Daily Times

Despite of many denies, finally, there is a blowing up the lid over the Indian cold start doctrine recently. This is done by an Indian official who is credible enough to quote and declare that India is on it officially. Gen. Bipin Rawat, Indian army commander-in-chief, blazed a new conflagration by acknowledging that the Cold Start doctrine exists for conventional military operations in an interview on January 4, 2017 in the strategic community of India right after few days of his appointment as army chief. He is the first senior Indian official,military or civilian, to do so as previous all the Indian chiefs avoided using the term Cold Start and preferred calling it as a ‘proactive strategy’.

This proactive strategy options is actually a move of more aggressive and an action with offensive lines. It’s worth mentioning here that India has declared policy of no-first use of nuclear weapons but India’s all the belligerent steps are pointing towards offensive moves and strategies. It actually threatens Pakistan from its conventional asymmetric preeminence relationship. Genuinely narrating Islamabad must be prepared for Delhi opting to nuclear first-use and ever more so with hardliners like Manohar Parrikar, Ajit Davol and Sushma Sawraj at the helm.

Contrariwise, Pakistan has developed its battle field nuclear weapons — Tactical Nuclear Weapons, primarily in response to Indian CSD for an assured defensive formation of launching a counter-offensive strike. Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry once outlining the conditions and options for TNW usage said, “Pakistan’s low-yield weapons were meant to lower the threshold for nuclear escalation to counter the perceived logic of Cold Start.”

The cold start doctrine or a strategy is actually a war fighting scheme that calls on India’s conventional forces to perform holding attacks before international intervention or before nuclear retaliation from Pakistan. Hitherto, it is believed that this doctrine is a step that would breakdown the deterrence in between both nations consequently it would end-up in serious consequences, including the potential use of nuclear weapons. India has consistently denied having such a stance, but in 2011 Army chief General V K Singh admitted there was a proactive strategy in place. The deployment of Indian tanks would be a key to the strategy as they are the key offensive assets to launch rapid attacks in Pakistani territory.

Ironically, Indian Chief’s reiteration of cold start doctrine is read as a fundamental exodus from New Delhi’s previous policy of proactive strategy and intended to signal Pakistan a nasty message. Therefore, it would be pertinent to mention here that Pakistan has not ruled out the option of using tactical nuclear weapons if India ever thought to launch any cross-border attack inside Pakistan whether from ground or through air strikes. Tactical weapons are usually delivered by short-range ballistic missiles that Pakistan does possess, which could effectively counter a Cold Start strike. Moreover, Pakistan can relocate its defensive formations nearby the Indian borders where it is deploying more than 460 Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) along its border with Pakistan, substantially increasing its already sizable tank force there.

Though India has always maintained an extensive amount of tank force along the India Pakistan border line, but this time there is a confirmation by some Indian senior defense officials to IHS Jane 360 that Indian army is planning to deploy the nearly 500 (exact of 464) newly ordered T-90MS MBTs along India’s western and northern borders with Pakistan. The MBTs have been specifically designed for export by Russia, at a cost of INR134.80 billionor $2 billion. These new MBTs will replace the already deployed 850-900 Bhishma MBTsor the T-90S Bhishma tanks in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Punjab — both bordering with the Pakistan borders. This new T-90 is the main battle tank of the Indian Army, replacing the older variants of T-72 and T-55 tanks in the force.

This alarming noteworthy increase in the tanks capability, at this instant on the border, could indicate that India is preparing to methodically activate and implement its Cold Start doctrine, which is endorsed from the recent rotating wave of CSD by the new Indian army chief. This would evidently result in a devastating impact for the entire region as cold start doctrine is a war fighting doctrine that would certainly lead the way to a full fledge nuclear response once the option of tactical nuclear weapons is exercised from the other side. It categorically vindicates Pakistan’s apprehension about Indian plans to use rapid-mobilization limited war operations in any future colliding confrontation with Pakistan.

Whereas, on the global level, India’s constant aggressive moves one after the other, gives appalling signals to the international community that the south Asia region is in a state of permanent horrendous of regional conflicts. Recently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, the outgoing US Vice President Joe Biden expressed his concerns in a speech over the rise of nuclear weapons in Europe, east and especially south Asia. This could be related with reference to the recent official acknowledgment of Indian Cold Start Doctrine also to the mobilization of Indian battle forces to border line. As a result, the response from Pakistani side would also be in the same way to ensure its incessant sovereignty. This is the only way to impede the efforts to malign Islamabad.

The writer is associated with the Strategic Vision Institute and can be contacted at beenishaltaf7@gmail.com