POLITICS-INDIA: Draft N-doctrine Could Ignite Arms Race

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Aug 18 1999 (IPS) - 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 Pokharan-II, 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 — i.e. 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 neighbours, 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, when deterrence often broke down – or from their own past history, with three full-scale wars, countless skirmishes and military engagements, including military exercises that went out of control.

The draft doctrine is not just a re-statement or elaboration of India’s credible minimum deterrent pronounced last September – itself an ex post legitimisation of the acquisition of nuclear weapons.

It clarifies for the first time that India will be under pressure to go in for a large-scale, triadic (air, land and sea) nuclear force with an elaborate, huge, command, control, communications and intelligence (C-cubed-I) infrastructure.

The draft reveals the nasty, menacing side of a ‘credible deterrent’ where the minimum is far less important than credibility, which invokes the demonstration of a capability and readiness to inflict ‘unacceptable damage,’ in revenge and 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 armoury, much larger than the early advocates of minimum deterrent envisaged, e.g. 100-150 nuclear weapons. (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 dollars (or twice its current military budget) on nuclear arms.

During the Cold War, the United States alone spent 800 billion (or nearly three times India’s GDP) on C-cubed-I systems.

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 dollars.

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 have 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 legitimising its own nuclear arsenal than of reassuring its neighbours. Pakistan refuses to reciprocate as that would mean accepting India’s conventional superiority and losing the ‘nuclear equaliser.’

Not a single neighbour 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” ( doomsday machine) 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 (e.g. 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 authorise 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?

Besides these domestic questions, there are tricky regional and international ones that New Delhi has to face.

It will be under pressure not to follow the path into the Atomic Abyss – pressures which can produce results if they come from non-hegemonic sources and from the global peace movement.