Prime Minister Imran Khan, himself regarded as a top Pakistani Army stooge whose election victory was engineered by the military, is parroting the same lines

In her seminal account ‘Fighting To The End — The Pakistan Army’s Way of War’, author C Christine Fair makes several leading points. Among them, she believes that the Pakistani nuclear deterrent is aimed at a situation when its conventional forces are overrun by the Indian Army, leaving them with no option but to push the nuclear button.

Not surprisingly, Prime Minister Imran Khan, himself regarded as a top Pakistani Army stooge whose election victory was engineered by the military, is parroting the same lines. He has said — significantly, more than once — that a loss in a conventional war may trigger a nuclear conflict.

He told a TV channel that a nuclear war could not be ruled out in case Islamabad lost a conventional war against India. “If say Pakistan, God forbid, we are fighting a conventional war, we are losing, and if a country is stuck between the choice: either you surrender or you fight till death for your freedom, I know Pakistanis will fight to death for their freedom,” he stated. With such sabre-rattling, India has done well to keep the Americans and other western powers in the loop.

Undoubtedly, the biggest achievement of the Modi years has been to be call Pakistan’s nuclear bluff. For far too long, Islamabad believed and indeed, implemented, its tactic of threatening to use nukes and successive Indian governments believed they were capable of doing it.

Now, finally you have a government in New Delhi, which is willing to take the threat at face value. The Pakistan Army’s most potent arsenal lies exposed. But, it is also fair to arrange for contingencies in the eventuality that some mad mullah soldier takes it into his head to go ahead with it, irrespective of the consequences. To that extent, New Delhi’s positive diplomacy in the last one month has paid dividends.