lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia
Julian Schofield (Lecturer in International Relations - Concordia University)
Mike Schatzky (Consultant – South Asian Development)
The combination of Pakistani and Indian nuclear tests in May 1998 and the
Pakistani military coup of October 1999 have raised serious concerns about the security
of India and the stability of South Asia more generally. Immediately following the coup,
the Indian Army went on alert along the Pakistani border.1 The global reaction varied:
whereas the Commonwealth pressed for a return to democratic government, the US
government took only minor steps to discourage military tenure.2 Recent events have
established several milestones: the first region to openly declare nuclear weapons
possession beyond the five recognized nuclear weapon states in the 1995 NonProliferation Treaty; the first frontier conflict between two nuclear-armed states since the
Sino-Soviet border war of 1969; the first successful military coup within a nuclear-armed
state. Theoretically, it has also drawn into sharp focus the implication of having nucleararmed militarily-led states on regional stability.
The conventional wisdom on the war-proneness of regime types is that military
governments are more likely to employ their armed forces as instruments of foreign
policy, and thereby to engage in conflict including war. Military governments are
believed to be easily provoked into war, are susceptible to counter-productive goals of
expansionism, and are therefore less likely to be restrained by the logic of deterrence.
When states are armed with nuclear weapons, orthodox nuclear deterrence theories assert
that the threat of escalation to a nuclear war diminishes the likelihood of conflict. In
contrast, proponents of the stability-instability paradox maintain that the effects of the
respective nuclear arsenals are cancelled out, permitting risk-acceptant states to initiate
conventional conflict. The logic of regime types and nuclear deterrence pull in different
and seemingly contradictory directions. Do nuclear weapons and military government
increase or decrease the chances for war? Addressing this issue will permit a better
understanding of the prospects for peace in South Asia.
In this chapter we argue that a militarized and nuclear-armed Pakistan is less warprone than commonly believed. The threat of escalation within a dispute to a nuclear
conflict is more easily perceived by a military government than a civilian one, thereby
rendering it more restrained. The stability-instability paradox is also therefore not a major
threat to stability in South Asia. The purpose of this article is to map out the logic of
these two dimensions in order to demonstrate that nuclear-armed military regimes are
actually less war-prone than civilian regimes. The argument unfolds in three parts. In part
one we lay out the logic of two relevant theories of nuclear deterrence. Part two outlines
the effects of regime type. Part three demonstrates the interactive implications of regime
type and the role of nuclear deterrence, and part four outlines the theoretical and policy
implications.
“Oh Pakistan,” The Economist Vol.353, No.8141 (October 16th, 1999), 18.
Kathy Gannon, “Pakistan General Mute on Return to Democracy,” The Washington
Post, October 29, 1999.
1
2
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
Part One – Nuclear Deterrence
Orthodox and Existential Deterrence Theory
One of the tenets of Western strategic deterrence theory is that states with nuclear
deterrent capabilities are less likely to engage in war.3 According to Richard Betts,
“altogether, the greatest consensus would be that capabilities for mutual destruction do
not absolutely preclude war but radically reduce the odds, and that deliberate initiation of
armed conflict against a nuclear power on behalf of lesser interests than core territorial
security is almost unthinkable…”4 This is because nuclear weapons have a crystal ball
effect that make states aware of the cost of confrontation: nuclear weapons can cause
tremendous devastation, the political implications of which tend to be quite clear to
decision-makers.5 Generally, the value of any political objective, other than the survival
of the state, is outweighed by the costs of using nuclear weapons. These costs include
international pariah status for breaking the taboo against the use, or even threatened use
of nuclear weapons, and the unfamiliar costs associated with nuclear war. 6 Also, a
conventional war, however small, may escalate to a nuclear war.7 It is this fear that
engenders caution over disputes between nuclear rivals.
Nuclear war is nonetheless possible: nuclear weapons may actually invite a
preemptive attack if not secured against a first strike. The incentive for a preemptive
attack is to make use of one’s own nuclear arsenal either before it becomes vulnerable to
3
See, for example Robert Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1984), 19-46; Bernard Brodie et al. The Absolute Weapon (New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1946); Patrick Morgan, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis
(Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977); Bernard Brodie, “The Development of Nuclear Strategy,” in
Steven E. Miller, Strategy and Nuclear Deterrence (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1984), 3-21; Lawrence Freedman, “The First Two Generations of Nuclear
Strategists,” in Peter Paret, Gordon A. Craig, and Felix Gilbert, Makers of Modern
Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986), 735-778; Edward Rhodes, Power and MADness – The Logic of Nuclear Coercion
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1989).
4
Richard K. Betts, “Nuclear Peace and Conventional War,” Journal of Strategic Studies
11 (March 1988), 83.
5
According to orthodox deterrence theory, where the threat of escalation exists, disputes
will be resolved according to the balance of interests and resolve, which is determined by
the balance of credibility. See Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, 152;
Richard K. Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (Washington, D.C.: The
Brookings Institution, 1987), 14-16.
6
T.V. Paul, “Nuclear Taboo and War Initiation in Regional Conflicts,” Journal of
Conflict Resolution 39 (December 1995), 696-717.
7
Herman Kahn, On Escalation (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968), 246; Patrick James
and Frank Harvey, “Threat Escalation and Crisis Stability: Superpower Cases, 19481979,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 22 (September 1989), 523-545.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
an attack from another’s arsenal or if an enemy attack is imminent, so as to decrease the
overall strength of their force.8 Between two first-strike nuclear forces, the ‘reciprocal
fear of nuclear attack’ is an incentive to attack first.9 However, states with a second-strike
capability (nuclear arsenals that can survive to retaliate even if they are struck first) deter
attack because they guarantee retaliation so costly that it would outweigh any conceivable
political benefits.
Despite the absence of second-strike nuclear forces typical of the superpowers, it
is plausible that preemptive nuclear attacks have not occurred in South Asia for the
simple reason that the paucity of nuclear forces relative to possible targets, wide
landscapes, large conventional forces, and the uncertain location of these nuclear
weapons, some of which may soon be attached to mobile tactical forces like the Prithvi
battalions, give little incentive for a first strike.10 While fixed facilities that produce
nuclear weapons are both identified and within reach of each other’s missiles, the
location of the weapons themselves is not.11 Kenneth Waltz has argued that preemption
of these ambiguous deterrents is only conceivable if “…the would-be attacker knows that
the intended victim’s warheads are few in number, knows their exact number and
locations, and knows that they will not be moved or fired before they are struck. To know
all of these things, and to know that you know them for sure, is exceedingly difficult.”12
Consequently, the small nuclear arsenals in South Asia should be good punitive
deterrents because of the relative vulnerabilities of the cities in India and Pakistan and the
relative ease of hiding the nuclear warheads.13
Devin Hagerty has argued that this so-called existential deterrent relationship
between India and Pakistan, and the uncertainty inherent in that relationship, is what has
minimized the importance of the reciprocal fear of surprise attack.14 An existential
deterrent strategy is one in which a state is ambiguous about the possession, deployment,
and doctrine of its nuclear forces: this generates a significant amount of uncertainty in its
rival. The uncertainty is intended both to weaken the intensity of any nuclear
Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution – Statecraft and the Prospect of
Armageddon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 24.
9
Thomas Schelling, Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University,1960), 207229.
