Why India must temper its rhetoric on Pakistan

IN a 1957 speech, Mao Zedong made a pithy but insightful observation: "Strategically we should despise all our enemies, but tactically we should take them all seriously." This is a thought that comes to mind when we hear the Army Chief, Gen Upendra Dwivedi, declare that if Pakistan continues with state-sponsored terrorism, the next time around India "won't show the restraint we exhibited during Operation Sindoor 1.0. This time we will take a step forward and act in a manner that will make Pakistan think whether it wants to remain on the world map or not."

The report came on the same day that, in a press conference, Air Force Chief AP Singh listed the heavy damage suffered by the Pakistan Air Force in the 87-hour war in May. Brushing aside reported Indian losses, he painted the picture of a hapless PAF that was compelled to sue for a ceasefire.

Not to be outdone, Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, touring the Bhuj area, warned that any misadventure by Pakistan in the disputed Sir Creek area would invite decisive force that could alter "both history and geography."

Not surprisingly, Pakistan responded with an unprecedented all-caps statement attacking India and declaring that it had the capability to bring war to every corner of India and if there was national erasure, presumably brought on by nuclear weapons, it "will be mutual."

There is a somewhat over-the-top quality in these statements that calls for the caution that Mao spoke of. There is little doubt that nuclear-armed Pakistan is a failing state that has used terrorism against India for the past 40 years. It is deeply divided, bankrupt, keeps its most popular politician in jail and lives on handouts.

Yet India cannot ignore Pakistan's 6,60,000-strong military or its nuclear weapons. It would be foolhardy to believe that Pakistan will allow itself to be "erased from the world map" without using its nuclear weapons.

Overweening generals have been rare in the Indian Army, but they have existed. One can think of the brilliant General K Sundarji. But despite his brilliance, that has played a great role in dealing with China and modernising the Army, his other ventures had a dubious ending. Operation Brasstacks brought us to the brink of an inadvertent war, Operation Bluestar was an unmitigated disaster and hubris led to the fiasco in Sri Lanka that cost us over a thousand lives.

The lessons of past wars and alarms should teach us that Pakistan is not easy to deal with. This bears restatement because of the tendency these days to rewrite history, not only of the country, but also of the wars with Pakistan.

Today, many believe that if India had continued the 1947-48 war with Pakistan, it could have liberated all of Jammu & Kashmir. The official history of the war examined this issue and noted that within Kashmir itself, India faced numerically larger Pakistani forces. It had the choice to go for a general India-Pakistan war, but this would have had fraught consequences in a country that had just undergone partition and was yet to consolidate its nation-state.

In 1965, India did well to offset Pakistan's grand plans of victory, but the war ended as a draw of sorts, with both sides making small gains in each other's territory.

In 1971, the war in the east was a supreme success; but it was a war we could not have lost. But the story in the west was different. Despite a demoralised Pakistan whose air force vanished from the skies, the gains on the ground were few and we even lost Chhamb.

Kargil was kept a limited war by design. Both India and Pakistan were nuclear powers now and New Delhi decided on a strategy of limiting the war in geography and intensity. India's big payoff was international support, especially that of the US, which forced Pakistan to withdraw its forces from the remaining heights in Kargil.

In 2002, Operation Parakram saw the mobilisation of the Indian and Pakistani armies, but after a nine-month period, India called it off because a guaranteed outcome was not visible. The same thing happened in the wake of the Mumbai attack of 2008. While former Union Home Minister P Chidambaram recently blamed the US, the reality is that the armed forces, particularly the army, were simply not ready in terms of their equipment and munitions.

The bottom line was best explained by Pervez Musharraf after Operation Parakram was withdrawn. He said it was his "military judgement that they (India) would not attack us… It was based on deterrence of our conventional forces. The force levels that we maintain… is of a level which deters aggression. Militarily… there is a certain ratio required for an offensive force to succeed. The ratios that we maintain are far above that — far above what a defensive force requires to defend itself…."

There has been no change in terms of numbers, organisation or equipment holdings to suggest that success is guaranteed for an Indian ground attack on Pakistan. We will have to overcome well-prepared defences, as well as soldiers who are as well equipped and motivated as ours. Now, in addition to Pakistan, the Indian forces also face a greater burden along the northern front. In the past five years, they have had to seriously reorient their forces to deal with the Chinese build-up along the LAC.

In the wake of Op Sindoor, Prime Minister Modi laid out new guidelines for dealing with Pakistani terrorism. The guidelines demand better exploitation of the space between nuclear and conventional conflict to punish Pakistan. Instead of threatening Pakistan, the generals should be crafting tactics to meet the Prime Minister's requirements.

Manoj Joshi is Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.