A sputtering ceasefire appears to have taken hold between India and Pakistan. While it is unclear if this will hold, there are other questions that come up about the lessons of the recent clash. Most obviously, what was achieved? The picture is a bit murky because, despite the despondency among a section of the Indian opinion, there were some achievements. But there were also setbacks.
The purpose of the Indian operation presumably was deterrence of future attacks by Pakistan-sponsored terrorist groups. Even if the objective was less significant, such as simply punishment for Pakistan’s support of terrorism, the question is whether the mission was achieved.
This is a difficult question to answer because it depends not on a simple issue of what damage was caused and who caused the most damage. What really matters is what psychological effect was created. Deterrence and punishment both depend on creating an effect on those we are trying to influence. The problem is that we cannot know with certainty how much damage needs to be caused to create that psychological effect. Some may be willing to tolerate much higher punishment than others. North Vietnam, to give one example, suffered enormously under American bombardment without losing its willingness to continue the fight to unify the country.
Clearly, a purely bean-counting exercise of the clash would likely suggest that India did better than Pakistan. Of course, such judgements need to be very tentative at this stage. Nevertheless, India appears to have successfully attacked many more Pakistani air bases, though the extent of damage is unclear. Pakistan appears to have attacked fewer such military installations, or at least were less successful in such attacks. The score as far as shooting down combat planes is unclear, though there is some evidence to suggest that an Indian Rafale fighter did go down.
Importantly, India crossed an important threshold by attacking a number of air bases associated with Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent, including the Sargodha base complex and the air base outside Islamabad. Pakistan has routinely raised fears of nuclear escalation, playing on the well-established fears of Western scholars and governments that any clash between India and Pakistan could escalate to the nuclear level. This has usually been used as justification for international pressure, a tactic that Pakistan has repeatedly used as cover for its support for terrorist groups targeting India.
India has usually succumbed to such pressures and even invited such interventions as a way of constraining Pakistan. They have never worked. In 2019, the Balakot strikes suggested that India may be tiring of such concerns.
The attacks on Pakistan’s air bases was another signal that India may be giving a short shrift to such exaggerated concerns. Unfortunately, India’s quick acceptance of US intervention for a ceasefire may dilute this signaling. This is assuming that undermining the nuclear scare tactics was at least partly the objective of the Indian strikes on Pakistan’s air bases.
Still, Pakistan now has to take into consideration that any serious terrorist attack on India will raise the risk of a wider war, including attacks on Pakistan’s air bases. But the question is whether Rawalpindi will be further emboldened that the US will step in to constrain India if there is another clash. One step forward, two steps back.
A ‘cheap’ war?
Some additional caveats also have to be acknowledged. India’s change of the rules of engagement is interesting but somewhat unimpressive. To say that future terrorist attacks will be considered an attack on India raises the question of whether it was not so in the past. Moreover, making a declaration doesn’t reduce the complications India faces in actually converting this into practical policy. Would a terrorist throwing a grenade that kills two civilians be sufficient for a retaliatory strike? Or would it have to be an attack as horrific as what happened in Pahalgam or something close to it? The point is that such declarations, possibly meant for the current moment to mollify domestic public anger, imposes commitment problems. If India doesn’t respond to a terrorist attack in the future because decision makers decided it was not serious enough, it will call into question the credibility of the declaration.
Another problem is that poor preparation is clearly a continuing issue for India. A good example is media management, a perennial problem. India can complain of negative press and Western media bias but whining about it is not a particularly useful response. Indian media management is slow, bureaucratic, and cautious, with none of the nimbleness needed for the social media age. To give just one example, Pakistan has been claiming for two days that they had shot down and captured a female Indian pilot. The evidence on social media is clearly fake but India could have easily debunked this story without much effort. Instead, it has now become a meme because it was left unaddressed.
More broadly, the India-Pakistan missile and drone exchange has potentially major negative consequences. On the one hand, from the perspective of the decision makers, it is cheap, not only in monetary terms but also because no airframes or pilots are lost, with the attendant political embarrassment.
But this is also a problem. Such “cheap” options suggest extreme sensitivity to cost. Whereas for deterrence, one needs to demonstrate some willingness to risk cost to get what you want. Second, because it is cheap, both sides could possibly decide to reach for it faster and keep it up for far longer than other types of military operations. It looks good and neither side has to back down. It keeps jingoists on both sides happy: Deep strikes look good on TV and both sides can claim success for successful attack and defense. Cheap war means a sustainable war but with potentially dangerous downstream costs.
Rajesh Rajagopalan is a professor of International Politics at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. He tweets @RRajagopalanJNU. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)
In the name of offering a different perspective, amongst the most cynical pieces ever written. Almost every point made can be debunked with ease and finesse. Serves no purpose other than to demoralise the country and its armed forces.