India and Pakistan on the Brink of War

Two unstable, nuclear-armed states are close to their fifth war. Here is some background on the decades-old conflict.

On Monday, Pakistan's defense minister said India appeared poised to attack his nation. This comes as tensions mount after terrorists believed linked to the Pakistan government killed 26 tourists picnicking in the disputed territory of Kashmir last week, spurring outrage in India.

The two nations are both nuclear-armed, with over 170 atomic weapons each and with doctrines that call for the explicit first use of these weapons in a war (Pakistan) or are ambiguous on their use (India).

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi vowed to “identify, track and punish every terrorist and their backers,” after last week’s terrorist attack.

A troubled past

Relations between Pakistan and India are among the most hostile on earth. Tensions date back to the birth of the two countries. When Britain pulled out of its Indian colony in 1947, it partitioned its former possession into two nations. The new Muslim state, Pakistan, was comprised of an eastern and western territory separated by 1,000 miles of Indian territory. Partitioning was traumatic for both countries, as 10 to 12 million refugees relocated across the new border. It was a bloody affair. The U.S. embassy in Karachi reported “appalling stories of murder and atrocities, which served to inflame the minds of the masses whether Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs with a sense of grievance and a not unnatural desire for revenge.” Conservative estimates put the death toll from the migration between 200,000 and 500,000.

Adding to the turbulence, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a champion for an independent Pakistan, died just one year after the country was formed, leaving the nation without its visionary leader. Some argue that this lack of a core identity elevated the conflict with India as the main factor legitimizing the Pakistan state. The late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said:

The 1948 war with India made Pakistan feel vulnerable to the Indian threat. Consequently, a large portion of the budget was spent on defense to counter India’s military. India’s military, of course, was backed by a much larger population and economy. Between 1947 and 1950 approximately 70 percent of the Pakistani budget was spent on defense. As Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first prime minister put it, ‘The defense of the State is out foremost consideration…and has dominated all other government activities.’ This began the process of giving the military inordinate stature and influence in Pakistani society, while diverting money away from economic and social development. Its political effect was dramatic. Instead of strengthening democratic institutions and infrastructure, unelected institutions such as the army and the intelligence agencies took precedence. They became the central institutions of the new Pakistan.

Many issues between the two countries were left unresolved with the partition, but foremost was a territorial dispute over the states of Jammu and Kashmir. At Partition, the princely maharaja ceded the two states to India, but the Muslim majority population rebelled, leading to the first Indo-Pakistani War. The United Nations brokered a ceasefire in 1949, which ended the fighting but did not resolve the dispute. Kashmir continued to seethe, and war broke out again in 1965. The UN again stepped in and pushed both countries to sign the Tashkent agreement, which stipulated a return to the pre-war cease-fire line.

The next major conflict with India led to the humiliation of the Pakistani Army and the loss of East Pakistan. East Pakistan was predominantly ethnic Bengali, a part of the Pakistani population who felt increasingly maligned by the government. Bengali grievances coalesced into a separatist movement in 1971, which triggered a harsh crackdown by the Pakistani Army. Atrocities and mass killings were so egregious that 20 U.S. State Department officials in East Pakistan sent a telegram of dissent back to Washington, calling the events genocide and chastising the U.S. policy of nonintervention as “moral bankruptcy.”

India stepped in after 10 million refugees poured across the border, and in a matter of six months, had completely routed the Pakistani Army in East Pakistan, which then declared itself the independent nation of Bangladesh. Indian military superiority on the sub-continent was now well established. Experts agree that this war was the most traumatic event in Pakistan’s brief history, spurring many decisions with a decidedly negatively impact on the South Asian security situation. Pakistani leaders often cite the defeat as convincing proof that they need nuclear weapons – as well private justification for beginning a low-level insurgency as a tool against India.

Not long after the war, in 1974, India conducted its first, allegedly “peaceful” nuclear test. Pakistan had already begun a secret program to develop a nuclear weapons capability, but “that test was the tipping point that transformed the 1972 ‘capability decision’ into a ‘proliferation decision.’” Pakistan revved up its program, lead by scientist A. Q. Khan, and by the mid-1980s probably had the ability to build a nuclear bomb. In 1998, India’s newly elected conservative BJP government shocked the world with its first overt nuclear weapons test. Despite intense international pressure Pakistan followed suit, testing a weapon a mere two weeks later.

With the dangers of conflict heightened by the nuclear capability, Pakistan and India fought a fourth limited war in 1999, often referred to as the Kargil crisis. Fighting had again erupted in Kashmir when Pakistani troops occupied territory across the line of control. India responded by mobilizing 200,000 troops and the Indian air force, recapturing the land within a few months. Owen Bennett Jones documents several instances during the crisis when Pakistani leaders considered the use of its nuclear arsenal. They did so again during another crisis in 2002, where both militaries were on high alert at the border when India mobilized after a terrorist attack on its New Delhi parliament building. According to Jones, General Musharraf said, “If Indian troops moved a single step across the international border or the Line of Control, they should not expect a conventional war from Pakistan.”

Doomsday Doctrines

As nuclear arsenals in India and Pakistan grow, so do the risks of war by design, miscalculation or accident. Neither country’s declared nuclear strategy alleviates these concerns; they exacerbate them.

