While we initially suggested India might start to make war preparations, New Delhi has by no means taken the military operation off the table even the crisis for now, has hit a lull. In fact India may have taken a step back to re-evaluate its options and the consequences of direct military intervention in light of  Pakistan’s nuclear first-use policy.

Two nuclear-armed foes adhering to a no-first-use policy are unlikely to have a nuclear exchange, because both have pledged not to escalate before the other. In first-use, one or both adversaries deliberately hold their nuclear weapons out as a deterrent to various forms of aggression or when the conventional dynamics are unfavorable to them. Like NATO in Europe during the Cold War, Pakistan is simply incapable of quantitatively matching Indian demographics and conventional military forces (challenges only compounded by Islamabad’s qualitative and technological disadvantages in relation to India). Nuclear weapons are Pakistan’s ace in the hole, and consequently Islamabad maintains an overt first-use policy, just as the United States and NATO never ruled out first-use.

But despite this similarity to the United States and NATO’s nuclear weapons policy, there are some very real differences between the Cold War dynamic and the current situation between India and Pakistan that are useful in highlighting the tensions in play and likelihood of escalation:

· Distance: The Americans and the Soviets were, for all intents and purposes, several thousand miles apart, despite the proximity of Alaska to Russia’s Far East. The inability to deliver meaningful conventional strikes at that distance until the waning days of the Cold War meant that any direct confrontation would likely be nuclear or result in a massive land war in Europe. In comparison, the capital cities of Islamabad and New Delhi are less than 500 miles apart. Dense populations saddle both sides of the border and the Pakistani demographic, agricultural and industrial heartland lies directly across a border with no real terrain barriers to invasion. This increases the likelihood of conventional warfare and consequently the potential for escalation toward the nuclear realm.

· Global scale: With interests around the globe, it was easy enough for the Soviet Union and the United States to challenge each other indirectly through proxies and peripheral wars from Korea to Vietnam and Afghanistan. In the case of Pakistan and India, the historical alternatives to a massive confrontation along the Punjab border have been fighting in the mountains and on the glaciers of Kashmir, blockades of Pakistani ports, and the use of militant proxies within each other’s borders. With military competition so close to home, the use of ballistic missiles and strike aircraft in conventional roles inevitably raises the specter of their use in the nuclear role — and when the stakes are that high, one does not have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for the clarification of the missile’s impact. One must assume the worst.

· Mutually assured destruction: Though Pakistan’s small, crude and low-yield arsenal could indeed be devastating, it is insufficient to threaten India with total destruction. While Indian delivery systems can range every corner of Pakistan, New Delhi enjoys immense strategic depth that Islamabad cannot match with any of its current delivery systems. India’s arsenal is more mature and more robust than Pakistan’s. Thus, Islamabad’s first-use policy is actually defensive in nature; it is a deterrent against Indian aggression that, in the end, Pakistan knows it cannot win.

But first-use is also a policy that not only the Indian military, but Indian society at large, is well aware of. It would be a deliberate choice for Pakistan to explicitly remind its arch-rival of something it already was keenly aware of during a tense conversation in the midst of a crisis.

It is, of course, the benefit of being a nuclear power that when the going gets tough, you can draw a line in the sand and wave the nuclear card. It is hardly a guaranteed defense, but it will certainly give your adversary pause. Ultimately, it did not deter the Chinese from moving forces into North Korea in 1950 or the Syrians and Egyptians from invading Israel in 1973 (which, at that point, was known to have nuclear weapons). In fact, it didn’t deter Pakistan from conducting a bold military operation in the 1999 Kargil war, nor did it prevent the two South Asian rivals from coming to a near-nuclear confrontation in 2002 after a militant attack on the Indian parliament. It may not ultimately deter India now. Islamabad is probably not willing to escalate to nuclear war over a few Indian airstrikes, when the price for nuclear escalation would be an inevitable and devastating nuclear reprisal from New Delhi, and India can be fairly confident of this fact.

Some of the other problems with Pakistan are, for example as we have discussed  al Qaeda and Taliban forces operate on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. While Afghanistan provides fertile ground for an insurgency, Pakistan — a nuclear-armed state with a strong radical Islamist current — presents an even more tantalizing opportunity for jihadists committed to reviving the Caliphate.

