Recent debates amongst the strategic community on the utility of force in statecraft have thrown up interesting perspectives that have seldom been debated in India. While great power rivalries, inter-state conflicts and coalition conflicts still remain distinct possibilities in the future, major principles of war fighting, conflict resolution, statecraft and nuclear deterrence have since been turned on their head when confronted by non-state actors and non-traditional threats.

In a nutshell the article posits that American naval power, and thus the United States' ability to police the seas, will continue to decline, and that Washington is attempting to compensate by fashioning a new paradigm of multinational maritime security. With no likely candidate for a global navy in the offing the challenge is to create one or more multinational guarantors of free navigation. I attempt to gaze into the future, discerning the likely dynamics of this coalition-building project.

The article reviews the Cold Start doctrine in light of the limited war doctrine. It argues that the launch of strike corps entails a risk prone war expansion. War termination should therefore be short of the launch of strike corps offensives. It suggests a 'Cold Start and Stop' strategy with limited offensives by integrated battle groups being used to coerce Pakistan. Pakistani amenability to Indian war aims would be dependent on India offering incentives diplomatically alongside. India's limited war doctrine, currently not articulated, must be informed by such a war waging strategy.