New Terror Attack Exposes India’s Limited Options - The Diplomat, 15 February 2019

In this week's column for The Diplomat, I wrote on the horrific terrorist attack in Pulwama yesterday and what India's options may be in response to it. In the piece, "New Terror Attack Exposes India’s Limited Options," I argue that despite the severity of the attack and the pressure for action, New Delhi’s choices are much more limited than they may initially appear.

A major terrorist attack in Awantipora area of Pulwama district in south Kashmir has killed dozens of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel, and the casualties are likely to go up. But despite the severity of the attack and growing pressure for action, New Delhi’s choices are much more limited than they may initially appear.

The Pulwama terrorist attack is one of the worst in recent years. The death toll is still climbing, but recent reports indicated over 40 people had been killed. In the 2016 attack on an Indian Army base in Uri, 16 personnel had died. The 2001 attack on the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly in Srinagar had killed 38 people. For the CRPF in particular, this is the second worst attack in its history. The last time it suffered such casualties was in Dantewada when Maoists insurgents ambushed and killed 75 CRPF personnel in April 2010.

The CRPF is the largest of the central paramilitary forces that come under the Ministry of Home Affairs. It has been carrying out law and order as well as counterinsurgency duties in Jammu and Kashmir and India’s northeast for several decades. The CRPF is generally less well trained and less well armed than the Indian Army, but it is usually used to bolster local police forces around the country in various contingencies including for counterinsurgency duties.

Reacting to the attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, “Attack on CRPF personnel in Pulwama is despicable. I strongly condemn this dastardly attack. The sacrifices of our brave security personnel shall not go in vain. The entire nation stands shoulder to shoulder with the families of the brave martyrs.” Union Minister VK Singh responded by saying, “As a soldier and a citizen of India, my blood boils at the spineless and cowardly attacks. 18 brave hearts from the @crpfindia laid down their lives in #Pulwama. I salute their selfless sacrifice & promise that every drop of our soldier’s blood will be avenged. #JaiHind.”

These statements are understandable and fairly routine, and the government will be under great pressure to do something. One reason is the scale of the attack and the open claim of responsibility by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Pakistan-based terrorist group. Another reason is that the Modi government claims to be tough on national security matters and its supporters will expect it to act forcefully. Moreover, India’s so-called surgical strikes in 2016 will lead to expectations that India will act this time also. Finally, national elections are due to take place in the next few months which adds domestic political pressure on the government.

For the full article, click here.



On the other hand, India’s options to respond are fairly limited. On the diplomatic side, while we have seen Indian officials speak about isolating Pakistan and some steps may be taken in this direction, they are likely to have little substantive impact considering that the level of diplomatic intercourse with Pakistan is already quite minimal and no major negotiations or talks are underway. While India could downgrade diplomatic relations even further, it is unlikely that it could do very much to assuage the anger in the country.

India could also try to generate diplomatic pressure on Pakistan through its friends in the international community and through multilateral fora such as the United Nations. But these have so far proved of little value and they are unlikely to bear much fruit.

This attack also raises questions about the Modi government’s Wuhan initiative to smooth ties with China. Despite Modi’s efforts to mollify China, there is little indication that Beijing has stopped providing cover to Pakistan, especially on the Masood Azhar issue. In fact, any Indian effort to once again list JeM founder Masood Azhar as a global terrorist is likely to be blocked by China.

India’s military options are equally constrained. If past crises are any indication, it is unlikely that there are any well-planned and prepared contingency options that have been decided in consultation between the political leadership and the Indian military. Thus, any response will have to wait until plans are drawn up, forces prepared, and equipment deployed. This is likely to take time, possibly several weeks.

It is also unclear that the Indian military has sufficient superiority over Pakistani forces to even consider any full-scale military retaliation. The Indian military has been starved of funds in the last several years, with very little capital acquisition and significant weaknesses in critical areas. The Indian Air Force, for example, is down to about 30 squadrons and it will be years before India is able to field the full 42 squadrons that has been sanctioned for the Air Force.

It is also unclear that India will respond with a full-scale conventional assault as envisaged under the Cold Start doctrine. With elections looming, such a venture may be considered too risky. While it is possible that India could conduct a somewhat enhanced version of the 2016 surgical strikes, that may not be seen as sufficient.

The Modi government is thus likely to find itself facing a series of bad choices. But it has only itself to blame for the poor planning and preparation to meet a contingency that was easily predictable. The greatest danger is that under pressure to do something, Delhi will launch a military assault with inadequate forethought that will likely make the situation worse.

Why India’s New Defense Budget Falls Short - The Diplomat, 12 February 2019

For The Diplomat this month, I start with an analysis of the Indian defence budget and highlight that the new budget does little to advance the very objectives the country has outlined for itself.

On February 1, India’s acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal (presented the Indian interim budget for 2019-20. Unsurprisingly for an election year, there was a big focus on agriculture and social sectors, and the defense allocation was certainly not the highlight.

Specifically, Goyal, in his speech said, “Our Defence Budget will be crossing 3,00,000 crore rupees [INR 3 trillion or about $42 billion] for the first time in 2019-20. For securing our borders and to maintain preparedness of the highest order, if necessary, additional funds would be provided.”

Newspaper headlines highlighted the fact that the defense budget had crossed the INR 3 trillion mark. But the key question is if this is sufficient against the backdrop of growing security challenges and the life-cycle driven military modernization that Indian military forces urgently require.

In fact, the defense allocation in real terms has gone down if one were to look at the rate of inflation and foreign exchange depreciation over the last year. Commenting on the defense budget, Air Marshal Nirdosh Tyagi, a former Deputy Chief of Air Staff, said, “Last defence budget had increase of just about 7.7 percent over the previous year. Inflation and rupee depreciation more than neutralized this. Thus, no increase in real terms.” Other commentators also echoed this general sentiment that Indian defense budget has stagnated.

For the full essay, click here.



With major plans for defense modernization on the anvil, the current defense allocation is far too meager to make any meaningful progress. In fact, in the last few years, each Indian defense budget has been criticized as being the lowest budget allocation since the 1962 war with China. Indian defense spending in the pre-1962 phase was about 1.5 percent of GDP annually, going up only as a consequence of the disastrous border war with China in late 1962 and the rebuilding of the Indian military that took place subsequently. It peaked at over 4 percent of GDP in the mid-1980s, according to the World Bank (based on SIPRI data), declining since then.

The government has made a total allocation for defense of INR 4.31 trillion which is slightly over 6.35 percent of the revised estimates for 2018-19. The total Ministry of Defense (MoD) budget includes all allocations to the Ministry of Defense, revenue allocations to the three services, Defense R&D Organization (DRDO) and Ordnance Factories and capital allocations to these entities and also defense pensions. Thus, the actual allocation for the defense forces is only INR 3.01 trillion, of which only a third (INR 1.03 trillion) is allocated for capital expenditure, which goes into modernization of the military.

Analysts have provided further break down of the budget in terms of the modernization funds available to army, navy and air force which shows that the resource crunch will continue to be a major problem for all the services. Most of the 6.3 percent hike in the defense budget actually goes to meet the salary and pension requirements, thus making the allocation for modernization a lot smaller than even the previous year. A quick look at the modernization budget shows that Air Force has got the largest share at INR 363.7 billion followed by Army and the Navy at about INR 220 billion.

Why does the continuing almost-stagnant defense allocation create anxieties? This year’s defense allocation is despite the Parliament Committee Report of 2018 which highlighted the serious deficiencies faced by the Indian military. India’s Vice Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Sarath Chand had last year made a case for increasing the budget, telling a parliamentary panel that the budget “has dashed our hopes”. He pointed to the possibility of a two-front war and to the continuing threats that India faced, saying India did not have sufficient funds for emergency necessary purchases, and the army did not have sufficient war reserves to fight a high-intensity war for more than ten days. He is not likely to be pleased with this year’s budget either.

More recently, the Indian Army has released its Land Warfare doctrine which clearly emphasizes a two-front threat scenario (China-Pakistan) for which the Indian Army has to be prepared against, signifying a shift from the single-threat scenario, which was the predominant thinking until a decade ago. Similarly, last year the Indian Air Force (IAF) conducted the Gagan Shakti exercises reportedly with a two-front war scenario.

It is somewhat surprising that a nationalist government that prides itself on a muscular foreign policy devotes so little for defense. While the current budget may be dictated by the impending elections and the need for providing sops to various domestic groups, that does not explain the consistently lower defense budget for several years. This also has an impact on India’s strategic options: India’s much softer approach to China over the last year may very well be dictated by the realization that New Delhi simply does not have the military capacity to do anything else.

Pakistan’s Nasr Missile: ‘Cold Water’ Over India’s ‘Cold Start’? - 31 January 2019

In this week's column for The Diplomat, Pakistan’s Nasr Missile: ‘Cold Water’ Over India’s ‘Cold Start’?, I wrote on the broader significance of broader significance of Pakistan's Nasr missile. Pakistan has claimed that it successfully conducted a "training launch" of Nasr, a short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile, last week. In addition to the statement, a video was released that showed four of these missiles being launched in a salvo.

According to the statement, which was put out by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR) office, the test was conducted to beef up the operational efficiency of Army Strategic Forces Command as well as to validate the technical parameters of the missile. The statement noted that the missile has the ability for “in-flight maneuverability” and claimed that it has given a boost to Pakistan’s “full spectrum deterrence.”

There is little doubt that the Nasr is directly focused on complicating India’s nuclear doctrine and the Indian Army’s efforts to create a space below the nuclear threshold for conventional operations through the “Cold Start” doctrine.

For the full essay, click here.



The Indian doctrine came about as a result of not having an effective response in the wake of the December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament. India recognized that Pakistan’s nuclear status prevents it from conducting deep thrusts into Pakistan’s territory because it could lead to Islamabad responding with a nuclear attack.

Cold Start is designed to nevertheless use India’s conventional superiority to punish Pakistan by conducting a large number of shallow attacks into Pakistani territory. The hope is that the shallowness of such an attack will prevent Pakistan from finding a justifiable cause for using its nuclear weapons, while the width and number of attacks will both prevent Pakistan from being able to defend itself and allow India to capture some territory to force Pakistan to be amenable to Indian political demands, such as stopping Pakistani support for the insurgency in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan wants to prevent such Indian plans by suggesting that it will respond with nuclear weapons to even limited-distance thrusts as envisaged under Cold Start. After a previous test launch of the Nasr missile in 2017, Pakistani army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa is reported to have said that the “Nasr has put cold water on Cold Start.”

Pakistan started developing the Nasr in the mid-2000s and the first report about the missile came out after a test firing on April 19, 2011. The missile, capable of carrying a sub-kilo ton nuclear warhead, is a derivative of the WS-2 Weishi Rockets system developed by China’s Sichuan Aerospace Corporation.

Though the missile is likely to carry a small tactical nuclear warhead, analysts argue that “it is intended to serve the dual purpose of demonstrating Pakistan’s determination to protect its vital national interests; and to provoke international intervention to stop India.” Some Pakistani analysts are of the view that the Nasr TNWs can restrain India from carrying out “massive retaliation,” a principle enshrined in India’s nuclear doctrine and is “a cost-effective way [due to Pakistan’s resource constraints] to alleviate the rapidly growing conventional asymmetries between India and Pakistan and to counter the threat of limited war.” Pakistan feels that Nasr is also less provocative because it is not intended to be used on Indian territory but on Indian troops who are already deep inside Pakistan’s territory.

While there are still questions about whether Pakistan has managed to actually build warheads sufficiently small to fit on top of the Nasr missile, the United States has remained concerned about the heightened risk of a nuclear conflict with India with the introduction of the TNWs. Such weapons have to be forward deployed, and control of these weapons need to be delegated to lower levels of command, which increases probability of these weapons being used without being authorized by the central command. There is also an increased risk of these weapons even being stolen. Nevertheless, for Rawalpindi, the Nasr has probably performed its deterrence task by seriously complicating Indian war plans and nuclear strategy.