India’s use of military power and the sovereignty principle: insights from the neighborhood

ABSTRACT

Notwithstanding India’s public stand professing its respect of the sovereignty principle, the imperatives of competitive international relations have necessitated the use of force against its neighbors, thereby undermining their sovereignty. This use of force has been manifested through conventional wars as well as through the sub-conventional use of force such as surgical strikes. This paper examines how India has sought to toe a fine line between pursuing its national interest through the application of military power while being mindful of the broader normative frameworks influencing state behavior since 1947. In doing so, it engages with the interplay of the material and the ideational. Given the time span of the study, it also seeks to shine light on the elements of continuity and change that mark its application of military power through the prism of the sovereignty principle. Furthermore, the paper also pays attention to the recent surgical strikes, features that mark them as being different from previous such actions performed by India, and what this means for India’s understanding of the sovereignty principle.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

^1. Stuart Elden, “Contingent Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity and the Sanctity of Borders,” The SAIS Review of International Affairs 26, no. 1 (Winter – Spring 2006): 11–13.

^2. Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: India’s Secret War in East Pakistan (Noida: Random House India, 2013), 122.

^3. Looking at clearly demarcated territories of states will allow claims of compromising a state’s sovereignty, when force has been used, to be more convincing. While India does claim that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is legally Indian territory, it is also a fact that India has, on the whole, paid due deference to the sanctity of the LoC, as demonstrated when Indian aircrafts were forbidden from crossing the LoC when evicting terrorists from the Kargil region in the summer of 1999. See Arjun Subramaniam, Full Spectrum: India’s Wars 1972–2020 (Noida: Harper Collins, 2020), 269.

^4. For a historical background into the issue, see A.G. Noorani, India-China Boundary Problem 1846–1947: History and Diplomacy (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011).

^5. Assessing India’s use of force against countries that continue to exist as independent entities allows for a better comparative angle to the study, as India’s stand on the principle as regards a particular country can be compared over time, allowing one to highlight changes and continuities in India’s attitude and behavior.

^6. The 1947 India – Pakistan War will not be examined as the two countries were still coming into their own and many aspects of statehood were still not settled.

^7. Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 3–4.

^8. Since the issues concerning India and its neighbors as regards sovereignty do not entail mutual recognition as actors, we do not focus on international legal sovereignty. Furthermore, since interdependence sovereignty is generally associated with globalization and flows connected with interdependency, we do not focus on this formulation in this study.

^9. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, 3–4. International legal sovereignty entails “practices associated with mutual recognition” while interdependence sovereignty “refers to the ability of public authorities to regulate the flow of information, ideas, goods, people, pollutants, or capital across the borders of their state”.

^10. Ibid., 20.

^11. Robert Jackson cited in ibid., 20–21.

^12. Atul Mishra, “Theorising State Sovereignty in South Asia,” Economic and Political Weekly 43, no. 40 (October 2008): 68.

^13. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, 8.

^14. Ibid., 20.

^15. Ramesh Thakur, “Intervention, Sovereignty, and the Responsibility to Protect: Experiences from ICISS,” Security Dialogue 33, no. 3 (September 2002): 329.

^16. Ibid., 329.

^17. Elden, “Contingent Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity and the Sanctity of Borders,” 12.

^18. Mishra, “Theorising State Sovereignty in South Asia,” 65.

^19. Thakur, “Intervention, Sovereignty, and the Responsibility to Protect,” 328.

^20. Elden, “Contingent Sovereignty, Territorial Integrity and the Sanctity of Borders,” 15.

^21. Arpan Banerjee, “Indian Surgical Strikes: Accelerating the Emergence of Nascent Norms of Use of Force Against Non-State Actors,” Cambridge International Law Journal, September 6, 2017. http://cilj.co.uk/2017/09/06/indian-surgical-strikes-accelerating-the-emergence-of-nascent-norms-of-use-of-force-against-non-state-actors/ (accessed October 23, 2021).

