Arctic Ocean – The New Cold War

Arctic Ocean – The Cold War for the Cold Region

Canada, Russia, the US, Denmark [via Greenland] and Norway are staking claims in the Arctic Ocean, which may contain a quarter of the world's untapped petroleum reserves, and is becoming more accessible due to global warming. Under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, they could acquire rights to Arctic seafloor territory if the areas are linked to their continental shelves. Russia made its claim in 2001, though it will make a resubmission. Canada ratified the Law on the Sea in 2003, so it has to file its claim by 2013. The United States had not ratified the Law of the Sea Convention.

In recent decades, it has been well recognized that published portrayals of the sea floor north of the Arctic Circle, particularly in the deep central basin of the Arctic Ocean, are not totally accurate, and that in certain areas, there are significant discrepancies between observed and charted depths. The principal cause of this situation has been the lack of sounding information needed to construct reliable and detailed charts: certain regions remain inadequately mapped on account of difficult operating conditions, or because critical data sets have not been made available for widespread public use.


The severe climatic and ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean make it difficult to apply some of the existing methods and technologies that are generally easy to use in other oceans, in order to obtain the information that is necessary for establishing the outer limits of the Continental Shelf.

The floor of the Arctic Ocean is characterized by the existence of at least four large submarine elevations that could be considered to be submerged prolongations of the continental margins beyond 200 nautical miles: Chukchi Plateau, Mendeleyev Ridge, Lomonosov Ridge, and Alpha Ridge. Adequate sets of geological and geophysical data, together with bathymetric and morphological information, are seen as critical to establishing that such elevations are indeed natural components of the continental margin.

The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, stipulates that any coastal state can claim territory 200 nautical miles from their shoreline and exploit the natural resources within that zone. Nations can also extend that limit to up to 350 nautical miles from their coast if they can provide scientific proof that the undersea continental plate is a natural extension of their territory.

Continental shelf claims beyond 200 nautical miles are made according to the provisions of Article 76 of the Law of the Sea. The implementation of Article 76 rests fundamentally upon the analysis and interpretation of bathymetric and geological information. A 1996 Workshop assembled specialists from the five coastal states that border the Arctic Ocean (Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the United States of America) to discuss scientific and technical issues relating to the preparation of continental shelf claims beyond 200 nautical miles. During the course of the 1996 Workshop, it was recognized that all five coastal states have valid grounds for developing continental shelf claims beyond their 200 nautical mile limits, and that the possibility, if not the likelihood, existed of overlapping claims between neighbouring states.

Article 76 of UNCLOS specifies a mechanism for extending the limits of the continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). After ratification of UNCLOS a country has ten years to collect the appropriate information and submit a claim for an extended continental shelf to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS).

Much of the argument revolves around the underwater Lomonosov Ridge. Mikhail Vasil'evich Lomonosov was the first Russian natural scientist of world importance. His major scientific accomplishment was in the field of physical chemistry, with other notable discoveries in astronomy, geophysics, geology and mineralogy. He founded what became Moscow State University, in 1755. This university, officially named after Lomonosov, is at the apex of the Russian system of higher education.

The Lomonosov Ridge is an undersea chain of mountains rising some 2500 meters above the Arctic floor. Measuring about 1700 km in length, the Lomonosov Ridge is considered to be of continental origin, a sliver that was separated from the Kara and Barents shelves and transported to its present position by sea-floor spreading.

The General Bathymetric Chart of the Oceans (GEBCO, Canadian Hydrographic Service, 1979) served as an authoritative portrayal of the seafloor north of 64°N. The International Bathymetric Chart of the Arctic Ocean (IBCAO) was developed from an accumulation of bathymetric measurements collected during past and modern expeditions. Striking discrepancies between the GEBCO and IBCAO portrayals of the Lomonosov Ridge occur between the North Pole and the Siberian continental shelf. The new model shows a far more complex morphology, with a ridge that is broken into several smaller segments.

Countries have the possibility of claiming the Lomonosov Ridge, a submarine mountain range, as a natural prolongation of their land territory. Bathymetry, seismic and gravity data are needed to substantiate the claim. Out to a distance of 350 nautical miles or further, if coastal states can claim the Lomonosov Ridge as a natural prolongation of land territory, coastal states can exercise specified sovereign rights. These rights include the right to explore and exploit mineral and biological resources on and below the seabed and jurisdiction in matters related to environment and conservation.

