Irregular Warfare Podcast - The Stability Instability Paradox: How Nuclear Weapons Incentivize Irregular Warfare

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Disclaimer: Episode 115 is a re-release of our original Episode 96, which explored the 1999 Kargil Conflict and its implications for irregular warfare in South Asia. Due to an unfortunate data corruption issue with our original file, we are re-publishing this important discussion. The content remains as relevant and insightful as when it first aired, featuring our distinguished guests Professor Sumit Ganguly and Professor Tricia Bacon. Our guests kick off by exploring the regional security dynamics germane to South Asia. They delve into the impact of nuclear weapons on fostering irregular warfare strategies, highlighting the specific ways in which the acquisition of nuclear capabilities by India and Pakistan has reshaped their relationship. This shift has driven Pakistan towards a heightened dependence on proxy forces to achieve its political objectives. The discussion culminates in a focused analysis of the bilateral relationship between New Delhi and Islamabad, offering a clear and insightful perspective on the evolving dynamics between the two nations. Professor Sumit Ganguly is a specialist on the contemporary politics of South Asia and a distinguished professor of political science at Indiana University. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the International Studies Review, and in 2019, Professor Ganguly authored a Foreign Affairs article entitled, “Why the India-Pakistan Crisis Isn’t Likely to Turn Nuclear,” which serves as the anchor for episode 96.  Professor Tricia Bacon is an Associate Professor at American University’s School of Public Affairs. Prior to teaching at American, Professor Bacon worked on counterterrorism for over ten years at the Department of State, including in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Bureau of Counterterrorism, and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Her work on counterterrorism in the intelligence community has received numerous accolades.

Hi everyone. I'm Ben Jeb, Chief Product Officer for the Irregular Warfare Initiative and a host on the Irregular Warfare Podcast. We're re-releasing this episode due to a corruption issue that caused it to disappear from major platforms like Apple and Spotify. It's one of our favorite episodes, covering the stability-instability paradox, the impact of nuclear weapons on low-intensity conflict, and South South Asian security all in one episode. Enjoy the re-release. So what happens post-1999? The Pakistanis take an additional step in the direction that they were heading, which is to launch terrorist attacks using Pakistani client organizations

beyond Kashmir. And the idea is the Indians won't be able to respond, right? Because there is this ambiguity about when the Pakistanis would use their nuclear weapons. On this notion that these jihadi groups just can't be dismantled. on this notion that these jihadi groups just can't be dismantled. You've unleashed a Frankenstein monster, and the monster will not neatly go back to its cave or to its pre-experimental stage. And it's not entirely clear that the Pakistani state even has the capacity to rein them in. It might, but it might involve a bloodbath. Welcome to the Irregular Warfare podcast. I'm your host Ben Jebb and my co-host today is Matthew

Muller. Today's episode delves into the 1999 Kargil conflict, exploring the intricate dynamics of the India-Pakistan rivalry and the impact of nuclear weapons on conflict below the threshold of open warfare. They begin by delving into the regional security dynamics in South Asia. They then discuss the impact of nuclear weapons on irregular warfare strategies. More specifically, they discuss how India and Pakistan's nuclear capabilities altered the rival's relationship, which ultimately led Pakistan to rely more heavily on proxy forces to accomplish its political aims. Finally, they end with a cogent analysis of the bilateral security relationship between

New Delhi and Islamabad. Professor Shumit Ganguly is a specialist on the contemporary politics of South Asia and a distinguished professor of political science at Indiana University. He also currently serves as the editor-in-chief of the International Studies Review. In 2019, Professor Ganguly authored a Foreign Affairs article entitled, Why the India-Pakistan Crisis Isn't Likely to Turn Nuclear, which serves as the anchor for today's conversation. Professor Trisha Bacon is an associate professor at American University School of Public Affairs. Prior to teaching at American Professor Bacon worked on

counterterrorism for over 10 years at the Department of State, including in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Bureau of Counterterrorism, and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Her work on counterterrorism in the intelligence community has received numerous accolades. You are listening to the Irregular Warfare Podcast, a joint production of the Princeton Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and the Modern War Institute at West Point, dedicated

to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners to support the community of irregular warfare professionals. Here's our conversation with Professors Shumit Ganguly and Tricia Bacon. Professors Shumit Ganguly and Tricia Bacon, thank you for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. It's great to have you here. Thank you for having me. It's great to be here with you and with Shumit. Yeah, it's a delight to be back on this podcast and particularly with Tricia. That's right, one of our few reoccurring guests. So this episode we'll discuss how nuclear weapons

