Coercive Diplomacy or Nuclear Brinkmanship?

15 Jul, 2002    ·   796

Arpit Rajain analyses the recent Indo-Pak standoff where nuclear capability had the possibility of acting as a deterrent while also being the cause for breakdown of deterrence
Arpit Rajain
As the present crisis between India and Pakistan continues on a de-escalation trajectory, it is increasingly being asked whether the crisis was coercive diplomacy at its best or nuclear brinkmanship at its worst.

 

 

It is being opined that the outcome of the present Indo-Pak crisis was determined by India ’s synergised policy of coercive diplomacy.  The attack on the Indian Parliament, followed by the attack on the Raghunath temple in Jammu , and the most recent attack on the Kaluchak army camp in Jammu , had increased the hardliners pitch demanding that the government take decisive action. India took a range of diplomatic steps: it reduced the High Commission staff by half, withdrew its High Commissioner in Islamabad , stopped over flight, and snapped rail and road links with Pakistan . Stepping up its diplomatic offensive against Pakistan after the Jammu massacre, India asked Islamabad to withdraw its High Commissioner in New Delhi , Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.  This effort was supplemented by constantly appealing to the western world and the US in particular to step up their pressure on Pakistan .  India threatened to take military action but never initiated it, thereby testing the limits of coercive diplomacy – threatening to go to war but not actually doing so. The US shuttle diplomacy managed to obtain an assurance from General Musharraf that infiltration had been ended, and permanently. That seemed sufficient for India to de-escalate.

 

 

The sounding of the war bugle, along with the persistent and well thought out crisis management and escalation control efforts, acquires a novel meaning in this context. If armed conflict was not initiated, it was because neither side was interested in escalating it to the ‘point of no return’, and choosing to come out of the crisis with ‘something to show’ for it as opposed to ‘backing off’. It appeared that the Pakistani decision-makers believed that thanks to their nuclear capability, India would not cross the international borders, a ‘norm’ that was set during the Kargil conflict. This is what some scholars imply when they say that the threat of war was effective in creating international pressure on Pakistan , but maintain that the execution of any such threat would be dangerous and could lead to a breakdown of deterrence.  There is a delicate balance between nuclear capability acting as a deterrent and it being the cause for breakdown of deterrence. The appropriate diplomatic response lies in adopting the stance of nuclear brinkmanship: threaten to cross the brink and hope your enemy gives in first. The risk that hostility between India and Pakistan may escalate was affirmed by several factors that ranged from the diplomatic to the politico-strategic. As the crisis de-escalates, Pakistan has claimed that deterrence has worked. 

 

 

For years Pakistan believed that it could bleed India in Kashmir . The May 1998 tests encouraged it further as it thought that stability at one level make sub-conventional conflict safer without the risk of escalation. Kargil demonstrated that Pakistan could be a reckless, adventurist, and risk-prone state, capable of behaving astrategically and irrationally.  The possession of nuclear weapons has raised the threshold for Pakistan to take risks. But in the post-Parliament attack phase, India decided to play tough. Until very recently Pakistan thought it could manipulate the risks of a nuclear confrontation purely for political reasons and when India upped the ante it could cry nuclear wolf, attract global attention to the Kashmir ‘flashpoint’ and get away with it. This time New Delhi decided that relentless pressure and war talk with subtle threats could alter the outcome of the crisis in its favour. To be taken credibly India had to ensure that its threat of initiating an armed conflict was taken seriously. And since Pakistan had to appear to be doing something apart from troop mobilisation, a series of missile tests were conducted. The range of military options available to India from limited air strikes to special forces action to limited war to all out conventional war – all carried the risk of escalation. The outcome of an armed conflict, especially with missiles and aircrafts deployed, may not have been to either country’s liking as neither country has any escalation control mechanism in place. At the same time, each side was determined to convince the other that it was not blustering, by maintaining the threat of actual war. 

 

 

However ‘victorious’ either side may feel from the stand-off, one thing is clear – an unresolved Kashmir issue carries the risk of another crisis.  The government should seriously consider the case for using monitoring technology and not maximalist preconditions in a unilateral mode of political bravado.  

 

 

 

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