The Lomonosov Ridge, which Russia claims is part of their continental shelf, is clearly a separate oceanic seafloor volcanic ridge and thus not part of Russia's continental shelf. The Russian UNCLOS claim over the Arctic Commons Abyssal area adjacent to the edge of their continental shelf was rejected in 2001 by the Commission for the Continental Shelf, as the geological facts proved that the claim had no basis under UNCLOS rules. The geology of the area in question has not changed since the Russian claim was rejected.

Russia's Oceanology research institute has undertaken two Arctic expeditions - to the Mendeleyev underwater chain in 2005 and to the Lomonosov ridge in August 2007 - on orders from the ministry to back Russian claims to the region, believed to contain vast oil and gas reserves and other mineral riches, likely to become accessible in future decades due to man-made global warming. The Natural Resources Ministry said in September 2007 that preliminary results of research carried out by Russian scientists will allow the country to claim 1.2 million sq km (460,000 sq miles) of potentially energy-rich Arctic territory. On 04 October 2007 Russia's natural resources minister said the development of the Lomonosov underwater mountain chain in the Arctic could bring Russia up to 5 billion metric tons of equivalent fuel. "Reaching the Lomonosov ridge means for Russia potentially up to 5 billion tons of equivalent fuel," Yury Trutnev said

In August 2008 Canadian researchers teamed with Danish scientists to offer proof that the Lomonosov Ridge is a natural extension of the North American continent. Their landmark findings, the initial result of years of sea floor mapping and millions of dollars in research investments by the Canadian and Danish governments, were presented at the 2008 International Geological Congress in Oslo under the innocuous title "Crustal Structure from the Lincoln Sea to the Lomonosov Ridge, Arctic Ocean."

Denmark hopes to collect evidence that will support a claim that the continental shelf of Greenland-a province of Denmark-extends to the North Pole. Norway is the only other country (besides Russia) that has filed a legal claim to extend its continental shelf into a portion of the Arctic Ocean.

Arctic sea ice during the 2007 melt season plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979. The average sea ice extent for the month of September was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles), the lowest September on record, shattering the previous record for the month, set in 2005, by 23 percent.

Arctic sea ice receded so much that the fabled Northwest Passage completely opened for the first time in human memory during 2007. Explorers and other seafarers had long recognized that this passage, through the straits of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, represented a potential shortcut from the Pacific to the Atlantic. Roald Amundsen began the first successful navigation of the route starting in 1903. It took his group two-and-a-half years to leapfrog through narrow passages of open water, with their ship locked in the frozen ice through two cold, dark winters. More recently, icebreakers and ice-strengthened ships have on occasion traversed the normally ice-choked route. However, by the end of the 2007 melt season, a standard ocean-going vessel could have sailed smoothly through. On the other hand, the Northern Sea Route, a shortcut along the Eurasian coast that is often at least partially open, was completely blocked by a band of ice in 2007.

In 2007 National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) Senior Scientist Mark Serreze said, “The sea ice cover is in a downward spiral and may have passed the point of no return. As the years go by, we are losing more and more ice in summer, and growing back less and less ice in winter. We may well see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer within our lifetimes.” The scientists agree that this could occur by 2030.


Discovery of oil fields and natural gas in the artic has led to an increased interest in the development of ice-breaking cargo vessels and/or tankers for use in transporting these resources to refineries and consumers at remotely situated markets. The cargo and/or tanker ships must operate efficiently during the transportation of their cargo. In order to operate efficiently, they must maintain a satisfactory speed with a relatively low fuel consumption. In order to meet these efficiency requirements, conventional ship designs have been developed. Such conventional designs have a low value of ship-ice resistance per unit cargo capacity. Such conventional designs are generally characterized by a relatively large length-to-beam ratio, fine bow forms and long parallel middle-body sections. Such hull designs allow the ship to perform efficiently during normal travel through non-ice-covered waters, and to perform well during straight travel through ice-covered waters. However, due to their relatively long parallel middle body sections, these conventional ships have poor maneuverability in ice-covered waters. The poor maneuverability of the conventional design has presented serious problems when attempting to turn these ships in order to change course in ice-covered waters to avoid objects, such as a major ice ridge or for maneuvering the ship into a docking facility. Accordingly, the poor maneuverability of such conventional designs within ice-covered waters deterimentally affects the safe operation and time required to effectively dock and position the vessel.

