India’s Experience with Confidence Building Measures

When two nuclear-armed neighbours share a disputed border, even a small misunderstanding can spiral into open conflict. This is precisely the danger that Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) are designed to prevent. CBMs are agreements, communication channels, and military protocols that reduce mistrust, lower the risk of accidental escalation, and keep dialogue alive even when political relations turn cold. For a country bordered by two rivals with unresolved boundary questions, CBMs are not a luxury but a survival strategy. This post examines how this approach has worked in practice with China and Pakistan, where the outcomes have been strikingly different.

What confidence building measures actually do 🔗

CBMs work on a simple logic: most conflicts between hostile neighbours are not caused by a deliberate decision to go to war. They are caused by misperception, miscalculation, and the absence of communication during a crisis. A troop movement meant for a routine exercise can look like preparation for an attack. A patrol that strays across a poorly demarcated line can trigger a deadly skirmish. CBMs reduce these risks by making each side’s intentions more predictable and transparent.

These measures usually fall into a few categories. Communication CBMs create hotlines and flag meetings so commanders can talk directly. Military CBMs set rules on troop deployment, advance notice of exercises, and conduct near contested borders. Nuclear CBMs aim to prevent accidental or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. The experience with China and Pakistan shows that the same toolkit can produce very different results depending on the depth of underlying hostility.

The experience with China 🔗

The relationship with China carries the legacy of the 1962 war and a boundary dispute that remains unresolved to this day. Yet for nearly three decades, the border was remarkably quiet. Much of that stability came from a carefully constructed framework of CBMs built in the 1990s.

The 1993 Border Peace and Tranquillity Agreement 🔗

Signed on 7 September 1993 during Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao’s visit to Beijing, the Agreement on the Maintenance of Peace and Tranquillity along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) was a turning point. It introduced the very concept of the LAC as the line dividing the two militaries in the Himalayas. Because both sides held different perceptions of where this line lay, they committed to jointly checking and clarifying the segments where their views diverged.

The agreement also contained a far-reaching promise: both sides would progressively reduce their military deployments along the LAC to a minimum level, based on the principle of mutual and equal security. The goal was not just to calm the border but to set Sino-Indian relations on a peaceful long-term trajectory.

The 1996 agreement on military CBMs 🔗

The follow-up came on 29 November 1996, when the two governments signed the Agreement on Confidence Building Measures in the Military Field along the LAC during President Jiang Zemin’s visit. This is widely regarded as the heart of the Sino-Indian CBM architecture. Its twelve articles effectively functioned as a no-war agreement, reaffirming that the LAC would be respected while the larger boundary question stayed open for negotiation.

The 1996 agreement was notably detailed. It limited the scale of military deployments and set rules for handling military exercises, air intrusions, and overflights near the LAC. It established flag meetings and telecommunication links between border personnel, and laid down procedures for dealing with the accidental crossing of the line. Article 10 even committed both sides to exchange maps to clarify the LAC’s alignment, and for a brief period there was real progress, with maps of the Barahoti sector exchanged around 2000.

Building on the foundation 🔗

These two agreements anchored a series of later additions. A 2005 Protocol spelt out the modalities for implementing the military CBMs, and a 2012 agreement set up a Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on border affairs. A 2013 Border Defence Cooperation Agreement added further mechanisms for managing patrol encounters. Together, these measures kept the border free of fatal clashes for decades, a genuine achievement given the unresolved dispute beneath the surface.

Where the framework was tested 🔗

The limits of these CBMs became painfully clear in 2020. When Chinese forces amassed troops with heavy equipment in eastern Ladakh, New Delhi argued that this concentration violated the 1993 and 1996 agreements, which required both sides to avoid massing large forces near the border and to respect the LAC. The Galwan Valley clash that followed was the first deadly encounter on the border in 45 years, an outcome the CBMs were specifically built to prevent.

The episode underlined an important truth. CBMs reduce the risk of accidental conflict, but they cannot stop a determined attempt to alter the status quo. Even so, the framework did not collapse entirely. After the standoff, both sides reached a patrolling arrangement for Depsang and Demchok in October 2024, and subsequent rounds of talks agreed to refine border management rules and strengthen the CBMs. The institutional habit of dialogue, built over thirty years, survived even a serious crisis.

The experience with Pakistan 🔗

The story with Pakistan is markedly different. Despite a long list of agreements, recurring wars, the Kashmir dispute, and cross-border terrorism have repeatedly undermined trust. Many CBMs exist on paper but deliver little in practice. Yet within this troubled relationship lies one of the most durable confidence-building arrangements anywhere in the world.

