PROLOGUE

India has become infuriatingly formulaic when it comes to Pakistan. Here’s how the script goes. There’s an attack in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. India blames Pakistan.

The Indian media — mainstream and social — start beating war drums. Retired Indian military officers and other analysts are invited by the Studio Corps who declare, wage and win a war against Pakistan. The hysteria has reached fever-pitch since the arrival on the scene of a Hindutva-driven Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Narendra Modi, and of social media platforms.

In bashing Pakistan, some even calling for its dismemberment, there’s no real difference between the right and the left in India or the many shades in between. Once again, after the April 22 Pahalgam attack, we are at that stage; once again there’s talk in India of punishing Pakistan. Even the negligible few who caution against rashness nonetheless muse about how to punish Pakistan without starting an Armageddon. There are almost no voices challenging India’s occupation of Kashmir.

Others dish out operational recipes about strikes that range from “limited” to a full-blown war, from keeping the conflict controlled through dominating escalation to fantastic scenarios of a “final solution”, with nary a thought to the genocidal underpinnings of that term. On such occasions, irony goes to die in India.

It should be obvious, given the obvious, that there should be a serious discussion on these goings-on, because the irresponsibility and false bravado that inheres in this balderdash impacts not just the citizens of Pakistan and India but, by geographic default, other countries that make up the defunct grouping called Saarc.

This article is therefore structured to (a) discuss what war means, whether full-scale or limited and (b) why do Pakistan and India keep getting into these cycles. The “b” also necessarily brings us to India’s denial to the Kashmiris of their right to self-determination.

To clarify, this is not an attempt to predict what India would or could do if it chose to launch a limited strike. Or what platforms it might use for that or how it could choose the nodal points for any strikes. The argument is that limited cannot assuredly remain limited. Which doesn’t mean that India cannot miscalculate. Wars have often started because of miscalculations.

As tensions between India and Pakistan mounted in the wake of the April 22 Pahalgam attack in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, war drums were once again beaten with great ferocity in India. Why do India and Pakistan keep returning to this state of brinkmanship? Can India actually conduct a military strike against a nuclear Pakistan? And what is the risk of its miscalculation?

CLAUSEWITZ’S ‘ZWECK UND ZIEL’

The Prussian soldier and war theoretician Carl von Clausewitz understood that war’s political objective was not just its highest level but the most important. The primitive violence of people, managing that violence and harnessing it to an aim must be subordinate to the political objective of war. But all the three levels have to be taken together, since that is what constitutes the triple nature of war as well as its grammar.

He used the terms Zweck und Ziel, the first referring to “purpose”, the second to “aim”. The Zweck denotes the political objective for which a war is being fought; the Ziel relates to the actual conduct and aim of battles, of which many may be fought to achieve the political end. The Ziel, in the Clausewitzian framework, must add up to the Zweck and be subordinate to it.

Clausewitz was, of course, writing before the advent of nuclear weapons and within his own geopolitical context. But what is clear is the connection between fighting and a political objective. Obvious also is the fact that victory will be determined not on the basis of winning a battle or battles but achieving the objective for which the battles are being fought. To put it another way, “there is no necessary correspondence between victory in battle and success in achieving the objective.”

Take the example of India’s chest-beating. Let’s assume that India decides to punish Pakistan and, in fact, does manage to do that. We are not concerned about what such punishment might look like but we can argue, given the nuclear overhang, that it would be limited by the very nature of India’s compulsion to keep the conflict controlled. Let’s also assume that, at that point, Pakistan determines that it cannot retaliate. Would that “battle” constitute victory for India? Yes, if it achieves the political objective; no, if it doesn’t.

It is logical at this point to ask what would be India’s political objective (it’s not domestic). What is the Zweck for India’s Ziel, assuming that getting into a fight for the heck of it means nothing. Even when it might satiate some base instincts or win elections, it can’t be policy, much less an objective in a Clausewitzian sense. That objective would be to establish deterrence against Pakistan — to ensure that Pakistan does not (or cannot) do anything that India considers to be inimical to its interests and security.

If India manages to punish Pakistan but fails to deter it from undertaking actions in the future that it considers damaging to its interests and security, then, in our hypothetical scenario, India has failed to achieve its political objective.

After all, India is not planning a limited nuclear strike. It only wants a limited conventional strike or maybe a few simultaneous limited strikes and it plans, presumably, to control escalation to avoid Pakistan going to a nuclear level.

It amuses me that so many former Indian generals (even diplomats) should wittingly or unwittingly ignore this central tenet of any armed violence. Remember what American diplomat

© Dawn (Magazines)