The progress of a conventional vessel through ice is dependent mainly on the thickness and type of ice; the thrust of the propeller or propellers; the shape of the hull, with particular emphasis on the forward section; and friction between the hull of the vessel and the ice. Should any of the above factors change or be changed then the vessel's performance would change. The ability of a vessel to steer, when operating in ice, is dependent principally on the thickness and characteristics of the ice; the shape of the bow section; the shape of the stern section; the thrust of the propeller and size of the rudder; and possibly of greatest influence, the length of parallel body (straight ship sides). So, although most vessels, other than ice breakers, have trouble in navigating in ice covered waterways, some have a lot more trouble than others, and this difficulty is proportionately increased with ship length.

In order to avoid safety hazards and attempt to minimize the transit time required to specifically maneuver the vessel, some ships have been designed to serve as the primary ice-breaking vessels. Such vessels escort the conventional cargo ships, clearing the path in front of the cargo ship. Such ice-breaking ships must have both a high maneuverability in the ice and cut a wide channel for the cargo vessel in which to follow. The necessary maneuverability, and ability to form a wide channel are made possible by providing such ice-breaking vessels with a stocky, rounded hull with a relatively low length-to-beam ratio, typically in the range of 4.0 to 5.5. The water plane-shape of this type of hull enables a certain degree of turning within the confines of the channel cut by the ship's beam. However, such a high beam-to-displacement ratio makes such a vessel configuration unsuitable as a cargo vessel. The high beam-to-displacement ratio results in a relatively high power requirement per unit cargo capacity which is moved. Furthermore, this high beam-to-displacement ratio results in an increased open water resistance per unit displacement. Therefore, such vessels do not travel efficiently through ice-covered or non-ice-covered waters.

Another design which has been developed in order to increase the maneuverability of a cargo ship in ice-covered waters includes a wide beam forward configuration. The object of the wide beam forward design is to cause the ship's bow to cut a sufficiently wide channel through the ice to allow a relatively narrow middle body and stern to swing outward to either side during a turning maneuver. This concept was embodied in a converted tanker SS Manhattan. While the wide beam forward design does provide a certain degree of improved turning capability in ice-covered waters, it suffers to some extent from the same effects as the stocky, rounded hull escort vessel discussed above. The wide beam forward configuration requires greater propulsion power per unit displacement in order to break through the ice than is required by an equivalent sized ship having a relatively high length-to-beam ratio. Therefore, although the wide beam forward configuration allows for greater maneuverability during turns in ice-covered waters, the design is inefficient for straight forward travel through ice-covered or non-ice-covered waters. The conventional fine hull shape with a long, parallel middle body section is a fuel efficient design. The fuel efficiency of this design is sacrificed to achieve improved maneuverability when the wide beam forward design is utilized.

When the ship is moving straight ahead, the ice is broken by its bow and the unbroken ice tends to hug the sides and develop considerable friction, impeding forward movement. The condition is complicated by the fact that the ice is often "uneven", as a result of channels having been broken and rebroken, with the pieces of ice thrown up into uneven mounds and refreezing in that form. This uneven structure increases the friction and resistance to movement. If straightline movement is difficult, the problem is compounded when the ship tries to turn. In making a turn, under the action of the rudder, the ship pivots about a point about a third of the way from the bow to the stern (this will vary somewhat depending on the design of the vessel and its draft forward as against its draft aft). Bow thrusters are sometimes used to move the bow laterally, but these tend to become fouled in ice and so are not usually employed for winter navigation.

The US Navy has not recently designed surface ships, other than ice breakers, to operate in the Arctic. The problems of ice damage and topside icing when surface ships were operated in high latitudes were handled on an ad hoc basis. From time to time during the design of a new class of surface ships, the issue of ice hardening has arisen. One example was during the design of the Perry (DDG-7) class guided missile frigates. While high latitude operations were envisioned, these ships were heavily cost constrained and the ice hardening characteristic was dropped from consideration during cost tradeoffs.