10
See for example Hagerty’s elaboration on the difficulties faced by the Coalition forces
in eliminating Iraq’s SCUD launchers during the 1991 Gulf War: Devin T. Hagerty,
“Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia – The 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis,” International
Security, 20 (Winter 1995/1996), 84; Greg J. Gerardi, “India’s 333rd Prithvi Missile
Group,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, 7 (August 1995), 363; “India’s Artillery is a Force in
Its Own Right,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, (9 October 1996), 35.
11
François Heisbourg, “Prospects for Nuclear Stability between India and Pakistan,”
Survival, 40 (Winter 1998-99), 84.
12
Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, Adelphi
Paper No.171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981), 16.
13
Heisbourg, “Prospects for Nuclear Stability between India and Pakistan,” 82, 85.
14
Hagerty, “Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia,” 85, 87.
8
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
confrontation, as well as to increase the fear of escalation by leaving unclear the precise
point at which retaliation will occur.15 Even if states do not possess a secure second-strike
capability, the threat that just a few nuclear weapons would survive a disarming first
strike should deter an attacker by consideration of the damage they would inflict on its
cities.16
The Stability-Instability Paradox
Orthodox deterrence theory has generally held that even the slightest threat of
escalation to nuclear war is a sufficient incentive against the initiation of conventional
conflict.17 It was for this reason that the United States and the Soviet Union were so
reluctant to become directly militarily engaged during the Cold War. A critic of the
stability expected by orthodox deterrence theorists, Kenneth Boulding, has argued that
this unmeasured and uncontrollable threat of escalation is vital to the functioning of
effective deterrence: “…if [deterrence] were really stable… it would cease to deter. If the
15
Although existential and opaque deterrence theories are dissimilar, they both rely on
the notion of uncertainty creating deterrence. An opaque nuclear state is one which
actively discourages public debate on the issue of its nuclear arsenal, and prefers to
present itself as a 'doctrineless'. At the same time it seeks to leave the existence and
deployment of its nuclear weapons ambiguous, so that their visibility remains below the
political significance threshold of its adversary. In effect, it seeks to avoid the
provocation of an arms race or nuclear research among its neighbors. See Benjamin
Frankel (ed.), Opaque Nuclear Proliferation: Methodologial and Policy Implications
(London: Frank Cass, London, 1991); See especially Hagerty, “Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” 87; Existential deterrence operates on the assumption that just a few nuclear
weapons are sufficient to preserve the peace despite changes in doctrine, technology or
numbers. See McGeorge Bundy, “Existential Deterrence and Its Consequences,” in
Douglas MacLean, (ed.), The Security Gamble: Deterrence in the Nuclear Age (Totowa:
Rowman and Allanheld, 1984).
16
Neil Joeck, “Tacit Bargaining and Stable Proliferation in South Asia,” Journal of
Strategic Studies 13 (September 1990), 77-91; See especially Hagerty, “Nuclear
Deterrence in South Asia,” 87; Brahma Chellaney, “After the Tests: India’s Options,”
Survival 40 (Winter 1998-99), 105; Varun Sahni, “Going Nuclear: Establishing an Overt
Nuclear Weapons Capability,” in David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo (eds.), India and
the Bomb – Public Opinion and Nuclear Options (Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1996), 92-93.
17
See David J. Karl, “Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers,”
International Security 21 (Winter 1996/1997), 93; Bruce G. Blair, The Logic of
Accidental Nuclear War (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1993); Peter D.
Feaver, Guarding the Guardians: Civilian Control of Nuclear Weapons in the United
States (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); for a critique, see Bradley A. Thayer,
“The Risk of Nuclear Inadvertence: A Review Essay,” Security Studies 3 (Spring 1994),
428-493.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
probability of nuclear weapons going off were zero, they would not deter anybody.”18
Steve Fetter has argued that the confidence placed in deterrence in South Asia operates
along the same lines: a nuclear balance managed so perfectly that it eliminates the
possibility of escalation undermines the restraint to engage in non-nuclear forms of
warfare.19
The relationship between escalation and peace requires a distinction to be made
between the notions that the presence of nuclear weapons reduces the likelihood of
nuclear war, as well as the likelihood of non-nuclear war. According to Šumit Ganguly,
“in a sense, we are seeing a variant of Glenn Snyder’s famous ‘stability/instability’
paradox. Stability at the level of nuclear weapons prevents the outbreak of full-scale war
while permitting both sides to engage in low-level conflict.”20 The logic behind the
stability-instability paradox is that when both states in a rivalry possess nuclear weapons,
they will tend to cancel out the deterrent effects of each other’s arsenals. 21 For Snyder,
nuclear deterrence (against nuclear attack) is stable when “…neither side can, by
18
As cited in Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution, 20; See also Kenneth
Boulding, “Confession of Roots,” International Studies Notes 12 (Spring 1986), 32.
19
Steve Fetter, “Correspondence – Nuclear Deterrence and the 1990 Indo-Pakistani
Crisis,” International Security, 21 (Summer 1996), 77.
20
Šumit Ganguly, “Freeze: Halting the Testing and Development of Nuclear Weapons,” in
David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo (eds.), India and the Bomb – Public Opinion and
Nuclear Options (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 74; see also,
Stephen Philip Cohen, The Pakistan Army (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1984), 153.
21
For a discussion of the stability-instability paradox, see Jervis, The Illogic of American
Nuclear Strategy, 148-157. He states: “It is a commonplace that American strategic
nuclear forces cannot deter subversion, Soviet assistance to revolutionary movements, or
even the use of force in areas of little importance to the West…,” 150; Glenn Snyder,
“The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Paul Seabury, Balance of Power
(San Francisco: Chandler Publishing Company, 1965), 185-186; Glenn Snyder refers to
Arthur Lee Burns, “From Balance to Deterrence”, World Politics 9 (1957), 494-529; See
also Jerald A. Combs, “The Compromise That Never Was: George Kennan, Paul Nitze,
and the Issue of Conventional Deterrence in Europe, 1949-1952,” Diplomatic History 15
(Summer 1991), 361-386; Hanson Baldwin, “Strategy for Two Atomic Worlds,” Foreign
Affairs 28 (April 1950), 386-397; A.J. Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army
Between Korea and Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press,
1986); Douglas Kinnard, President Eisenhower and Strategy Management (Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky, 1977); Matthew B. Ridgway, Soldier (New York: Harper,
1956), 324; cited in Aaron L. Friedberg, “Why Didn’t the United States Become a
Garrison State?,” International Security 16 (Spring 1992), 119; There is also the point
that ‘once attacked, a rationally calculating player has nothing substantial to gain by
massive retaliation’, although this will only apply after India and Pakistan can guarantee
that nuclear weapons will cripple each other. See John Steinbrunner, “Beyond Rational
Deterrence: The Struggle for New Conceptions,” World Politics 28 (January 1976), 231.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
executing a counterforce first-strike, reduce the opponent’s retaliation to ‘acceptable’
proportions.”22 By this definition, the Indo-Pakistani nuclear stand-off is stable because
neither side can reduce the other’s nuclear arsenal enough to successfully prevent a
retaliatory strike. Of more interest for the South Asian nuclear relationship is Snyder’s
observation that “…if neither side has a ‘full first-strike capability,’ and both know it,
they will be less inhibited about initiating conventional war, and about the limited use of
nuclear weapons, than if the strategic balance were unstable.”23
This means that Pakistani and Indian nuclear weapons are politically deadlocked:
they are irrelevant because each arsenal cancels out the influence of the other. Neither
side can threaten to use nuclear weapons without being threatened in turn: they retain
their prominence only over issues that threaten the existence of the state. However, in
disputes that are unrelated to the immediate survival of the state, such as in the fighting
along the Line-of-Control in Kashmir, the existence of a nuclear stand-off may actually
increase the incentives for conventional warfare. This is because India and Pakistan,
knowing how undesirable a nuclear conflict would be, both for themselves and their
opponent, may be lulled into a false sense of security that a localized escalation could
never proceed to a nuclear war. According to Betts, “most analysts would agree with the
strongest form of the argument that nuclear forces (if secure against a disarming firststrike) prevent deliberate attacks on the possessors’ homelands. There is far less
agreement about the broader argument that the same applies to use of force against ‘vital’
interests outside the homelands…”24 If India and Pakistan are unwilling to make use of
nuclear weapons, except in response to another nuclear attack or to deter the complete
destruction of the state, then the use of conventional forces is not deterred by nuclear
weapons.