^22. Such an understanding of sovereignty is also very similar to the Responsibility to Protect principle, which was also developed around two decades ago. However, given the unilateralist underpinning of the U.S. formulation, this study accords greater salience to contingent sovereignty and the “unwilling and unable” test as propagated by the U.S.

^23. Ian Hall, “India and the Responsibility to Protect,” in New Directions in India’s Foreign Policy: Theory and Praxis, ed. Harsh V. Pant (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 177.

^24. Ibid., 178.

^25. Happymon Jacob, “Evolution and practices of the Indian notion of sovereignty,” in China, India, and the Future of the International Society, ed. Jamie Gaskarth (London: Rowman and Littlefield International Limited, 2015), 20–21.

^26. For a Pakistani perspective on why the war occurred keeping Kashmir as the focal point, see Abdul Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, 1947–2012: A Concise History, 3^rd ed. (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2013), 98–105.

^27. Based on the assumption that Pakistan had a limited time period for using military force against India to wrest Kashmir away from the latter, before India’s capabilities became overwhelming, Pakistan initiated hostilities. See Omkar Marwah, “India’s military intervention in East Pakistan, 1971–1972,” Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 4 (October 1979): 553.

^28. Arzan Tarapore, “Defence without deterrence: India’s strategy in the 1965 war,” Journal of Strategic Studies, (advance online publication). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2019.1668274 (accessed October 1, 2019).

^29. T.V. Paul. Asymmetric Conflicts: War Initiation by Weaker Powers (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 107.

^30. Tarapore, “Defence without deterrence,” 9.

^31. J.N. Dixit. India – Pakistan in War and Peace. 1st ed (London: Routledge, 2002), 139.

^32. R.D. Pradhan, 1965 War – The Inside Story: Defence Minister Y.B. Chavan’s Diary of India-Pakistan War (New Delhi: Atlantic, 2020), 35.

^33. Rudra Chaudhuri, “Indian ‘Strategic Restraint’ Revisited: The Case of the 1965 India-Pakistan War,” India Review 17, no. 1 (2018): 66.

^34. Ibid., 67.

^35. Paul, Asymmetric Conflicts, 108–109.

^36. Sumit Ganguly, “Deterrence failure revisited: The Indo – Pakistani War of 1965,” Journal of Strategic Studies 13, no. 4 (1990): 80.

^37. Chaudhuri, “Indian ‘Strategic Restraint’ Revisited,” 63. See also Tarapore, “Defence without deterrence,” 11.

^38. Chaudhuri, “Indian ‘Strategic Restraint’ Revisited,” 67.

^39. Pradhan, 1965 War – The Inside Story, 77–78.

^40. Ibid., 91.

^41. Chaudhuri, “Indian ‘Strategic Restraint’ Revisited,” 66.

^42. Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy 1947–2012, 107.

^43. Victoria Schofield, Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2003), 110.

^44. Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Neorealist Theory and the Indo-Pakistan Conflict II,” Strategic Analysis 22, no. 10 (1999): 1531.

^45. Chaudhuri, “Indian ‘Strategic Restraint’ Revisited,” 56.

^46. Tarapore, “Defence without deterrence,” 19.

^47. Ibid., 3.

^48. John G. Stoessinger, Why Nations go to War, 9th ed (Toronto: Wadsworth, 2005), 170.

^49. Marwah, “India’s military intervention in East Pakistan,” 560.

^50. Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 55.

^51. From the report of the East Pakistan Staff Study of the International Commission of Jurists cited in Wheeler, Saving Strangers, 57.

^52. Ibid., 57.

^53. Bass, The Blood Telegram, 148.

^54. Ibid., 236.

^55. Ibid., 249.

^56. Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, 206.

^57. Ibid., 152.

^58. Ibid., 155.

^59. Ibid., 180.

^60. Ibid., 180, 187.

^61. Ibid., 60, 68.

^62. Bass, The Blood Telegram, 210.

^63. Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, 161, 173.

^64. Ibid., 61.

