the Kargil adventure. Pakistani leaders believed that the Indian occupation of the Siachen Glacier region was itself a breach of the LOC.5 Indian vigilance was low, thanks to the positive atmosphere created by a recent Indo-Pakistani summit at Lahore, and the terrain favored whichever party gained control of the heights. Perhaps most important, India appeared to be gaining firmer control over the Kashmir insurgency, and the international community was losing interest. A crisis on the LOC could reawaken the international community and trigger major power diplomatic intervention to reopen the Kashmir issue. Thus,
Pakistan’s most favored outcome was uncontested occupation of the Kargil heights, but its second choice would be an outcome that led to major power diplomatic intervention.
Stalemated border hostilities were preferable to a continued acceptance of the status quo.
For India, the most desirable option was the initial state, the status quo. Once the
Pakistani incursion across the LOC was discovered, Vajapayee’s government believed that it could not accept the cost to its reputation for resolve, and the risk of additional strategic costs, by not responding forcefully. Thus, its second preference was to dislodge the Pakistani-supported troops without escalating the hostilities to a conventional war.
The worst outcome for India would be to accept the territorial change without a military response. 13
The Kargil game in figure 1 depicts the intersection of the preferences of the two sides.
Figure 1. Kargil game
Pakistan Accept Status quo Escalate Conflict Accept Status quo at Lahore Pakistani troops and Status Quo Declaration, Feb. Islamic militants occupy 1999 Kargil heights.
(4,1) (1,4) Escalate Pakistan orders Limited war. India gains Conflict retreat of militants the upper hand with air from heights. strikes. High casualties Fighting ends; for both sides. Pakistan obtains major power diplomatic involvement.
India (3,3) (2,2)
The crisis began with Pakistan’s decision to move from the status quo (4,1) to
(1,4). India then moved the game to (2,2), prompting Pakistan to move to (3,3), which is
a non-myopic equilibrium. That is, neither player, anticipating all the rational moves and
counter-moves from the current state (3,3), would have an incentive to depart from it
because the departure would eventually lead to a worse, or at least no better, outcome
(Brams, 1994: 33, 224). Insofar as the Kargil crisis is concerned, that is where the game
ended.
Viewed from the larger perspective of the Indo-Pakistani rivalry, one could argue
that a truly non-myopic Indian leadership would prefer to stay at (3,3) and accept the
prospect of American diplomatic involvement in seeking a settlement of the Kashmir
dispute in order to avoid another Pakistani effort to alter the status quo. But, in fact, when
President Clinton attempted to play a mediating role in the Kashmir dispute a year later, 14
Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee rejected the offer out-of-hand. One could say that today the game is back at the initial state (4,1), with a Pakistani incentive to move to (1,4).
From the perspective of deterrence theory, the game illustrates the difficulty of accurately estimating the intentions and capabilities of the other player. Indian leaders were shocked by the LOC incursion because of the presumed good-will engendered
between Vajpayee and Sharif at the Lahore summit only a few months earlier. To India
the preference orderings of the two sides resembled those appearing in the Indian Kargil
game in figure 2.
Figure 2. Kargil as perceived by India
Pakistan Accept Status quo Escalate Conflict Accept Status quo at Lahore Pakistani troops and Status Quo Declaration, Feb. Islamic militants occupy 1999 Kargil heights.
(4,3) (1,4) Escalate Pakistan withdraws Border hostilities. High Conflict from the heights. casualties on both sides, but India gains the upper hand.