The Navy and Coast Guard, however, have designed icebreakers, as have commercial interests. Other commercial ships have been designed for ice hardening. Most major classification societies who govern the details of commercial ship hull design have established rules for the design of ship hulls for operations in ice. The American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) would be the relevant classification society for US ship design. ABS Rules require strengthening of the bow and stern areas. Bow mounted sonar domes and arrays in particular would require careful attention. Propellers, rudders, fin stabilizers, and sea chests are also affected by ice operation. The effect of topside icing and a provision to de-ice must also be considered.

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Pakistan’s Frankenstein Monster

India's has accused "elements inside Pakistan" of orchestrating the late November terrorist attacks on high-profile targets in Mumbai. While such accusations often follow attacks inside India, the scale of these attacks put them in a new category. India's accusations may be based on hard evidence, but cautions that Pakistan's government may be unable to control the "Frankenstein's monster" it created when it helped train terrorists to infiltrate and fight against Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir region. "These groups have developed an independent capacity to raise resources and an independent capacity to plan and prosecute operations in Afghanistan, in India, and, unfortunately for Pakistanis, increasingly within Pakistan."

It appears that any time there's an incident like this in India, particularly an incident involving Muslims in India, the government immediately points its finger to Pakistan and often to the area administered by India in Kashmir. How much of this is based on actual evidence and how much just seems to be a reaction that India has to any of these type of incidents?


I think any reporting that you get out of India on these kinds of events that come out within the first few hours is almost certainly not related to some sort of actual data or evidence. It's only through the evidence that they get maybe out of interrogations—this one individual that they actually were able to arrest and presumably interrogate at great length already—that's when you start to realize that they might actually have a sense as to what's really going on. Even then, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad are groups that are always named every single time something goes wrong and subsequently we know that they are not always the ones that were directly responsible for the attacks even if they may have some indirect linkages to the groups that actually perpetrated them. So from my perspective, it's always useful to wait at least twenty-four hours and see if some more reliable evidence actually comes out. In this instance, because we're starting to hear about the idea that they came via Karachi, that apparently this one individual they arrested says that he was somehow trained in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp or was associated with them, it starts to make more sense. But even then, the complexity of these groups, they're not as distinguishable as they once were, or as distinct as they once were. There are multiple and overlapping relationships in terms of the facilities they use and the training and so on.

These two groups have been pegged for years as groups which have at least received support and some training from inside Pakistan to disrupt Indian rule in Kashmir. There are some analysts today that feel the Pakistani government, having developed its own pretty serious terrorist challenge internally, has really lost control of these two groups. Is that fair to say?

I think it's absolutely fair to say that this looks more like a Frankenstein's monster kind of situation in Pakistan than it looks like a directly controlled and manipulated and directed militancy that's driven by the top leadership in Islamabad. So that means exactly what you say, which is that historically these groups Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, and others were very clearly in the pay of the Pakistani state intelligence and military. In time, however, what they've done is these groups have developed an independent capacity to raise resources and an independent capacity to plan and prosecute operations in Afghanistan, in India, and, unfortunately for Pakistanis, increasingly within Pakistan. They've turned against the hands that once fed them. So that's the nature of the problem now. It is actually still complicated by the fact that there appears to be evidence of continued complicity or at least passive relations between the Pakistani state and some of these groups.

For years the Israelis tried to hold Yasser Arafat responsible for the actions of various groups that were either within Fatah and described by the Palestinian Authority government as out of control militants or were actually outside it. The Israelis held them responsible one way or another. Is that essentially the Indian position with the Pakistani government here?

I think it had been the Indian position and was certainly the Indian position in 2001-2002, where the Pakistani government and President Pervez Musharraf after the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 came out and took some actions, banned some of these organizations, and the Indians still came out and said, "Look, you've got to get your house in order. We blame you; it's your territory." And there are certainly Indians who still believe that. But I think what has changed is that Indians are starting to see evidence that supports the Pakistani claim that their leadership, including their military leadership, is directly threatened by some of these groups. So I think the Indians, at least Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, are somewhat more reluctant to go down that path of just blaming Pakistan because what they see in the Pakistani state is a state of weakness. Now maybe the Israelis saw the same thing in Arafat, and they honestly didn't care. They gave up on him and decided that he could not be, as they say, a partner for peace. And at some point maybe the Indians will come to that conclusion. I'm hopeful that they haven't reached that conclusion yet, that instead what they see in the Pakistani government is a weak but increasingly more well-meaning potential partner.

