Asia Times: India's nuclear doctrine ups the ante



	August 20, 1999	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

India's nuclear doctrine ups the ante
By Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI - The draft nuclear doctrine drawn up by the National Security Council (NSC) Advisory Board marks a hardening of India's nuclear posture after the nuclear tests in May 1998.

It is certain to ignite a nuclear arms race in the region, with potentially disastrous consequences. And it marks the final Indian nail in the coffin for the cause of global nuclear disarmament which New Delhi promoted for half a century.

Fifteen months after the turning point of the Pokharan nuclear tests, India's policy-makers are now under pressure from the NSC Advisory Board (composed largely of rabid hawks lacking statutory powers) to put the country on the path of a ''credible minimum deterrent''. This means readiness to inflict ''unacceptable damage'' upon an adversary - ie willingness to kill millions of babies and incinerate non-combatant civilians.

But India cannot even identify the ''adversary'' state, nor explain how ''punitive retaliation'' can give security. This country itself argued for a half-century that security cannot ever come through nuclear weapons.

The draft doctrine uses extremely threatening terms like ''punitive retaliation'' and ''unacceptable damage'', reminiscent of NATO's early Cold War doctrine and alien to India's strategic discourse. This is bound to be considered menacing by India's neighbors, particularly Pakistan and China. It also bears testimony to the moral and political debasement of India's elite, and its arrogant ambitions and delusions of grandeur.

Significantly, it comes in the wake of the bloody conflict in Kargil, in which 2,000 lives were lost. At Kargil, India and Pakistan came perilously close to a nuclear confrontation. Their officials and ministers delivered indirect and direct nuclear threats to one another no fewer than 13 times. Neither state seems to have learned from the experience of the Cold War or from their own past history, which includes three full-scale wars, countless skirmishes and military exercises that went out of control.

The draft doctrine is not just a restatement or elaboration of India's credible minimum deterrent pronounced last September - itself an ex post legitimization of the acquisition of nuclear weapons. It clarifies for the first time that India will be under pressure to go for a large-scale, triadic (air, land and sea) nuclear force with an elaborate command, control, communications and intelligence infrastructure.

The draft reveals the nasty, menacing side of a "credible minimum deterrent", in which the minimum is far less important than credibility, which invokes the demonstration of a capability and readiness to inflict "unacceptable damage", in babaric retribution.

This credibility is to be acquired through ready-to-use nuclear weapons, with guaranteed ''survivability''. Survivability implies that India will have enough nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles in its arsenal to strike the adversary even after it has been attacked with nuclear weapons and much of its military infrastructure degraded.

This means a large-scale nuclear armory, much larger than the early advocates of minimum deterrent envisaged. One newspaper report speaks of 400 weapons, the same order as China's nuclear arsenal. To achieve this, New Delhi will have to spend upwards of $20 billion, or twice its current military budget, on nuclear arms.

The size of the proposed arsenal, the underlying strategic ambitions, and the extended reach and character of nuclear weapons advocated by the NSC Advisory Board, are likely to provoke not just Pakistan, but also China. A nuclear submarine-based strike force can target many Chinese cities. And triadic deployment suggests a nuclear war fighting capability. Such a capability is estimated to have cost China upwards of $110 billion.

Thus India may be inviting economic disaster by wantonly getting into serious nuclear rivalry with China, which has a 30-year lead as nuclear and missile power and an economy three times bigger.

Ironically, China has never threatened India (or any other state) with nuclear weapons and relations between the two countries had greatly improved in the years prior to last year's tests. The two signed extended agreements on peace and tranquillity along the border (on which they had a dispute leading to war in 1962) in 1993 and 1996.

None of the aggression and menace implied in this doctrine is mitigated by India's offer of no-first-use of nuclear weapons against any state, and its promise never to use or threaten to use them against non-nuclear states. As things stand, India's no-first-use pledge is more a means of legitimizing its own nuclear arsenal than of reassuring its neighbors. Pakistan refuses to reciprocate, as that would mean accepting India's conventional superiority and losing the "nuclear equaliser".

Not a single neighbor has said it feels more secure owing to India's no-first-use pledge. In a warlike situation, such pledges may have no meaning, especially in the absence of a legal treaty obligation. They can always be rescinded by citing the "supreme national interest". Besides, few generals would be willing to lose the advantage of surprise offered by first use.

The display of nuclear hubris by Indian officials is equally distressing. When asked if the prime minister would carry a ''black briefcase'' to activate nuclear weapons, National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra suggested that India had gone beyond that level of technology.

This is strange coming from a disaster-prone, technologically backward country that can barely manage its electricity grid or run its trains safely, and where mishaps in sophisticated weapons systems (eg aircraft) are as common as road accidents. India has lost more than 200 combat aircraft in accidents since 1991.

The draft doctrine raises serious questions about policy-making and accountability in such critical matters as national security and nuclear weapons command. What competence should a group of hawks selected by a particular government - which crossed the nuclear Rubicon without a democratic mandate - be credited with? Can they set the parameters of such policies and influence the political agenda while taking no responsibility?

How democratic is it to accept that an elected prime minister can nominate or authorize someone else to pull the nuclear trigger? What of the irrationality of seeking military security through superior nuclear weapons while degrading real security through excessive military spending?

(Inter Press Service)

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