Pakistan’s military establishment is the dominant force and guarantor of stability in the country. As long as the military holds together, Pakistan will not devolve into a failed state that can be overrun by jihadists. The Pakistani military still has a fairly solid grip on Pakistan’s core, in the Punjabi heartland, but is losing control of its periphery in the northwestern tribal areas. And that is where things get exceedingly complicated for the United States.

The United States needs Pakistan – despite its complicity in the jihadist insurgency — in order to fight the war in Afghanistan. Geographically, Pakistan provides the shortest and least complex connection to the open ocean, from which all U.S. supplies not flown directly into Afghanistan are delivered. Those supplies include fuel, much of which is refined in Pakistan itself. As of late, however, Pakistan has become an increasingly unreliable supply route for the Americans and NATO. Not only has the Taliban targeted NATO convoys within Pakistani territory (perhaps with the aid of some elements of the Pakistani intelligence apparatus), but the United States is losing patience with the way Islamabad manages its insurgency.

The Pakistanis are dealing with the fact that segments of the military establishment itself are the fuel for the insurgent fire. In order to retain control, the military has adopted a complex strategy that distinguishes between “good Taliban” and “bad Taliban” — using the good guys to box in the bad guys and attempting to keep the insurgents’ focus across the border, in Afghanistan. After all, without an insurgency for the United States to contend with, Pakistan’s utility to the United States as a tactical ally diminishes. And with the United States set on developing a long-term, strategic partnership with India, the Pakistani regime must do whatever it takes to maintain its ties with Washington.

Islamabad’s method of managing the jihadist insurgency obviously does not align with U.S. interests. So rather than contending with the same Pakistani headache, Petraeus and his team are now trying to expand their options and essentially deprive Pakistan of much of its leverage in the jihadist quagmire.

That involves developing alternative supply routes to support the war effort in Afghanistan.
 

Pakistan After Mumbai

In the event of a war, however, the Pakistanis hope that all these elements currently battling Islamabad will turn their guns against Indian forces. Though this is likely to happen, these nonstate actors will be acting not as instruments of the state, but to advance their own position in Pakistan. Since the military no longer has the clear upper hand in the relationship, the Islamists can assume a leading role in any conflict and post-conflict scenario.

Non-Islamist forces continue to dominate the Pakistani political scene — something that became evident in the rout of the Islamists in Pakistan’s February election. At the social level, there has been an increase in religious conservatism in recent years, however, as a consequence of the state’s use of Islam for domestic and foreign policy purposes. And religion is a powerful motivator in times of war, especially in Pakistan — a state founded on the basis of religious nationalism.

The non-Islamist forces in the country — aside from the Karachi-based ethnic party Mutahiddah Qaumi Movement — do not have the power to fire up the man on the street that the political Islamists and the jihadists have. Though not very popular, JI remains the best-oiled political machine in the country. It has vast networks throughout society and deep experience at mass mobilization techniques through its powerful student wing, the Islami Jamiat-i-Talaba.

The largest Islamist party, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, has considerable presence in NWFP and Balochistan. And the political front of the LeT — Jammat-ud-Dawah, which the United Nations declared a terrorist organization Dec. 10 and which has since been banned by Islamabad — maintains a vast social network of schools, hospitals and charities. There are also a host of other smaller religious-based political factions and a host of nonpolitical religious groups in Pakistan, and the last three decades or so have seen a proliferation of religious seminaries in the country.

All of these forces are in addition to the Taliban/jihadist phenomenon that plagues the country. Though the bulk of the 168 million people of Pakistan are not of Islamist orientation, the Islamists constitute a significant minority. This cross-section of society can be expected to play a leading role in any conflict with India.

Further complicating the situation is the historical schism over the role of Islam in public life. The debate over the nature of the Pakistani republic, which began even before the country’s birth in 1947, has only become more intense, as is evident from growing extremism in the South Asian country. More than ever, Pakistan is polarized over whether the state should be secular or run along Islamist principles.

Islamabad expects that a conflict with India could help rein in the various centrifugal forces pulling the country apart at present. But a war in fact is likely only to further exacerbate these forces. This is due to the weakness of the state, which will prevent Islamabad from making use of the crisis. A weakened state will thus become heavily dependent on the various nonstate Islamist players within the country, which will be empowered by their lead role in the conflict. This is not to say that Islamists will seize control of the country, only that their influence would greatly increase.