India should make it difficult for Pakistan to attack: Sumit Ganguly

Noted expert on Pakistan Sumit Ganguly on Thursday said India needs to invest in securing its strategic installations and make it exceedingly difficult for Pakistan to launch as attack.

Speaking on the probable Indian strategy to deal with Pakistan, Ganguly suggested strategy of deterrence by denial whereby making it exceedingly difficult for them to attack targets.

This is not a perfect strategy because no strategy of denial can be foolproof, he added.

He said this strategy has been attempted by India but in a half-hearted and idiosyncratic manner.

"It needs to be implemented in far more full-blown fashion and thereby make Pakistan realise the futility of this enterprise over the long-term," Ganguly added.

He suggested 'strategy of deterrence by punishment' to India and said, "Any time Pakistan provokes, be prepared to exact a cost. To inflict pain on Pakistan as was done quiet recently and to remind Pakistan that behaviour of this sort is intolerable and that a cost will be inflicted..."

Ganguly cautioned that this strategy comes with limitations "as one does not know the exact threshold by which Pakistan will begin using the nuclear blackmail".

Sumit Ganguly, Professor at Indiana University, USA, has recently published a book titled "Deadly Impasse: Indo-Pakistani Relations at the Dawn of a New Century".

He was delivering a public lecture on 'Terminating the Interminable: Ending the India-Pakistan Rivalry?' organised by Nehru Memorial Library and Museum.

Rejecting the cultural diplomacy and people to people contact as a way to deal with Pakistan, he said: "There are limits to cultural exchanges and the flow of people and ideas that the military is likely to permit."

"So, I doubt that this soft power and deployment of cultural resources somehow melt the extraordinary grasp that the military still has over the state," he added.

--IANS

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