Nope!!!
But let me repeat what I said to Kshatriya87 the other day.
If this was three years back, I would have expected a military retaliation and upset if not done.
But now for the first time there is talk of a multi-pronged strategy on diplomatic, economic, ecological and military fronts . I would like to see where this goes.
Even retired generals on TV debates who said for first two days that military is being held back, are now saying that multi-pronged strategy is better than a reactive retaliation.
Hope you have not forgotten that we did do a month long massive retaliation towards the end of 2014, but that has not changed many things from paki side.
Bolo !!!
I am with you that a heavy weight military response should be a last resort after exhausting non military channels like you said diplomatic, economic, ecological, and then military fronts.
This begs the question: have we not tried this before? On the non- military we have tried carrot and stick, more carrot than stick. Nehru and many of his mindset chamchas have been giving gestures of biryani to pakis for 70 years. Includes big ticket items – IWT with 80% water, POK, Tashkent, Simla, MFN etc. On the stick side, we have shouted ourselves hoarse in all fora from UN to US to USER, Russia and everyone in between. And the results are there to see. The paki hate train continues.
So if our strategy is to isolate them internationally what are we going to do differently this time around? Are we going to scale up the diplomatic offensive by a factor of x? In which case to measure success India needs to define it's non-military objectives backed by performance timelines.
Targets cannot be low hanging fruit, they need to be punitive and hurt badly. Cancellation of SAARC, non participation of SAARC satellite program etc are easy pickings. These don’t meet the definition of scaling up the diplomatic offensive that is emanating from PMO/South Block. If India is serious about upping the game diplomatically and that has to hurt pakiland, stretch targets for isolating pakiland diplomatically could include:
- UNSC condemnation
- UNGA condemnation
- Condemnation by major powers ie USA, Russia, AND China
- Scaling down of contacts by India’s ‘friends” eg Russia etc
- India downgrading it’s diplomatic ties
On the economic front, we know pakiland is very vulnerable to any deltas in steady state. It’s military and it’s economy are on life support of foreign exchange income. What levers can India pull to cause economic harm to pakiland:
- For starters end all imports
- Influence IMF, WB, ADB to lend at disfavorable terms eg Greece
- Convert future aid to loans
- Clear policy definition that companies that deal with pakiland will not deal with India. Eg US’s sanctions on Iran, lower scope but similar in nature. DCSN can choose whether to sell to India or pakiland. Policy to apply to companies in the economic sphere as well.
These are just examples off what came to mind.
Another thrust area needs to be media and social media strategy. International media needs to paint pakiland a pariah state. India will have its work cut here in influencing international media but transforming public opinion will be a massive win. Eg look at NYT/WAPO/BBC team tagging to paint Russia the bad guy in Syria.
There are two other fronts to bring pakiland to its knees: ecological as you nicely put it and equally important covert strategy.
The levers of the ecological strategy are in our hands through the intelligent management of water flow.
Covert strategy needs to go way beyond Balochistan - needs to include Sind and PoK. Imagine the impact of a ‘Free Sind’ movement. Landlocked punjab!
Both these are complex long drawn and long term and expensive. More on these later.
My point is India needs to set targets that it plans to achieve for its non-military offensive backed by timelines. Otherwise talk is cheap.