India has officially adopted a policy of “Cold Start.” This is not a new kind of arms control agreement but a plan to mass troops along the Pakistan border within days of an order. Pakistan, in turn, publicly plans to use short-range (tactical) nuclear weapons against any Indian troops that cross its border, in the belief that India will not respond as long as the weapons are not used on Indian territory. India does plan to respond, however. Walter Ladwig, an associate professor at King’s College in London, wrote:

Limited war on the subcontinent poses a serious risk of escalation based on a number of factors that are not necessarily under the control of the policymakers or military leaders who would initiate the conflict. A history of misperception, poor intelligence, and India’s awkward national security decision-making system suggests that Cold Start could be a risky undertaking that may increase instability in South Asia.

The Indian strategy developed after an attack by five gunmen on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001. The terrorists, who killed 12 people and injured 22 others, were quickly linked to Pakistani extremist groups, Laskkar-e-Taiyyaba and Jaish-e-Mohammad. After Pakistan refused Indian demands to arrest and extradite suspected militants, India sent armored troops towards the border, but it took them three weeks to get there. The United States and other nations intervened to prevent an invasion. “The result was a ten-month standoff that ended with India’s quiet withdrawal,” says Ladwig. “In the eyes of many senor Indian officers, Pakistan had outplayed them. It had managed to inflict a high-profile attack on the Indian capital via its proxies and then exploited the Indian Army’s long deployment time to internationalize the crisis in a manner that allowed Pakistan to escape retribution.”

India has long planned, at least theoretically, to respond to the next terrorist attack with a rapid conventional strike against Pakistan, driving deep into its national territory. The aim “would be to make shallow territorial gains, 50-80 kilometers deep, that could be used in post-conflict negotiations to extract concession from Islamabad.” Last week’s attack could set those plans in motion.

Reuters reported on Monday that India “had responded to 'unprovoked' small arms firing from Pakistan along the de facto border for the fourth consecutive night, as it deepens its search for militants in the region.”

Here’s the problem: If India invades, Pakistan could compensate for the inability of its own tanks, troops and planes by firing nuclear weapons to stop the invasion. Although the precise conditions under which Pakistan would use nuclear weapons are not clear, many experts, including Ladwig, cite the statements of Pakistani Lt. General Khalid Kidwai to an expert delegation of Italian scientists. Kidwai, then the head of the Strategic Plans Division, detailed for the group the situations in which Pakistan would use nuclear weapons: If India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part of its territory; if India destroyed significant part of Pakistan’s military forces; if India blockaded Pakistan; or, if India tried to destabilize Pakistan politically.

The situation is not entirely bleak. India’s doctrine may be more talk than capability. A leaked 2010 cable from the U.S. Mission to India calls Cold Start “a mixture of myth and reality.” If India did mobilize its forces for attack, it might take Pakistan days, perhaps weeks, to ready its nuclear forces. Unlike U.S. or Russian weapons, thousands of which are ready to launch within tens of minutes, Pakistani nuclear systems are kept in a “low-alert form.” This means that the weapon cores are not actually in the warheads and the warheads are not mated with delivery vehicles. The launch mechanism, the device and other mechanisms are kept at different places.

Global Consequences

A South Asian nuclear war would destroy the subcontinent, perhaps the most heavily populated region on Earth. But the catastrophe would also have global climate consequences. Scientists calculate that the use of just 100 nuclear weapons would directly kill between 50 and 125 million people on the subcontinent but also generate smoke and clouds that would blanket the planet, decreasing global temperatures, killing food crops and triggering a world-wide famine that could kill two billion people.

Could that many weapons possibly be used? Yes. Pakistan’s capabilities and doctrines are unclear, but at least one former nuclear official, giving an example of the type of calculations that Pakistani planners might make, said that for a set of 10 possible targets, a country might need 68–70 warheads (without taking into account the risk of a pre-emptive strike). And that does not count the warheads that might be used by India.

The problem with Indian’s nuclear arsenal is its lack of transparency, which greatly heightens tensions in the region. Federation of American Scientists scholar Hans M. Kristensen wrote in his 2010 overview of India’s nuclear forces:

All Indian nuclear systems are dual-capable (they can carry either nuclear or conventional warheads), and the operational status of these systems is ambiguous. This not only makes the size, composition and readiness of India’s nuclear arsenal difficult to determine, but it also has troubling implications for stability on the subcontinent, especially in the case of a war with Pakistan; for example, preparations for an Indian launch of a conventionally armed nuclear-capable ballistic missile could be misidentified by Pakistan as a pending nuclear attack, triggering nuclear escalation of the conflict.

In a show of force, India test-fired some of its long-range missile over the weekend. A Pakistani officials responded with a warning that his country’s nuclear arsenal of more than 130 missiles was “not kept as models” and was aimed “only for India … these ballistic missiles, all of them are targeted at you.”

This could go either way. And that is what is so terrifying. Most experts and journalists agree with analyst Michael Kugelman who this week told The Guardian, “An all-out war is unlikely, as India, despite its relentless tough talk, is most focused on limited options like degrading anti-Indian terrorists and restoring deterrence,” he said.

But here’s the catch: “That said, one can’t completely rule out worst-case scenarios, depending on the nature of a potential Indian strike, how Pakistan might respond to any initial Indian military action, and the ever-present miscalculation risk,” Kugelman added. “And given that these are nuclear-armed rivals, the stakes are quite high.”

As long as nuclear weapons exist, the threat that a local conflict could escalate into a global nuclear war is constantly with us.

This essay is adapted from my book, Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World before It Is Too Late, published by Columbia University Press ten years ago this June.