affects international security dynamics. And more specifically, we'll look how nuclear weapons can sometimes incentivize states to pursue irregular warfare tactics, often below the threshold of open war. And as a case study, we'll discuss the evolving relationship between India and Pakistan. But before we dissect specific events like the 1999 Kargil conflict, I think it's important to zoom out to gain a regional perspective. So, Schumit, could you discuss how and why

the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir became such a contentious issue between India and Pakistan? When did it start and what's happened there over the last 70 years? It's good that you've mentioned 70 years because that's how long this dispute has been around. It originated in 1947 when India and Pakistan emerged from the breakup of the British colonial empire in South Asia, and in fact, in the month of August, on 14th and 15th of August respectively. Pakistan on the 14th, India on the 15th. And almost immediately, the two countries found themselves

at loggerheads over Kashmir because for India, it wanted to hold on to Kashmir to demonstrate that a Muslim majority state could thrive in a predominantly Hindu country. And India constitutionally was committed to the idea of secularism, respect for all faiths. That's the vision of Indian secularism, as opposed to the Jeffersonian division of the separation of church and state. So Kashmir was vitally important for symbolic purposes for India.

For Pakistan, it was equally important to have Kashmir because here you have an adjoining Muslim majority state which had to be incorporated into Pakistan to make Pakistan complete as a state because Pakistan had been created as a homeland for the Muslims of South Asia and consequently both countries were passionately committed to holding on to Kashmir. And therein begins the conflict. So there are a couple of other terms I'd like to define just so our listeners are familiar with it. Professor Shumit, could you discuss what the line of control is and how the line of control came to be? Yes, the line of control is the de facto international border between India and Pakistan.

For all practical purposes, that's where a settlement eventually will be reached. At least I think so, even though there are people in India and in Pakistan who have maximalist claims who will not give up on the original territory of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. It's called the line of control after the 1971 war, the third Indo-Pakistani conflict. The first was in 47, 48, the second in 65, the third in 1971. After the 71 conflict, there was a conference where President Bhutto of Pakistan and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India met at a colonial hill resort of Shimla in northern India, where they agreed that they would disengage their forces to where they had been deployed at the end of the war. And that's the line of control

in Kashmir. Thanks for that. Professor Bacon, we've read that even though Indian and Pakistani conventional troops have habitually classed in Kashmir, there are a lot of indigenous stakeholders involved in the territorial dispute there. Could you give us a broad overview of the type of non-state actors and other organizations that have played pivotal roles in the Kashmir conflict? Sure. I think it's useful to break down the non-state actors into three categories. And it's important to say they're not all indigenous.

In fact, the categories that aren't indigenous become increasingly important. But the first category would be those in Kashmir who wanted independence. They were seeking to secede from India, but to become their own country. And these groups were particularly dominant at the outset of the insurgency in the early 1990s.

And they were primarily an ethnic based groups. They were Kashmiri. They were Muslim, but they weren't really religious. They didn't really have a strong religious ideology. And they were mostly indigenous. And so Pakistan originally supported some of these organizations and it was supposed to be kind of a realization of what the Pakistanis had long hoped for, which was like a people's war in Kashmir that would result in its unification with Pakistan. But the alignment of goals was not complete because a lot of these actors wanted independence

not to unite with Pakistan. So what Pakistan did was start to insert Pakistani militant organizations who were not indigenous to Kashmir. And they were sort of supplanting the indigenous elements of the insurgency and really kind of taking over the insurgency in a lot of ways. And they tended to be more jihadist, more Sunni jihadist in orientation. Most of them were Pakistani, Punjabi and Pashto, although

there was a Kashmiri organization as well. And this was largely organizations that were formed during the 1980s in Afghanistan. They were participating in the insurgency against the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. They weren't consequential in that war, per se, but they were a product of President Zia's policies and they began to organize their and gain capability and were able to take that into Kashmir to sort of quickly over those years become a very brutal and very dominant factions within the insurgency in Kashmir. And then there's the third category, which I would describe as probably arguably the most important now, which are those in Kashmir, the indigenous

elements who realize that Kashmir is not leaving India. That's not a realistic goal anymore. And so what they're really pushing for is better governance in Kashmir. And this is more of an indigenous sort of constituency of the opposition. And Pakistan doesn't have nearly as much influence over this subset of the opposition. But I think there's generally these three categories that you have to sort of think about distinctly. And with that, how does India and Pakistan use these surrogates and coordinate with non-state actors during the 20th century? So one of the things that happens