While Pakistani doctrine remains unclear, Indian doctrine as enunciated in the
Draft Report on Indian Nuclear Doctrine indicates that it intends to employ a strategy of
“credible minimum nuclear deterrence” (para 2.3) “based on a triad of aircraft, mobile
land-based missiles and sea-based assets” (para 3.1) “to permit adequate retaliatory
capability should deterrence fail” (para 2.1). India’s commitment to a policy of no first
use (para 1.5) is contradicted by its stated intention to bolster conventional forces to raise
the threshold of the use of nuclear weapons (para 2.7).25 This doctrine implicitly rejects a
doctrine of massive retaliation or flexible response to conventional attack. For one Indian
government spokesman, “India shall not engage in an arms race, nor, of course, shall it
subscribe to or reinvent the sterile doctrines of the Cold War.”26 According to George
Perkovich, “the combination of moral, institutional, technical and international factors
Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” 186.
Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” 199.
24
Betts, “Nuclear Peace and Conventional War,” 83.
25
National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine, “Draft Report on Indian
Nuclear Doctrine,” August 17, 1999.
26
Jaswant Singh, “Against Nuclear Apartheid,” Foreign Affairs 77 (September/October
1998), 50; For the makings of a South Asian arms race, see Amit Baruah, “Pakistan for
Sanctions Against India,” The Hindu, March 28, 1998.
22
23
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
has made India rather averse to the Western theology and practice of nuclear doctrine.
Excepting a handful of Western-styled strategists, and a small number of military
intellectuals, the shapers of India’s nuclear policy have rejected the highly abstract
algebra of traditional nuclear doctrine.”27 Aside from announcing India as a nuclear
weapons state and making retaliation to a nuclear attack explicit, the new doctrine has left
its policy on escalation unclear.28 The deployment of its nuclear arsenal has not,
therefore, been tied in to any geographic commitments, leaving the implications of a
conflict along its Western frontier with Pakistan ambiguous.
Robert Jervis, a critic of the stability-instability paradox, reproves both Snyder
and Boulding for proposing that the mutual influence of nuclear weapons can be
cancelled. First, Jervis argues that their hypotheses rest on the assumption of perfect
information, which is unrealistic. India and Pakistan simply do not have the level of
certainty necessary to make fear of escalation irrelevant. Derived from this is his second
criticism, which is that escalation, (from conventional to nuclear conflict) can therefore
not be controlled.
It seems intuitively obvious that if there is crisis stability, neither side can
credibly threaten to start an all-out nuclear war in response to a limited
provocation. But this misstates the situation. It would be an accurate
formulation if levels of violence were hermetically sealed off from each
other, if undesired escalation were impossible. In fact, most statesmen
realize that whenever violence is set in motion, no one can be sure where
it will end up. Because events can readily escape control, limited
responses carry with them some probability that the final, although
unintended, result will be all out war. A state that begins a confrontation
or responds to one invokes what Schelling called ‘the threat that leaves
something to chance.’ What then brings pressure to bear on the adversary
George Perkovich, India’s Ambiguous Bomb: Indian Practice, International Relations
Theory, and Nonproliferation Policy (Charlottesville: W. Alton Jones Foundation, 1997),
497. See also 498: There are some proponents of orthodox military thought in India, but
they have not influenced the government: K. Sundarji (Gen.), “Nuclear Deterrence:
Doctrine for India – Part 1,” Trishul 5 (December 1992); K. Sundarji (Gen.), “Nuclear
Deterrence: Doctrine for India – Part II,” Trishul 6 (July 1993); Chris Smith, India’s Ad
Hoc Arsenal: Direction or Drift in Defence Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press for
the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 1994); See also Strobe Talbott,
“Dealing with the Bomb in South Asia,” Foreign Affairs 78 (March/April 1999), 118.
28
Beside the fact that the Indian program is under civilian control and the Pakistani
program is under military direction, little is known of the command structures for nuclear
control of either. Samina Ahmed and David Cortright, “Going Nuclear: The
Weaponization Option,” in Samina Ahmed and David Cortright (eds.), Pakistan and the
Bomb – Public Opinion and Nuclear Options (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame,
1998), 94; Harold Hough, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Status – Confusion or Strategy?,” Jane’s
Intelligence Review 17 (June 1995), 270-272.
27
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
– and on the state as well – is less the immediate product of the action than
the fear of where both states could end up.29
According to Jervis, “because escalation can occur although no one wants it to,
mutual second-strike capability does not make the world safe for major provocations and
limited wars.”30 In effect, Jervis agrees with Boulding’s observation that the ‘threat that
leaves something to chance’ in the process of escalation is what produces deterrence.31
Nuclear danger comes from the increased possibility of nuclear war as a conflict spiral
intensifies.32 The essential difference between orthodox deterrence theory and the
stability-instability paradox is over the question of whether or not it is perceived that
there is a threat of escalation to a nuclear war. If a state’s decision-makers believe that it
is probable that a dispute would escalate to nuclear war, then they will exercise restraint.
If it is believed that there is a stability-instability paradox in play, then it is because
‘breaks’ are perceived that interrupt the escalatory process, and make it appear that it is
improbable that a dispute would escalate to nuclear war. The distinction that must
therefore be explained is what explains the variance in this perception.
Part Two – Militarization and War Proneness
Military professionals, whether in or out of government, are more likely to
correctly perceive the dangers of escalation to nuclear war than are civilian decisionmakers. This is entirely the result of the professional bias of the armed forces grounded
within their institutional structures and their methods of planning. For the purposes of this
study, a militarized government is one in which the armed forces rule a state directly, and
provide policy guidelines for constitutional, external, and war-making affairs.33 Within
this definition, there may be an intervening organization, such as a subordinate civil
bureaucracy, or a military bureau responsible for civil affairs, that isolates the military
planning from the martial law functions of the armed forces. However, if the intervening
organization is an autonomous ideological party, a non-military political elite, or if the
influence of the armed forces is limited to veto powers only, then the government is of a
Robert Jervis, “Arms Control, Stability, and Causes of War,” Political Science
Quarterly 108 (1993), 246; Schelling, Strategy of Conflict, 187-203.
30
Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution, 21.
31
Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966),
121-122.
32
Jervis posits three reasons for strategic stability in the Cold War confrontation that are
weak in the Indo-Pakistani confrontation: the perception of a positive-sum game, the
mutual perception of defending the status quo rather than expansion, the evident restraint
in the Cold War, and the perceived high costs of war: The Meaning of the Nuclear
Revolution.
