Indian Army’s New Land Warfare Doctrine 2018: Implications for Pakistan

Abstract

The Indian military’s doctrinal transformation has been a credible threat to the security of Pakistan. The pattern of the Indian army’s doctrinal shift has shown India’s offensive ambitions toward Pakistan. At the start, India mostly kept its strategy non-offensive, but with the passage of time, it brought offensive doctrines into its military-strategic setting pointed toward Pakistan. During Indira Gandhi’s time period, the first steps were taken towards the offensive policies. Later, Sunderji brought a new doctrine, comprising of mechanized infantry and strike corps. The Doctrine represented the shift in Indian military thinking from passive defence to more active and offensive operations. The main aim was to conduct short but deep operations inside Pakistan to cut Pakistan into two, but Pakistan timely responded to threats. The introduction of nuclear weapons in the South Asian region, brought new changes in the Indian policies and strategies. After the nuclear weapons made their way to the region, the idea of a full-scale war was next to impossible. A new concept of “limited war under nuclear overhang” was brought into scene under the name of the Cold Start Doctrine. After the failures of the previous doctrines, India initiated new modes of warfare such as Hybrid warfare, creation of IBGs and surgical strikes. New Doctrines were introduced to execute these new modes such as, Hybrid warfare doctrine, Maritime doctrine and land warfare doctrine. The impact of these transformations is faced by Pakistan, in the form of economic burden as the country cannot bear the extreme military expenditure. At every point, Pakistan did counter the Indian strategies and gave them a hard time, which is visible in the continuous need for change in the Indian strategies. This study explains how these transformations took place. Why was there a need for these transformations? How is Pakistan facing the impact of them? And what countermeasures are necessary by Pakistan for the latest 2018’s New Land Warfare Doctrine? The study is carried out under the scope of offensive realism with the help of descriptive and exploratory methodologies. This qualitative study fills the literature gap by providing a comparative analysis on Indian military doctrinal transformation and the rationales behind.