is I'm frequently asked this question. I'm sure Schumet is too. And the first thing I want to say is that it's a problematic thing to put the two countries in the question together, because it somehow makes them seem like they're engaging in similar behavior. And they're not. India, I would say, in the 20th century, kind of dabbled a little bit in surrogates and clients in Pakistan, especially in Sindh. But it was never a very sophisticated, never very organized, never very developed effort. And what it is instead is that the Pakistanis have this very sophisticated,

institutionalized program of supporting militant groups, but they mirror image to the Indians. And they claim that the Indians are doing the same thing that they are. And they frequently produce these sort of manifestos that give evidence of Indian involvement in Balochistan or the federally administered tribal areas. And so they're very convinced that the Indians are playing a comparable role, but the Indians are not. And it prevents Pakistan from diagnosing the real source of its internal instability. But for Pakistan, especially the Pakistani army, really, these kind of proxy clients were a core tenant of its national security strategy, both at home and its foreign policy and its relations with its neighbors, most importantly

India, but also Afghanistan. And this really began at partition. And as Schumann was describing the genesis of this conflict, one of the things that the Pakistanis did that backfired very spectacularly was to send in these irregulars into Kashmir, to try to force Kashmir to become part of Pakistan. And it's sort of a symbolic use of these kinds of non-state actors that are very much state-supported, because it completely failed and would sort of project what will happen with Pakistan's policies in the future in this score. But essentially, Pakistan became much more sophisticated in institutionalizing these relationships, especially in the 1980s, under President Zia and when the US was providing so much support for the war in Afghanistan. So it's not because the US was providing support for the war in Afghanistan that the Pakistanis were doing this, but it allowed them to increase

how sophisticated their use of these surrogate organizations would become. So, I feel like Matt and I are learning in real time here, which is great, and that was a wonderful synopsis of the regional dynamics by both of you. But before we dig into the Cargill conflict, we also need to familiarize our listeners with an academic concept known as the stability instability paradox Schumacher, could you explain what the paradox is and how it pertains to the India Pakistan relationship? Yes, absolutely

the idea of the stability instability paradox goes back to the Cold War and during the Cold War analysts in the United States Observed that once there was rough parity, nuclear parity, between the United States and the Soviet Union, the possibilities of large scale war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, for the most part, was highly unlikely because of the prospects of mutually assured destruction, that if we initiated a conflict, the Soviets would probably still have residual forces to attack us and inflict unacceptable damage. And by the same token, the reverse was also true, that if the Soviets initiated a conflict and

attacked us, we would have enough residual forces to inflict extraordinary pain and destruction upon them. Consequently, the central balance between the United States and the Soviet Union was more or less stable, never perfectly stable when you're dealing with nuclear weapons, but rough and ready form of stability. And with that, what happened is both sides, but particularly the Soviets, since they were a revisionist power, sought to probe in peripheral areas. So they supported the Cubans in Angola and Mozambique.

They supported the Ethiopians in the Horn of Africa, places which were not critical to the United States by any means. Not probing, for example, along the Fulda Gap in Germany, because that could actually initiate a war in Europe. They were cognizant of that danger. By the same token, we didn't do anything that adventurous, but they in particular found ways to probe in peripheral areas of the world. So stability at the central balance in Europe and between the United States and the Soviet Union, but instability in distant peripheral areas where the likelihood of those conflicts or proxy

conflicts spiraling to Europe or to the central balance between the United States and the Soviet Union was extremely unlikely. So this is the crux of the stability and stability paradox. And not to be overly self-referential, but I wrote the first article focused on this possibility in South Asia. I think in the Journal of Conflict and Terrorism, if I'm not mistaken. And there I argued that the stability and stability paradox had arrived in South Asia in that both sides recognized that a major war like 1971 was no longer feasible because of the distinct possibility of it spiraling into a nuclear war. However, this created

incentives to probe in peripheral areas and Cargill is the perfect example thereof. It's an extraordinarily harsh landscape and very thinly populated. I suspect there are more sheep and yaks there than human beings. And consequently, this was an area where a risk-prone decision-maker like General Pervaiz Musharraf felt that he could make an incursion to see how prepared the Indians were to be able to respond promptly. And with that, let's dig into our primary case study. So the 1999 Cargill conflict. Could you provide us with a narrative of the event? What was the primary cause?

Who was involved? What happened? And why is this episode so often studied by political scientists? What happened is there were several factors involved. One, largely to assuage the concerns of the international community after May 1998, when India and Pakistan carried out parallel nuclear tests, there was a great deal of global concern about the likelihood of nuclear war in South Asia. President Clinton referred to it as the most dangerous place on earth.

