Interview: Is War the Only Option?

India has said that its Operation Sindoor targeted terror camps in Pakistan with precision as it had set out to do. But is a military solution the only answer?

Does it help the Modi government deter Pakistan from cross-border infiltration and terrorist activities? If not, what should be India's long-term deterrence goals and strategies? What of US involvement in a bilateral issue? And what happens to an ecosystem where sections of the media put their own spin on narratives, whipping up war cries, and so on.

The Wire spoke to two eminent strategic experts. Retired Admiral Arun Prakash who served as Chief of Navy from 2004 to 2006 and was a distinguished chair from 2016 to 2022 at the Naval War College at Goa, and Ajai Sahni who is an author on counter terrorism and a founding member and executive director of the Institute of Conflict Management in New Delhi.

Excerpts from the chat follow.

Does Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the nation on May 12 explain his government's strategy vis-a-vis Pakistan after Operation Sindoor?

Arun Prakash: PM Modi has said Operation Sindoor is not over yet, it is still in progress. Its success or otherwise will be decided in the next few days, that is if Pakistan has taken the message or continues with cross-border terrorism. Secondly, this was a tactical-level operation, it is more by way of retribution or revenge or whatever else, for public consumption. This was only the first step; what we need to do now is also to send a message at the strategic level, which is a message of deterrence.

Yes, we carried out attacks on terrorist camps on the first day. We then attacked their air and radar bases and other targets, as the three Director Generals of Military Operation have put out including photographs of the damage inflicted on Pakistani targets. So this first set of hostilities is a message to Pakistan. Op Sindoor is a more substantive message to Pakistan post-2016, after the Uri surgical strike, and post-2019, after the Pulwama air strike. We will soon know if they've accepted the message or if they will still be defiant and continue with cross-border terrorism or not.

Ajai Sahni: The prime minister has said that Operation Sindoor is the new normal. He has said that every time there is an offence, though the offence has not been defined in any hard terms, and if India feels it is required, it will act in the manner as of now. He has made a more modest assertion – for what defines offence has not been made as rigid in his statement – he has toned down from the earlier official statement that every act of terrorism will now be an act of war, which was a little excessive because it cannot be realistic. You can't go to war every time a person from the other side breaches agreement.

The PM also clarified that talks and terror can't go together, even as Trump announced talks soon between India and Pakistan. Modi's speech clearly makes an effort to distance the country from Trump's claims and assertions of US mediation in the future.

However, while he does say that talks and terrorism, and trade and terrorism don’t go together, what appears to be missing is the articulation of a wider strategy. He still talks only of a military response, there is no indication of a wider strategy, what we call unrestricted or protracted war parody.

How do you define message of deterrence or protracted war parody?

Arun Prakash: Pakistan's infiltration is with the purpose of carrying out an attack on our armed forces and civilians. They engage our armed forces with shelling, inflict casualties and so on. There have been beheading of soldiers too. Or in an extreme case, they attack unarmed civilians like in Pahalgam, which is a barbaric thing to do. So when they train terrorists, they are not here for a holiday. Op Sindoor launched kinetic action – attack them with explosives, bombs and rockets. This is an immediate response. It's the first message.

Now if this message is not added to, you can either go up the ladder of escalation and hit more targets and know that they will probably respond. But there are other means of bringing pressure on Pakistan and conveying the message to them through diplomatic tactics and strategies that can isolate Pakistan and achieve our goals. Bringing up evidence of Pakistan’s terror camps in the United Nations Security Council, blocking the IMF's loans and World Bank bailouts, and pushing its debt burden even higher, are options, as are interfering with its trade, oil and energy to push it further to the brink of desperation.

The Indus Water Treaty is the most obvious, and will show almost immediate signs, by inflicting distress on farmers and other others; but it will take a certain amount of management on our side too.

Ajai Sahni: First, in the current operation, at a level of scale, verification and impact, it is generations beyond Balakot. We hit nine near simultaneous targets, including two very big and very important targets in terms of terrorist infrastructure, the Mudrike and Bahawalpur headquarters of Lashkar and Jaish. We have complete confirmation from both sides and in terms of impact, there is a complete shifting of lines. Pakistan now understands that what was holding us back in the past will not hold us back now – the scales have gone up though the tactical and operational objectives were very simple. They were intended to inflict punishment and strike these targets at least to this extent.