^65. Ibid., 78.

^66. Bass, The Blood Telegram, 123–124.

^67. Ibid., 179.

^68. Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, 222–223

^69. Bass, The Blood Telegram, 265.

^70. Ibid., 141.

^71. The country was called “Ceylon” till 1972. Thereafter, it has been called “Sri Lanka.” Subramaniam, Full Spectrum, 165.

^72. David Lewis, “Counterinsurgency in Sri Lanka: A Successful Model?” in The Routledge Handbook of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency, ed. Paul B. Rich and Isabelle Duyvesteyn, 312–313. (New York: Routledge, 2012).

^73. P. Sahadevan, “Resistance to Resolution: Explaining the Intractability of Ethnic Conflicts in Sri Lanka,” International Journal of Group Tensions 27, no. 1 (1997): 20.

^74. Landon E. Hancock, “The Indo-Sri Lankan Accord: An Analysis of Conflict Transformation,” Civil Wars 2, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 84.

^75. Ibid.

^76. J.N. Dixit, Assignment Colombo (Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1998), 13.

^77. Ibid., 3. See also Subramaniam, Full Spectrum, 168.

^78. Dixit, Assignment Colombo, 17.

^79. Subramaniam, Full Spectrum, 169.

^80. Dixit, Assignment Colombo, 15–16.

^81. Jayanta Kumar Ray, India’s Foreign Relations, 1947–2007 (New Delhi: Routledge, 2011), 504.

^82. Ibid.

^83. Ibid., 504–505.

^84. Dixit, Assignment Colombo, 107.

^85. Ibid., 104–106.

^86. Ibid., 107.

^87. Hancock, “The Indo-Sri Lankan Accord,” 90.

^88. Dixit, Assignment Colombo, 111. The governments of China, Pakistan, and Bangladesh took a very grim view of India’s action.

^89. Ibid.

^90. Subramaniam, Full Spectrum, 176

^91. A related sovereignty-based controversy pertained to the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka as per the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord of 1987. While the initial deployment was not as controversial, the launch of Operation Pawan in October 1987 that saw the IPKF fighting against the LTTE and the issue of the timing of the withdrawal of the IPKF from Sri Lanka generated controversy. This article will not delve into this issue as the presence of the IPKF had the consent of President Jayewardene and was based on his request to the Indian authorities so as to focus on the instability in the Sinhala-dominated areas of Sri Lanka and deploy Sri Lankan forces to those areas while the IPKF took care of the situation in the Tamil-dominated areas to the north. See Alan Bullion, “The Indian peace-keeping force in Sri Lanka,” International Peacekeeping 1, no. 2 (Summer 1994) and Dixit, Assignment Colombo.

^92. Radhika Daga, “2016 surgical strike was not India’s first, here are the previous ones,” Outlook India, July 6, 2018, https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/2016-surgical-strike-was-not-indias-first-here-are-the-previous-ones/313158 (accessed May 25, 2020).

^93. Pravin Sawhney, “Bottomline: Soldiers as Pawns,” Force, https://forceindia.net/bottomline/soldiers-as-pawns/ (accessed July 1, 2021).

^94. C. Raja Mohan, “Explained: How Balakot changed the familiar script of India-Pakistan military crises,” The Indian Express, March 4, 2019, https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/pulwama-attack-pakistan-narendra-modi-balakot-air-strike-iaf-5609325/ (accessed July 1, 2021).

^95. Sushant Singh, “Myanmar strike: Not the first time Army conducted cross-border operations,” The Indian Express, June 10, 2015, https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/army-crossed-border-to-target-militants-in-the-past-too/ (accessed September 11, 2021).

^96. Wasbir Hussain, “What India’s ‘Hot Pursuit’ strategy is and is not,” The Wire, June 11, 2015, https://thewire.in/diplomacy/what-indias-hot-pursuit-strategy-is-and-is-not. (accessed July 4, 2021). It is claimed that Indian forces “never formally violated” Bhutan’s sovereignty. See Lionel M. Beehner, “A means of first resort: Explaining ‘Hot Pursuit’ in international relations,” Security Studies 27, no. 3 (2018): 21.

