‘India's strategy should be to make Pakistan as irrelevant as possible'

The Hindu

4 days ago

Published : May 29, 2025 18:32 IST - 16 MINS READ
On May 10, the India-Pakistan ceasefire went into force after four days of cross-border hostilities. As can be expected after each conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, analysts from both sides are making all kinds of claims. With propaganda being one of the weapons in the arsenal of both countries, truth is often the casualty. As time progresses, claims, counterclaims, and inputs from Western sources are expected to provide a better picture of what happened during Operation Sindoor.
Ramanathan Kumar, a former Pakistan analyst with India's foreign intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), spoke to Frontline to discuss this and understand what happens now between India and Pakistan. He headed the Pakistan desk of R&AW for many years and has also served as a counterterrorism specialist. Edited excerpts:
Now that the ceasefire seems to be holding, what happens next between India and Pakistan?
We are in a somewhat familiar situation, which Dalton and Perkovich once famously described as 'Not War, Not Peace'. We are still very much on the razor's edge—this can still go anywhere. It is, after all, just a pause in what happened between May 7 and 10. Unless the ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's foreign intelligence agency] ceases all infiltration forthwith and pulls back the terrorists who are already in the Valley, there could well be another terrorist attack either in Jammu and Kashmir or elsewhere in India. If that happens, India will be compelled to respond at a time and in a manner of its choosing, as happened after the Pahalgam attack.
On the other side, in the persona of the newly promoted Field Marshal Asim Munir, the Pakistan Army has an uncompromising and ideologically oriented Chief of Army Staff [COAS] who will not hesitate to retaliate in equal measure to the Indian response. So there could well be an even more serious escalation the next time around. I would agree with the well-known Pakistani commentator, Professor Pervez Hoodbhoy, who once said that any optimism is currently unwarranted.
What happened during the military hostilities between May 7 and 10? Can we arrive at some truth between the claims and the counterclaims?
First and foremost, there is a great deal of disinformation in the public domain, which has to be discounted. I don't want to repeat blow-by-blow all that has happened, but I will highlight some key points. Commercially available satellite imagery, which is a neutral umpire in these situations, shows that we were successful in conducting precision strikes on several Pakistani military installations, including Bholari Air Base, Rahim Yar Khan, Sargodha, and Nur Khan Air Base. Whereas Pakistan doesn't seem to have inflicted any noticeable damage at the sites which it claims to have attacked.
On the other hand, the government of India has not released any information in the public domain about the aircraft that Pakistan claims to have downed. Hence, it is not possible to make a meaningful assessment about this. Pakistan certainly believes that it downed some aircraft, which explains the upbeat mood in the country and possibly the conferment of the rank of Field Marshal on COAS Asim Munir.
From reports available in the international media, it does appear that the combination of the J-10 fighter aircraft and the PL-15 missile supplied by China to Pakistan did have a significant impact on the outcome of the conflict, especially during the initial stage on May 6-7. Going forward, the possibility of Chinese military assistance to Pakistan in key domains such as electronic warfare, airborne warning and control systems, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance—thereby blunting our advantage in the event of a conventional conflict—will be a matter of great concern. A well-known military analyst has described this not as a two-front war, but a 'reinforced single-front' conflict, with the Pakistan front being reinforced by China.
You referred to disinformation: Indian television channels were making all kinds of claims that Karachi had been bombed, pilots had been captured, Lahore had been taken, there was a coup in Pakistan.... Propaganda has always been there, but this takes it to a rather fantastic level, does it not?
It sure does. Propaganda experts often say that for propaganda to be truly successful, it is best to mix a little bit of fiction with a large amount of fact rather than the other way around. I'll just leave it at that.
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You mentioned the claims and counterclaims: they claim that they hit our airbases. The commercial satellite imagery tells a tale of the damage India inflicted. Do you think there was enough for both sides to claim victory and then arrive at this ceasefire through American help?
I would agree with that fundamentally. There is enough for both sides to claim some kind of victory, and that is what made the ceasefire possible, with some nudging from the Americans, which we will talk about at greater length.
What does the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty mean in the long term? Is this going to be a big issue between India and Pakistan?
This is a fundamental issue. In international law, there is a well-known principle of rebus sic stantibus [things standing thus]—that if there is a fundamental change in circumstances, the parties to a treaty can call it off. We have made a point that when the Indus Waters Treaty was signed in 1960, there was no cross-border terrorism. Then there are the sheer environmental changes, which have drastically affected the melting of the glaciers, the population increase, so on and so forth. So there are many grounds to say that there is a fundamental change in circumstances.
But we should look at the other side also. It has been said by several perceptive observers that it is an animal fear of undoing which explains a great deal of Pakistan's irrational behaviour, its inveterate hostility, and its aggressiveness. So it is a fundamental point that needs to be deeply considered. When their very existence is at stake—or at least that is the interpretation that Pakistan will put on it—will this compel them to learn salutary lessons, or will it increase the irrational behavior and their aggression? It's very difficult to arrive at a definitive conclusion.
