While things are heating up on the Line of Control (LoC), several serving generals have surprisingly given calls for easing tensions with Pakistan.
There needs to be a realisation that 70 years of talks has yielded precious little and military and quasi military options needs be explored.
What is the saddening scenario?
Making peace is a diplomatic initiative and it is desirable that military generals focus on combat strategising rather than on extending olive branches.
Needing Aggression - It is to be recognized that no fight can ever be won with just a shield and a sward too is needed to hit back at the foe.
If the choice of when and where to attack is the prerogative of the enemy, it could lead to a serious loss of morale for our forces.
It would be wrong for any political or military leadership to relegate their forces to mere punching bags for terrorists by advocating defensiveness.
Hence, it would be a blunder to suspend the entire strategic, surprise and tactical initiatives of the military to the enemy in the name of offering peace.
The Hesitation - While many sight the threat of an aggressive action escalating to a nuclear war, this is largely an exaggerated notion.
Notably, Kargil had highlighted that two nuclear-armed nations can fight for nearly 3 months without a single nuke being used.
Pakistan’s nuclear potency also seems to be overrated and has effectively relegated India to a state of inaction even when direly needed.
Notably, India has not come up with a viable response to the proxy warfare being unleashed by Pakistan by supporting organisations like LeT.
How could India shape its military strategy?
The series of options short of a full-scale nuclear war need to be visualised on an escalation later with appropriate calibration.
Such a calibrated approach will consecutively increase the pressure on Pakistan and substantially strain its proxy war strategy.
At the 1st level, the responses could be – surgical strikes (solitary), raids and local fire assaults using small arms, mortars and tanks.
This could be followed by a vertical and horizontal escalation along the LoC in the form of an artillery war using ‘Bofors like guns’ and rocket launchers.
This would mean a sustained fire assaults in depth areas and to interdict lines of communications, like the one that was exhibited in early 2003.
The 3rd would be to carry out air and naval strikes on high-value targets like gun areas, and supply depots that support terrorism directly or indirectly.
This could also involve the use of rocket launchers and cruise missiles with conventional warheads to and seizure of strategic points by ground forces.
The final stage could be gauging the Pakistani response and resorting to cold-start style (planned strategic advancement) along the International Border.
What is the way ahead?
As aerial assault is key to the possible calibrated approach, India needs to drastically speed up the acquisition of fighter jets, which are deficient.
A positive is that considerable procurements have been made in the “medium range guns”, but this needs to be further speeded up.
Peace talks with Pakistan has proved to have little deterrence value and strong assertiveness needs to be imbibed into the military ranks and file.
It shouldn’t take 5 or 6 infiltration aided terror attacks for our military to respond once, as that would tilt the gain in favour of Pakistan.
India should rather actively strategise militarily to comprehensively destroy and dismantle state aided terror networks in Pakistan.
