Since then, the full power of the Indian military has been deployed on the borders to signal New Delhi’s willingness to apply military force to combat Pakistan’s cross-border terrorism. India’s defensive strategy led General Pervez Musharraf to promise on January 12 that no terrorism would be permitted from Pakistani soil. Unfortunately, Musharraf’s promises failed to translate into actual results, as the killing of three dozen innocent children and women among families of the soldiers on border duty attests to. That incident dangerously heightened the threat of war, and the U.S. quickly stepped in to assure New Delhi of fresh promises made by Musharraf to stop infiltration across the borders and to eliminate the jihadi infrastructure inside Pakistan.

Pakistan’s rationale for the use of terror across the border was that its nuclear weapons provided the umbrella under which it could safely bleed India through a “thousand cuts.” As the logic goes, India would not be able to undertake punitive action because of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Thus, cross-border terrorism was started in Punjab in the mid-1980s once Pakistan had a semblance of nuclear deterrence, and it expanded to Jammu and Kashmir in 1988 after Islamabad had acquired nuclear weapons capability.

But what the Pakistani elite failed to realize is that there are many ways in which India could apply punitive military force—short of a full-scale war—that would not force Islamabad to reach for nuclear weapons. A limited war below the nuclear threshold remains a practicality as, indeed, happened between China and the USSR in 1969, and when Pakistan attacked across the Line of Control in the Kargil War in the summer of 1999.

India’s primary objective in the use of military power has been to persuade Pakistan that its assumption that a strategy of cross-border terrorism is a low-cost option is flawed. In fact, the mere mobilization of forces on the borders on both sides is imposing heavy costs on Pakistan. It had to increase its defense spending by 15 percent during the six months after military deployment began last December, raising the investments in military by 0.6 percent of the GDP (to 4.1 percent) in an economy that has been tottering on the verge of total collapse for many years now.

At this rate, the cost for Pakistan would amount to more than 1.2 percent of the GDP by the end of this year. Western countries are providing massive relief because of the need to obtain Pakistan’s cooperation in the U.S. war against terrorism. But they also know that their economic assistance is largely subsidizing Pakistan’s cross-border terrorist efforts against India.

There are obvious risks in choosing the military option. One such risk is the possibility that any use of military forces could escalate and spiral into the use of nuclear weapons possessed by both countries. This looming possibility has provided the basis for the strategy of terror Pakistan has pursued for two decades. But if Pakistan was not deterred from using military aggression across the borders in 1999, there is no intrinsic reason why New Delhi cannot pay Pakistan back in kind. On the other hand, India has declared that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. Pakistan, of course, has made it clear that it would use nuclear weapons first, without elaborating the circumstances under which that would happen.

It is also clear to the Pakistani elite that any use of nuclear weapons by its leadership would lead to assured nuclear retaliation by India, which would lead to “unacceptable damage” to Pakistan—resulting in the obliteration of Pakistan as we know it. The resort to nuclear weapons by Islamabad, therefore, must take this risk into account and could come only in case the survival of Pakistan or its military forces is in deep jeopardy.

And India’s strategy would seek to ensure that this kind of scenario does not happen by deploying sufficient punitive action without causing grievous harm. This would dictate how a possible war, if it becomes inevitable, would have to be fought—and India has the necessary conventional military superiority and doctrinal clarity to pursue that strategy.

Meanwhile, India’s short-term goal is the progress of political measures in Jammu and Kashmir. It has announced the schedule for elections to the state assembly starting on September 16. There is a risk that the elections may be disrupted by jihadi terrorism. If that happens, the risk of India having to take active military punitive measures across the border would increase. India is already exercising great restraint in the face of escalatory terrorist violence, like the atrocities committed in Jammu on July 13 and, once again, on the Amarnath pilgrimage. There could be more escalatory terrorist attacks between now and the holding of elections. New Delhi may be hard put to stay calm under these circumstances.

At the same time, continuing terrorism poses a grave threat to free and fair elections in Jammu and Kashmir. The international community in general, and the United States in particular, have a critical role to play in applying pressure on Pakistan to ensure that violence is stopped so that democratic processes could proceed without fear of external intervention by jihadi groups. As it is, the U.S. war against international terrorism and India’s war against the same phenomenon have been converging after the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters diffused inside Pakistan, mixing with the jihadi groups indigenous to Pakistan. Many of the Al Qaeda cadres, in fact, have slipped into the mountains of northern Pakistan and Kashmir.

At the same time, on the diplomatic front, New Delhi would need to offer some incentives to Musharraf to ensure that the elections are not disturbed. This could come in the form of an offer to hold dialogue on all outstanding issues after elections go through peacefully. This had been agreed to before, during the Lahore meeting in 1999, and India should have no difficulty in starting a dialogue on this basis.

Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, AVSM, VrC, VM, IAF (retd), one of India’s leading strategic experts, is Director, Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), New Delhi. A former Director of Operations of the IAF, he headed India’s premier think tank: the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. A former member of National Security Advisory Board of the NSC, he is a leading author and visiting professor at war colleges worldwide.