Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella. Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis
Abstract
This report presents the results of a quick-turnaround study conducted by RAND at the request of the U.S. government in the months leading up to the November 2000 presidential election in the United States. The study was intended to support a variety of internal reviews and briefings that took place around the time of the election. The broad purpose of the study was to understand how India and Pakistan viewed the significance of the Kargil conflict, what lessons they drew from this conflict, and the implications of those lessons for future stability in South Asia. Consequently, this report is not an all-source document: it has deliberately avoided the use of all U.S. governmental documents and for most part many other open-source American materials as well. Instead, the source materials used are almost exclusively Indian and Pakistani. Since the significance of the Kargil conflict as appreciated in India and Pakistan is a complex matter, with many different and often conflicting strands of opinion, this report focuses mainly on capturing thematically the dominant ideas circulating in the subcontinent on this issue. As a result, not every view pertaining to Kargil is recorded and, further, many nuances and variations on the main themes recorded here are excluded unless judged by the authors to represent viewpoints that ought to be of interest to policymakers in the United States.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2001
- Accession Number
- ADA400858
Entities
People
- Ashley J. Tellis
- C. C. Fair
- Jamison J. Medby
Organizations
- RAND Corporation