As Professor Christine Fair wrote in her book In Their Own Words:Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the possibility of holding the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance sounds like an opening salvo short of declaring war. But it will likely threaten Pakistan's core interest, which is the survival of the state itself. In that situation, Pakistan will possibly be compelled to respond with whatever means it has at its disposal.
People like Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] leadership have mentioned this threat of stopping water several times as a justification for what they do. There was a famous tract published by the LeT in 2004 called 'Hum Jihad Kyun Karte Hain' [Why we pursue jihad], written by someone called Bin Muhammad. There were eight main justifications given for LeT's jihad against India. One was the self-defence of Muslims. The second was another country abrogating or walking out of treaties signed with Muslim countries. From the LeT's point of view, that was adequate justification for jihad.
So as a country, this threat will linger over the issue of water?
As a counterterrorism man, I can definitely say that in the motivational speeches of the LeT leadership to attract more recruits, along with their litany of grievances, which they seek to exploit, this water business will also be included.
Just by way of background, this Indus Waters Treaty actually cannot be abrogated. It can only be replaced by another treaty, which is why the government of India has used the word 'in abeyance'. Now, it has been suggested from a reasonably high level in India that Pakistan was informed, and it was expected that since India was only targeting terrorist camps, maybe the Pakistan Army would sit this one out. Do you think that is a realistic way of looking at a possible Pakistani reaction?
Knowing Pakistan's DNA, that really could not have been on the cards. Remember, we are talking of a country where if we conduct five nuclear tests, they will not rest content unless they've carried out six. To expect that there would be no retaliation from Pakistan is not being realistic. We were very clear, careful, calibrated, measured. We said our strikes were non-escalatory in nature and we had struck non-military targets. But knowing Pakistan, it could not have been expected that they would also confine their retaliation only to civilian or non-military targets. There are no equivalents of sites like Muridke and Bahawalpur on our side. So it stood to reason from a Pakistani point of view that they would strike at whatever they could, including military targets. That would set in motion an escalatory chain of events, which is exactly what happened.
In Balakot in 2019, we hit one site. During Operation Sindoor, India struck at nine places. Given that terrorist groups are still active and the known posture of the government of India, how do we expect the Modi government to respond to the next terrorist attack?
I can't speak on behalf of the government. But as a dispassionate observer, one can say that the government will be under pressure from sheer public expectation. We've seen a lot of jingoistic and immature posturing from both sides who think that confrontation and conflict are a substitute for finely balanced statecraft. This immature posturing, public posturing, media pressure, propaganda—these create pressure on the governments on both sides. These unrealistic expectations tend to box the government in and narrow the government's options. That is not a very happy situation for any government to be in.
A certain degree of expectation management—the government will have to think of doing that to manage the expectations and keep them real, so that it retains a certain flexibility of action. That will be a key challenge going forward.
One sense is that Pakistan does not have the ability to retaliate and that it will roll over. That seems to have been helped along by sections of the media and their reportage during Operation Sindoor.
That is a completely unrealistic expectation to think that Pakistan will simply roll over. This is high-decibel propaganda, wishful thinking, ignorance of basic facts and ground realities. Pakistan rolling over is a very unreal possibility.
If I may go back into history, in 1971, we accomplished what we had to as far as East Pakistan was concerned in spectacular fashion. But we did not widen the war to West Pakistan. Why was that? One reason was the Cold War context, the possibility of the superpowers getting involved. But apart from that, there is a very lucid passage in Mr Jairam Ramesh's book, Intertwined Lives: P.N. Haksar and Indira Gandhi, where he quotes a note written by Mr Haksar, who was the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister. Mr Haksar very clearly says that to roll over Pakistan, to finish the job, we would have to go into Pakistan as an occupying power and put boots on the ground. This would mean that we would have our garrisons in Lahore, Hyderabad, Islamabad, Karachi. This would be an absolutely nightmarish proposition, which nobody in their senses could even contemplate. If that was the situation in 1971, well before the nuclearisation of Pakistan, you can rule that out ab initio now. These are completely fantastic scenarios which have no bearing on reality.
'Pakistan has always been—it remains—obsessed with India. So our strategy should be to make Pakistan as irrelevant as possible.'
You referred to nuclearisation: Pakistan's nuclear weapons are not for show. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's famous comment about eating grass and developing a nuclear weapon—there is something very intrinsic. Being a little skeptical about the limits of this sub-nuclear conflict, how much can India actually push the envelope, or do we even know how much we should push the envelope?
At the end, all nuclear signalling is a matter of bluff and counter-bluff. It's all in the mind. There are many mind games at the core of it. Even the very possession of nuclear weapons is a supreme act of blackmail because they are not meant to be used. It's purely a deterrent.
Coming specifically to the India-Pakistan context, if I might go back about 20 years to Operation Parakram, when we had the attack on the Indian Parliament and we amassed our troops on the border in a threatening posture. In the end, it all fizzled out. One of the things we discovered was that because of the way our army is deployed, many of our formations were stationed inland. So the mobilisation was slow, and it took a lot of time for them to reach the border. We thereafter developed what Pakistan calls 'Cold Start', although there is no such formal term that is used by us. We started shifting our forces closer to the Pakistan border so that the next time there was a similar situation, our offensive formations would be able to move into Pakistan very quickly.
