To make the transition from the prevalent Nash Equilibrium with its lower payoffs to Pareto-optimal which will yield higher pay offs, India and Pakistan must break away from their traditional thinking of making no concessions.
Since there is no evidence to suggest that the expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile has degraded India’s retaliatory capability, India should retain its no-first-use doctrine.
Military diplomacy has not figured significantly in India-Pakistan relations with ample reasons. Military to military engagement between the two states is confined to CBMs of varying significance. Even as both militaries have several regional and extra-regional engagements falling under the rubric of military diplomacy, the ones between the two are restricted to the routine exchanges of military advisors in respective missions in national capitals. However, there is a case for expansion in military diplomacy between the two.
The absence of a credible interlocutor in Pakistan who can exercise effective control over the Pakistan army leaves India with little choice except to open a parallel dialogue with the military establishment in Pakistan.
As long as the sub-conventional deterrence holds, the enunciation of the Cold Start doctrine actually introduces a degree of strategic stability in the region.
The strategy helps sensitise Pakistan to India’s tolerance threshold and reinforces deterrence by bringing home unambiguously to Pakistan that things could get out of hand.
The ISI threat assessment may be received with great enthusiasm in Western capitals and policy circles, but for observers from the subcontinent it is neither ‘fundamental’ nor a ‘shift’.
In international conflict resolution, there is a term called ‘disaster diplomacy’, which explains how a disaster in one country may open new ways of interaction and how it brings a new perspective to persisting issues.
