Limited War in India-Pakistan: Revisiting the 24 years of Kargil War

Abstract

In May 1998, the two most important South Asian states overtly conducted their nuclear tests and thus marked the beginning of an era of nuclearisation in the sub-continent. This overt nuclearisation within the region led to a sense of optimism among scholars and policymakers which almost completely ruled out the possibility of an all-out war between India and Pakistan. However, exactly after a year the Kargil War erupts between India and Pakistan- a war that was fought between two ‘nuclear power states’ and since then has completely changed the equation and definition of ‘warfare’ between the two most important and strategically volatile states of South Asia. The year 2023 marks the 24th anniversary of the Kargil War, and the present paper makes an attempt to apprise the lesson that both India and Pakistan have learnt in the post Kargil War era, with specific reference to the techniques and modus operandi of warfare. Questioning the very definition of ‘war’ as developed during the Cold War era, this paper will try to look into pertinent issues how warfare between India and Pakistan has undergone a qualitative change in the post-nuclearisation phase. A closer scrutiny of the nature of war that took place in Kargil points to the fact that there exists a space below the nuclear threshold of both India and Pakistan that can be exploited for conducting a ‘Limited War’- a theoretical prism that refutes the claim made by nuclear pessimists that any war between new nuclear nations will escalate to a nuclear level. Using qualitative methodology as its framework, based on the secondary literature and insights of interviews of policy analyst and experts the paper wishes to contribute a new debate within the discourse of India-Pakistan Relations.