I think we should look at it using Game Theory in terms of assessing relative Payoffs. First of all I think that we would all agree that the adversary, I.e the real opponent making the decisions is tha Pak military generals; Pak overall population and politicians are just pawns in the game, not the decision makers.
At the moment the Pak generals achieve positive Payoff by commiting proxy terrorist attacks in India. They get Payoff - the benefit of positive adulation from Islamic supremacists and the overall Pak population. Any criticism can be deflected by claims that it is third party actors commiting the terrorist atrocities and not the Pak military. Also the Pak military keeps getting funded as they keep pedalling the inherent Moslems persecuted by Hindhus myth and the need for an effective Pak military to counter Hindhu kufars.
Now the Payoffs from the Indian perspective. Up until the recent Modi government, perceived options were limited. terrorist acts in India were negative Payoffs, but the alternatives were considered even worse. CSD was obviously considered as a non starter because of the fears of escalation to nuclear conflict. Indian leaders have to consider the the death of millions on the Indian side, whereas Pak generals don't give a shit if millions die from their side. Basically Pak generals were by accident or design positively playing the 'Game'.
So what can be done to reduce the Payoffs from the Pak Generals perspective. First of all I still think CSD is a non starter, as the payoffs from a nuclear conflict remain the same, I.e miliions die from both sides, but Pak Gemerals don't give a shit and indeed they think it's for the greater Islamic good. Without a credible ABM shield in the 90%+ effective range, I cannot see the relative payoffs changing.
On the other hand my view is that any strikebacks on Pak military/civilian or terrorist assets, without giving the Pak generals an excuse for all out war, would achieve negative Payoff for them, as it would make them look impotent/incompetent/stupid from the perspective of the Pak population and Islamists generally. On the other hand liberal Pak politicians (I'm sure there must be some hiding somewhere) would archive positive Payoff by being in a position to finally take on the generals.
So what form can such strikebacks that don't escalate into a full blown nuclear war be? Well first of all, I think support for freedom movements and balkanisation by proxy is a definite tactic that seems to be working at the moment. Whether or not the current Modi government is actually supporting the Baloch freedom movements etc. the Pak generals seem impotant to doing anything about it. Hence the negative Payoff and their whinging, which is good news for us.
Additionaly any strikebacks at specific targets would also achieve the same objective as long as the Pak generals cannot have an excuse to escalate to full blown war. Indeed the strikebacks don't even have to be particularly accurate as long as ithey cause negative publicity in Pakistan and the Pak generals are impotant to do anything about it. Take out terrorist leaders, or camps by all means. But even if there is 'collateral damage' as long as it is mostly to infrastructure rather than people, we can always go oops, so sorry. Blow up a bridge, a ship whatever. Just says Oops, so sorry collataral damage. Keep firing off artillery, as Modi government is doing finally! Pakis will critcicse, but Pak generals cannot do anything about it and will look impotant.
The ultimate objective of Game Theory is to induce alternative behaviours in your opponent. During the Cold War, Game Theory was used to prevent all out war between the US and USSR, whilst still each side asserting their interests. Game Theory is said to have been used by Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis, to browbeat the Soviets into recalling their ships. The object of giving the Pak generals any negative Payoff, is to stop them from at a minimum supporting terrorist acts, and ideally, the Pak population eventually to take much of the power away from their generals and to start acting like a modern responsible state.
I recently wrote this letter to some bean-counter in South Block. I sent it with a photocopy of my passport, so it doesn't spook them out. I didn't get a reply, but hopefully it made someone's lunch-table discussion/joke. I don't care. I also posted a more crude version of this in some other threads.
Here goes.
Sir,
India needs a "Samson Option" of its own.
You probably know that as a mythical Israeli military doctrine for when hordes of Arab armies are marching down its borders and it finds itself outnumbered, Israel carries out a spectacular final MRBM/ICBM launch, with dozens warheads seeking key targets in the region. This presents a scary prospect for any army wanting to march on Israel, and should be enough to deter even entities such as the IS.
India needs a Samson Option of its own, because we have an unfavourable nuclear stalemate with Pakistan, which Pakistan is clearly taking advantage of. Pakistan believes that because India has "more to lose" (more people, cities, infrastructure, and economic-achievement), India would exert a crippling amount of self-restraint when dealing militarily with Pakistan. Unfortunately, we do.
This equation allows Pakistanis (state/non-state actors) to violate the LoC and international border at whim; while India cannot. Since Pakistan went nuclear, we've never really managed to breach their borders. We've tried to sugarcoat our inability to do so by citing a "respect for international law," but we know that's bullshit. When they didn't have nukes, we breached their borders in 1971, and wiped the floor with them.
We need to escalate their cost of a nuclear first-strike, in an attempt to make it affordable for us to breach the LoC and IB. One way to do that, is to make it ambiguous yet apparent, that in a nuclear exchange with Pakistan, India would also hit targets outside Pakistan. A nuclear exchange with Pakistan will not be "limited," the Pakistani first strike will be quantitative, and thus it presents an "end of the world" scenario for India. We must hence plan our retaliatory second-strike to be equally end-of-the-world in nature, so that it weighs in heavily on the guy deciding to go nuclear in Rawalpindi.
The targets we pick must include religious sites, capitals, and key port-cities in the Sunni-Islamic world, oilfields, coalfields, and any other major world power we suspect to be behind our predicament. This doctrine must be whispered just enough in security circles, while we must maintain a strong denial. Our demographics will assist our denial.
Surely we are civilised people, and surely we won't make good on our perceived threat to nuke Mecca, but we must make good on our threat to "aim beyond Pakistan," if we're ever drawn into a nuclear exchange with them.
Having escalated the consequences for initiating a nuclear exchange with India, we can go ahead and breach the LoC or IB, to take out terrorist training camps at whim, in the event of another major attack like 26/11. We could also use our reshaped nuclear doctrine with Pakistan to destabilise implementation of CPEC.
