4 The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017
SPECIAL REPORT
INDIA AND PAKISTAN211971, India and Pakistan fought full-blown if mercifully brief
wars. The second of those, with India supporting a guerrilla in-
surgency in the Bengali-speaking extremity ofEast Pakistan, gave
rise to yet another proud new country, Bangladesh; but not be-
fore at least half a million civilians had died as West Pakistan bru-
tally tried to put down the revolt.
Even periods of relative peace have not been especially
peaceful. In the 1990s Pakistan backed a guerrilla insurgency in
Indian Kashmir in which at least 40,000 people lost their lives. In
1999 Pakistani troops captured some mountain peaks in the Kar-
gil region, which India clawed back in high-altitude battles. A
ceasefire in Kashmir that hasheld since 2003 has notstopped
Pakistan-sponsored groups from striking repeatedly inside India.
Pakistan claims that India, too, has covertly sponsored subver-
sive groups.
Analysts discern a pattern in thismutual harassment:
whenever politicians on both sides inch towards peace, some-
thing nastyseems to happen. Typically, these cycles start with an
attack on Indian soldiers in Kashmir by infiltrators from Pakistan,
triggering Indian artillery strikes, which prod the Pakistanis to re-
spond in kind. After a few weeks things will calm down.
Just such a cycle started in late 2015, prompted, perhaps, by
a surprise visit to the home of the Pakistani prime minister, Na-
waz Sharif, by his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi. Hopes
raised by this overture dimmed within days when jihadist infil-
trators attacked an Indian airbase. Another suicide squad struck
an Indian army camp near the border, killing 19 soldiers. Faced
with public outrage, Mr Modi ordered a far harder response than
usual, sending commando teams into Pakistan. In the past, India
had kept quiet even when it hit back, leaving room for Pakistan to
climb down. This time Mr Modi’sgovernment moved to isolate
Pakistan diplomatically, rebuffed behind-the-scenes efforts to
calm tensions and sent unprovoked blasts offire across the Kash-
mir border.India’s loss of patience is under-
standable. It has a population six times
Pakistan’s and an economy eight times as
big, yet it findsitself being provoked far
more often than it does the provoking.
When Mr Modi’sHindu-nationalist Bha-
ratiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in
2014, it promised to put muscle into In-
dia’s traditionally limp foreign policy. “In-
dia for the first time is being proactive, not
just responding,” says Sushant Singh, a
military historian and journalist. “This is
a huge shift.”
Yet Mr Modi’s pugnacity raises the
risk of a dangerous escalation. “After a
routine operation, the adversary may or
may not escalate; after a publicised opera-
tion he will have only one option: to esca-
late,” writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta, one of
India’s more thoughtful intellectuals.
Whether India and Pakistan are
reckless enough to come to serious blows
would not matter so much if they simply
fielded conventional armies. But they are
equipped with more than 100 nuclear
warheads apiece, along with the missiles
to deliver them. Since both countries re-
vealed their nuclear hands in the 1990s,
optimists who thought that a “balance of
terror” would encourage them to be more
moderate have been proved only partial-
ly right. Indians complain of being blackmailed: Pakistan knows
that the risk of nuclear escalation stops itsneighbours from re-
spondingmore robustly to its provocations. Worryingly, Pakistan
also rejects the nuclear doctrine of no first use. Instead, it has
moved to deploy less powerful nuclear warheads as battlefield
weapons, despite the risk that fallout from their use might harm
its own civilians.
India does espouse a no-first-use nuclear doctrine, but its
military planning is said to include a scenario of a massive con-
ventional blitzkriegaimed at seizing chunks of enemy territory
and crushing Pakistan’s offensive capacity before it can respond.
India’s arsenal includes the hypersonic Brahmos III, the world’s
fastest cruise missile, which can precisely deliver a 300kg pay-
load to any target in Pakistan. An air-launched version could
reach Islamabad in two minutes, and Lahore in less than one.
And in a grim calculation, India, with four times Pakistan’s terri-AFGHANISTANPAKISTANINDIAMYANMARBANGLADESHBHUTANCHINASRI
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At partition, 1947GDP, % change on a year earlier15105051015+1961 70 80 90 2000 10 16IndiaPakistanBangladesh*Forecast †Per day, 2011 international
prices at purchasing-power parityCompare and contrastSources: IMF; World BankPopulation living on less than $1.90†
As % of total populationGDP, % increase on a year earlierPakistan India Bangladesh02468102000 05 10 15 17*0102030401995 2000 05 10 13