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A Shattered Myth: India’s Conventional Military
Superiority
Pakistan Sohail A. Azmie Pri, Mar 29, 2019
India often believes that Pakistan lives under the shadow of its
superior mi
Boasting on numerical ascendancy, India looks at Pakistan through
the lens of, what I call, ‘perpetuated grandiosity’, i.e., reducing
Pakistan and its military capability to an ‘incapacitated flutter’.
This estimation is rooted deep in the Indian strategic community’s
belief that India’s strategic interests lay in its becoming of a dominant
player.
India is, and always has been, an existential threat to Pakistan as most
of its military doctrines and the operational orientation is against
Pakistan.
India’s interference — that ranges from politico-military to sub-
conventional domains ~ in the affairs of neighbouring states has
turned South Asia into a ‘security-centric region’.
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This leaves Pakistan to have legitimate security concerns as India,
striding on Kautiliyan creeds, seeks regional hegemony.
India evaluates Pakistan, and now China, as irritants in its route to
emerge as an ‘influential power”.
Ziba Moshaver, in Nuclear Weapons Proliferation in the Indian
Subcontinent, notes that Nehru believed such a power was attainable
through socio-economic development, whereas the succeeding leaders
argued for a stronger military that could sustain India’s reckonable
position in the strategic milieu.
The later thesis got enduring acceptance and is conspicuously visible
in the evolution of Indian military doctrine’s continuum, which ranges
from ‘Simultaneity and Deep Thrusts’ to ‘Cold Start’ and from
“Proactive Operations’ to “Two Front War’
‘This article argues that India, while pursuing to establish itself as a
powerful actor in the region, made two strategic mistakes, which
comprehensively turned its conventional military irrelevant to the
operational environment,
This also led to unmasking of the myth that Indian conventional
superiority would be enough to check-mate Pakistan and significantly
influence the course of events.
The first of those two mistakes is the overt nuclearization of South
‘Asia when India went nuclear in 1998; the second is the most recent
air strike, on 26 February 2019, against contrived ‘terror hideouts’
deep inside Pakistan.
Soon after Nehru’s death, in 1964, deviating from his policies of
restraint on use of nuclear technology for destructive purposes, Zi
Moshaver observes, India quickly embraced the idea of developing
nuclear weapons.
Violent convergence of Communist and Capitalist ideals in the Indian
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weapons,
Calling it a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’, India tested a nuclear device,
in 1974, under the direct stewardship of Indira Gandhi.
This invited worldwide condemnation against India, which paved the
way for establishment of Nuclear Suppliers Group in 1974,
The detonation forced Pakistan to recalibrate its security choices in
the face of a foe treading the path of hegemony and influence.
India had set an irreversible, irreconcilable and irreverent race
towards nuclearization of, hitherto, nuclear-free South Asia.
Maintaining restraint, Pakistan’s nuclear program remained covert,
uncertain and ambiguous.
But not for long. India went nuclear, again, in 1998 overtly claiming
itself to be a ‘nuclear weapons state’. Amit Gupta, in his essay India’s
Draft Nuclear Doctrine written for the “Round Table’ magazine in
2000, notes that L. K. Advani viewed the nuclear weapons “gave
India the ability to engage in hot pursuit of Kashmiri insurgents across
the border into Pakistan”.
This provocative stance compelled Pakistan to follow suit, as Hassan
‘Abbas in Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb: A Story of Defiance, Deterrence
and Deviance, argues that Pakistan’s nuclear response was
substantially reactive and threat-based.
India kept transforming its military potential from land-based strategic
missiles to nuclear triad whilst enlarging its conventional military
potential
Pakistan had to bridge the power gaps across the levels of war and
introduced nuclear weapons as per new policy, what is now called the
“Full Spectrum Deterrence’, to blunt India’s numerically superior
conventional military might.
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Kargil War, in 1999, erupted between the two recently declared
nuclear weapons states.
India’s strategic mistake of 1998 had already set the wheel of
nuclearization in the region, which significantly truncated its
conventional military’s options to escalate or define the clear notion
of vietory.
‘The ensuing stalemate meant that India, with all its military strength,
was unable to either prescribe or articulate the course of events in its
favour.
Losses were near symmetrical on both sides as a result of violence,
but the occurrence led the strategic communities particularly on
Indian side to postulate that ‘limited war was possible under the
nuclear overhang’.
‘The postulate, nevertheless, could not stand the test on two occasions:
firstly in 2001, post-Indian Parliament Attack and secondly in 2008,
post-Mumbai Attack; when India quickly blamed Pakistan for the
terrorist incidents though choosing to restrain the use of military.
In order to substantially invalidate this postulate, Pakistan had to
figure something new, the result of which was the reported
development of low yield nuclear weapons.
These weapons, in view of Gen Kidwai, could deter a powerful
conventional military assault that India contemplated under its ‘Pro-
Active Operations’ strategy that seeks “massive retaliation” against
Pakistan.
Pakistan’s policy of introduction of nuclear weapons across the levels
of war, as approved by the National Command Authority in 2013, as
Kidwai posits, “reduced the chances of war”.
This means, in simple terms, that with a powerful conventional
military, India may sit eyeball to eyeball, without having the will to
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Encouraged by a completely farce ‘surgical strike’ in 2016, in the
aftermath of Uri Attack, India chose to ‘avenge’ the Pulwama Attack
of 14 February 2019, through another surgical strike.
This was the second strategic mistake that shattered the myth of
India’s conventional military being superior in deciding the course of
events.
India claimed to have sent a package of 12 fighter jets that bombed 3
targets deep inside Pakistan, across the LOC.
Resultantly, in view of the Indian official stance, nearly 300
‘terrorists’ were eliminated. India, despite repeated calls from within
India and abroad, egregiously failed to provide even a scant evidence
of that purported kill.
Nonetheless, Pakistan Air Force clinically conducted an airstrike in a
quid pro quo and additionally brought down 2 Indian fighters.
Capture and return of Wing Cdr Abhinandan is a living evidence of
Pakistan’s airstrike that cannot be refuted by India.
Despite a strike by Pakistan, in a broad daylight, within Indian-
occupied territory, the Indian conventional military potential failed to
create any meaningful disturbance to Pakistan’s deterrence.
Indian military leadership appeared clueless as they groped in the
dark, after the Pulwama Attack, to look for options against Pakistan.
India, thriving on ‘proactive reductionism’ that I referred to in my
piece published in “The News” on 15 January 2019, coupled with an
emotionally charged media went ballistic against Pakistan.
Hastily executed air strike, on 26 February 2019, and arbitrary
deployment of naval vessels reflected outlandish operational thinking
of the Indian military leadership.
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PAF struck back immediately to re-establish the deterrence. While on
the Maritime front, one of the Indian Navy ship remained holed up in
Oman, for nearly 2 weeks, fearing an interception by Pakistan Navy
and Kalvari, Scorpene Class submarine, was humiliated when pushed
back before it could be applied against Pakistan,
Indian aircraft carrier along with other major combatants were also
tracked throughout and Pakistan Navy even had a clear shot of
striking but opted to side with the peace.
With a defence budget of well over US $ 60 billion, the Indian
military remains inert to operational challenges, whereas Pakistan
with a meagre figure of US $ 9.8 billion has been successful keeping
the Indian ‘perpetuated grandiosity’ in check.
India’s supposedly algorithmic application of its numerically loftier
conventional military capability remains sketchy and clouded in
doubt.
The myth of ‘numerical ascendency influencing the course of events”
is shattered. This necessitates introspection at the India’s end and
quintessential need to behave rationally the next time another terror
incident occurs inside India.
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