In the India-Pakistan situations, off-ramps have come either through foreign mediation (after months of kinetic warfare over Kargil, and a long stand-off with Op Parakram) or when a situation made it possible for both sides to claim a win, explains Shekhar Gupta.
Pahalgam was the first step on the escalatory ladder. Kinetic action implies use of military force to deliver a message. India took that step up the ladder on the intervening night of May 6-7
Three interconnected expressions have acquired currency in our conversations since April 22, the outrage in Pahalgam. These are kinetic response, escalatory ladder, and off-ramp.
Before these, however, comes a term used so rarely these days, it sounds exotic: casus belli.
I am employing Latin despite my first venerable news editor late D N Singh's orders to never use 'foreign' until an English alternative was available.
Somehow, cause to justify conflict or war does not sound so convincing.
The casus belli in this case is Pahalgam and it is astounding -- and disappointing -- how it has faded from not just international media, but ours too.
If that massacre hadn't taken place, we wouldn't be here today. Pahalgam, thus, was the first step on the escalatory ladder.
We are also familiar with the successive steps on this ladder already claimed.
The diplomatic staff cuts, vaporising of people-to-people contacts and visas, ban on overflights, and finally, the holding of the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance by India, and the Pakistani counter with the threat to respond with 'reserving the right' to do just this with the Simla Agreement.
As we climbed these steps on the escalatory ladder, the question often asked was: Will there be kinetic action. And if so, when and what kind?
Kinetic action implies the use of military force to achieve your objective and deliver a message, as differing from diplomatic, information and economic warfare, lawfare, sanctions, and so on.
India took that step up the ladder on the intervening night of May 6-7.
Pakistan followed the next night with surprisingly ambitious targeting of Indian airbases across our North and West.
They were not trying to carry out any massive damage or hit aircraft yet. The nature of the attacks, instruments used, and targets chosen would introduce us to another term you might need to get familiar with.
It is SEAD: Suppression of Enemy Air Defence. Sometimes DEAD is preferred, destruction replacing suppression.
If you can suppress or even partly degrade your rival's air defences, it gives your air power (fighters and missiles) that much greater freedom and safety to operate.
Remember, on the night of May 6-7, India carried out the attacks without any SEAD action preceding it.
It might have made the action safer for the IAF strike forces, but would have been like waking up the Pakistanis like an air raid alarm.
This should enable us to appreciate the degree of difficulty and danger our strike elements faced.
This SEAD is precisely what Pakistan tried on the night of May 7. If they had succeeded even partly, they would have come with larger attacks.
This is the 'compliment' India paid back with its drone attacks. Each was targeted precisely with the same objective: SEAD.
That brings us to the concept of 'off-ramp'. It is literally like when you are peering on a highway and want to get off it for rest, or a snack -- in strategic discourse, it's a halt to hostilities or a return to negotiation or peace.
It can also apply to a bull continuing to invest breathlessly even as the markets are declining and then, at some point, either losing nerve or embracing prudence, decides to stop. Or get off the ramp.
In the India-Pakistan situations, off-ramps have come either through foreign mediation (after months of kinetic warfare over Kargil, and a long stand-off with Op Parakram) or when a situation made it possible for both sides to claim a win.
Think Pulwama. When India hit a terror base in the Pakistani mainland for the first time, Pakistan had a pilot as a prisoner of war.
His return under Indian pressure became the off-ramp for both.
Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com
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