There's another analysis out there that it's not just these groups which are really out of control of the civilian government in Pakistan, but the ISI, the Intelligence Services, and the military itself really don't appear to be under the complete control of the civilian government. Is that a fair statement?


It's absolutely fair, and I don't think there are too many people who would honestly suggest that the Pakistani civilians completely control their military at all. The military sets it own budget, it sets it operational plans, and although this military head of the army is more amenable to sharing his plans and, in fact to some degree, letting the civilians set a strategic framework for his operations, he's still very much in control of his actual operations and that holds for the ISI as well. So what you have in Pakistan is, in relative terms, a strong and dominant national institution in the army and a relatively weaker civilian political leadership that is only in the very early stages of trying to balance out the influence and sort of come to any kind of command relationship over the military. I think they're a ways off from that.

This crisis in Mumbai occurred as India is building up to national elections. There's a lot of talk about the Congress Party being in some serious trouble now. They're under a lot of pressure and criticism for their handling of the attacks. Should we be wary of public statements from the Indian government right now on this?


You're right, the Congress Party is feeling very much under pressure and I think recognizes that the upcoming national elections weren't looking particularly good for them because of the economic downturn, and this is one more reason why they are probably anticipating a significant loss of support at the polls relative to the last elections. For that reason they're really going to have to—at some level they have to find a face-saving way out of this. The resignation of the home minister is one piece of it. Pressuring the Pakistanis to yield on something will have to be another piece of it, I think. And demonstrating as a government that they are taking firm steps to improve India's internal security will have to be a third piece. All these things are very hard, and I think the opposition BJP, which hasn't been a particularly effective party in opposition, is already looking to exploit this politically.

Up until now, the charges of not providing enough security, which have been leveled by the BJP after a series of attacks in India over the past several years, really haven't stuck. They haven't found an audience. But an event like this, hitting such symbolic targets of Indian wealth and rising power, economic power, is probably going to touch more people and make them more concerned about the state of their national security, possibly shifting some votes toward the BJP, although I have to imagine that the national economy will still be more of a campaign issue in the end.

Now you could look at this in a perspective that says that if there was, in fact, some group that actually crossed the border with Pakistan, India might feel somewhat relieved. It has an enormous Muslim minority and unrest among that group would be maybe an even greater challenge. Is that right?


There is a problem if these kinds of attacks, like some of the ones over recent months apparently have been perpetrated by this group, the Indian Mujahideen, which has at least got some significant indigenous connections, not necessarily from Pakistan or Bangladesh or anywhere else but Indian. And the problem with these indigenous strikes is that they raise questions about India's capacity to actually live and make workable a multi-ethnic, as they say, secular Indian state, to maintain that as a national identity and to make it workable. So if the attack comes from the outside it doesn't necessarily damage that national identity side of things, but it does threaten a cross- border level of violence with their neighbor in Pakistan that is probably almost as dangerous. So different kinds of problems, and yes, in some ways it is nice for the Indian government to be able to point fingers outside the country in terms of a political sense, in a domestic politics sense, but I would say no matter how the Mumbai attack ends up being in terms of who is responsible and where the strings run, they do have an increasing problem with domestic violence or internal violence perpetrated by Indian Muslims and unfortunately it appears Hindu nationalists as well.

What's Washington's role here? It strikes me that this is just an absolute hornet's nest for US policymakers.


It's very difficult, certainly, for the incoming Obama team as they're just getting their footing but also for the Bush administration to do much more than certainly counsel restraint on both sides, and that's clearly happening. The only other piece—because the United States is a country that enjoys relatively good relationships with both governments—is that it can help, if there is a face-saving way to avoid any escalation here, it may be able to help find it and find it rapidly to avoid unnecessary escalation that's driven by politicking on both sides. So that's where a lot of talk—I'm sure the phone lines are burning up; I gather US Secretary [of State Condoleezza] Rice is in Delhi or on her way—that's where the United States can play a role. But it's important to recognize that the India-Pakistan conflict is one that we've seen an improvement in that relationship over the past several years primarily driven by those countries themselves, not by the United States. And there's always been relatively little the United States could do—in the way of leverage that is more significant than what either state has in the way of interests with respect to the other. In other words, the United States can be helpful, and we can help to find solutions. If the two sides are willing and able to put them on the table, it can bring them closer together, but unfortunately it doesn't have the capacity, I think, to impose a solution.