But it is not an overwhelming game. What was the strategic purpose of these operations? It is deterrence, that Pakistan will not do this again, will not engage in the sponsorship and support of terrorism again? And herein lies the problem. I do not believe Op Sindoor or any other operation of any scale will have permanent deterrent value.

What is required is something that is continuous, and it cannot be continuous at a military or kinetic level. Look at how Pakistan has treated its major ally, the US, where for almost 20 years in the US war in Afghanistan, the US bombed and used drone attacks in Pakistan on thousands of occasions against designated specific terrorist targets on Pakistani soil. The US discovered and neutralised Osama bin Laden literally in the backyard of the Kakul Officers Academy and yet, even though it was against an adversary as powerful as the US, Pakistan did not stop supporting the Taliban and other terrorist groups, including the Jaish and Lashkar who were at that point of time directed into Afghan operations too.

Pakistan never stopped supporting terrorism against the coalition forces and against the then government in Kabul. So, any one-off operation, whatever its impact, is not going to be a permanent deterrent.

You require enduring programmes, policies and strategies to ensure that you are inflicting costs on Pakistan, which will eventually become unbearable. For instance, the most promising instance is the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty. Now even if we do not start doing what the wild imaginations are suggesting, which is to dam up the entire water – you need 30 dams and it will take us 30 years to do so – if you start completing the dams within the treaty provisions and which have not been allowed to be completed because of Pakistan’s frivolous objections of running to the tribunal, or the World Bank, we would cause enormous stress on Pakistan. Pakistan is today estimated to have a 30% deficit in water.

We can withhold water flow data which becomes disastrous in years to come as they will have no capacity to prepare for drought or floods in advance. There are costs in terms of foreign investment and economic activities, and there are costs in terms of the entire development trajectory of a state.

The essence of a protracted conflict strategy lies in the formulation where you exploit the weaknesses and erode the strengths of the adversary’s system. So, what are the strengths and weaknesses? Pakistan’s strength is the army, and that is already eroding because of internal factors. The credibility of the army has been challenged for the first time, you've seen protests during Imran Khan’s arrest; there are covert and overt ways but we won't discuss strategy in detail. After all, Operation Sindoor could have achieved what it set out to do if we hadn't been screaming about it – we would probably have got Azhar and Hafiz if we had just stayed quiet. We've hit their headquarters but they were obviously removed.

How does US president Donald Trump’s announcement of America brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan now play out on the Kashmir issue? Are we obliged to stick to it?

Arun Prakash: First, the ceasefire declaration should have been made by one of us, and strangely India did not dispute Trump’s announcement either. If he had any sense of propriety, he should have left it to the two heads of state of India and Pakistan to announce it but he wants to be first and it speaks of his own immaturity. Trump is a transactional man, he thinks trade can make America great again, so he's using trade as a huge weapon. Now it's up to our leadership to see if they can stand up to Trump. He has no soft corner for India, he has said openly that he brokered the peace deal in the hope of extracting trade from both countries.

Of course, he has extracted something from India, a price must have been paid. We will know in the days to come.

Ajai Sahni: It's very unfortunate for us and it reflects a breakdown of the Shimla agreement between India and Pakistan which underlined there would be no third-party involvement in the dispute. It also gives Trump a toehold into the Kashmir conflict, which he has repeatedly expressed a desire to secure, so I think at the diplomatic level it will become more difficult for us. It has created complexities for India with third-party interventions likely to increase in intensity; or at least the challenge of countering third-party intervention will be more. After all, Pakistan has been rushing to the international community all the time seeking third-party intervention, now it has got at least the beginning of third-party intervention, breaching the Shimla agreement.

Once that happens you never know what geo-political interest will push other countries to act in favour of or against India or Pakistan. Third parties don't act as independent and judicial authorities, they act politically. They act within their own subjective and transient interest of state. Remember, the US has a very long record of supporting Pakistan in situations where Pakistan’s malfeasance is more than demonstrated. It is an unreliable power. Donald Trump is an even more unreliable power.

The IMF loan to Pakistan of a billion dollars came right in the middle of the conflict even though it was scheduled – but what message does it send to India and Pakistan?