33
Andrew L. Ross, “Dimensions of Militarization in the Third World,” Armed Forces
and Society 13 (Summer 1987), 562-4.
29
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
mixed variety that may not suffer from the effects of military rule as severely. 34 These we
will refer to as civilian regimes.
Traditional militarization theory argues that, as the armed forces increase their
influence in government, because of an increase in their capabilities, the state becomes
more likely to adopt an aggressive foreign policy that can lead to war. 35 “…[T]he
presence of military capabilities means participation in decision making by officials
responsible for those capabilities, who are likely to urge or endorse the use of force and
who regard it as a proper and feasible step.”36 The conventional wisdom, at least, is that
military leaders are more likely to endorse war mainly because they are more familiar
with that policy instrument.37
However, while there is evidence of covariance between states with high per
capita defense spending and conflict38, the current social science literature does not
34
On the impact of military influences on governing coalitions, see Jack Snyder, Myths of
Empire – Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991), 3160; David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe, 1904-1914
(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996); David G. Herrmann, The Arming of Europe and the
Making of the First World War (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996).
35
On this discussion, see jack S. Levy, “The Causes of War: A Review of Theories and
Evidence,” in Philip E. Tetlock, Jo L. Husbands, Robert Jervis, Paul C. Stern, and
Charles Tilly (eds.), Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War (New York, Oxford University
Press, 1989), 261; David C, Rapoport, “The Political Dimensions of Military
Usurpation,” Political Science Quarterly 83 (December 1968), 551-572; Aaron S.
Klieman, “Confined to Barracks – Emergencies and the Military in Developing
Countries,” Comparative Politics 12 (January 1980), 143-163; Amos Perlmutter, “The
Praetorian State and the Praetorian Army,” Comparative Politics 1 (April 1969), 382404, 390; Amos Perlmutter, “The Military and Politics in Modern Times: A Decade
Later,” Journal of Strategic Studies 9 (March 1986), 5-15; S.E. Finer, “The Man on
Horseback – 1974,” Armed Forces and Society 1 (November 1974), 5-27, 19-25; Roger
W. Benjamin and Lewis J. Edinger, “Conditions for Military Control over Foreign Policy
Decisions in Major States: A Historical Exploration,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 15,
(March 1971), 5-31, 17; I.K. Feierabend and R.L. Feierabend, “Aggressive Behaviors
within Politics, 1948-1962: A Cross-National Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 10
(September 1966), 249-271.
36
Patrick M. Morgan, “Disarmament,” in Joel Krieger (ed.), The Oxford Companion to
the Politics of the World (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993), 246.
37
Alfred Vagts, Defense and Diplomacy – The Soldier and the Conduct of Foreign
Relations (New York: King Crown’s Press, 1958), 3; For critics of the association
between military socialization and foreign policy attitudes, see Samuel A. Kirkpatrick
and James L. Regens, “Military Experience and Foreign policy Belief Systems,” Journal
of Political and Military Sociology 6 (Spring 1978), 29-47.
38
Stuart Bremer, “Dangerous Dyads: Conditions Affecting the Likelihood of Interstate
War, 1816-1965,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 26 (June 1992), 309-41; Other critics,
such as Rummel, have found that non-democracies are more prone to engage in severe
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
indicate that non-democratic regimes, in all their variants, including military regimes, are
more conflict prone than democratic regimes as a whole (there are no statistically
significant findings that indicate as much).39 Although there are as yet no direct large-n
inferential studies on military versus non-military regime types per se, we believe that
non-democracies are a legitimate surrogate for military regime behavior given their
shared reliance on narrow decision-making processes and state-directed coercion.
Furthermore, the conventional wisdom that democracies are restrained by a population
that must bear the burden of war, is offset by the recurring rally-around-the-flag effect
wars, but not with more frequency, than democracies. See R.J. Rummel, “Democracies
are less warlike than Other regimes,” European Journal of International Relations 1
(1995), 457-79; R.J. Rummel, “Libertarianism and International Violence,” Journal of
Conflict Resolution 27 (March 1983), 27-71; See also J. David Singer and Melvin Small,
“The War-Proneness of Democratic Regimes,” Jerusalem Journal of International
Relations 1 (1976), 65; Kenneth Benoit, “Democracies Really are More Pacific (in
General),” Journal of Conflict Resolution 40 (December 1996), 636-57; James Lee Ray,
Democracies in International Conflict (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1995).
39
Or findings that assert that regime types do not affect war-proneness, see Quincy
Wright, A Study of War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942); W.K. Domke,
War and the Changing Global System (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Zeev
Maoz and N. Abdolali, “Regime Types and International Conflict, 1816-1976,” Journal
of Conflict Resolution 33 (1989), 3-35; Harvey Starr, “Why Don’t Democracies Fight
Each Other? Evaluating the Theory-Findings Feedback Loop,” Jerusalem Journal of
International Relations 14 (1992), 41-59; Clifton T. Morgan and Sally Howard
Campbell, “Domestic Structure, Decisional Constraints, and War – So Why Kant
Democracies Fight?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 35 (June 1991), 187-211; D. Marc
Kilgour, “Domestic Political Structure and War Behavior: A Game-Theoretic Approach,”
Journal of Conflict Resolution 35 (June 1991), 266-84; Nehemia Geva, Karl DeRouen,
and Alex Mintz, “The Political Incentive Explanation of the ‘Democratic Peace’:
Evidence from Experimental Research,” International Interactions 18 (1993), 215-29;
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman, War and Reason: Domestic and
International Imperatives (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 146; Erich Weede,
“Democracy and War Involvement,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28 (1984), 649-64;
Erich Weede, “Some Simple Calculations on Democracy and War Involvement,” Journal
of Peace Research 29 (1992), 377-83; Ernst-Otto Czempiel, “Governance and
Democratization,” in Ernst-Otto Czempiel and James N. Rosenau (eds.) Government
Without Government: Order and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 250-71; Randolph M. Siverson, “Democracies and War
Participation: In Defense of the Institutional Constraints Argument,” European Journal
of International Relations 1 (1995), 481-89; Steve Chan, “Democracy and War: Some
Thoughts on Future War Agenda,” International Interactions 18 (1993), 205-13.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
that occurs within democracies during crises.40
Betts and Samuel Huntington have found that in constitutional governments,
particularly in the United States, military decision-makers tend to advise caution rather
than adventurism. Huntington argues that the soldier “…will always argue that the danger
of war requires increased armaments; he will seldom argue that increased armaments
make war practical or desirable.”41 The principal reason for this, he contends, is that war
increases rather than decreases the threats to a state’s security, and this is an outlook
common to the militaries of states as dissimilar as Imperial Germany, Communist Russia,
and the United States. The military also has an institutional motive for self-preservation
that tends to emphasize the accumulation of power rather than the execution of its
function, even where the two are linked. Consequently, militaries tend to oppose
adventurist foreign polices except where they are linked to averting future threats to core
strategic interests.42 In the normal policy process, the military’s reluctance to recommend
war is a function of the awareness of the political constraints within which military
leaders have to operate.43 Under these circumstances, military leaders within a civilian
decision-making structure are actually less likely to recommend war as an option than the
civilians themselves.44 In fact, the US Army Chiefs of Staff have historically been more
reluctant to recommend force than their civilian counterparts, particularly over US
intervention in Laos in 1961, Jordan in 1970, and the Taiwan Straits in 1954.45
Military regimes have two pertinent distinctions with their civilian counterparts.
