National Objectives and Global Power during the Second Kashmir War: The Crisis Period: 5 August - 22 September 1965

Abstract

This analysis conceptualizes conflict processes as the simultaneous pursuit of incompatible objectives by the protagonists. From this starting point, its primary focus is the impact of actor goals on conflict escalation and conflict reduction. This case study addresses the period from 5 August to 22 September 1965 during the second Pakistan-India war centered on the contending issue of the sovereign status of the pre-Partition Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir. Within the timeframe of these 49 fateful days the respective national objectives of Pakistan and India are reported by applying an events-data methodology to the subject matter. These objectives are then categorized in terms of three types of functions: protection, acquisition, and denial. In turn, function sets are contextualized by the issue-areas of territory, political control, and international systemic impacts. Thus, the configurations of actor objectives in the India-Pakistan nation-pair, or dyad, are identified and analyzed according to four aspects of the goal pattern of the adversaries: the function pairing of objectives; the nature of the issue upon which Pakistan and India focus their concerns; the range of national objectives; and, the degree of State commitment to each objective. In addition, the national objectives pursued by the power centers of each State are set in the political and strategic contexts of the time by integrating polarization and capability measures. The principal theoretical assumption of the research strategy posits that purposive behavior is central to an understanding of the dynamics of conflict and that patterns of incompatibility in the objectives of the adversaries are closely related to the intensity of conflict behavior as well as to the pattern of conflict escalation or de-escalation.

Keywords: Conflict Analysis, War and Peace Studies, Kashmir Conflict, Strategic Studies, International Security, South Asia

JEL Classification: F51, F52, F53, F54, F55, F50