India (3,2) (2,1)
Prior to Pakistan’s Kargil incursion, India believed that it had a capable and
credible threat. (Pakistan would prefer (4,3) to (2,1) or (3,2); India would prefer (2,1) to
(1,4)). A Pakistani move from the initial state (4,3) also would violate TOM’s rational
termination rule, as the game would cycle back to (4,3). But the Lahore summit did
nothing to change the Kashmir situation, and India did not foresee Pakistan’s willingness
to accept a high risk to satisfy domestic critics and to create the conditions for major
power diplomatic pressure to reopen Kashmir discussions. 15
On the Pakistani side, the Kargil game illustrates how the leadership of a militarily weaker revisionist state will accept high risks to obtain vital interests. First,
Pakistan’s leadership gambled that India would not respond to the incursion across the
LOC. Second, they gambled that, if India did respond militarily, it would not escalate the hostilities when it found itself on disadvantageous terrain. Finally, Pakistani leaders gambled that the border crisis would bring major power pressure on India to reach a mediated end to the hostilities and reopen the Kashmir issue. The first gamble underestimated the Indian government’s concern with its reputation for resolve; the second gamble underestimated India’s military capability, specifically its ability to dislodge the Pakistani-supported troops with air strikes; and the third gamble overestimated the United States’ ability – and willingness – to side with Pakistan by pressuring India to reopen the Kashmir issue. 16
The game in figure 3 depicts Kargil as perceived by the leadership of Pakistan. In this game, India has neither a capable nor a credible deterrent threat.
Figure 3. Kargil as perceived by Pakistan
Pakistan Accept Status quo Escalate Conflict Accept Status quo at Lahore Pakistani troops and Status Quo Declaration, Feb. Islamic militants occupy 1999 Kargil heights.
(4,1) (2,4) Escalate Ceasefire with major Border hostilities. Conflict power intercession. Pakistan has a tactical Kashmir issue advantage by holding reopened. high ground.
India (3,3) (1,2)
Pakistan moves from (4,1) to (2,4), and assumes that India will stay at (2,4) because India’s pay-off at (2,4) is preferable to that at (1,2), that is, fighting on unfavorable terrain. But Pakistani leaders must have recognized that the strategic advantage that Pakistan could gain from controlling the heights over Kargil, along with the Indian leadership’s concern for its reputation for resolve, would encourage India to respond militarily, if not at Kargil, then somewhere else along the LOC. But if a non- myopic India moves to (1,2), Pakistan moves to (3,3), where both sides attain their second-best pay-offs at a non-myopic equilibrium. India obtains a return to the status quo along the LOC; Pakistan attains major power pressure to reopen Kashmir negotiations; both sides maintain their reputations for resolve.
One could argue that the simple two-by-two games in figures 1-3 obscure the full range of choices, which should include the option for an immediate move to a full-scale conventional war. But at the outset of limited hostilities, as in the Kargil crisis, escalation 17 to a full-scale war is unlikely given India’s satisfaction with the status quo, and a similar escalation on Pakistan’s part is even more unlikely because of its disadvantage in conventional forces. On the other hand, it is not hard to imagine escalation to a full-scale conventional war following an initial limited response by the party defending the status quo, whether it be India responding to a Kargil-like incursion or an intensification of
Pakistani-supported guerrilla activities Kashmir, or Pakistan responding to an Indian breach of the LOC in hot pursuit of guerrillas, or a particularly brutal Indian attempt to suppress Muslim opponents of the regime in Kashmir.
Full-Scale Conventional War. The initial state for the Full-Scale Conventional
War game in figure 4 is a stalemated border conflict like the situation in Kargil before
Indian air strikes turned the tide of battle.
Figure 4. Conventional War game.
Pakistan Accept Status quo Escalate Conflict Accept Stalemated limited Pakistan invades Indian Status Quo war. Kashmir.
(2,3) (1,4) Escalate India invades Azad Full-scale conventional Conflict Kashmir. war across the international border.
India (4,1) (3,2)
The asymmetric preference orderings in the Conventional War game in figure 4 are based on the imbalance in conventional military forces that favors India. That imbalance, however, should not be over-drawn. Ten Indian divisions are deployed on the
Sino-Indian border, and a sizeable portion of the Indian army is occupied with counter- insurgency duties in Kashmir. Those constraints are not sufficient to redress the 18 imbalance favoring India, but they do reduce it to the point where Pakistan could contemplate joining the battle if the stakes are sufficiently high.
