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Not a Myth
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Cold Start is a sensible and doable strategy for the J&K theatre |
The Chicken’s Neck area in Jammu is one of the bulges that the Indian Army’s
would like to straighten
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Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab
There is more to the Indian Army’s (IA) Cold Start doctrine than has been written about. Western analysts view it as the forerunner of nuclear war between India and Pakistan, Pakistani writers decry it as a grave instability factor in an unpredictable relationship, and the US, according to Wikileaks has called it ‘a mixture of myth and reality’. These assessments make the doctrine a revolutionary idea.
However, this is not how the IA views it. For the IA, Cold Start has been an
evolutionary process, stemming from Operations Vijay (1999 Kargil conflict) and
Parakram (the 10-month military
stand-off between India and Pakistan from 18 December 2001 to 16 October 2002).
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Hence,
let alone the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the highest decision-making
body headed by the Prime Minister, the IA has not put its doctrine for clearance
of the defence minister either. Interestingly, the army chief in 2004 introduced
the doctrine as Cold Start to the media. Once the latter went into an overdrive
with interpretations,
a panic-gripped IA renamed Cold Start as ‘pro-active strategy’ in 2006, making
the distinction that the IA will not cross into Pakistani territory the moment
hostilities commence.All it desired was to reduce its war mobilisation time to
match that of the Pakistan Army.
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