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Militant Attacks In Mumbai and Their Consequences

Militant Attacks In Mumbai and Their Consequences

On 26/11, a group of Islamist operatives carried out a complex terror operation in the Indian city of Mumbai. The attack was not complex because of the weapons used or its size, but in the apparent training, multiple methods of approaching the city and excellent operational security and discipline in the final phases of the operation, when the last remaining attackers held out in the Taj Mahal hotel for several days. The operational goal of the attack clearly was to cause as many casualties as possible, particularly among Jews and well-to-do guests of five-star hotels. But attacks on various other targets, from railroad stations to hospitals, indicate that the more general purpose was to spread terror in a major Indian city.

While it is not clear precisely who carried out the Mumbai attack, two separate units apparently were involved. One group, possibly consisting of Indian Muslims, was established in Mumbai ahead of the attacks. The second group appears to have just arrived. It traveled via ship from Karachi, Pakistan, later hijacked a small Indian vessel to get past Indian coastal patrols, and ultimately landed near Mumbai.



Extensive preparations apparently had been made, including surveillance of the targets. So while the precise number of attackers remains unclear, the attack clearly was well-planned and well-executed.

Evidence and logic suggest that radical Pakistani Islamists carried out the attack. These groups have a highly complex and deliberately amorphous structure. Rather than being centrally controlled, ad hoc teams are created with links to one or more groups. Conceivably, they might have lacked links to any group, but this is hard to believe. Too much planning and training were involved in this attack for it to have been conceived by a bunch of guys in a garage. While precisely which radical Pakistani Islamist group or groups were involved is unknown, the Mumbai attack appears to have originated in Pakistan. It could have been linked to al Qaeda prime or its various franchises and/or to Kashmiri insurgents.

More important than the question of the exact group that carried out the attack, however, is the attackers’ strategic end. There is a tendency to regard terror attacks as ends in themselves, carried out simply for the sake of spreading terror. In the highly politicized atmosphere of Pakistan’s radical Islamist factions, however, terror frequently has a more sophisticated and strategic purpose. Whoever invested the time and took the risk in organizing this attack had a reason to do so. Let’s work backward to that reason by examining the logical outcomes following this attack.

An End to New Delhi's Restraint

The most striking aspect of the Mumbai attack is the challenge it presents to the Indian government — a challenge almost impossible for New Delhi to ignore. A December 2001 Islamist attack on the Indian parliament triggered an intense confrontation between India and Pakistan. Since then, New Delhi has not responded in a dramatic fashion to numerous Islamist attacks against India that were traceable to Pakistan. The Mumbai attack, by contrast, aimed to force a response from New Delhi by being so grievous that any Indian government showing only a muted reaction to it would fall.

India’s restrained response to Islamist attacks (even those originating in Pakistan) in recent years has come about because New Delhi has understood that, for a host of reasons, Islamabad has been unable to control radical Pakistani Islamist groups. India did not want war with Pakistan; it felt it had more important issues to deal with. New Delhi therefore accepted Islamabad’s assurances that Pakistan would do its best to curb terror attacks, and after suitable posturing, allowed tensions originating from Islamist attacks to pass.

This time, however, the attackers struck in such a way that New Delhi couldn’t allow the incident to pass. As one might expect, public opinion in India is shifting from stunned to furious. India’s Congress party-led government is politically weak and nearing the end of its life span. It lacks the political power to ignore the attack, even if it were inclined to do so. If it ignored the attack, it would fall, and a more intensely nationalist government would take its place. It is therefore very difficult to imagine circumstances under which the Indians could respond to this attack in the same manner they have to recent Islamist attacks.