So both sides had an incentive to signal to the global community that, no, things are actually under control. And to that end, earlier in the year, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Bajpai of India had gone to Pakistan and specifically to the city of Lahore, the capital of Punjab, Pakistani Punjab, where he actually went to the monument from where the call for the creation of Pakistan had emerged in 1940. Over there, he said quite publicly that we accept the territorial integrity of Pakistan. The Indians genuinely believed that they had achieved at least the beginnings of a rapprochement with Pakistan, and thereby they lowered their guard in Kashmir.

And routine reconnaissance flights, which are carried out by RAW, the Research and Intelligence Wing, India's equivalent of the CIA, were basically stopped, saying, we are now on a pathway towards peace. And finally the Indians had ignored some troop movements along the Pakistani border and had not paid much heed. Until what happened in late April, early May of 1999, an Indian patrol went out and simply disappeared. And that's when the headquarters in Srinagar, the capital of the Indian controlled portion of Kashmir, got anxious and started reconnaissance flights, started to send in troops and to their dismay, they discovered that the Pakistanis had actually seized several spots at extremely high altitudes, strategic salients, which are normally abandoned by the Indian forces in winter because of the

extraordinarily cruel climatic conditions in winter. Those mountain salients had been occupied by Pakistani troops who were now well entrenched. At which point, the Indians felt compelled to launch an offensive to dislodge those Pakistani encampments. This is what precipitated the Kargil conflict. And then Trish, could you kind of take over? I'm not sure how familiar you are with the Kargil conflict, but it sounds like Pakistan leveraged a perceived gap in India's Kashmiri perimeter

and that once India found out out they responded by deploying troops to the region. Could you pick up the narrative from there? I think one of the aspects of this that comes through very clearly as Shuman is talking about it is this was a Pakistani army operation. This was a Musharraf operation, right? But there was a Prime Minister and there was a civilian prime minister at the time. And he went to Washington and met with President Clinton, and seemed to have been looking for a way out and received an unusually blunt message from the Americans, which was, end this. Like, you don't have our support. We are not going to bail you out of this. So the Pakistanis find themselves having undertaken this very sort of adventurous operation in

a really difficult position, which is losing militarily on the ground to the Indians and unable to get support from the Americans. And this does harken back a little bit to the proxy policies, because one of the maybe more disingenuous things that the Pakistani army tried to claim is this wasn't the army. This was irregular forces. This was proxy. These were non-state actors. These were Kashmiri liberation fighters. And the concept of plausible deniability was one that Pakistanis have stretched in a number of instances, but this instance was a bridge too far. And in a way, it harkens back to what I referenced before when they sent irregulars into Kashmir to try to force its succession at partition.

And so the Pakistanis find themselves internationally isolated and essentially losing on the ground in Kargil. And what they're able to do then is hand the Indians basically a complete victory. The Pakistanis call for an unilateral ceasefire, they withdraw from the conflict zone, and it really leaves the Pakistani military humiliated at the end of this on multiple fronts, both internationally, diplomatically, and militarily. So, Shumit, it sounds like maybe because of the joint nuclear capabilities between the two states in 1999 as opposed to previous years, the Kargil conflict was somewhat different than the first, second, and third Indo-Pakistani wars. Could you compare and contrast what was different about those and how nuclear weapons factored

into the maybe risk calculus of both sides? Yes, this is an utterly fascinating and a vitally important question in 1971 India not only held the Western Front from Pakistani attacks held the Western Front from Pakistani attacks, but even sought along the Western Front to try and smoothen out certain strategic enclaves. They were not terribly successful in this endeavor because for Pakistan, that was the heartland and they threw all their resources on the Western Front. But on the Eastern Front, Bangladesh did not exist.

It was East Pakistan separated by about 1,500 miles of land barrier, essentially India. In the Eastern Front, the Indians devised, and John Mearsheimer, the great American strategist, wrote about this in his book Conventional Deterrence that the Indians embarked essentially on a blitzkrieg strategy using armored vehicles and armor and they had carefully waited for the rains to end so that they would encounter basically dry flat land and the Pakistanis had a strong point defense strategy. They had bolstered certain garrison towns which were very well armed and equipped. But what the Indians did is they completely bypassed those towns

using armored vehicles and actual mechanized armor like tanks and just punched a hole through the Pakistani defenses to airdrop paratroopers behind enemy lines. And then the multi-pronged Blitzkrieg forces linked up with the paratroopers. And this is the first time that the Indians had actually gone into someone else's country, apart from minor incursions along the international border in 1965. This was a dramatic shift in battle tactics and doctrine because earlier, a doctrine largely inherited from the British was focused on territorial defense. This is not territorial defense.

