Agrees Ladwig: "Multiple divisions operating independently have the potential to disrupt or incapacitate the Pakistani leadership's decision making cycle, as happened to the French high command in the face of the German blitzkrieg of 1940."
Also, rather than seek to deliver a catastrophic blow to Pakistan (i.e., cutting the country in two), the goal of Indian military operations would be to make shallow territorial gains, 50-80 km deep, that could be used in post-conflict negotiations to extract concessions from Islamabad.
Where the strike corps had the power to deliver a knockout blow, the division-sized Battle Groups can only "bite and hold" territory. This denies Pakistan the "regime survival" justification for employing nuclear weapons in response to India's conventional attack.
CALLING THE NUCLEAR BLUFF
To be sure, Pakistan has declared it has a very low nuclear threshold - that is Islamabad will launch nuclear strikes against India when a significant portion of its territory has been captured or is likely to be captured, or the Pakistani military machine suffers heavy losses.
But this is just a myth - perpetuated and planted by US academia and think tanks, and is probably officially inspired. For, it suits the needs of the conservative American establishment in whose eyes India is a long-term rival and Pakistan a useful, if unreliable, ally. Unfortunately, India's political leadership and its uncritical media have been brainwashed into believing that Cold Start has apocalyptic consequences.
But "nuclear warfare is not a commando raid or commando operation with which Pakistan is more familiar," says Dr Kapila. "Crossing the nuclear threshold is so fateful a decision that even strong American Presidents in the past have baulked at exercising it."
Indeed, Pakistan cannot expect India would sit idle and suffer a Pakistani nuclear strike without a massive nuclear retaliation, which would be the end of the Pakistan story.
PAKISTAN'S OPTIONS
So where does that leave Pakistan? The wayward country is faced with the cold reality that India is prepared to undertake offensive operations against Pakistan without giving it time to bring diplomatic leverages into play.
Since India has declared that it will not resort to a nuclear first strike, the onus is squarely on Pakistan and its patrons. A nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan has the potential to spiral out of control, sucking in China, the US, the Islamic countries and Russia. That would send the price of oil skyrocketing and cause a worldwide economic crisis.
Therefore, "a nuclear conflict will take place in South Asia only if the United States wants it and lets Pakistan permissively cross the nuclear threshold," says Dr Kapila.
Ralph Peters, the author of Looking for Trouble, and a strategic analyst for Fox News, agrees that the US needs to consider an alternative approach to handling "splintering, renegade" Pakistan. "Let India deal with Pakistan. Pakistan would have to behave responsibly at last. Or face nuclear-armed India. And Pakistan's leaders know full well that a nuclear exchange would leave their country a wasteland. India would dust itself off and move on," observes Peters.
COLD SHOULDER BY INDIA'S POLITICIANS
To be sure, Cold Start, though it has been war gamed five times, lacks consensus in India. That is mainly because the country's political leadership lacks the nerve to implement a strategy that could possibly lead to nuclear war. But that is precisely why India's generals brought it into the public realm. Cold Start was devised to end the standoff in the subcontinent. Pakistan cannot be allowed to export terror and brandish its nuclear weapons at India, ad infinitum.
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