-
CENTRES
Progammes & Centres
Location
Why 'implausible deniability' may be India’s most strategic tool for responding to Pakistan after the Pahalgam massacre
.jpg)
Image Source: Getty
The massacre of 26 Indian tourists by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists near the town of Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) has left the nation appalled. As the country mourns, New Delhi must consider its options with clarity. The response thus far has been resolute. In particular, the abeyance of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), which by some estimates could restrict Pakistan’s access to nearly 80 percent of upper riparian flows, is likely to deliver a significant blow to Pakistan’s primarily rural economy.
Yet such measures are only the first phase of India’s multi-stage response to Pakistan’s aggression. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vow to “identify, track, and punish every terrorist and their backers…to the ends of the Earth,” implies a strong preference for some degree of kinetic action at the highest levels of government. Covert action, guided by the principle of ‘implausible deniability,’ emerges as the most prudent course for policymakers in the South Block under such conditions. What, then, is implausible deniability, and to what end can it provide value for Indian policymakers?
According to scholars Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich, ‘implausible deniability’ refers to those sub-threshold intelligence operations where an executant state’s involvement is “apparent but not acknowledged”. Although emphasising unattributability, it eschews the ‘plausible deniability’ traditionally underlying the pursuit of covert action, where a state seeks to disclaim responsibility for its actions by “evading fulfilment of the requirements for the burden of proof,” as per Canadian academic Douglas Walton.
Various states have historically utilised implausible deniability towards strategic ends. In the 1980s, the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) ‘Operation Cyclone’ to arm the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan War was evidently sanctioned by Washington, which neither denied nor acknowledged its involvement. Russia’s support for the Wagner Group under Yevgeny Prigozhin, until his mysterious death in 2023, provides another such example. Most recently, Israel has avoided claiming responsibility for the pager/walkie-talkie bomb attacks in September 2024 targeting Hezbollah members across Lebanon—although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to strongly allude to the Mossad’s role.
The concept of implausible deniability can provide critical value for decision-makers crafting India’s response to Pakistani involvement in the Pahalgam attack.
First, it allows India to better calibrate movements along the ‘escalation ladder’—a concept defined in 1965 by German scholar Herman Kahn, who described it as a series of thresholds ranging from step 1, the identification of “an ostensible crisis,” to step 44, nuclear warfare. Between these two extremes, governments take steps to either escalate or de-escalate, depending on their discrete interests and the evolving circumstances. Covert action against specific terrorist targets, particularly when tempered by the principle of implausible deniability, can preclude tensions from escalating to the point of broader conflict by preventing formal attribution. At the same time, hinting towards India’s likely role may signal New Delhi’s capabilities/reach in targeting Pakistan-sponsored terrorist organisations such as The Resistance Front (TRF), which has claimed responsibility for the massacre in Pahalgam.
India’s formal acknowledgement of both its special forces raids against terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in 2016, and its 2019 airstrikes against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) camps in Balakot later enabled Islamabad to establish conclusive back-bearings.
Second, the ambiguity associated with implausible deniability may limit Pakistan’s ability to construct a coherent strategy against India’s countermeasures. While serving an important purpose at the time, India’s formal acknowledgement of both its special forces raids against terrorist camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) in 2016, and its 2019 airstrikes against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) camps in Balakot later enabled Islamabad to establish conclusive back-bearings. This, in turn, allowed Pakistan to craft counter-strategies to what it sees as a template for potential Indian responses to state-sponsored terrorism, subsequently undermining deterrence. This was evident in 2016, when New Delhi’s acknowledgement of responsibility for its ‘surgical strikes’ helped Pakistan develop a standardised narrative for responding to potential Indian military action against terrorist groups—one centring false claims of having repulsed Indian forces without major casualties. This was similarly observed during the 2019 Balakot airstrikes, where Pakistan perceived India’s official use of its air force capabilities as only establishing a short-term model of deterrence, inadvertently enabling the most recent provocation in Pahalgam. However, employing implausible deniability deprives Pakistan of the ability to formulate counter-strategies against India, particularly as it rests on a lack of formal acknowledgement and thus frustrates efforts to attribute direct state culpability. Doing so generates ambiguity and uncertainty about the adversary’s decision-making capabilities— slowing down their ability to respond to stimuli. This, in turn, could be leveraged by India to pursue a prolonged strategy dependent on the prevailing circumstances, to re-establish the long-term deterrence that Pakistan seeks to puncture through the Pahalgam attacks.
Finally, implausible deniability is well-suited, keeping in mind the wider global responses to the recent attacks, especially those from the United States (US). As remarks by US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicate, while Washington recognises India’s need to respond kinetically short of open conflict, it also seeks to remain uninvolved in what it sees as a flashpoint increasingly distant from the Trump administration’s immediate priorities. Consequently, India’s use of implausible deniability may be especially well-suited given Washington’s hesitation in involving itself as a mediator while simultaneously allowing New Delhi to re-establish longer-term deterrence against Pakistan, unhindered by third-party involvement.
Admittedly, adopting such a strategy carries certain costs. For one, an overreliance on implausible deniability can potentially constrain India’s ability to respond forcefully through formal means if such an approach is necessitated in the future. Indeed, obliquely hinting at Indian involvement in key covert operations may allow Pakistan to purposefully misrepresent India as the aggressor, when in fact New Delhi seeks to respond as a victim of state-sponsored terrorism. As such, overusing implausible deniability within covert action may inadvertently damage India’s international standing and compel New Delhi to respond to Pakistan’s aggression within more rigid geopolitical constraints.
implausible deniability is not a catch-all solution to the brazenness of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. It is predicated upon a degree of restraint, which in the heat of the current crisis, may be lost on both Pakistan and domestic audiences.
More immediately, the ambiguity of the principle may also inhibit India’s ability to demonstrate its resolve to Pakistan and even domestic audiences. As the effectiveness of implausible deniability depends significantly on whether or not the message that it hints at is received by external audiences, a lack of formal acknowledgement may equally signal to Pakistan that India cannot effectively respond to terrorist attacks conducted on its soil. Equally, the subtlety and implications of the principle may be lost on domestic audiences, who, given the flagrancy of the Pahalgam attacks, demand an unequivocal response against Pakistan.
Thus, implausible deniability is not a catch-all solution to the brazenness of Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. It is predicated upon a degree of restraint, which in the heat of the current crisis, may be lost on both Pakistan and domestic audiences. Equally, overreliance on such an approach risks inadvertently building a case for India’s adversaries, constraining a fuller response to Pakistani aggression if circumstances so demand in the future. However, the prudent use of this principle may outweigh these costs. Ultimately, employing implausible deniability allows India the simultaneous achievement of various goals in combating and containing Pakistani terrorism. These include control over the escalation ladder, leveraging ambiguity to greater coercive strategic effect, and better calibration of extraregional partnerships, such as those with the US. As policymakers in the South Block craft India’s response, a consideration of this principle may go a long way in crafting a prudent strategy, targeted, and most importantly, effective in re-establishing long-term deterrence against Pakistan.
Archishman Goswami is a postgraduate student studying the MPhil International Relations programme at the University of Oxford.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Archishman Ray Goswami is a Non-Resident Junior Fellow with the Observer Research Foundation. His work focusses on the intersections between intelligence, multipolarity, and wider international politics, ...
Read More +
PREV