This is actually penetrating someone else's country with the goal of seizing territory. And they accomplished that within a matter of three weeks. It was a remarkable operation. Contrast that with 1999. I have interviewed multiple pilots of the Indian Air Force who told me bluntly, we were told under no circumstances are you to cross the line of control, even to suppress fire coming from across the line of control. And they said that this put us at risk because it was easy for us to make a quick foray across the line of control, suppress the fire, pull back.

We were told we'd be court-martialed if we did that. Why? Suddenly, the better angels had come to inhabit the Indians, nothing of the sort. They were terrified at the prospect of provoking a full-scale war. This was a decision made at the highest civilian levels in the Cabinet Committee on Security, which the Prime Minister heads up. I asked General Malik, who was the Chief of Staff of the Indian Army after the 1999 war, that did nuclear weapons play a critical role in your restraint?" And he smiled and he said, yes, of course.

Well, that's really good. And that kind of actually leads us to our next question. You talked very well there about how, obviously, nuclear weapons changed how the state actors operated in the region. But Trisha, can you talk a little bit more about how nuclear weapons may have changed how the non-state actors operate in the region? Have Pakistan and India come to rely more or less on terrorist groups and sergents since 1999? So I think I'll probably start my answer to the question similarly to my previous one, which is to say that the Indians are not really the actor to analyze in this context. As I say, they dabbled in the 20th century. But post-1999, this is not a

part of the Indian strategy. It needs to be Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan comes into this environment with this nuclear deterrent in place, a lot of ambiguity about when it would use them. It has a, in some ways, implied first use policy, and sort of deliberately cultivates uncertainty about when it would use nuclear weapons. And having nuclear weapons also increases the likelihood that international actors will become involved in any conflict. Now, that didn't work out that well for the Pakistanis in 1999 and the Kargil War, but there is this sense that Pakistan can't be ignored and that this conflict can't be ignored. So with these factors in place and admittedly a humiliation in the Kargil War, we see this emboldening of Pakistan's use of the proxy organizations.

If before this there was the use of indigenous militants finding the pressure points in India and pressing on them, some introduction of Pakistani militant groups into Kashmir, and then an episode in 1993, where they use an Indian organized crime organization to launch a major terrorist attack in Mumbai. So what happens post 1999? The Pakistanis take an additional step in the direction that they were heading, which is to launch terrorist attacks using Pakistani client organizations beyond Kashmir, in particular in New Delhi, in particular in Mumbai. And the idea is the Indians won't be able to respond, right, because there is this ambiguity about when the Pakistanis would use their nuclear weapons.

There's this first use policy, international actors will step in and prevent this from escalating. And so it really sort of escalates that tactic. And it's first used in 2000, so just basically a year plus after the Cargill War in New Delhi against the Red Fort. And Masjid-e-Tayyiba launches operatives into the Red Fort, kills three people, and then they escape, which is showing us huge gaps in the Indian security apparatus that they could get in and access this target and then escape afterwards.

And it really brings in this hallmark tactic of the Pakistani client organizations known as Fettahin operations. And it's where they take these very high risk operations. They're not suicide operations because they don't kill themselves, but they don't expect to live. But when they do, like in this instance, it is considered a real success by the organization. Even if the body count wasn't that high, the symbolism of hitting the Red Fort was also very great. And they don't stop there. Just the next year, a different Pakistani proxy organization, Jaiishi Mohammed, attacks the Indian parliament in 2001. And of course, this comes shortly after 9-11. Then in 2006, there's

a bombing of trains. It shifts to Mumbai, to the economic capital, and the bombing of trains in Mumbai, and then really peaks with the siege of Mumbai in 2008, again, by Lashkar-e-Taiba. So there is this escalation of where these organizations will hit the direct use of Pakistani client organizations, and this attacking in sort of major symbolic hubs beyond Kashmir. Trish, that was like a really good summary of the post-1999. And, Shemira, I'd also like to hear your perspective on how the Kargo War maybe did or did not change Pakistan's security decision-making process after the Kargo conflict. It did and it did not. It did in the sense that it's highly unlikely that Pakistan, anytime in the foreseeable future, will embark on another real military operation,

like happened in Kargil. And I think Trish is absolutely right that they tried to obfuscate it by saying, no, no, no, these incursions were really not made by us. They were made by people who are beyond our control. These are organizations who are sympathetic to the Kashmiris and they embarked on it on their own. And they tried to sort of blur the picture. And in large part because they didn't want to appear to be an irresponsible power having acquired nuclear weapons.