Arun Prakash: The world doesn't want to see Pakistan falling apart. Pakistan is in a very, very dangerous economic situation. They are borrowing money only to pay off other loans, the people are suffering, prices are going up, water and electricity are not available, and the country is in dire straits. By withholding the IMF loan, it could have pushed Pakistan over the edge, and that can be dangerous.

As an Indian, we wouldn't like them to be in a comfortable situation but IMF may have had other considerations. I’m sure the IMF and US must have extracted a price from Pakistan before granting the $1.3 billion loan. Hopefully these are positive and related to stopping terrorism.

Ajai Sahni: In India, everybody including the strategic community thumps their backs and believes operations of the past were game changers, so future strategies and operational patterns are all designed and devised on the assumption that those past strategies were the magnificent successes they were. So, all we do now is only scale up the patterns of operation that we think succeeded in the past. So, it’s more ammunition, deeper targets, larger number of targets. But we are on the same trajectory and we do not ask the fundamental question that if this was so successful, why do we still have terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir? If deterrence was the objective, then why do we have these hundreds of fatalities between 2019 and now? What is the answer?

The answer is a sustained, long term, protracted conflict strategy in which you go after the strengths and weaknesses of the Pakistani system – the economy, political system, internal divisions, and internal strife.

There’s a conflict ongoing there, so if it's inflicting costs on Pakistan, we raise the costs. The Pak Army is losing face, help the army lose face even faster.

We can direct interventions to worsen economic conditions, go to the international community and stop loans that fund terrorism. We have not done anything. There are no narratives. Only when something comes up, we go and make a representation – like we didn’t vote for the IMF loan. This has to be a sustained preemptive strategy, not just a reaction to an incident. It’s a war of a thousand cuts in reverse, without the bloodletting.

The only narrative coming to the public is through the mainstream media, from television networks and newspapers, mostly unverified and unofficial. They are seen to be whipping up war and bloodshed on the back of the Pahalgam tragedy?

Arun Prakash: I have seen some of it, this war mongering on television, and I must say I am completely and utterly appalled by the immaturity of our media channels. I think enough is enough and the government should step in and put a stop to the nonsense. If left to this media, they can actually provoke a war by feeding false information to the public – imagine senior TV journalists saying Karachi, Islamabad has been occupied. Not just silly, it's dangerous and I think the ministry of I&B need to step in and put a stop to this nonsense. They are making us look ridiculous in front of the international community because every responsible channel to journalists are doing this.

The I&B ministry is quite proactive in other cases. This is a classic case for them to step in and take action, but it’s doing nothing, so that will be taken as approval. Look at the attack on the foreign secretary, and the vicious attack on private individuals like the naval officer’s widow who only appealed to the public to not attack innocent people in retaliation to Pahalgam, but no one from the government came to her defence. As a former serviceman, I am completely appalled by this.

Ajai Sahni: I'm not surprised at all by the war mongering for the simple reason that this regime has always relied on the manipulation of media for its purposes. They are not concerned with establishing an authoritative institutional narrative until they have been able to firm up the narrative they like or want. 'Journalists can keep screaming about imaginary victories but I didn't say any of this.'

Despite the public clamour for war, the then government pulled out all diplomatic stops internationally to force Pakistan to admit that some of the organisations like JUD [Jamaat-ud-Dawa] were involved in terrorism, placed their leaders under house arrest and took over the management of madrasas in Mudrike, and such like. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was called a weak PM but infiltrations came down considerably by the hundreds during his term.

Today, you can see that it is now being orchestrated, people appearing as guests on these discussions have been told or have been picked up to scream for war. This is happening on both sides of the border. This is not irrational. This is part of the orchestration, so that it is part of the threat.

Of course, it’s immoral to use a tragedy to whip up war but they will tell you that Chanakya says nothing is immoral in ‘rajneeti’ or governance. It’s all transactional. In the old days buying a cinema ticket in the black was illegal; today, it’s called surge pricing.

If a situation can be used to my advantage, then it must be so. If you don’t agree at the national policy level, you are anti-national, as you are undermining national interest by giving up on the opportunities that are presented to you for national gain. This is the new calculus of political morality.

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