^97. Singh, “Myanmar strike”

^98. This is contrary to the claim that it was a joint India-Myanmar military operation in which Indian troops did not enter Myanmar’s territory. Ibid.

^99. Rumel Dahiya, “Operation Golden Bird: Revisiting counter-insurgency on the India-Myanmar border,” Journal of Defence Studies 10, no. 3 (July – September 2016): 18–19.

^100. Ibid., 10.

^101. Ibid., 13.

^102. On a slightly different note, Gurmeet Kanwal claimed that while the Myanmar army (tatmadaw) blocked the escape routes of the militants, the Indian Army “moved in” and killed the militants. While this indicates a degree of coordination between the armed forces of India and Myanmar, it also acknowledges that Indian troops did indeed enter Myanmar’s territory and carry out military operations. See Beehner, “A means of first resort,” 22.

^103. Ibid., 20.

^104. Ashish Ray, “Myanmar ‘resented’ Indian claims of hot pursuit in its territory,” The Hindu, December 17, 2016 https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/Myanmar-%E2%80%98resented%E2%80%99-Indian-claims-of-hot-pursuit-in-its-territory/article16870950.ece (accessed May 20, 2021). See also Sawhney, “Bottomline: Soldiers as Pawns.”

^105. Hussain, “What India’s ‘Hot Pursuit’ strategy is and is not”

^106. Ibid. In May 2015, the militaries of India and Myanmar signed a follow-up security agreement allowing for greater coordination along the border as regards patrolling and intelligence sharing. See Beehner, “A means of first resort,” 22–23.

^107. “Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore lauds army operation in Myanmar, says it is the beginning,” The Economic Times, July 13, 2018, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/rajyavardhan-singh-rathore-lauds-army-operation-in-myanmar-says-it-is-beginning/articleshow/47606435.cms?from=mdr (accessed May 20, 2021).

^108. Hussain, “What India’s ‘Hot Pursuit’ strategy is and is not”

^109. Ray, “Myanmar ‘resented’ Indian claims of hot pursuit in its territory;” Nitin A. Gokhale, Securing India the Modi Way: Pathankot, Surgical Strikes and More (New Delhi: Blomsbury, 2017), 91.

^110. Pravin Sawhney, “Politicising surgical strikes erodes the Army’s potency and deterrent value,” The Wire, October 1, 2018,https://thewire.in/security/politicising-surgical-strikes-erodes-the-armys-potency-and-deterrent-value (accessed May 23, 2021).

^111. Gokhale, Securing India the Modi Way, 91–92.

^112. Beehner, “A means of first resort,” 21.

^113. “3 years of Uri terror attack: The day when the Indian army suffered its worst loss in 20 years,” India Today, September 18, 2019,https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/uri-terror-attack-anniversary-the-day-when-indian-army-suffered-its-worst-loss-in-jammu-kashmir-1600436–2019-09-18 (accessed September 2, 2021).

^114. “4 hours, choppers and 38 kills: How India avenged the Uri attack,” ET Online, July 12, 2018, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/army-conducted-surgical-strikes-on-terror-launch-pads-on-loc-significant-casualties-caused-dgmo/articleshow/54579855.cms?from=mdr (accessed September 2, 2021).

^115. Manvendra Singh quoted in “Talk Point: What did India’s surgical strike against terrorists in Pakistan achieve?” The Print, September 26, 2017, https://theprint.in/talk-point/surgical-strike-pakistan-achieve/10897/ (accessed May 22, 2020).

^116. “Transcript of Joint Briefing by MEA and MoD (September 29, 2016).” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, https://www.mea.gov.in/media-briefings.htm?dtl/27446/Transcript_of_Joint_Briefing_by_MEA_and_MoD_September_29_2016 (accessed July 2, 2021).

