Field Marshal of the Pakistan army, General Asim Munir, recently raised the spectre of a nuclear contestation in the subcontinent during his trip to the United States. Munir highlighted the element of mutually assured destruction, an assured strike against India's existing and upcoming critical infrastructure in the near future. This latest act of theatrics is worth examining in the new strategic environment defined by Operation Sindoor, an initiative by New Delhi against Islamabad's decades-old sponsorship of terrorism. It is aimed at securing support in both the domestic and international community to delegitimise and constrain India's conventional military options against Pakistan's misadventures.
Why Are Munir's Remarks (In)significant?
Munir's remarks and his nuclear threats are both rhetorical and simultaneously critical for four reasons.
First, Pakistan, primarily its elites and the military, has drawn both its existence and policy initiatives from its sentiments against India-based existential security threats. The Pakistan military, primarily with its army as the most dominant constituency, leads the narrative within the country and abroad. Hence, Munir's words as Field Marshal matter, as they shape the discourse within the domestic constituency to reestablish the image of the military as an institution and its readiness to safeguard the sovereignty of the state.Second, as a senior-most official in the Pakistan army, Munir's speech on a foreign soil, the US at that, is a move to re-emphasise the threat of asymmetric escalation, an inherent part of Pakistani nuclear doctrine. The underlying motive is intertwined with Munir's religious doctrinal leanings to perceive India's image as a Hindutva ideology-based state threatening Pakistan.
In this regard, the emphasis on nuclear weapons is to recalibrate and restore the element of strategic stability vis-a-vis India. Islamabad, since its overt nuclearisation in 1998, has been attempting to impose structural conditions on New Delhi to push its sub-conventional warfare, marked by cost infliction through the sponsorship of terrorism. India, in response, has been adopting a more risk-acceptance approach to restore deterrence and reestablish new contours of engagement in the nuclear environment, evident through its conventional military response. Pakistan is making all possible attempts to overplay the (in)stability element to pressurise New Delhi. As a result, it establishes the narrative that if India undertakes an ‘Operation Sindoor 2.0' or any military initiative in the future, Pakistan will be compelled to use (tactical) nuclear weapons. However, the challenge for Pakistan to risk nuclear escalation with an assured retaliation from the Indian side remains a serious one.
Mutual Vulnerability
Third, Munir's statements aim to reinforce Pakistan's conception of the idea of ‘mutual vulnerability', aiming to deny India the space for a conventional level response by India. However, this construction of mutual vulnerability was already shattered by the Indian response to some degree and extent through an evolutionary strategy followed in Operation Sindoor. In such a scenario, the constraints of vulnerability in the conventional domain at the lower rung of the escalation ladder, and the responsibility for the maintenance of stability, have fallen more upon Pakistan.
Fourth, the Pakistan army, as the guardian of its ideological state, has adopted an asymmetric nuclear posture against India's superiority in the domain of strategy. Pakistan holds a full-spectrum deterrence posture, including tactical nuclear weapons for employment, providing a lower threshold against India's aggression. However, India has managed to challenge this imposition through its response to terrorist attacks in the form of the Uri surgical strikes, the Balakot air strikes, and the latest Operation Sindoor.
Munir's threats against India and the plausibility of a mutually assured destruction are to construct a structural third-party element in the India-Pakistan nuclear dyad. His stress on nuclear dangers is aimed at roping in the international community, particularly the US, to intervene as a structural constraint against India's response and deterrence policy. This catalytic nuclear posture could be seen as an effort to develop a safety valve for Islamabad against India's redefined approach of “any attack on Indian soil will be considered as an act of war”.
New Realities
Deterrence starts and ends within the cognitive-cum-psychological domain of strategy. Pakistan's historical track record to exacerbate the nuclear element against India and to court the attention of the international community only validates the old French adage: the more it changes, the more it remains the same. Pakistan maintains a deliberate element of ambiguity, flirting with first use, but its operationalisation is muddled by a paradox that casts nuclear weapons simultaneously as a first-use option and a last resort in itself. India has leveraged this paradox to restore deterrence in the Balakot and Operation Sindoor episodes. Hence, Munir's words are a part of a rhetoric emanating from the exasperation over Pakistan's overdeterministic reliance on nuclear posture and his quest to restore his domestic constituency. To this end, there is a likelihood of the development of new capabilities by Pakistan against India's ‘new normal' post Operation Sindoor. Latest US intelligence estimates predict that Pakistan is developing intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability to both match and challenge India's growing strength. China may play the invisible hand to support Pakistan, given their historical cooperation in nuclear proliferation and acquisition of missile technology. The end goal is to deny India the initiative to establish a credible deterrence vis-a-vis Pakistan in the conventional nuclear spectrum.
Against these developments, New Delhi must not shy away from amassing both nuclear and strategic non-nuclear capabilities as part of its growing arsenal and overall base. Indian policymakers will have to calmly counter the rhetoric, as it otherwise helps Pakistan enhance its catalytic nuclear posture by bringing in the US as a structural factor in the India-Pakistan nuclear dyad. Though Washington has reaffirmed that its relationship with both India and Pakistan "remains unchanged" and that its diplomats are "committed to both nations," New Delhi will have to delegitimise, both in the short and long term, efforts by Pakistan to centre stability and security around nuclear weapons.
(Harsh V Pant is Vice President, ORF and Rahul Rawat is a Research Assistant at ORF.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