Betts has noted, first, that although military leaders are no more hawkish than their
civilian counterparts in recommending intervention, and sometimes less so, they are far
more likely to recommend a rapid escalation once hostilities are underway. “Generals
prefer using force quickly, massively, and decisively to destroy enemy capabilities rather
than rationing it gradually to coax the enemy to change his intentions.”46 This bias has its
origins in the military-type of organizational decision-making whose hierarchical design
ensures quick responses under chronic environmental uncertainty, but within parameters
40
Bruce Bueno DeMesquita, James D. Morrow, Randolph M. Siverson, and Alastair
Smith, “An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace,” The American Political
Science Review 93 (December 1999), 791-807.
41
Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State – The Theory and Politics of CivilMilitary Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 69.
42
Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 69-70.
43
Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 64-65.
44
Richard Betts, Soldier, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1977), 5.
45
Betts, Soldier, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, 217.
46
Betts, Soldier, Statesmen, and Cold War Crises, 5; See also Carson Eoyang, Shu S.
Liao, Douglas C. Hayden, and James W. Thomas, “Risk Preference in Military DecisionMaking: An Empirical Study,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 15 (Fall
1987), 245-61.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
familiar to the military.47 Once an outbreak of war occurs, not to deploy the totality of
forces violates the advantages inherent in the use of a concentration of force, thereby
decreasing the chances for victory, and increasing both the duration and the costs of
conflict. Rapid escalation is therefore the natural bias of military institutions.48
Consequently, military planners are less prone to see a conceptual break between
peace and war, and instead view periods of peace as the preparation for war. The
predisposition to view a seamless path from preparation for war to a conflict in which all
resources are deployed within war, also makes military planners more sensitive to the
implications of escalation, including its high costs.49 Not perceiving the threshold
between peace and war as clearly as civilians, military leaders are less likely to be
deceived by the imaginary thresholds against escalation inherent in the stabilityinstability paradox.
In contrast, civilians are more likely to perceive a clear threshold between peace
and war for the principal reason that war is beyond their professional competence and, in
the event of war, its conduct is largely surrendered to the military establishment.
Civilians are therefore more likely to escalate a dispute below the war threshold than
military decision-makers, although they tend to defer escalation within war to the
competencies of military leaders. A threshold between a mutually desirable and
undesirable outcome, such as war, may also act as a point of salience around which state
decision-makers adopt strategies designed to undermine the commitments of their
adversaries. This is precisely the behavior predicted by the stability-instability paradox.
A second distinction is over the types of disputes in which regimes participate.
Military governments, because of an increased sensitivity to the balance of capabilities
with an adversary, are less likely to concede losses over strategic matters (those that have
long-term implications for the survival of the state, as opposed to disputes over symbolic
issues) than civilian governments.50 The concern for streamlined decision-making
inadvertently imposes a military interpretation upon all events, insulates military regimes
from their populations and impedes the upward flow of information.51 Military
governments are therefore less sensitive to domestic issues that have symbolic
importance because the nature of their governance renders them relatively isolated from
47
Morris Janowitz and Roger Little, Sociology and the Military Establishment (New
York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1965), 31, 100.
48
B.H. Liddel Hart, Strategy (New York|: Meridian, 1991), 334-37
49
This does not preclude miscalculations, except that the overwhelming power of nuclear
weapons significantly decreases the margins of safety in military planning.
50
Richard Smoke, War – Controlling Escalation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1977), 23-25; Ole R. Holsti, “The 1914 Case,” American Political Science Review 59
(June 1965), 365-378.
51
Morris Janowitz and Roger Little, Sociology and the Military Establishment (New
York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1965), 103.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
popular politics.52 In contrast, civilian governments are more likely to take action on an
inter-state dispute that has symbolic importance because they have a greater short-term
dependence than military leaders on popular support. Whereas a military government
may stave off unpopularity using coercive means, the same alternatives are less attainable
by civilian governments.
A residual outcome is the hybridized venture, a product of either civilian or
military regimes, in which the preferences of both are represented. 53 Hybrids are policy
coalitions of select civilian and military members who logroll their interests in order to
aggregate their influence to obtain a common goal. In a logrolled coalition, lesser
preferences tend to be sacrificed for core interests in order to maintain solidarity. Hybrid
ventures are likely under civilian regimes when core military strategic interests are either
satisfied or remain unthreatened, and civilian interests, typically symbolic political issues,
are under pressure for resolution. Hybrid ventures are likely under military regimes when
the attainment of symbolic goals coincides with the need to resolve an impending
strategic threat to core interests. Hybrid ventures are dangerous because they desensitize
military decision-makers to the threats of escalation by their close association with
civilian symbolic issues.
Part Three – Regimes and Deterrence
War proneness is predicated on a state elite’s understanding of the effects of
escalation (Table 1.). Civilian regimes view escalation differently than military leaders:
escalation is conceptualized as a ladder with clear rungs indicating salient points easily
identified by both adversaries. Rungs indicate such breakpoints as levels of provocation,
geographic limits to conflict, and war itself. Civilians are less familiar with the process of
escalation once war is underway, and are more likely to understand nuclear weapons as
instruments of last resort instead of instruments of battlefield victory. Civilians also
believe that as both sides to a dispute view war and nuclear war as undesirable outcomes,
it is possible to exploit this shared interest by asserting a greater commitment within a
confrontation. Therefore, the escalation-proneness of civilian regimes is guided by the
expected delay imposed by breakpoints on the path to war.
Harold D. Lasswell, “The Universal Peril: Perpetual Crisis and the Garrison State,” in
Lyman Bryson, Louis Finkelstein, and R.M. MacIver, eds., Perspectives on a Troubled
Decade: Science, Philosophy and Religion, 1939-1949 (New York: Harper, 1950), 117125, 118; “The Garrison-State Hypothesis Today,” in Samuel Huntington, ed., Changing
Patterns of Military Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1962), 51-70; Jay Stanley,
“Introduction: An Invitation to Revisit Lasswell’s Garrison State,” in Jay Stanley (ed.),
Essays on the Garrison State (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 17-41, 23;
Jay Stanley and David R. Segal, “Conclusion: Landmarks in Defense Literature,” in Jay
Stanley (ed.), Essays on the Garrison State (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers,
1997), 127-134, 128.
53
Robert A. Hanneman, “Military Elites and Political Executives,” Journal of Political
and Military Sociology 14 (Spring 1986), 75-89.
52
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
Table 1. Propensity by Civilian and Military Regimes to Escalate a Dispute
Regime Types
Deterrence Forms
Conventional Deterrence
Nuclear Deterrence
Civilian/Hybrids
Military
Escalation limited
by fear of
war outbreak.
Escalation
limited by fear
of defeat.
Escalation
limits defined by
stability-instability
paradox.
Escalation limited
by fear of
consequences of
nuclear war.
Civilians are therefore likely to pursue strategies that maximize the delay imposed
by available breakpoints, including a reliance on low-intensity force, geographic limits,
and mutual fears of war outbreak and the use of nuclear weapons. In situations of
conventional deterrence, breakpoints are exploited well below the war threshold. In
situations of mutual nuclear deterrence, however, as indicated by the stability-instability
paradox, the deterrents of last resort are mutually-canceling and violence is permitted to
achieve much higher thresholds on the ladder of escalation.