Beginning at the initial state of stalemated limited hostilities, India’s first preference would be a decisive conventional attack, such as the seizure of Azad Kashmir, without escalation to full-scale war (4,1). But, given its military advantage, India would prefer a full-scale conventional war (3,2) to a stalemated border war (2,3). The worst outcome for India would be a successful Pakistani military strike across the LOC to seize
Indian-controlled Kashmir (1,4). Pakistan’s preference ordering would be a mirror-image of India’s, except that Pakistan would prefer a continuation of a stalemated limited war
(2,3), with the prospect of outside diplomatic intervention, to a full-scale conventional war (3,2).
Both parties have an immediate incentive to depart from the initial state of limited war, but India has a capable and credible deterrent threat. (Pakistan prefers (2,3) to (3,2);
India prefers (3,2) to (1,4)). Pakistan, however, lacks a capable threat to deter India from moving from (2,3) to (4,1). Thus, India escalates the hostilities by moving from (2,3) to
(4,1). Pakistan then moves from (4,1) to (3,2), which is a non-myopic equilibrium, and the game’s final state.
It is not hard to devise scenarios to fit the Conventional War game. A stalemated limited war would bring considerable domestic pressure on the Indian government to escalate the hostilities to “teach Pakistan a lesson,” or to seize the opportunity to gain control of all of Kashmir. It could include a punitive attack across the International
Border on Pakistan proper, perhaps through the Thar/Rajasthan area in a manner similar to the 1986-1987 Brasstacks scenario and the scenario practiced in Indian war games in 19 the spring of 2001. In either case, the Pakistani government would be faced with either accepting a devastating defeat or launching a full-scale military response. When India escalated the limited war in Kargil with the use of air strikes, Pakistan responded by placing its military forces on “red alert,” put its navy to sea, and scrambled F-16 fighters to challenge any Indian incursion into Azad Kashmir or across the line of control
(Bodansky, 1999:20). If the air strikes had not been successful, India probably would have attacked across the LOC in an area with more favorable terrain, which would have increased the risk of escalation to full-scale war.
If the nuclear deterrent capabilities of the two sides are not likely to deter conventional war, what about nuclear war? Leaving aside the risks of a nuclear accident, or a preemptive strike based on faulty intelligence in states with shaky track records, what is the risk that a nuclear war could occur as a matter of rational choice?
The 1998 tests eliminated any remaining ambiguity regarding the nuclear capabilities of the two sides. The credibility of their respective nuclear deterrents, however, is dependent on each side’s perception of the other’s nuclear threshold, that is, the point at which it would use its nuclear weapons. The initial use of nuclear weapons is likely to come as a last resort in the course of a conventional war. Given the mismatch in conventional forces, the most likely scenario is one in which India is on the verge of a victory that the Pakistani leadership views as an immediate threat to their state’s survival.
Just where that threshold lies is unclear.
Pakistan’s nuclear program is “India-centric”; it revolves around the perception of threat from India (Ahmed, 1999; Vas, 1987). Pakistan has no officially stated nuclear doctrine, but it is hard at work at miniaturizing nuclear warheads and developing several 20
types of ballistic missiles, presumably to develop a tactical nuclear force to balance the
Indian advantage in conventional forces (see Cheema, 2000:175-178). With that option
in mind, Pakistan has refused to join India in a “no-nuclear-first-use” pledge.
Publicly, Pakistani leaders claim that any attack across the international border
would be grounds for a nuclear response. Privately, they acknowledge that it would take
the imminent loss of a major city, such as Lahore, which sits on the border with Kashmir,
for the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) to make the fateful decision.6 In Pakistan, practical control over the development and use of nuclear weapons lies in the hands of the military. As we noted above, the Pakistani officer corps, which is falling increasingly under the influence of Islamic fundamentalists, has long harbored the belief that India’s long-term objective is to eliminate the state of Pakistan and reunite the subcontinent under Hindu rule.