^117. Chaudhuri, “Indian ‘Strategic Restraint’ Revisited,” 56.

^118. “There is a need for another surgical strike: Army chief Bipin Rawat,” Indian Express, September 25, 2018,https://indianexpress.com/article/india/there-is-a-need-for-another-surgical-strike-army-chief-bipin-rawat-5373081/ (accessed July 1, 2021).

^119. Rudra Chaudhuri, “War and peace in contemporary India,” Journal of Strategic Studies 42, no. 5 (2019): 567–568.

^120. Rajesh Basrur, “Modi’s foreign policy fundamentals: A trajectory unchanged,” International Affairs 93, no. 1 (2017): 12–13.

^121. Mohan Guruswamy, “What a surgical strike really is (and why the Army action across the LOC may not qualify as one),” Scroll.in, October 7, 2016, https://scroll.in/article/818398/what-a-surgical-strike-really-is-and-why-the-army-action-across-the-loc-may-not-qualify-as-one(accessed July 5, 2021).

^122. This does not mean, however, that such attempts have been readily accepted by the international community. The fact that India did not clearly mention the “unwilling and unable” test in its formal post-strike statements shows the tenuous nature of this attempt to reformulate sovereignty. See Srinivas Burra, “Legal implications of the recent India-Pakistan military standoff,” Opinio Juris, March 8, 2019, http://opiniojuris.org/2019/03/08/legal-implications-of-the-recent-india-pakistan-military-standoff/ (accessed November 22, 2021).

^123. Pravin Sawhney, “Four reasons India has little cause to cheer the Balakot airstrike and its aftermath,” The Wire, March 5, 2019, https://thewire.in/security/four-reasons-india-has-little-reason-to-cheer-the-balakot-airstrike-and-its-aftermath (accessed May 22, 2020).

^124. Ajai Shukla, “Indian Air Force strikes Jaish-e-Mohammad terror camps in Pakistan,” The Business Standard, February 26, 2019, http://ajaishukla.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2019–03-06T07:46:00%2B05:30&max-results=7 (accessed May 20, 2020).

^125. “Balakot air strike: Pakistan summons India’s diplomat over ‘violation of its territorial sovereignty,‘’ The New Indian Express, February 26, 2019,https://www.newindianexpress.com/world/2019/feb/26/balakot-air-strike-pakistan-summons-indias-diplomat-over-violation-of-its-territorial-sovereignty-1944060.html (accessed May 22, 2020).

^126. Abhijnan Rej and Rahul Sagar, “The BJP and Indian Grand Strategy,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 4, 2019,https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/04/04/bjp-and-indian-grand-strategy-pub-78686 (accessed May 20, 2020).

^127. “Statement by Foreign Secretary on 26 February 2019 on the Strike on JeM training camp at Balakot,” Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, February 26, 2019,https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl/31089/Statement+by+Foreign+Secretary+on+26+February+2019+on+the+Strike+on+JeM+training+camp+at+Balakot (accessed May 24, 2020).

^128. Atul Aneja, “Sushma Swaraj briefs China on Balakot air strikes, says India does not want ‘escalation,’” The Hindu, February 27, 2019.https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sushma-swaraj-briefs-china-on-balakot-air-strike-says-india-does-not-want-escalation/article26382632.ece (accessed May 24, 2020).

^129. C. Raja Mohan, “Explained: How Balakot changed the familiar script of India-Pakistan military crises,” The Indian Express, March 4, 2019, https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/pulwama-attack-pakistan-narendra-modi-balakot-air-strike-iaf-5609325/ (accessed July 1, 2021).

^130. M.K. Narayanan, “Lines being crossed,” The Hindu, March 4, 2019, https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/lines-being-crossed/article26425124.ece?homepage=true (accessed July 5, 2021).

^131. Alex J. Bellamy and Nicholas J. Wheeler, “Humanitarian intervention in world politics” in The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, ed. John Baylis, Steve Smith, and Patricia Owens, 8th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 516.