In contrast, military decision-makers are principally concerned with defeat rather
than war, whether conventional or nuclear. Politically-controlled escalation, while it may
be pursued to avoid mutually averse-outcomes, is anathema to the military’s professional
logic of applying maximum force at the earliest opportunity (in order to achieve the
maximized kill ratios that are a function of the concentration of force). Military regimes
do not conceptually recognize a ladder of escalation replete with breakpoints, but,
instead, perceive escalation to be a seamless path. Escalation is therefore abbreviated,
with the consequence that an escalation process is rarely embarked upon without
consideration of the ultimate outcome. In situations of conventional deterrence, militaries
will escalate rapidly if they believe a victory borne of a limited attack is possible, and
will avoid conflict altogether if they believe in the enemy’s military superiority. In
situations of nuclear deterrence, because militaries tend to conceive of conflict as an allor-nothing enterprise, the effects of nuclear weapons are automatically incorporated into
the effects of any capability analysis, and military decision-makers will avoid any
confrontation whose outcome does not ensure a high certainty of victory.
A consideration of the intersection between regime and deterrence types shows
that nuclear-armed and deterred military regimes are in fact the least escalation-prone of
the categories.54 The key observation is that military regimes have a clearer
understanding of the dangers of escalation, and are therefore more wary of risking
54
Nuclear arsenals are assumed to be possessed by both states in a dyad.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
nuclear war from confrontation than their civilian counterparts. The next step involves
examining how well this has explained conflict activity in the Indo-Pakistani security
competition.
(1). Civilian Regimes and Conventional Deterrence (1947-1958, 1971-1977).
Our theory would indicate that civilian regimes operating under conventional
deterrence are limited in their escalation by the perceived likelihood of war. They also
have a tendency to escalate symbolic political issues more than core strategic concerns.
Although neither dispute is necessarily more frequent than the other, symbolic issues tend
to be more arbitrary, and therefore both more uncompromising and recurring than core
strategic issues. While operating under a conventional deterrent in the period 1947-1958,
Pakistan’s civilian regimes only permitted escalation when convinced by military
interests that core strategic issues were at stake, or when a symbolic dispute, Kashmir,
attained public salience.
The first instance of escalation, the decision to intervene in Kashmir in October
1947, was pursued by a civilian regime concerned with national consolidation and its
underlying principle of the Two-Nation Theory, an important symbolic issue for the
legitimacy of Pakistan. It was also supported for the most part by traditional military
leaders because of core strategic interests – the irrigation headwaters and defense of the
northern flank – in Kashmir.55 To avoid a general war with India, Pakistan had arranged
for tribal warriors to conduct its campaign.56 However, when in early 1948, it appeared
that India was preparing an offensive to seize all of Kashmir, the British commander,
General Gracey, advised, and was permitted, intervention with conventional forces. 57 The
Pakistan Governor General, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, was convinced by his military
advisors that Pakistani forces were, at the time, too weak to oppose Indian forces in
Kashmir as well as the Punjab, and so he sought to contain the war there. 58 To limit the
escalation of the crisis to an open conflict, counterattacks or provocative offensive
operations were prohibited.59
The third instance of escalation over a serious dispute with India was the second
war scare in the summer of 1951. The Indian decision to convene a Constituent Assembly
55
Akbar Khan (Maj Gen), Raiders in Kashmir (Karachi: Pak Publishers Limited, 1970),
8, 15-16.
56
H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain-India-Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University
Press, 1985), 443; Fazal Muqueem Khan (Maj Gen), The Story of the Pakistan Army
(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1963), 92.
57
Fazal Muqueem Khan (Maj Gen), The Story of the Pakistan Army (Karachi: Oxford
University Press, 1963), p.98-99; Gen. Yaqub Khan, interview, April 28th, 1999,
Islamabad.
58
Shaukat Riza (Maj Gen), Izzat-O-Iqbal (Nowshera: School of Artillery, 1980), 50.
59
Khan, The Story of the Pakistan Army, 103, 110-111, 117.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
in Kashmir provoked a hostile domestic reaction in Pakistan.60 Starting in June, both
countries deployed their principal ground units opposite each other in the Punjab.61 While
there was almost universal support in Pakistan for the government’s handling of this
symbolic issue, the military thought a war with India would be a disaster. 62 The opinion
in the U.S. State Department was that the Pakistani Prime Minister, Liaquat Ali Khan,
was allowing his country to drift towards a war that even the new Pakistani Commanderin-Chief, General Ayub Khan, was reluctant to get involved in.63 In 1951, in expectation
that the international community would not permit an Indian conquest of Pakistan, he told
Ayub Khan, that “I am tired of these alarums and excursions. Let us fight it out.” Ayub
Khan warned that the military was not prepared because there were only thirteen
operational tanks against an entire Indian armored division.64 The war scare ended with
the unsolved assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan. This dispute in particular offers strong
support of our theory by its contrast of the civilian and military predisposition to escalate.
By comparison, the relatively dispute-free period of 1971-77 was characterized by
rearmament and recovery from the 1971 defeat, an active nuclear weapons program from
1972, the civilian consolidation of power, and from 1974, deterrence by India’s Peaceful
Nuclear Explosive. India had demonstrated in 1971 its willingness to exploit Pakistani
weakness, and civilian decision-makers could therefore not be as confident of the
remoteness of war as they had previously. In general, the Pakistani civilian regime was
limited in its exploitation of disputes with India by its fear of an outbreak of war.
Whereas conflict in Kashmir through to 1948 was sanctioned by strategic concerns, the
war scare of 1951 was mainly symbolic (as the strategic interests had been secured in
April of 1948). In all of these instances the civilian regimes were not reluctant to escalate
when it was believed that general war with India was unlikely.
(2). Military Regimes and Conventional Deterrence (1958-1971; 1977-1988).
Military regimes under conventional deterrence escalate according to the
prospects for victory. Because a military perceives the peace-war continuum as a
seamless path, its only justification for engaging in continued military preparation rather
than war is inferiority. If it believes that through a limited or total conflict it can prevail
against a threat to its core strategic value, it will recommend a decision for war in the
near-term. When Pakistan’s military regime believed itself inferior to India, as it was in
the period before 1960 (by which time it had received its deliveries of arms from the US)
Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry
of Information, 1961), 466, 468.
61
“India Warns Pakistan on Blow on Kashmir,” The New York Times, August 6, 1951.
62
Michael Brecher, The Struggle for Kashmir (New York: Oxford University Press,
1953), 125.
63
M.S. Venkataramani, The American role in Pakistan, 1947-1958 (New Delhi: Radiant
Publishers, 1982), 158-159, 180.
64
Mohammad Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters – A Political Autobiography (London:
Oxford UP, 1967), 40.
60
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
and from 1977 to 1986 (after which time it acquired a crude nuclear capability), it was
particularly averse to confrontation.