The Indian nuclear weapons program has been directed at perceived threats from two states: Pakistan and China. Its 1998 tests were partly in response to a perception of a deteriorating strategic position following Pakistan’s test of its intermediate range missile, the Ghauri, and a series of nuclear tests by China (Ganguly, 1999; Cohen, 2000).7 India,
which has campaigned for a mutual “no-nuclear-first-use” pledge, views its nuclear
arsenal as a deterrent force that would be employed only if Pakistan (or China) launched,
or threatened to launch, a first-strike. Unlike Pakistan, control over any Indian decision
to use nuclear weapons would be in the hands of the civilian government.
Nuclear War games. Let us suppose that a limited war escalates to a full-scale
conventional war when Indian forces mount an offensive across the LOC into Azad
Kashmir and across the International Border, threatening Lahore. The Nuclear War 21 games in figures 5-7 begin with Indian forces on the verge of driving Pakistani troops from Lahore.
Figure 5 presents the game as it might appear to India.
Figure 5. Nuclear War game as perceived by India.
Pakistan
India Accept Status Quo Escalate
Accept India is on the verge of Pakistan employs tactical Status Quo occupying Lahore. nuclear weapons against Indian forces.
(4,3) (1,4) India advances beyond Strategic Nuclear War. Lahore to conquer all of Escalate Pakistan.
(3,1) (2,2)
The game depicted in figure 5 is consistent with Indian statements following the nuclear tests conducted in 1998, including the advocacy of a more “proactive” use of conventional forces under the umbrella of India’s nuclear deterrent. India has no incentive to depart from the initial state (4,3), and it possesses a capable and credible threat to deter Pakistan from moving from (4,3) to (1,4). (Pakistan prefers (4,3) to (2,2) and (2,2) to (3,1); India prefers (2,2) to (1,4)). Following the rational termination rule, the initial state (4,3) is also the final state. The game in figure 5 is how the situation might well appear to Indian leaders determined to demonstrate their military superiority and resolve to Pakistan, but willing to accept a peace settlement that would leave Pakistan proper intact.8 But the intense enmity and distrust that exists between the two sides might 22
lead to a different perception on the part of Pakistani leaders, such as that depicted in
figure 6.
Figure 6. Nuclear War game as perceived by Pakistan.
Pakistan d n I Accept Status Quo Escalate
Accept India is on the verge of Pakistani employs Status Quo occupying Lahore. tactical nuclear weapons against Indian forces.
(3,2) (2,4) India advances beyond Strategic Nuclear War. Lahore to conquer all of Escalate Pakistan.
(4,1) (1,3)
The Nuclear War game as perceived by Pakistan differs in three respects from the
game perceived by India. The first difference is a reversal of Pakistani preferences in
r1c1 and r2c2, so that Pakistan prefers nuclear war to losing a conventional war.
Pakistani leaders argue strongly, and persuasively, that they could not accept the loss of
a major city without employing every possible means, including the use of nuclear
weapons, to prevent it.9 The other two differences result from the Pakistani learders’
perception of Indian preferences. The first, which reverses the Indian pay-offs in r1c1
and r2c1, is based on the Pakistani suspicion that India’s strategic objective is to reunite
the continent under Hindu rule. The second difference is a reversal of India’s pay-offs in
r1c2 and r2c2. That change is based on a Pakistani belief in Hindu passivity, Indian fears
of the costs of a strategic nuclear war between states in such close proximity to each
other, and the assumption that the international community would exert sufficient 23 pressure on India’s leadership to restrain it from escalating the conflict to a full-scale nuclear war.10
Thus, as the Nuclear War game is perceived by Pakistan, both parties have an immediate incentive to depart from (3,2), but Pakistan possesses a capable and credible threat to deter India from moving to (4,1). (Pakistan prefers (1,3) and (2,4) to (4,1); India prefers (3,2) to (1,3) or (2,4)). India, however, does not have a credible threat to deter
Pakistan’s move to from (3,2) to (2,4), which is a Pareto-superior state, and a non-myopic equilibrium.