What the Indians actually will do is not clear. In 2001-2002, New Delhi responded to the attack on the Indian parliament by moving forces close to the Pakistani border and the Line of Control that separates Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, engaging in artillery duels along the front, and bringing its nuclear forces to a high level of alert. The Pakistanis made a similar response. Whether India ever actually intended to attack Pakistan remains unclear, but either way, New Delhi created an intense crisis in Pakistan.

The U.S. and the Indo-Pakistani Crisis

The United States used this crisis for its own ends. Having just completed the first phase of its campaign in Afghanistan, Washington was intensely pressuring Pakistan’s then-Musharraf government to expand cooperation with the United States; purge its intelligence organization, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of radical Islamists; and crack down on al Qaeda and the Taliban in the Afghan-Pakistani border region. Former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had been reluctant to cooperate with Washington, as doing so inevitably would spark a massive domestic backlash against his government.

The crisis with India produced an opening for the United States. Eager to get India to stand down from the crisis, the Pakistanis looked to the Americans to mediate. And the price for U.S. mediation was increased cooperation from Pakistan with the United States. The Indians, not eager for war, backed down from the crisis after guarantees that Islamabad would impose stronger controls on Islamist groups in Kashmir.

In 2001-2002, the Indo-Pakistani crisis played into American hands. In 2008, the new Indo-Pakistani crisis might play differently. The United States recently has demanded increased Pakistani cooperation along the Afghan border. Meanwhile, President-elect Barack Obama has stated his intention to focus on Afghanistan and pressure the Pakistanis.

Therefore, one of Islamabad’s first responses to the new Indo-Pakistani crisis was to announce that if the Indians increased their forces along Pakistan’s eastern border, Pakistan would be forced to withdraw 100,000 troops from its western border with Afghanistan. In other words, threats from India would cause Pakistan to dramatically reduce its cooperation with the United States in the Afghan war. The Indian foreign minister is flying to the United States to meet with Obama; obviously, this matter will be discussed among others.

We expect the United States to pressure India not to create a crisis, in order to avoid this outcome. As we have said, the problem is that it is unclear whether politically the Indians can afford restraint. At the very least, New Delhi must demand that the Pakistani government take steps to make the ISI and Pakistan’s other internal security apparatus more effective. Even if the Indians concede that there was no ISI involvement in the attack, they will argue that the ISI is incapable of stopping such attacks. They will demand a purge and reform of the ISI as a sign of Pakistani commitment. Barring that, New Delhi will move troops to the Indo-Pakistani frontier to intimidate Pakistan and placate Indian public opinion.

Dilemmas for Islamabad, New Delhi and Washington

At that point, Islamabad will have a serious problem. The Pakistani government is even weaker than the Indian government. Pakistan’s civilian regime does not control the Pakistani military, and therefore does not control the ISI. The civilians can’t decide to transform Pakistani security, and the military is not inclined to make this transformation. (Pakistan’s military has had ample opportunity to do so if it wished.)

Pakistan faces the challenge, just one among many, that its civilian and even military leadership lack the ability to reach deep into the ISI and security services to transform them. In some ways, these agencies operate under their own rules. Add to this the reality that the ISI and security forces — even if they are acting more assertively, as Islamabad claims — are demonstrably incapable of controlling radical Islamists in Pakistan. If they were capable, the attack on Mumbai would have been thwarted in Pakistan. The simple reality is that in Pakistan’s case, the will to make this transformation does not seem to be present, and even if it were, the ability to suppress terror attacks isn’t there.

The United States might well want to limit New Delhi’s response. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on her way to India to discuss just this. But the politics of India’s situation make it unlikely that the Indians can do anything more than listen. It is more than simply a political issue for New Delhi; the Indians have no reason to believe that the Mumbai operation was one of a kind. Further operations like the Mumbai attack might well be planned. Unless the Pakistanis shift their posture inside Pakistan, India has no way of knowing whether other such attacks can be stymied. The Indians will be sympathetic to Washington’s plight in Afghanistan and the need to keep Pakistani troops at the Afghan border. But New Delhi will need something that the Americans — and in fact the Pakistanis — can’t deliver: a guarantee that there will be no more attacks like this one.

The Indian government cannot chance inaction. It probably would fall if it did. Moreover, in the event of inactivity and another attack, Indian public opinion probably will swing to an uncontrollable extreme. If an attack takes place but India has moved toward crisis posture with Pakistan, at least no one can argue that the Indian government remained passive in the face of threats to national security. Therefore, India is likely to refuse American requests for restraint.

