NOT WAR, NOT PEACE?
Motivating Pakistan to Prevent Cross-Border Terrorism
George Perkovich and Toby Dalton
Oxford University Press
297 pages; Rs 695
Prescient would be an underwhelming adjective to describe a book that claims to be “the first comprehensive assessment of the violent and non-violent options available to India for compelling Pakistan to take concrete steps towards curbing terrorism originating from its homeland”. The timing of this publication can perhaps be compared only to the timing of Virat Kohli’s stroke-play.
Authors George Perkovich and Toby Dalton (both from the Washington D C-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) provide some much-needed clarity to questions such as how India should respond to Pakistan’s usage of sub-conventional warfare, and the costs and benefits for each of India’s options.
As a piece of analytical writing, the book avoids the trap of a recency bias — excessive jingoism calling for retribution in response to terrorist attacks such as in Uri that can lead to an error in decision-making. Instead, the authors identify four objectives for any response by the Indian side to an act of terror: one, satisfying the domestic political-psychological need to punish the perpetrators; two, motivating Pakistani authorities to prevent the next attack; three, deterring Pakistani authorities from escalating the conflict in reaction to India’s punitive moves; and, four, ending the conflict in ways that doesn’t leave India worse off than it would have been had it responded with less destructive means.
With these objectives as the backdrop, the authors describe five strategies: a proactive strategy not very different from the surgical strikes deployed in the aftermath of the Uri attacks, limited airborne strike on terrorist targets in Pakistan, covert operations to take out terrorists and their infrastructure, a change in India’s nuclear force posture, allowing India to punish Pakistan in ways currently unfeasible and, finally, non-violent methods involving alliances with other states to inflict costs on Pakistan.
The book is, however, severely critical of the “tendency in India, verging on standard operating procedure, to announce or publicly discuss operational concepts or weapon systems before they actually exist.” We have seen glimpses of this tendency recently as well: whether it was the prime minister raising the case of aiding Balochistan separatists in the Independence Day speech, the case of a possible review of the Indus Water Treaty or Defence Research and Development Organisation’s claims on programmes such as ballistic missile defence systems. Premature sabre-rattling without credible capacity only motivates the irreconcilable entities in Pakistan, while India is caught off-guard when these forces retaliate.
The book also incriminates the below-par performance of India’s military-industrial complex, saying that this lacuna constrains many of India’s military options. The two authors’ assessment of the US role in Pakistan is also noteworthy. They accurately cite that even today, the US remains Pakistan's biggest export market and a substantially large provider of economic and military aid. Getting the US to stop supporting Pakistan, financially and militarily remains an unfulfilled task.
A few sections in the book, however, are based on long disproved assumptions. For instance, the first chapter derives that India’s position with respect to Pakistan is undermined, at least partly, due to a lack of “strategic culture”. The proof for this claim are statements by retired and serving defence officers, who place the blame on political leaderships through the years. This doesn’t hold water. Just because India’s strategic aims were not Alexander-like in nature does not imply that there was no strategic culture. In fact, India’s strategic aim for long has been the consolidation of markets and states in the subcontinent. The chapter does make a redeeming point: the lack of a “defence economics” practice in India. Questions such as how much should be spent on defence and on what basis or whether the armed forced would agree to a reduction in manpower in favour of better hardware remain unasked.
The authors are charitable when they criticise Pakistan for its “unwillingness or inability to prevent cross border terrorism against India". After all, Pakistan has been directly involved in several cases of cross-border terrorism. The “rogue actor” model, often used to bury this unsettling fact can’t explain the following. How is it that there is a high substitutability of labour between the army and the jihadi groups, and among jihadi groups themselves? And what explains the fact that any efforts at peace talks between Pakistan and India are promptly followed by acts of violence, terror and intimidation from and within Pakistan?
Pakistan is not one geopolitical entity, but two. The first is a putative state; currently represented by a civilian government. The second entity is the military-jihadi complex, a dynamic syndicate of military, militant, radical Islamist and political-economic structures that pursues a set of domestic and foreign policies to ensure its survival and relative dominance. Policies towards Pakistan will continue to be ineffective unless these two Pakistans are explicated and internalised.
The book also claims that “today and in the foreseeable future, the choice Indian leaders will face is between doing nothing and doing too much.” Perhaps, there is a space for a third option: Ignore Pakistan while building up defences, resolving the political issues in Jammu & Kashmir, and shaping international morality against states that support terrorism as a policy.
Not War, Not Peace? is a vital read for anyone interested in the protracted India-Pakistan conflict. Long-time Pakistan watchers will enjoy the exhaustive nature of the analyses while new readers will find the language easy to grasp. One final regret: such a comprehensive and lucid assessment of India’s options was written first by experts in the US, and not in India.
The reviewer is a Research Fellow at the Takshashila Institution, a Bengaluru based think-tank and school of public policy
