The Hindu : India's nuclear balance sheet

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Tuesday, May 07, 2002

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India's nuclear balance sheet

By V.R. Raghavan

Nuclear weapons have already proved incapable of conferring great power status on India.

Four years after the nuclear tests of 1998 is a good time to assess India's stock as a regional and global strategic player. Great power status and consolidation of India's claims to it were claimed to be the primary aim of the tests. The `resurgence of India', which the tests were supposed to herald, seems today some long distance away. In fact, the mood at present is one of despair within and disquiet outside the country, on the prospects of its political stability, economic buoyancy and strategic reliability. India's military is in its battle stations against Pakistan. The Government at the Centre is reduced to retaining power through political deals, which both defy ideological ideals and violate electoral promises to the people. The follow-up required on achieving the stability of nuclear deterrence is missing. Nuclear deterrence seems to have failed both the country and its leadership in making the nation more secure. It would be appropriate to posit that the political leadership which obtained nuclear weapons has not yet understood their essential meaning.

The nuclear reality in South Asia is one of loss of direction after the big bangs of May 1998. India has done no more than raise a few Prithvi regiments for the Army and Air Force. The Agni tests have evoked hardly a ripple in and outside the country. They are soon to be inducted in the defence services. Doubts nevertheless continue to be expressed by scientists in and outside India about its capacity to miniaturise the nuclear warheads adequately to mate with existing missile delivery systems. The Government is unwilling to set these doubts at rest. The first principle of deterrence stability, that of leaving no doubts in the adversary's mind on one's capability, is thus being disregarded. The nuclear doctrine of the nation hangs in limbo, with neither its authors nor the Government claiming it to be official, legitimate or authoritative. There is no known nuclear command authority; the chain of command is unclear to both friends and adversaries. There is no nuclear risk reduction dialogue among the Indian, Chinese and Pakistani Governments.

The Chief of the Defence Staff who is expected to put some order into the loose and ambiguous nuclear command and doctrine system in India is nowhere in sight. An Integrated Defence Staff has been created, in which there is going to be a three star ranking officer in charge of the strategic forces. He is to work under another three star ranking officer who currently heads the integrated set-up. The latter is himself under the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which has no authority to integrate the nuclear infrastructure comprising nuclear scientists and intelligence agencies. The nuclear command, control and intelligence authority is therefore neither convincing, nor confuted of its shortcomings by the Government. Nuclear weapons have thus become part of the general drift and doubt in national governance.

In Pakistan, the doubtful advantage of nuclear weapons remaining in the hands of the military has been seen to be a chimera. The threat of nuclear warheads getting into extremist hands has apparently increased. Testimony by U.S. intelligence agencies have confirmed this risk. Pervez Musharraf's speech on January 12 confirmed that his nuclear weapons had made him hostage, rather than giving him any room for manoeuvre against U.S. demands to comply with its Afghan policy. Now and then Islamabad feels impelled to refer to a nuclear response, if India crosses the undefined Rubicon of Pakistan's vital interests. Nuclear deterrence in its technological, military, arms race and political dimensions is thus unstable in India and Pakistan. The situation is made no less dangerous by continuing Chinese nuclear and missile assistance to Pakistan.

The global nuclear circumstance has changed dramatically since the tests of 1998. In no small measure, India's tests also contributed to that change. They put paid to the aspirations of the nuclear powers to retain their monopoly over the nuclear deterrent. India's tests effectively laid to rest the NPT as an instrument of nuclear denial. They also confirmed that sanctions against nuclear proliferation do not deter those determined to face up to them. The CTBT had already been put to perpetual sleep by the inability of the U.S. to ratify it. The Indian tests reconfirmed the fears in many circles that the nuclear powers are each on their own. Russia's economic difficulties and the run down of its nuclear capability have also left the U.S. in a dominant and unchallenged nuclear position.

The U.S.' preference for unilateral action on nuclear and missile policies was in the making even before the Indian tests. It was nevertheless given a sharper edge by the tests. The U.S. decisions to speed up its missile defence programmes, its decisions to pull out from the ABM Treaty, and its counter-proliferation emphasis, now provide the framework of its strategic priorities. It is not as if no successes were gained by the BJP-led Government which went in for the tests. The tests moved India from being a covert nuclear weapons possessor to an overt one. It certainly made the major powers take note of the new boy on the block. Indian skills in restoring global confidence in its rational and responsible strategic policies were commendable. Its image as an economic and political power in the making was carefully crafted. These initiatives laid the groundwork for a new set of strategic relationships with major powers. In other words, the repositioning of India in the post-Cold War era had been skilfully begun.

There are, however, serious doubts about the political leadership's awareness of the constraints nuclear weapons place on policy. The first one relates to waging a military campaign. The risks of such action when nuclear weapons are on the scene are not reduced by terming it a limited war.

Nuclear weapons' use can never be unilateral in view of its global consequences. Seeking a war in the belief that use of nuclear weapons can be isolated from it shows a lack of understanding of the escalatory dynamic built into military campaigns. That Pakistan's leadership could think of Kargil as a feasible military option without a nuclear risk demonstrated a dangerous propensity to risk taking. The Indian leadership's belief in war being an option and its discounting of the nuclear dangers is equally risk prone.

The arrival of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan should lead to new thought on resolving their antagonisms. The key issue of Jammu and Kashmir has led to the current military deployment for war. It would continue to keep the risks of a conflict at high levels in future. War was never a viable option for Pakistan against India. Now that there are nuclear weapons on the scene, war is not a viable option for India either. Equally, terrorism is not an option for Pakistan to obtain an advantageous outcome of the Jammu and Kashmir issue if it wishes to ensure that a war does not take place. The resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir issue will, therefore, have to come from options that preclude a military solution. In the absence of that mutually agreed belief, nuclear weapons will continue to threaten instead of ensuring the security of the two nations.

Nuclear weapons have already proved incapable of conferring great power status on India. If not handled carefully, they will continue to bedevil its strategic equations within and beyond the South Asian region.

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