Foggy Slope to Armageddon

WHEN CONSIDERING NUCLEAR risks, commentators often invoke “the brink.” The notion evokes a sense of peril. One imagines a precipice, beyond which lies the unthinkable abyss. Rational nuclear powers, in a theoretical sense, understand that the possibility of careening off the brink is precisely what enables deterrence—the word contains the Latin root “terrere,” meaning to frighten or terrify. The prospect of the mass destruction that lies beyond motivates prudence.

However, the proverbial nuclear brink is not a well-defined point beyond which lies ruin. Thomas Schelling, a seminal US thinker on nuclear strategy during the Cold War, argued that it was more akin to a “curved slope,” which one might “stand on with some risk of slipping.” This slope is better conceived of as being shrouded in a thick fog. For the protagonists of a nuclear crisis who might see utility in exploring this terrain, the only way to learn the true steepness of the slope is to tread forwards, one step at a time, knowing full well that the next step could lead to a loss of footing and, eventually, towards the abyss. Leaving this terrain uncharted is what nuclear-armed states normally do, even as deep political grievances might fester. Not in South Asia, however.

India and Pakistan have co-existed as neighbours with nuclear weapons for almost three decades. The 1999 Kargil War is one of the few examples—and the only one since the end of the Cold War—of intense violence between nuclear powers. It was, notably, a conflict with limits. Both countries, which had conducted nuclear tests the previous year, understood that the character of war was fundamentally, as the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz observed, a “province of uncertainty.” Even as they sparred over the territorial and political stakes, each had a mutual interest in avoiding a walk toward the foggy nuclear brink. One of the most important limits was the avoidance of deliberately using air power across the international boundary. India deployed its air force to great tactical effect on its own side of the Line of Control.

Since Kargil, India and Pakistan have had no shortage of major crises—including the 2001 attack on parliament, as well as those on Indian security personnel in 2015, 2016 and 2019—but none of them has escalated to all-out war. Nuclear deterrence has provided an important constraint on India’s ability to respond to each of these provocations. Pakistan, which has an inferior arsenal of conventional weapons, has relied on its nuclear capabilities as an offset. It overtly reserves the right to employ them first if India approaches four well-known thresholds: if a significant portion of Pakistani territory is conquered, if its military suffers significant losses, if its economy is choked off, and if its polity is destabilised or subverted.