Are We Staring at a Fifth India-Pakistan War?
Since the April 22nd attack on Hindu tourists in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), by Islamist terrorists linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the prospect of a fifth war between India and Pakistan has increasingly become real. India is convinced that this abominable and provocative attack was planned and sanctioned by the Pakistani Army and its covert agency the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Indeed, a few days before the attack, General Asim Munir, Chief of Army Staff (COAS), in a speech before an audience of mostly overseas Pakistanis, gave vent to his deep hatred for Hindus and India.
Why Did Munir Do It?
One important question at this juncture is why did Munir plan and sanction this attack? One hypothesis that is circulating in the Indian media and among a few academics is that Munir sanctioned this attack due to his deep ideological hatred for Hindus and India; he also expected that India's reaction, including any kinetic action, would be similar to the Balakot airstrike in 2019 after the Pulwama terror attack by the Jaish-e-Mohammad. A second hypothesis that some have offered is that this attack was meant to destroy peace and prosperity in J&K. Ever since the removal of Art370 by the Modi government, the pace of peace and development in J&K has shot up and tourists have started returning to the region in large numbers. The logic then is that Munir planned and authorized the Pahalgam attack at the beginning of the summer tourist season to derail peace and prosperity in J&K. A third hypothesis, mostly coming from Pakistani analysts, is that the Pahalgam attack is Munir's revenge on India for the losses that the Pakistani Army have recently suffered in Balochistan, which the Pakistani Army believes has India's fingerprints all over.
One question that keeps coming back to me in all of this is: did someone (a far bigger power) put Munir up to this? Munir would have to be incredibly stupid to think that he could get away with this lightly. Indeed, if he is that stupid, then a bigot like him has no business being the COAS of a nuclear armed country. But somehow, I do not think he is that stupid! In the immediate aftermath of the Pahalgam attack, Munir and few other top generals quietly shipped their families out of Pakistan. Munir himself has gone into hiding or probably has left the country. Munir's predecessor, General Bajwa, had publicly admitted that Pakistan did not have enough fuel reserves to fight even a limited war with India. And things have become much worse in Pakistan after Bajwa left office. Munir must surely know this state of affairs. Yet he chose to provoke India - why? Did someone put him (and the top generals) up to this with enough personal incentives knowing fully well that such an attack will put pressure on Modi to retaliate. Could the aim be to lock India into a limited war with Pakistan, which could set the Indian economy back and affect India's growth trajectory?
What Will India Do?
What will India do? All wars are ultimately political, meaning that military operations are carried out to achieve certain political objectives. So, what are these political objectives that the Modi gov will now ask the Indian military to deliver through kinetic actions? I have absolutely no idea, and I doubt if anybody apart from the key top leaders know also.
But I am fairly sure that at the highest level of the Indian government (that is, at the level of the Cabinet Committee on Security or CCS), they have already worked out the political objectives and outcomes that they would like to see vis-a-vis Pakistan. And the Modi gov has given the Indian armed forces full autonomy to decide how they will deliver these objectives and outcomes. In other words, the armed forces will decide what targets to hit, when, using what kinds of weapons platforms, for how long, etc. If the political objective is to retake the POK and Northern Areas, that would eventually mean ground operations and military occupation. If the political objective is to dismember Pakistan, then that will mean a much larger military operations, possibly together with Baloch, Pashtun, and Sindhi secessionist forces.
Another important question at this juncture is what will be the Pakistani forces' reaction to the Indian military operations? This is a big unknown at this point. An associated question will be how far up the escalation ladder will India be prepared to go? Any military operation carries with it the risks of two types of escalation, horizontal and vertical. Horizontal escalation happens through the gradual spreading of the war across multiple theatres and domains and involving greater number of soldiers. Verticle escalation occurs when the intensity of the war rises as bigger and more powerful weapons systems are used to achieve war objectives. In the India-Pakistan case, given that both sides possess strategic and tactical nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, the escalation risks/calculus will be particularly concerning. Hence, before getting into a firefight, the top leadership in both states must work out in advance how far up the escalation ladder they are willing to travel and what will be the off ramps they will take to de-escalate once they have reached the top escalation point. I am sure India has worked this out already, but I have no clue about this for Pakistan.
The Role of Great Powers?
The Great Powers (United States, China, and Russia particularly) also have a big responsibility here. If these states have given India the go ahead to destroy or at least severely damage the terror infrastructure inside Pakistan and inflict severe costs on the Pakistani Army/ISI, then they must have also told Modi how far he should go. These states must also communicate to the Pakistani government and the Army/ISI that under no circumstances they should even consider using nuclear weapons. In other words, it will be up to the Great Powers to manage the escalation risks in this conflict.
Rajat Ganguly is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Asian Security and International Affairs (Sage) and Journal of World Affairs: Voice of the Global South (Sage). He is also a faculty member of the Global Security program at Murdoch University, Western Australia. He received his PhD in Political Science from Tulane University (US) and has held academic positions at Murdoch University (Australia), the University of East Anglia (UK), Victoria University of Wellington (New Zealand), the University of Southern Mississippi (US), Tulane University (US), and the University of West Florida (US). He has also been a Visiting Research Fellow at McGill University (Canada). He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of South Asian Development, South Asian Survey, Journal of Human Rights and Peace Studies, Journal of Law and Policy, and the Journal of North-East Indian Studies. He specializes in international relations and international security, particularly great power politics and interstate war, ethnic conflict and insurgency movements, terrorism and political violence, Indian foreign and security policy, and Asian international and strategic affairs. He is the author/editor of several books, and his articles have appeared in scholarly journals such as Small Wars and Insurgencies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Third World Quarterly, Asian Studies Review, Strategic Analysis, and India Quarterly.