Also, the Pakistani military was less willing than its civilian counterparts to
escalate a dispute that was not a core strategic interest. This is evinced by the fact that
despite moves by India in January 1960 to finalize a process of placing Kashmir beneath
the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, a threat to a symbolic issue of public importance in
Pakistan, there was little official reaction.65 Instead the matter was routinely brought to
the UN for resolution.66 Military governments were unlikely to manipulate the symbolic
value of Kashmir because the Pakistan Army did not value the Kashmir Vale
strategically.67 Within official circles, Ayub had remarked that “there were a dozen better
reasons for going to war than Kashmir.”68 In fact, the military regime was very
accommodating during this period, as evinced by its agreement over the Indus Waters
Treaty in 1960 (an issue of far greater strategic interest to Pakistan than Kashmir). Nor
was Kashmir a core ideological issue in the sense of being ‘sacred territory’: Pakistan’s
military regime was quite willing to offer territorial concessions from Kashmir to China
in March 1963, just as it was settling territorial disputes with its other neighbors, such as
Afghanistan in May 1963 and with Burma in 1964.69
Conflict occurred in 1965 in part because, with US military hardware including
the M48 Patton tank and F-104 Starfighter interceptor, Pakistan believed itself strong
enough to deter any conventional Indian attack.70 However, it was also believed that
India’s military build-up in response to the 1962 defeat by China would eventually
neutralize Pakistan’s deterrent. Rann of Kutch dispute in March-April 1965, which had
Šumit Ganguly, The Origins of War in South Asia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994).
61.
66
S. C. Tewari, Indo-US Relations – 1947-1976 (New Delhi: Radiant Publishers, 1977),
51; Agha Shahi., interview, April 21st, 1999, Islamabad.
67
Gen. Gul Hassan did not believe Kashmir had strategic value worth risking a war.
Interview, April 23rd, 1999, Rawalpindi; Kashmir’s strategic value, its headwaters for
irrigation and access to China, had already been secured in the First Kashmir War in
1947-1948. Interview, de facto Pakistan Army Chief 1984-87, Gen. K. M. Arif, April
26th, 1999, Rawalpindi; Interview, Pakistan Army Chief 1988-91, Gen. Mirza Aslam
Beg, April 24th, 1999, Rawalpindi; Gen. Mohammad Musa was reported to have said that
after 1949, the Kashmir issue was dead. Gen. Yaqub Khan, interview, April 28th, 1999,
Islamabad. There is nonetheless evidence that Pakistan intelligence was active in Indianoccupied Kashmir in the 1950s: Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir (Karachi: Pak
Publishers Limited, 1970), 172; B.N. Mullik, My Years with Nehru – Kashmir (Agra
Canton: Deep Publications, 1971), 52.
68
Agha Shahi, interview, April 21st, 1999, Islamabad.
69
Frank Trager, “The United States and Pakistan: A Failure of Diplomacy,” Orbis 9 (Fall
1965), 613-629, esp. 624; Khurshid Hyder, “Pakistan’s Foreign Policy,” Survival 9
(January 1967), 19-24, esp. 21.
70
Bhupinder Singh, 1965 War (Role of Tanks in India-Pakistan War) (Patiala: B.C.
Publishers, 1982), 27.
65
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
little intrinsic strategic or symbolic political value, was used as a demonstration of
Pakistani commitment and permitted a demonstration of its superiority.71 Pakistan’s
military thereafter felt sufficiently secure to permit a hybrid venture of military and
civilian interests to capitalize on the symbolic issue of Kashmir. On August 5th, 7,000
Pakistani insurgents were infiltrated into Indian-occupied Kashmir. But, by the third
week of August, the operation had failed disastrously, and local Indian units had
successfully counterattacked into Pakistan-held Kashmir, in turn threatening to liberate
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.72 This threat to Pakistan’s core strategic interests led the
mainstream military command to intervene in order to restabilize the situation.73 Ayub
authorized Operation Grand Slam for September 2nd, an armored attack towards Akhnur
bridge designed to isolate Indian forces in the Kashmir Valley.74 This triggered a number
of limited moves and countermoves that eventually erupted into open warfare by
September 6th.
The 1965 defeat had indicated to Pakistani decision-makers its inferior strength to
India, and it was this altered perception that drove subsequent escalatory restraint during
its 1971 conflict with India. Not until an Indian attack was actually underway in East
Pakistan did President Yahya Khan permit ‘preemptive strikes’ against Indian bases, and
even then, except for selective operations in Kashmir, there was no authorization of
counter-offensive operations from West Pakistan. Similarly, from 1977 to 1986,
Pakistan’s fear of escalation with a militarily superior and nuclear-capable India deterred
the incitement of Kashmir and other dormant disputes. Under military governments then,
a necessary condition for Pakistani escalation was therefore a belief in its ability to
prevail in a general war with India. Where this belief was absent, there was also a
reluctance to enter into even a low-intensity confrontation.
(3). Civilian Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence (1988-1999).
Civilian regimes both deterred and benefiting from nuclear deterrence tend to
believe that conflict at lower levels is safe because escalation is unlikely. It is this
perception among Pakistani decision-makers that explains the coincidence of the re71
Gen. Gul Hassan believed that the Pakistani forces should have escalated even sooner
than they did. Interview, April 23rd, 1999, Rawalpindi; This was not an uncommon belief
among Pakistan’s generals. Interview, Gen. Fazal Muqueem, April 25th, 1999,
Rawalpind; Gauhar, Ayub Khan, 312, 316; Syed Abid Ali Bilgrami, “Limited War and
Likely Areas of Conflict,” Pakistan Army Journal 1 (1959), 31-38, 33.
72
Harbakhsh Singh, War Despatches – Indo-Pak Conflict 1965 (New Delhi: Lancer
International, 1991), 32.
73
Mohammad Musa, My Version – India-Pakistan War of 1965 (Lahore: Wajidalis,
1983), 2, 5.
74
Although GHQ prepared the attack in expectation of escalation, it appeared that Gen.
Akhtar Malik, the commander, had intended the attack to go through anyway. Interview,
Col. Saeed Akhtar Malik (Gen. Malik’s son), April 21st, 1999, Rawalpindi; Letter from
Gen. Malik to his brother, dated November 22, 1967.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
introduction of civilian governments in Islamabad with the increasingly aggressive
support to the insurgency in Kashmir, and the particularly escalatory responses to the
1990, 1993, and 1999 crises with India.75 There was a widespread belief among civilian
leaders that with the availability of nuclear weapons, Pakistan had obtained a free hand to
step up the tempo of intervention in Kashmir. Furthermore, the nuclear shield was not
directed at solving issues of pressing military concern, such as in the Siachen Glacier
(which imperiled the Karakorum Highway to China), but were, instead, deployed to
permit manipulation of the popular symbolic issue of the insurgency in the Vale of
Kashmir.
The predictions of this theory are therefore entirely consistent with the role of
Pakistan in Kashmir beginning in 1990 and culminating in the adventure in and around
Dras-Kargil in May-July of 1999. Although accusations have been directed against a
variety of sources, only a few facts are known with certainty: the conflict was over an
issue of significant symbolic value, conducted with widespread civilian support and
acknowledgement, and assisted if not directed by elements within the military’s
intelligence branches. The prevailing evidence indicates that the operation, much like the
one in August 1965, was conducted by a hybrid coalition of civilian and military officers,
probably based on the intelligence community, and involving a mixed group of Pakistani
military personnel, domestic religious fundamentalists, and non-Kashmiri mujaheddin.
