Arming without Aiming: India's Military Modernization

by Stephen Philip Cohen

Buoyed by new military capability, Rajiv made two dramatic attempts at strategic assertion. The first came in 1986 when he approved General Sundarji's plans to conduct a large-scale military exercise on the border with Pakistan. Called Brasstacks, the military maneuvers were later reported to have been open-ended and could have turned into an invasion of Pakistan. Military advice to the Indian prime minister is not publicly available, but General Sundarji wrote after his retirement that Brasstacks was India's last opportunity to decapitate Pakistan's nuclear program and force a Kashmir settlement. In the event, Pakistan threatened to use nuclear weapons and India backed down. A similar scene played out in 1990, when India was compelled once more to accept nuclear parity as the new reality. India's conventional superiority, including its modernization program, served little purpose. Indeed, the wars India would fight thereafter were against insurgencies and demanded troops and superior organization rather than advanced weaponry and technology. Rajiv's second act of strategic assertion came in 1987 when he sent the Indian Army to police a peacekeeping deal he had forced on the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers. Both sides rejected the agreement, and the Indian Army was caught between an insurgency on one side and an unhelpful host government on the other. India's only campaign of peace enforcement was a chastening experience. The Indian Army lost more men in that wa...