The “real” nuclear game is harder to predict because of the difficulty in assessing
Pakistan’s nuclear threshold, and in assessing Indian perceptions of the threshold. It is unclear whether we should accept the threshold suggested by Pakistani leaders, or assume that they would take a more cautious approach when the time came to make the decision.
Thus, figure 7 presents alternative pay-offs for Pakistan in r1c1 and r2c2.
Figure 7. “Real” Indo-Pakistani Nuclear War game
Pakistan
India Accept Status Quo Escalate
Accept India is on the verge of Pakistani employs Status Quo occupying Lahore. tactical nuclear weapons against Indian forces.
(4,2) (1,4) [4,3] India advances beyond Strategic Nuclear War. Lahore to conquer all of Escalate Pakistan.
(3,1) (2,3) [2,2] 24
In the first version of the game, India has no incentive to move from the initial
state at (4,2), but Pakistan does. India has a credible, but not capable, threat to deter
Pakistan from moving from (4,2) to (1,4). (India prefers (2,3) to (1,4), but Pakistan
prefers (2,3) to (4,2)). Thus Pakistan moves from (4,2) to (1,4), and India moves from
(1,4) to (2,3), which is a non-myopic equilibrium. The game ends in a strategic nuclear
war. The key to the game is the relationship between Pakistan’s pay-offs in r1c1 and
r2c2.
In the second version of the game, with the pay-offs in r1c1 set at [4,3] and those
in r2c2 at [2,2], India has a capable as well as credible deterrent threat, as Pakistan
prefers the initial state, [4,3], to [2,2]. In accordance with TOM’s rational termination
rule, neither player departs from the initial state.
Discussion. Pakistan’s nuclear threshold is dependent on its leaders’ perceptions of Indian intentions, which, in turn, are influenced by their perceptions of where
Pakistan’s nuclear threshold lies. Simply put, the effectiveness of India’s ability to deter a nuclear attack from Pakistan is less dependent on India’s nuclear capabilities than on the Pakistani leadership’s perception of the threat posed by an Indian victory in a conventional war.
One of the paradoxes of deterrence based on mutual assured destruction is that awareness of the mutual fear of the potentially catastrophic consequences of nuclear war can encourage policymakers on each side to perceive the other as having a greater tolerance for coercion short of nuclear war. The Nuclear War games in figures 6 and 7 illustrate the high risks associated with that assumption and, more particularly, Indian 25 minister Advani’s advocacy of using India’s nuclear deterrent to undertake a more
“proactive” military strategy.
An added risk, which the games do not consider, is the possibility of a preemptive first strike by either party as a result of a mistaken assumption that the other was on the verge of launching a strategic first strike. One of the ironies of nuclear deterrence systems is that they increase the probability of nuclear war through miscalculation. If India were on the verge of victory in a conventional war, there would be an increased danger of a preemptive strike by both parties. India could launch a counter-force strike against
Pakistan’s nuclear installations on the mistaken assumption that Pakistan was preparing to launch a nuclear strike out of desperation; Pakistan could launch a counter-force strike against India because of its fear that Indian fears of Pakistani intentions would prompt a
Indian first-strike. A “use them or lose them” mentality, coupled with faulty intelligence, could provoke a first strike from either side.
If hostilities between India and Pakistan were to escalate to a limited war and then to a full-scale conventional war, India would have to take great care to limit its military objectives and to communicate those limits to Pakistan to convince its leadership that the likely outcome of the conventional war would be preferable to nuclear war. A useful model exists in the diplomacy of Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat during the October War with Israel in 1973. Egypt’s Sinai territory had been under Israeli occupation since the
Six-Day War of 1967. Sadat’s objective was to gain enough ground in the Sinai to create the conditions for a negotiated return of the Egyptian land lost in the 1967 war. As soon as the war began, Sadat made it clear, with the United States acting as the intermediary, that he had no intention of pursuing the offensive beyond the Sinai, that the offensive was 26 not an attempt to eliminate Israel (Kissinger, 1982:460). Sadat was well aware of the risk of provoking Israel into another all-out effort, with American materiel support, that ultimately could lead to another devastating Egyptian defeat. Egypt’s early military successes demonstrated Israel’s vulnerability, and Sadat’s communication of his limited objectives enabled the United States and the Soviet Union to broker a ceasefire that led to the disengagement accords of 1974, and, ultimately, to the Camp David accord of 1978.