There is also considerable evidence that President Nawaz Sharif had approved of the
operation in order to placate the influential fundamentalist Jama'at party and his own
Muslim League Party who were pushing him for action on Kashmir.76
The fact that the engagement occurred so close to the Line of Control, making it
an easily perceived escalatory threat, seems to confound the theory, since military
authorities should have resisted such an adventure. It is equally plausible that the Kargil
operation was a failed attempt at deeper infiltration into Kashmir, and therefore more
fully supported by the mainstream military leadership. This would better explain the
relative ease with which India was able to interdict their movement, and the subsequent
relocation of the infiltrators some distance into Kashmir after July. It is therefore most
likely that the Kargil operation was a hybrid civilian-military operation, permitted
75
Kanti Bajpai, P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, Stephen P. Cohen, and Sumit
Ganguly, Brasstacks and Beyond – Perception and Management of Crisis in South Asia
(New Delhi: Manohar, 1995), 10-11, 14, 28, 40-41, 53; C. Raja Mohan and Peter R.
Lavoy, “Avoiding Nuclear War,” in Michael Krepon and Amit Sevak (eds.), Crisis
Prevention, Confidence Building, and Reconciliation in South Asia (NY: St.Martin’s
Press, 1995), 32; Inderjit Badhwar and Dilip Bobb, “Game of Brinkmanship,” India
Today, Feb. 15, 1987; “Indian Army to Gather on Pakistani Border,” The Montreal
Gazette, October 13, 1998; Evidence suggesting that the 1990 crisis was more serious
than later criticism is cited in David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo, “Indian Public
Opinion and Nuclear Weapons Policy,” 3; Syed Ishfaq Ali, Fangs of Ice – The Story of
Siachen (Rawalpindi: Pak American Commercial, 1991), 23-24.
76
Sultan Ali Barq, Henry Stimson Center, Confidence-Building Measures Project, July
14, 1999.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
because nuclear weapons granted security to core strategic interests, but pursued at the
same time because of the propensity of civilian governments to manipulate the popular
symbolic issue of Kashmir.
(4). Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence (1987-1988, 1999-2000).
Military regimes operating under a nuclear umbrella are the least dispute and warprone mix. Military regimes have an inculcated appreciation of the effects of escalation,
and are therefore unlikely to permit the pursuit of strategies predicated upon the stabilityinstability paradox. The stability-instability paradox therefore holds less substance for
military governments because by eliminating the effects of nuclear weapons, the
Pakistani armed forces would thereby face the prospects of a superior Indian military.
According to Brian Cloughley, “ [Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), Gen. Pervez]
Musharraf has never been a nuclear hawk. As a soldier he realises more than most the
terrible consequences of a nuclear exchange.”77 Claims that the military’s coup against
the Sharif government were linked to the latter’s termination of the Kargil operation are
less convincing than Sharif’s preceding and more general interference with the military’s
autonomy.78 The arrest of Lt.Gen. Khawaja Ziauddin, the chief of ISI (inter-service
intelligence) and the most likely director of operations in Kargil, for cooperating with
Sharif in an attempt to displace Musharraf, indicates that there were serious policy
differences between Musharraf and Ziauddin and that, paradoxically, Ziauddin was not at
odds with Sharif’s decision to pull back from Kargil. Similar to 1965, the Kargil
operation was more likely the product of a hybrid coalition including military factions
that did not necessarily receive approval for their operations through GHQ in Rawalpindi.
Our theory predicts that a nuclear-armed and deterred military government would
therefore show greater restraint in comparison with a similarly-armed and deterred
civilian government. This prediction is consistent with the apparent behavior of
Pakistan’s military government following the coup of 12th October 1999, and in its
failure to exploit the availability of a nuclear shield from 1987 to 1990, especially during
the 1987 Brasstacks Exercise. Aside from limited support provided to a low-intensity
insurgency operating on the interior of Kashmir, and mixed evidence of support to statesponsored terrorism, Pakistan’s military government showed markedly greater restraint
than the preceding and proceeding civilian governments. In the period prior to 1990, the
Pakistani support to insurgents in Kashmir was low-key. In the period since the 1999
Kargil operation, the military has resumed its low-key support to the insurgency in
Kashmir, but has carefully avoided the same proclivity for escalation witnessed during
the civilian tenure of government in the 1990s.79
77
Brian Cloughley, Former Australian Defense Attache in Islamabad, Henry Stimson
Center, SAIF Cross-border Dialogue XII, October 18, 1999.
78
“Pakistan’s New Old Rulers,” The Economist 353 (October 16th, 1999), 39.
79
Jehangir Karamat (Gen. Fmr Army Chief), Op Ed, The News International, Pakistan,
August 5, 1999; Talat Masood (Gen.), Henry Stimson Center, Confidence-Building
Measures Project, July 17, 1999.
lian Schofield and Michael Schatzky, “Military Regimes and Nuclear Deterrence in
South Asia,” in Hugh Johnston, Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay, and John Wood (eds.),
South Asia – Between Turmoil and Hope (Montreal: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute,
2000), 327-354.
Part Four – Conclusion
In part one we examined theories of deterrence relevant to the South Asian
context. In part two we examined the decision-making structures and motivations that
influenced the escalation-prone tendencies of military and civilian regimes. In part three
we demonstrated the interplay between the differing perceptions of deterrence with
regime type to show how it explains conflict escalation within South Asia. It is clear that
by comparing theories of orthodox/existential deterrence with the stability-instability
paradox, intersected with civilian and military regime types, we can better explain the
tendency to escalate disputes. By examining the interplay of the perception of deterrence,
motivations to escalate, and reactions to escalation, we can conclude that a military
regime in a nuclear Pakistan is far less conflict-prone than commonly believed, and that
nuclear-armed civilian regimes are less escalation-averse than often portrayed.
Military professionals are predisposed to think and organize in terms of the
defense of strategic interests, war preparedness, and the comparison of military
capabilities. The limits of their institutional structures, whether subordinate to the state,
or as regime type, reflect this. Although military regimes are no more war-prone than
their civilian counterparts, they do have a tendency to put a particularly military
interpretation on events: they perceive conflict as having a “seamless” escalatory
potential that consequently discourages engaging in behavior that might lead to conflict
and spiral to threaten core strategic or territorial concerns. In a conflict situation,
militaries are prone to rapid escalation so as to press advantages and minimize losses.
Whereas civilians are more likely to perceive thresholds between “levels of war,”
military regimes, being more aware of escalation patterns, are less sensitive to the
existence of thresholds, and are therefore less escalation-prone.
Civilian regimes are also more susceptible to symbolic political disputes, whereas
military regimes with conventional deterrents are more likely to recommend war to
counter a perceived threat to core strategic concerns. Civilian regimes with nuclear
deterrents are prone to escalate because they are even more likely to believe in the
implausibility of an easy escalation to nuclear conflict: they believe in the operation of
the stability-instability paradox and that nuclear weapons create a safe threshold of
conflict.
The key determinant factor is the perception of the effects of escalation. Having
taken faith in thinking that escalation to a nuclear conflict is deterred by the creation of an
illusory threshold, the greatest danger lies in the tendency of civilian regimes to exploit
symbolic opportunities and then ceding control of operations to the military. If the
conflict escalates to threaten core strategic concerns, the military would react with rapid
escalation in accordance with its training. To subscribe to the stability-instability paradox
when one party has a stated policy of continued existential deterrence suggests that there
is no shared, clear-cut perception of a threshold in the peace-war continuum (ie- non use
of nuclear weapons) that would prevent a conventional conflict from escalating into a
nuclear one. It is this threat of spiraling escalation that gives rise to the spectre of nuclear
conflict in South Asia.