What did Pakistan do to counter Cold Start? They developed what are known as battlefield nuclear weapons or tactical nuclear weapons. The threat is that if you move your offensive formations into our territory to any depth, and if the existence of our state is threatened and we are under threat of physical dismemberment, we will not hesitate to use small tactical nuclear weapons. When Pakistan came up with this concept, they said, now that we have battlefield nuclear weapons, we have eliminated the space completely for any kind of conventional conflict whatsoever. You cannot now have conventional conflict in Pakistan.
Conversely, from our side, there were experts and strategists who argued that despite Pakistan's nuclear threshold, there is space for conventional conflict. We've seen that logic play out in this situation. We did use conventional military means despite the fact that Pakistan brings the N-word into play all the time. From Pakistan's point of view, the effort was to close this window, and that is exactly what the Chinese assistance to them has done—to close this window of conventional military conflict as much as possible.
It has been a bit of a draw. It has shown that there is still scope for some military conflict under the nuclear overhang. But it is quite possible that next time around, that window will become even smaller.
On May 10, there was a Reuters report that suggested that the Nuclear Command Authority in Pakistan was going to meet. A few hours later, when the phone calls started going from Washington, DC, to Islamabad and to Delhi, there was a denial of the story. The alarm bells did start ringing in world capitals. The threshold was probably when India expanded its attacks, and maybe the Nur Khan air base that was struck was something quite serious as far as the Pakistanis were concerned. We have to factor in this nuclear threshold, the role of the Americans and other influential players.
I certainly agree. This is the fundamental limitation of a strategy of overt military action against a covert proxy war, which is what is being pursued by Pakistan—the escalatory potential quickly attracts unwelcome international attention with all its attendant complications. We saw that in this case. What—72 or 96 hours—was all that it took before the rest of the world began to think, and the Americans in particular, that both sides were quickly ascending the escalatory ladder. The experts say that there are 23 steps in the escalation ladder. Clearly, they felt that the rungs were being mounted rather quickly and rather alarmingly.
All this leads me to the point that precisely because of the escalatory potential and the prospect of unwelcome international attention, which we have always tried to ward off, the argument can well be made that other non-escalatory options in the covert domain may perhaps be more effective in persuading Pakistan to give up what is essentially a self-defeating exercise of pursuing a covert proxy war against us. This has progressively brought diminishing returns to Pakistan over a period of time. Pakistan's covert proxy war against us is best fought by a covert counter-proxy war, and that war really has to be one in the shadows.
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This bilateral bogey—the Shimla agreement that was signed, which the Pakistanis say they are not going to respect, though they have never respected it to begin with. Everyone knows the reality of how Kargil ended. Everyone knows the reality of how Operation Sindoor ended. Why should we keep pretending? We should be open that there are influential players who can influence behaviour and we should factor that in any decision making. What do you think?
Certainly, it has to be factored into any strategy that we pursue. I entirely agree. The issue that decision makers have to grapple with is, at what point do other players come into the equation? How long can they be held off? Can they be held off till as long as it takes for you to achieve a certain objective? Even in 1971, these questions were there as to how long the conflict can be kept going before the Americans and the Russians get involved. You're absolutely right when you say that, fundamentally, this has to be one of the key points that has to be factored into our decision-making.
Turning to Pakistan internally, the promotion of Asim Munir as Field Marshal is signalling to the people of Pakistan and to India that they have achieved a major success. Does this give Munir and his civilian proxies, the Bhutto-Zardaris and the Sharifs, far more legitimacy in Pakistan?
Yes, all the evidence suggests that what happened has given a fresh lease of life to the Pakistan Army in particular. By all accounts, its popularity and that of then-General Asim Munir were at a historically low ebb because of Pakistan's own internal difficulties and crises on multiple fronts. For the time being, at least, a euphoria has been generated, rightly or wrongly, which has put the Army on a new pedestal. It has all but ensured that Field Marshal Asim Munir will be at the helm of affairs for the foreseeable future in Pakistan. It perhaps represents a setback to Imran Khan and his people, at least for the time being.
From our perspective, one negative fallout is that it brings the military and the civilian leadership closer together, despite a completely lopsided relationship. Our fundamental interests are best served by not having them on the same page, or at least putting as much daylight between them as possible. That has clearly not happened—it is the other way around.
Any concluding remarks on this current round of the India-Pakistan conflict?
In conclusion, Pakistan has always been—it remains—obsessed with India. So our strategy should be to make Pakistan as irrelevant as possible under the circumstances so that it recedes further and further back in our rear-view mirror. This is something that we have done over the past few decades. In our quest to become a developed nation by 2047, Pakistan can become a strategic distraction. That is something we should not let happen.
Amit Baruah was The Hindu's Islamabad-based Pakistan correspondent from 1997 to 2000. He is the author of Dateline Islamabad.