Limited War in South Asia: From Decolonization to Recent Times

227 Pages·2017·3.25 MB·English

by  Scott Gates

Limited War in South Asia
This book examines the origins, courses and consequences of conventional
wars in postcolonial South Asia.
Although South Asia has experienced large-scale conventional warfare
on several occasions since the end of World War II, there is an almost total
neglect of analysis of conventional warfare in the Indian subcontinent. Fo-
cusing on China, India and Pakistan, this volume, therefore, takes a unique
approach. Regional rivalries between India and Pakistan are linked with
global rivalries between the US and USSR (later Russia) and then China,
and war is defined in a broader perspective. The book analyses the conduct
of land, sea and air warfare, as well as the causes and consequences of con-
flicts. Tactical conduct of warfare (the nature of mobile armoured strikes
and static linear infantry combat supported by heavy artillery) and gener-
alship are studied along with military strategy, doctrine and grand strat-
egy (national security policy), which is an amalgam of diplomacy, military
strategy and economic policy. While following a realpolitik approach, this
book blends the development of military strategies and doctrines with the
religious and cultural ethos of the subcontinent’s inhabitants. Drawing on
sources not easily accessible to Western scholars, the overall argument put
forward by this work is that conventional warfare has been limited in South
Asia from the very beginning for reasons both cultural and realpolitik.
This book will be of much interest to students of South Asian politics, se-
curity studies, war and conflict studies, military studies and International
Relations in general.
Scott Gates is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, Nor-
way and Director Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Insti-
tute Olso (PRIO), Norway.
Kaushik Roy is Guru Nanak Chair Professor at the Department of History,
Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India and Global Fellow at Peace Research
Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway.
Military Strategy and Operational Art
Edited by Professor Howard M. Hensel
Air War College, USA
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The Routledge Series on Military Strategy and Operational Art analyzes
and assesses the synergistic interrelationship between joint and combined
military operations, national military strategy, grand strategy and national
political objectives in peacetime, as well as during periods of armed con-
flict. In doing so, the series highlights how various patterns of civil– military
relations, as well as styles of political and military leadership, influence
the outcome of armed conflicts. In addition, the series highlights both the
advantages and challenges associated with the joint and combined use of
military forces involved in humanitarian relief, nation building and peace-
keeping operations, as well as across the spectrum of conflict extending from
limited conflicts fought for limited political objectives to total war fought
for unlimited objectives. Finally, the series highlights the complexity and
challenges associated with insurgency and counter-insurgency operations,
as well as conventional operations and operations involving the possible use
of weapons of mass destruction.
Also in this series:
Air Power in UN Operations
Wings for Peace
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Security and Defence Transformation
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Culture and Defence in Brazil
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The Future of US Warfare
Edited by Scott N. Romaniuk and Francis Grice
Limited War in South Asia
From Decolonization to Recent Times
Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy
Limited War in South Asia
From Decolonization to Recent Times
Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy
First published 2018
by Routledge
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© 2018 Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy
The right of Scott Gates and Kaushik Roy to be identified as authors
of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-4094-6199-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-59244-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
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Contents
List of maps vii
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of abbreviations xiii
Glossary xv
Introduction 1
1 Origins of the Indian and Pakistan armed forces 5
2 The First India-Pakistan War, 1947–1948 24
3 The China-India War 44
4 The Second India-Pakistan War: 1965 65
5 The Bangladesh War 87
6 The Kargil War 115
7 Planning for future war 135
Conclusion 166
Bibliography 173
Index 189
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Maps
1 India and Pakistan in 1947 xvi
2 Aksai Chin in 1962 xvii
3 Western India-Pakistan Border in 1965 xviii
4 Disposition of Indian Troops against East Pakistan in 1971 xix
5 Pakistani Dispositions in the West in 1971 xx
6 Pakistan in the New Millennium xxi
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Preface
Studies of the post-1947 Indian and Pakistan armies can be divided roughly
into two groups: literature generated by their military officers and work
done by civilian historians and political scientists (Indian, Pakistani, Amer-
ican and British). The military officers focus on operational details in a
narrative, chronological manner, emphasizing the ‘blood and guts’ of the
officers and the men they commanded. In modern parlance, the civilian
academics condescendingly term such studies as ‘drum and buttons’ his-
tory. The military officers portray the military operations as if they had
occurred in a sociopolitical vacuum. In contrast, civilian scholars, using
methodologies derived from political science and sociology, emphasize the
social and political aspects of the armed forces. But, they completely forget
that armed forces, as the nineteenth-century Prussian military philosopher
cum historian Carl Philip Gottlieb von Clausewitz rightly noted, exist for
conducting warfare. In fact, as Clausewitz notes, battles and campaigns are
like gold and silver in commercial transactions. Since the 1980s, with the
aid of organizational theory, academic analysis of military operations (em-
phasizing the roles of chance factors, the use of concepts like lessons learnt,
and so forth) have been in vogue in the Western world but not in the case of
India and Pakistan. This monograph, co-written by a political scientist and
a historian, attempts to fuse a sociopolitical analysis of the armed forces
establishment with academic operational military history. This book will
be of interest to researchers, students of South Asian contemporary politics
and security studies and military historians. How successful is our venture,
that our readers will judge.
Scott Gates, Oslo
Kaushik Roy, Kolkata