They wanted to maintain the sort of a fig leaf of being a responsible state, and hence suggesting that indigenous groups who had grievances against India in Kashmir had embarked on this operation on their own. That's my way of background. But since 1999, while Pakistan, I think Trish will agree with me on this, has continued periodically to support insurgent and terrorist organizations like the Jaish-e-Mohammed whom she mentioned and then the Lashkar-e-Taiba which launched a major attack on Bombay, Mumbai in 2008, November 2008 over Thanksgiving. And several Americans, by the way, were killed in that operation, not just Indians.

Close to 150 people perished. It was a highly skilled and well orchestrated attack. So Pakistan hasn't given up on its use of proxy forces and terrorist organizations since cardio. And most recently, just a couple of years ago, an Indian convoy was attacked. A paramilitary force convoy was attacked, and several people were killed in a place called Pulwama. And it was not only attributed to Pakistan, but even responsibility was claimed

by one of the terrorist organizations for that attack. So to that extent, while Pakistan's support for these proxy terrorist organizations has waxed and waned, that strategy, that jihadi strategy, has not come to an end. However, a conventional war strategy, I really don't think is in the cards unless Pakistan finds itself attacked, in which case of course it will respond with every bit of firepower that it can muster and has also this very ambiguous nuclear doctrine which leaves considerable scope for the early use of nuclear weapons. And furthermore, there's an additional element of ambiguity.

If the Pakistanis use nuclear weapons on their soil, do the Indians then have the right to retaliate with nuclear weapons? Doesn't that then push the onus on the Indians about what to do about nuclear weapons. It's a very deft strategy that the Pakistanis have devised by introducing this large element of ambiguity about when exactly they might use nuclear weapons. And if I could just add on to that, those are all, of course, excellent points. I think one of the things that had to be brought into this discussion is, of course, there is the introduction of the nuclear deterrent on both sides. But in conjunction with the events we're talking about is 9-11,

is the US global war on terrorism. So this addition of the nuclear deterrent and sort of the ability to operate in this or in bold and way is also coming against the realities of the United States, of course, needing Pakistan for its war in Afghanistan, but at the same time exerting more pressure on the Pakistanis for support for anti-India militant groups. Of course, the parliament attack derailed a US effort in Afghanistan to capture Bin Laden. So we do see this period of about 10 years where the Pakistanis are emboldened, these big attacks, symbolic attacks, parliaments, red forage, civilian trains, several-day siege of Mumbai, killing Americans as well.

And then we see a reversion by the Pakistanis to essentially a pre-nuclear approach to supporting militant groups. It starts to once again restrict its militant activity to Kashmir. It's still supporting groups in Kashmir. If you look at the numbers, it declines, like the number of fatalities, the number of incursions. It's not linear, but there is a decline in what it's doing.

And it stops these high profile major attacks outside of Kashmir on New Delhi and Mumbai. And there hasn't been one now since 2008. And so there is this interesting emboldening effect, but it's not permanent. And that is not to say the Pakistanis couldn't start doing that again. It's not irreversible. These groups still have the capability. They still have the intent. But the analogy that Zia used in Afghanistan was boiling the water at the right temperature, right? So for now, the boil has been brought down

by the Pakistanis, even though they still have the things we discussed about nuclear deterrence in the Sandvik US. So it did have this sort of decade-long effect. And then there was a recalibration of it that is also, I think, a very interesting factor, in part because it comes in the midst of the US global war on terrorism and the pressure, the international pressure that comes with that. Yeah, I mean, this has been an extremely

fascinating conversation up till now. And we've talked about the Indian-Pakistani relationship through the 20th century and up to the beginning of the 21st century and know the whole discussion about how nuclear weapons maybe have led to a shift in tactics. But Trish, could you give us a broad overview of where the political and security relationship between New Delhi and Islamabad stands now? Sure. So, as I mentioned, we have a sort of recalibration of the Pakistani's use of proxy client groups in India in, let's say, the last decade at least. But it's also been unveiled as a completely failed strategy.

The Pakistanis have never been further from acquiring Kashmir than they are now. India has virtually uncontested control. Pakistan has no real viable route. At the outset, Schumacher pointed out, the LOC was probably always gonna be what it was gonna be, but there is undoubtedly, the Pakistanis are in a weaker position. They have less influence over insurgents in Kashmir. There's more sort of dislike of Pakistan in Kashmir.

