A Deterrence Strategy against Terrorism

Measures suggested so far include a unified national agency to deal with terrorism, improved intelligence, special counter-terrorist units like NSG in state capitals, police reform, enhancing police equipment, better coastal defences, better border management, etc.  All these measures are defensive because all of them are meant to increase the level of difficulty for terrorists to design and execute a terrorist strike.  But there are always ways of working around even the best defenses.  Since terrorists can pick the time and place of attack and focus on soft targets, defensive measures ultimately will fail.  Therefore, from a terrorist’s perspective, the only threat that a defensive strategy might pose is that his attack may fail.  That is not much of a threat.  If an attack does not succeed, the terrorist will simply try elsewhere, another time.  What they -- and more importantly their sponsors -- need to fear is not the possibility of failure, but the threat of punishment.  Though not all terrorist attacks can be prevented through a deterrence strategy, it can work in cases where a state or its elements are involved, because states are vulnerable to retaliation and pain in ways that terrorists and terrorist groups are not.  

 

The key questions to ask in any deterrence strategy are: who needs to be deterred; what do they value that can be threatened in order to deter them; and, on the basis of this, what should be an appropriate deterrence strategy.  

 

To deter terrorism, especially of the kind that India faces, we need to go beyond just deterring terrorists.  Most of these terrorist attacks have been carried out by terrorists who were aware that these are suicide missions.  Deterring someone who is prepared to die is impossible.  A more appropriate strategy might be to deter the organizations and the leaders of these organizations.  This might be somewhat more effective, even though ultimately, terrorist leaders can be replaced and new organizations can take the place of those eliminated.  Terrorist organizations find a fertile soil in Pakistan.  As long as Pakistan remains committed to a strategy of terrorism against India, new terrorist organizations can always replace the ones that we destroy, if we manage to destroy them at all, which is itself a difficult task.  The key, therefore, is to target Pakistan itself.  

 

But what does targeting Pakistan mean?  Clearly, the civilian government has little control.  The support that the terrorists are getting is primarily from the ISI, which is to say the Pakistan Army.  There has been considerable evidence of ISI involvement in terrorist acts against India.  After the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, even other countries that used to routinely dismiss Indian claims of Pakistani involvement in these attacks stand convinced.  But, targeting the ISI means targeting the Pakistan Army.  Though the extent of the direct involvement of Pakistan army leadership is unclear, they bear the responsibility to ensure that ISI does not engage in such activities.  And, they have clearly failed in this responsibility.  That alone should make the Pakistan army a legitimate target.  Of course, their involvement may be more.  In the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, for instance, there were reports that the Pakistani army leadership may have had direct knowledge of the ISI plans.  In any case, to the extent that ISI is under the command of the Pakistan Army, they are fully responsible for its actions and thus, a legitimate target.  The other reason why Pakistan Army should be the appropriate target is that it remains the only reasonably efficient, functioning institution in Pakistan.  If Pakistan is to do anything about terrorism, it is the Pakistan Army that has to do it and that again makes it the key target of any deterrence strategy against terrorism.  

 

What is of value to the Pakistan Army that we could target?  We could use the same strategy that Pakistan sponsored terrorists use against us, which is to target Pakistani civilians.  If we want to be particularly brutal, we could even more specifically target family members and dependants of Pakistan Army officers, and thus inflict pain on them.  But such policies would be morally reprehensible, and so are and should be beyond the pale of policy options for us.  It will be more appropriate to target Pakistan Army high command directly, with targeted assassinations. However, such actions may not work because they could result in tit for tat responses that would leave us no better off.  What this suggests is that we need to escalate in such a way that we control the escalation ladder.  In other words, our threats should not only punish but do so in a manner for which they have no good answers.  

 

The best way to do this would be to bring to bear our superior conventional capabilities.  But a replay of Operation Parakram where we simply stopped after mobilization of our forces would be useless because Pakistan could counter-mobilize as they did in 2002, leading to a pointless standoff.  The Indian conventional superiority would work only if the mobilization leads to war.  Such a war should specifically be focused on significant destruction of Pakistani Army, such as their armoured divisions.  Since 2002, Indian Army has developed the Cold Start doctrine that does give us such conventional war options, which will not be painless, but which would impose a higher cost on Pakistan Army.  Such a war would force their army leadership to face the consequences of their actions, and rein in the ISI.  

 

A key challenge to a conventional war option is, of course, the threat of nuclear escalation.  For the last ten years, the Indian political leadership has scared itself into paralysis by worrying that any war between India and Pakistan will automatically escalate to the nuclear level.  This is an unwarranted fear.  Pakistan has refused to subscribe to India’s no-first use policy, but that does not mean Pakistan will use nuclear weapon as soon as conventional war begins, or even that it will use them recklessly.  Pakistan’s nuclear policy is much like Israel’s policy -- first use, but last resort.  In other words, Pakistan will use its nuclear weapons only if it is confronted with a threat to its survival.  That leaves us many conventional options that can punish Pakistan’s Army well short of the nuclear threshold.  It is this gap that we must exploit.  

 

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies)