The dilemma of the right strategic choice

Right or wrong, fallacious or prudent, assertive or devastative, India has announced its intent. She calls it the 'new normal' and call it what we may, she is unlikely to desist from it till Modi dispensation is in place — unless someone can hammer sense into this ludicrous mindset. Clearly, she has chosen to challenge the prevailing deterrence regime around nuclear capability on both sides.

Her army chief declared in his public interactions at the Shangrila Dialogue that there was space for a conventional war under the nuclear overhang without really testing the threshold. Problem? Threshold is both numerative as well as perceptive.

It translates thus: If and when India attributes a 'terror' event on its territory to Pakistan she will respond by attacking Pakistan in the name of neutralising terror network and its sponsors. This does not take into consideration international obligations which bind nations to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries.

Neither will India honour the sanctity of international borders under agreed covenants of international law. In fact, India will violate those norms to assert its strategic dominance over Pakistan rubbishing any respect and deference in compliance of the internationally recognised principles of peaceful coexistence and neighbourly courtesy.

India will go to war against Pakistan every time a 'terror event' takes place on its soil. That leaves Pakistan with only one option: defend against this aggression and fight back as evinced in the four-day war.

I believe, in doing so, India is probing the limits of the space for conventional war in a nuclear environment. She began with a proclaimed 2016 surgical strike, to the Balakot 2019 expedition, to her most recent misadventure. In each case Pakistan acted with restraint hoping that a minimum defensive effort will enthuse some rationality to Indian juvenility. India may also be aiming to 'normalise' sporadic Indian outburst, 'immunise' Pakistani sentiment to India's presumptive outrage, and inure sensitivity to a perceived nuclear threshold. This is playing with fire.

With seventeen simultaneous insurgencies enveloping one-third of India — most in the east and north-east, farthest from Pakistan — how she determines that an event may have had its roots in Pakistan is perhaps the hubris that India bestows upon itself. It is at best childish, juvenile and devoid of a mature, responsible and stately act by an entity that aspires to a global mantle and recognition.

No amounts of international entreaties to jointly investigate an event to determine responsibility can cut with India's instinctive bias to only label Pakistan. Intrinsically, it remains a system reeking of intense racial and ethnic hatred as a means to societal cleansing and remains blind to civility. It betrays presumed hubris and ethnic exceptionalism. She mimics Israel without realising she is not Israel surrounded by ravaged, listless and emaciated nations in the middle east.

How may India eventually act will be India's choice. Pakistan will be forced to react, at worst in a riposte or a counteroffensive. Preemption, Pakistan's preferred option as an opening gambit, had to be forsaken under the strategic environment of nuclear parity. Were Pakistan to initiate hostilities in any preemption - unless a full-scale attack by India seemed imminent - it would puncture its own narrative of the much-propounded deterrence stability.

India's recent pronunciations in defiance of operational logic and trumping common-sense forces upon Pakistan the dilemma of thwarting India's ill-conceived intent and misplaced aggression. India's declaration imposes the reality of a continuous, perpetual war over South Asia with its own hair-trigger dynamics.

Pakistan's response in the four-day war was exceptional in the air and restrained on the ground — a little less quid pro quo, measured and calibrated. The reason was obvious: the PAF had wrought such damage on the Indian air force in the very first hour of the hostilities that it outweighed all else that India may have intended to do.

And although Pakistan had declared that an offensive will respond to India's arrogated right to violate its borders with a direct attack, it was still meant to be proportionate and non-escalatory. It came some ninety hours later but by then its intensity, spread and volume had enhanced considerably. India upped the ante with a foolish last gasp impact by unleashing a missile barrage against PAF bases and infrastructure. It achieved little but paid a heavier price in the losses that she suffered in Pakistan's return offensive.

Is India smarting yet? Seems not when Modi claims in public gatherings that India was in pause and that a 'new normal' has been established and will stay in effect granting India the godly right to strike whenever and wherever she deemed necessary. Note the arrogance and the shamelessness, and the deficient sense of probity and responsibility of a global thug.

This misplaced haughtiness justifies hubris and entitlement. This needs to be treated. If the international community will shy away from helping correct the conceptual malfeasance emerging in South Asia, it shall be Pakistan's weight to carry. And this is what Pakistan is currently grappling with — what will and should change India the way she imagines her presumptive preponderance in action and thought.

The recipe is simple. Keep the level of pain and punishment, and shame - although it remains a subjective measure - above the tolerance level of the current Indian order. How do we get there? The menu of items we have on the inventory is exhaustive enough to create a mix that will deliver what is intolerable and will pain long enough, but it must of essence be wholesome, definitive and complete in effect.

And we are not talking non-conventional yet except maybe a sprinkling to add intensity to excite the latency. Another DCA/OCA (Defensive/Offensive Counter Air - the air force guys know what I am talking about) to send the message across from enemy's excursion is a sine qua non. The offensive which should follow soon after should be sectorially substantive whether value or forced-oriented. Whether it shall be counterforce or countervalue, and in what mix from the available options is under consideration.

Pakistan's conventional capability is sufficient to change the way India and Modi assume the arrogated role of a regional policeman with a sense of entitlement. But with the most recent swarm attack by Ukraine of Russia in different geographical locations, the fine division between conventional, unconventional and non-conventional has turned murkier.

The decision points escalating from one level to the next are muddled into singular entity. In fact, the effect is almost simultaneous of all elements which earlier composed different strands and levels of capability. The whole spectrum is in play at all times which makes any miscalculation entirely devastating. That makes Jaishankar's call to Pakistan before India launched its attack on the May 6/7 night laughable and incredulous. If India does not desist from its declared recourse, Pakistan's punch must be substantive, focused and finite.