The groups that they support are really marginal in the political processes in the opposition at this point. So it's a sort of changed environment in that way. India has moved on in a lot of ways. Of course Pakistan is still a very emotional and activating and galvanizing threat for the Indians. But in terms of its relative strength, it's so far surpassed the Pakistanis that often Pakistan is referred to by Indians as a nuisance, that kind of level of problem, except for

how activating it can be politically. But the Indian's lens has really shifted to China. And that is really now its predominant security concern. And interestingly, there's also been a shift on the Indian side. We talked about the ambiguity that the Pakistanis cultivate and sort of how they tried to create some uncertainty. But interestingly, the Indians have been able to do some of that as well, especially under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

There is ambiguity now about where the Indians' line is, how far the Pakistanis can push them with these kinds of proxy attacks before the Indians will retaliate. There was a conventional wisdom back in sort of the Mumbai era day that attacks outside of Kashmir wouldn't prompt an Indian military response. That is clearly not the case anymore because they've done it twice in response to that. And there's also probably been a creation of an expectation amongst the Indian population that India will respond when Pakistan provokes in that way. So India is actually also a less predictable actor. So while the Pakistanis have reduced their sponsorship, they've reduced the amount of

activity that they sponsor in India for militant organizations, India's threshold is lower and it's less predictable at the same time. And meanwhile, Pakistan has really spiraled into its own weakness. It's got this dramatic internal political instability, economic instability. It wasn't as blatant as Musharraf's coup in 1999, but the military has taken over once again. But it's a little bit more damaged in the process. There's been much more backlash

against the military's intervention into the civilian government. And it's really consumed with a lot of its own problems. The only thing I would add to that is to say that Pakistan's proxy policies in Afghanistan have also failed. They succeeded in helping to bring the Taliban into power in Afghanistan, much to the US's anger and chagrin. But at the same time, the Taliban into power in Afghanistan, much to the US's anger and chagrin. But at the same time, the Taliban has not turned out to be all that compliant of a client. And so it now has kind of a hostile neighbor on its other side who turns out to be friendlier to India than maybe some other options would have been.

So the Sino-Indian competition is another fascinating topic we could spend a whole episode on which we'd probably bring Professor Ganguly back for again. But Shumik, same question to you. Do you agree with Trisha's analysis? How do you see competition between Pakistan and India in contemporary times? There is absolutely no daylight between us on this subject. Her characterization is, in my judgment, entirely accurate and nuanced. The U.S. has a minimal relationship with Pakistan today. It's mostly concerned about intelligence gathering, keeping an eye on Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, and to see what Pakistan

is up to in Afghanistan. Of course, some notion of humanitarian assistance to Pakistan because climate change is wreaking havoc on that poor country. There were massive floods slightly over a year ago, and US assistance was crucial. India looms very large in the American strategic calculus now, primarily because of China. The Indians have lost a lot of their inhibitions about cooperating with the United States after they got a nice wake-up call in the spring of 2020 in extreme northwestern India in Ladakh, where the Chinese made major incursions and the Indians were caught asleep at the wheel.

And any fond hopes that the Indians had maintained that somehow or other the border dispute could be set aside and India and China could cooperate in global fora on climate change, on international trade negotiations, on other aspects of the global commons. All that went out of the window. The Indians now see something I had argued a lot earlier that this is your real long-term threat. They have come to that realization and are devoting significant resources and Trisha's use of a particular term is one I've used myself independently is the Indians see Pakistan as a nuisance. It's like a gnat in the room that just won't go away and periodically threatens to bite

your arm or leg. But beyond that, it's irrelevant. It serves as she hinted at, and I'll just elaborate on her point, it serves sometimes a domestic rallying purpose. If you want to whip up frenzy and suggest that Muslims and Pakistanis constitute a real threat, it works in an election rally very well. But if you look at the real deployments, it's not along the Western border. So to wrap up, I'd like to get both your thoughts on the implications of today's conversation.

What are the relevant takeaways for policymakers, academics, and practitioners who are interested in both irregular warfare and South Asian security? And I'll direct that question to Trish first. So I think the takeaway is really that there is a lot that one can take away from the 1999 Kargil War more broadly for international relations. But this region has moved on in a lot of significant ways since then. That makes that particular conflict is one that's hard to see replicated in today's environment between the two countries.