The diplomatic backbone 🔗

Several landmark agreements set the political stage. The 1972 Simla Agreement, signed after the 1971 war, committed both countries to resolving disputes bilaterally and acknowledged the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir as a de facto border. The 1999 Lahore Declaration, signed by Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif just months after both nations conducted nuclear tests, sought to reduce nuclear risks and continue the Simla spirit. Its accompanying Memorandum of Understanding became a blueprint for later nuclear CBMs.

The nuclear non-attack agreement 🔗

The single most successful CBM between the two countries grew out of fears stirred by the massive Brasstacks military exercise of the late 1980s. The Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities was signed on 31 December 1988 and entered into force in January 1991. It bars each side from attacking the other’s nuclear installations, including power and research reactors, fuel fabrication plants, and reprocessing facilities.

What makes this agreement remarkable is its consistency. Every year on 1 January, the two countries exchange lists of their nuclear installations through diplomatic channels in New Delhi and Islamabad. This exchange has continued without fail since 1992, even through wars, terror attacks, and frozen diplomatic ties. It is the longest-lasting and most reliable CBM in South Asia, proving that narrowly defined, mutually beneficial measures can survive even when the broader relationship breaks down.

Military and nuclear risk-reduction measures 🔗

Beyond the non-attack pact, the two sides built up other measures over the years. A 1991 agreement required advance notification of military exercises, manoeuvres, and troop movements, so that routine drills would not be mistaken for war preparations. A 1994 agreement addressed the prevention of airspace violations and the conduct of military aircraft near the border. Earlier still, a hotline between the Directors General of Military Operations, established in 1965, allowed senior commanders to communicate during tense moments.

On the nuclear front, the 2005 agreement on the pre-notification of ballistic missile flight tests was a direct result of the Lahore Declaration. Both sides now inform each other in advance of surface-to-surface ballistic missile tests, reducing the chance that a routine test launch could be misread as an attack. A 2007 agreement followed, aimed at reducing the risk of accidents relating to nuclear weapons.

Why the results have been limited 🔗

Despite this impressive list, the overall track record with Pakistan is one of fragility. The Kargil conflict erupted in 1999, the very year of the Lahore Declaration. Terror attacks such as those on Parliament in 2001 and in Mumbai in 2008 repeatedly froze dialogue. Analysts at the Stimson Center note that while measures like missile pre-notification add some predictability, their impact on preventing crises and managing escalation remains limited, since standoffs continue to occur regardless.

The core problem is that CBMs treat symptoms rather than causes. They can manage the risk of accidental escalation, but they cannot resolve the deep disputes over Kashmir or the persistent issue of cross-border terrorism that keep relations hostile. The recurring pattern of progress followed by a major incident has prevented the kind of cumulative trust that took root with China for several decades.

Two relationships, two lessons 🔗

Comparing the two experiences reveals what makes CBMs succeed or fail. With China, a relatively stable foundation in the 1990s allowed a detailed military framework to mature, keeping the border quiet for decades until a deliberate change in posture tested it. With Pakistan, an underlying relationship poisoned by Kashmir and terrorism meant that most CBMs struggled to gain traction, with the striking exception of the narrowly focused nuclear non-attack agreement.

The clearest lesson is that CBMs are tools, not solutions. They work best when both sides genuinely want stability and when the measures are specific, verifiable, and serve a shared interest, such as avoiding nuclear catastrophe. They falter when political hostility runs too deep or when one side decides the benefits of changing the status quo outweigh the costs. Confidence, after all, has to be built on a willingness to be reassured.

What do you think? Should CBMs be designed to tackle the root causes of conflict, such as territorial disputes, or is it wiser to keep them narrow and technical so they can survive political storms? And given the 2020 border crisis with China, can the older CBM framework still be trusted, or does it need a complete redesign?

References

1. https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/india-china-1993.htm
2. https://www.orfonline.org/research/indo-china-row-signals-breakdown-of-confidence-building-measures-67469
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agreement_on_Military_Confidence_Building_Measures,_1996
4. https://theprint.in/diplomacy/why-india-needs-new-confidence-building-measures-to-clarify-lac-issue-with-china/502995/
5. https://www.deccanherald.com/india/india-china-plan-new-confidence-building-measures-to-avert-flashpoints-along-disputed-boundary-3680487
6. https://www.nti.org/education-center/treaties-and-regimes/lahore-declaration/
7. https://stanleycenter.org/publications/india-pakistan-non-attack-agreement/
8. https://www.outlookindia.com/national/india-pakistan-exchange-nuclear-installations-lists-amid-strained-ties
9. https://thediplomat.com/2022/05/looking-back-at-the-1999-india-pakistan-lahore-declaration/
10. https://www.stimson.org/2024/nuclear-risk-reduction-between-india-and-pakistan/