Should hostilities between India and Pakistan escalate to a full-scale war, India would have to eschew territorial gains against Pakistan, including the seizure of Azad Kashmir, and successfully communicate the limits of its objectives to Pakistan’s leaders.
Conclusion
Working from the history of the Indo-Pakistani rivalry, particularly developments since the rival states conducted successful nuclear tests in 1998, we have employed a series of two-by-two games, played according to Brams’s Theory of Moves (TOM), to demonstrate how ongoing sporadic hostilities could escalate to limited war, to conventional war, and, finally, to nuclear war. The simple logic of the games demonstrates the weaknesses of both sides’ beliefs regarding the effectiveness of their nuclear capabilities to deter war at any level. In particular, we have shown how, in the event of a full-scale conventional war, the ambiguity of Pakistan’s nuclear threshold renders the avoidance of nuclear war more dependent on the ability of India to limit its military objectives and to communicate those limits, than on the military effectiveness of
India’s nuclear deterrent.
Our analysis has been based on the presumed preferences of rational and independent policy-makers. Several other factors add to the risk of nuclear war between 27 the two long-time rivals: emotionally intense religious/cultural competition; a legacy of mutual distrust and animosity that has grown over a half century that has included four wars and nearly constant low-intensity hostilities; dysfunctional lessons drawn from previous confrontations; domestic pressures from influential radical factions to take more aggressive action, and shaky command and control systems. Above all, there is the seemingly irreconcilable, and potentially explosive, dispute over Kashmir. None of these factors bodes well for the future. If there is a silver lining in the nuclear cloud that now hangs over the Indian subcontinent, it is the willingness of the leaders of the two countries, one from the Pakistani military, the other from a nationalist Hindu party, to continue the process of meeting to discuss their differences and the dangers that confront them. 28
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1 An excellent account of the origins of the Kashmir insurgency in 1989 appears in Ganguly (1996).
2 The summer 2000 issues of the Pakistan Army Journal and Pakistan Defense Journal contain several articles about the prevalence of this fear.
3 Interview with Zia Main, January, 2001.
4 Interviews with anonymous Pakistani officials conducted by Husain, January, 2001.
5 The Siachen Glacier region is 20,000 feet above sea level in a rugged mountain area where the Line of Control between the two sides is difficult to delineate with any certainty. 30
6 The Prime Minister is vested with the formal authority to reach the decision to launch, but the practical reality is that the decision is likely to be made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
7 Another reason cited by Ganguly (1999) is concern about the consequences of imminent ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and its “entry into force” clause, which would prohibit future Indian tests. Cohen (2000) adds the momentum of a long- standing nuclear program occurring in an environment in which the coalition government was too weak to adopt any radical changes in foreign policy.
8 Whether an Indian seizure of Azad Kashmir would be a natural extension of a successful Indian military campaign is unclear. The integration of all of Kashmir into India is a long-standing goal of Vajpayee’s Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, which has been formalized in a parliamentary resolution, but, since attaining office, Vajpayee has taken a more moderate position. Indian leaders are well aware that the loss of Azad Kashmir would significantly increase the stakes for Pakistan, whose leaders would fear more extensive Indian war aims.
9 Based on interviews with Pakistani officials conducted by A. Husain in January, 2001.
10 As then Pakistani president, Ayub Khan, put it on the eve of the Second Kashmir War in 1965, “the Hindu have no stomach for fight” (Leng, 2000:227).