A shattered myth: India's conventional military superiority.

Byline: SOHAIL A. AZMIE

India often believes that Pakistan lives under the shadow of its superior military prowess. Boasting on numerical ascendency, India looks at Pakistan through the lens of, what I call, 'perpetuated grandiosity', i.e., reducing Pakistan and its military capability to an 'incapacitated flutter'. This estimation is rooted deep in the Indian strategic community's belief that India's strategic interests lay in its becoming of a dominant player. India is, and always has been, an existential threat to Pakistan as most of its military doctrines and the operational orientation is against Pakistan. India's interference that ranges from politico-military to sub-conventional domains in the affairs of neighbouring states has turned South Asia into a 'security-centric region'. This leaves Pakistan to have legitimate security concerns as India, striding on Kautiliyan creeds, seeks regional hegemony. India evaluates Pakistan, and now China, as irritantsin its route to emerge as an 'influential power'. Ziba Moshaver, in Nuclear Weapons Proliferation in the Indian Subcontinent, notes that Nehru believed such a power was attainable through socio-economic development, whereas the succeeding leaders argued for a stronger military that could sustain India's reckonable position in the strategic milieu. The later thesis got enduring acceptance and is conspicuously visible in the evolution of Indian military doctrine's continuum, which ranges from 'Simultaneity and Deep Thrusts' to 'Cold Start' and from 'Proactive Operations' to 'Two Front War'.

This article argues that India, while pursuing to establish itself as a powerful actor in the region, made two strategic mistakes, which comprehensively turned its conventional military irrelevant to the operational environment. This also led to unmasking of the myth that Indian conventional superiority would be enough to check-mate Pakistan and significantly influence the course of events. The first of those two mistakes is the overt nuclearization of South Asia when India went nuclear in 1998; the second is the most recent air strike, on 26 February 2019, against contrived 'terror hideouts' deep inside Pakistan.

Soon after Nehru's death, in 1964, deviating from his policies of restraint on use of nuclear technology for destructive purposes, Ziba Moshaver observes, India quickly embraced the idea of developing nuclear weapons. Violent convergence of Communist and Capitalist ideals in the Indian Ocean...