The word "retaliatory" is important.
Dont miss this either..
Sundarji doctrine would 've worked better if the strike corps were not placed far away in central India and were smaller in size.It would not 've taken our strike corps 3 weeks to reach the borders, and in those 3 weeks Pakistan would not 've had the time to appeal to its allies (US) nor would Musharraf 've got time to do U-turn and make his famous speech"Pakistan would not allow any terrorist activity on its soil" or something to that effect.
I'm not a war monger, the coercive diplomacy did work through this op.Parakram but it still had its issues.
The article says "limited war would be risky for the region".
Cold start ostensibly came into being in 2004 and in last 10 years we have not seen any war in the region which proves this assumption in the article wrong.
The article has many contradicting statements like on one side it says cold star doctrine would help India disrupt the Pakistan decision making cycle and on the other side it says cold start would be a retaliatory response.It also says that till date theres no public evidence that integrated battle groups have been formed.
The article rightly concludes that Cold start is still a concept and not a reality.
Overall I liked the article, it was a very neutral article by Walter Ladwig.