It is possible that New Delhi will make a radical proposal to Rice, however. Given that the Pakistani government is incapable of exercising control in its own country, and given that Pakistan now represents a threat to both U.S. and Indian national security, the Indians might suggest a joint operation with the Americans against Pakistan.

What that joint operation might entail is uncertain, but regardless, this is something that Rice would reject out of hand and that Obama would reject in January 2009. Pakistan has a huge population and nuclear weapons, and the last thing Bush or Obama wants is to practice nation-building in Pakistan. The Indians, of course, will anticipate this response. The truth is that New Delhi itself does not want to engage deep in Pakistan to strike at militant training camps and other Islamist sites. That would be a nightmare. But if Rice shows up with a request for Indian restraint and no concrete proposal — or willingness to entertain a proposal — for solving the Pakistani problem, India will be able to refuse on the grounds that the Americans are asking India to absorb a risk (more Mumbai-style attacks) without the United States’ willingness to share in the risk.

Setting the Stage for a New Indo-Pakistani Confrontation

That will set the stage for another Indo-Pakistani confrontation. India will push forces forward all along the Indo-Pakistani frontier, move its nuclear forces to an alert level, begin shelling Pakistan, and perhaps — given the seriousness of the situation — attack short distances into Pakistan and even carry out airstrikes deep in Pakistan. India will demand greater transparency for New Delhi in Pakistani intelligence operations. The Indians will not want to occupy Pakistan; they will want to occupy Pakistan’s security apparatus.

Naturally, the Pakistanis will refuse that. There is no way they can give India, their main adversary, insight into Pakistani intelligence operations. But without that access, India has no reason to trust Pakistan. This will leave the Indians in an odd position: They will be in a near-war posture, but will have made no demands of Pakistan that Islamabad can reasonably deliver and that would benefit India. In one sense, India will be gesturing. In another sense, India will be trapped by making a gesture on which Pakistan cannot deliver. The situation thus could get out of hand.

In the meantime, the Pakistanis certainly will withdraw forces from western Pakistan and deploy them in eastern Pakistan. That will mean that one leg of the Petraeus and Obama plans would collapse. Washington’s expectation of greater Pakistani cooperation along the Afghan border will disappear along with the troops. This will free the Taliban from whatever limits the Pakistani army had placed on it. The Taliban’s ability to fight would increase, while the motivation for any of the Taliban to enter talks — as Afghan President Hamid Karzai has suggested — would decline. U.S. forces, already stretched to the limit, would face an increasingly difficult situation, while pressure on al Qaeda in the tribal areas would decrease.

Now, step back and consider the situation the Mumbai attackers have created. First, the Indian government faces an internal political crisis driving it toward a confrontation it didn’t plan on. Second, the minimum Pakistani response to a renewed Indo-Pakistani crisis will be withdrawing forces from western Pakistan, thereby strengthening the Taliban and securing al Qaeda. Third, sufficient pressure on Pakistan’s civilian government could cause it to collapse, opening the door to a military-Islamist government — or it could see Pakistan collapse into chaos, giving Islamists security in various regions and an opportunity to reshape Pakistan. Finally, the United States’ situation in Afghanistan has now become enormously more complex.

By staging an attack the Indian government can’t ignore, the Mumbai attackers have set in motion an existential crisis for Pakistan. The reality of Pakistan cannot be transformed, trapped as the country is between the United States and India. Almost every evolution from this point forward benefits Islamists. Strategically, the attack on Mumbai was a precise blow struck to achieve uncertain but favorable political outcomes for the Islamists.

Rice’s trip to India now becomes the crucial next step. She wants Indian restraint. She does not want the western Pakistani border to collapse. But she cannot guarantee what India must have: assurance of no further terror attacks on India originating in Pakistan. Without that, India must do something. No Indian government could survive without some kind of action. So it is up to Rice, in one of her last acts as secretary of state, to come up with a miraculous solution to head off a final, catastrophic crisis for the Bush administration — and a defining first crisis for the new Obama administration. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once said that the enemy gets a vote. The Islamists cast their ballot in Mumbai.

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