I think that there is still a lot of potential in this region for miscalculation, for inadvertent escalation, for backsliding, especially in the Pakistanis' sponsorship of militant groups, and this sort of misassessing. Every now and then, I'm sure Shumeta's experience is too. You talk to Pakistani interlocutors, you talk to Indians, and they're so sure that they understand each other's red lines. They're so sure they understand what will escalate. And I have never been as sure as they are about their assessments of that. So that's one thing I would say. The second thing I would say is the use of militant proxies is inherently, despite the sort of rhetoric about very finely calibrating the boil, it's a much blunter instrument than

that. The attack in Uri in 2016 killed a lot more Indian security forces than it might have if there were flame retardant tents. The attack in 2019 is a single suicide bomber. It can be very hard to calibrate how many people are killed in these kinds of operations, which means that there is the possibility for an operation by the Pakistanis that maybe isn't supposed to be particularly big even Mumbai in 2008 was much bigger than the Pakistanis planned for it to be that these attacks can go further than They are intended to which can set off these kinds of miscalculations and escalation so even though I have said I

Recognize the Pakistanis have made this tactical recalibration, and I think that it's often overlooked in the frustration the Indians and the Americans have vis-a-vis Pakistan. At the same time, it's still a very dangerous policy to pursue at any level because of that and because of the changes in the Indian threshold. And Schumit, same question to you. What are the implications of today's conversation? Well, to begin with, I am in vehement agreement with Trisha on both points. First, the point about miscalculation. Indians and Pakistanis seem to think that because they share a common cultural

heritage, because at least significant numbers speak the same language, that they are so intimately familiar with each other's societies, that we know how far we can push you and nothing will go wrong. But the problem is, as the brilliant 19th century Prussian strategist Karl von Tlauswitz reminded us in that inestimable expression, the fog of war. Things can go wrong, things that you have calculated carefully. Some form of friction can get into the gears. And this has happened, as Trisha pointed out, in November 2008. I don't think the Pakistanis had imagined

the kind of destruction, like what six operatives of the Lashkar-e-Taiba managed to wreak on Bombay. So, or for example, the attack earlier in 2001, which led to a massive Indian military mobilization for almost six months along the border, exercise in coercive diplomacy. So the dangers of miscalculation are there, and they tend to sort of write off people like Trisha and myself saying, this is typical American alarmism. We don't need to pay any heed to you guys. You don't really understand the region. We have this kind of granular understanding.

This is simply an attempt to curb our nuclear forces, saying that things will get out of control. And the second thing is, I could not agree more with her on this notion that these jihadi groups just can't be dismantled. You've unleashed a Frankenstein monster, and the monster will not meekly go back to its cave or to its pre-experimental stage. These are young men who have committed themselves to an ideology and to a certain set of goals.

And it's not entirely clear that the Pakistani state even has the capacity to rein them in. It might, but it might involve a bloodbath if they tried to do that. And Pakistan, let me assure you, has enough problems of its own at the moment. This does not exculpate them for having created these organizations, but there's a certain kind of autonomy that these organizations now possess beyond the inter-services intelligence agency which spawned them in the first place. And the final point is she's absolutely right yet again on this whole issue of outbidding. If I am a leader of the Lashkar-e-Kaiba,

one of the most vicious organizations that have exacted quite a price in Kashmir and in Afghanistan, I want to demonstrate I'm tougher than ISIS. We've witnessed this elsewhere in the Middle East amongst competing organizations attacking Israel to demonstrate who can be tougher when dealing with the IDF. And a similar dynamic is at work in South Asia. And a similar dynamic is at work in South Asia. And the only other point I would add, Ben, to this conversation is, okay, so what about in Washington? How is the sort of Washington established thinking about these issues?

And I guess what I would say about that is there is this firm alignment with India and there is this sort of desire for a minimum relationship with the Pakistanis and getting India to focus on China, really encourage that focus on China. But an attack in India from Pakistan could derail the Indian's shift to some degree at least, right? Because it's so politically and emotionally activating, especially for this government. So while the US doesn't want to be engaged with Pakistan much at all, and I'm not suggesting it should massively re-engage, there does need to be sort of a consistent vigilance about pressuring Pakistan to keep

these groups tactically constrained, if not strategically, for the reasons that Shima just mentioned. And I guess I sometimes get concerned that terrorism is not really where Washington is focused anymore, but there is this sort of interesting and concerning area where that comes together with the desire to focus on China. And that's in India. The effect of terrorism in India can really derail some of what the US is trying to do vis-a-vis China.

Yeah, I mean, it is fascinating to look at the shift in US national security policy and priorities. But going back to what Shumit said earlier, a level of strategic parity between the US and China and other great powers may indeed, I guess, shift conflict to the periphery as we saw in 1999 and earlier. But we're kind of at our time right now. And that was an absolutely fascinating conversation

with both of you. So Professor Bacon, Professor Ganguly, thanks for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast today. Thank you for this opportunity. Yes, thank you so much. This was a great discussion. Thanks again for joining us on the Irregular Warfare podcast. We release a new episode every two weeks.

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