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A recipe for disaster

By M. V. Ramana

ON AUGUST 17 last, the Indian Government released a draft version of its nuclear doctrine. Despite a proclaimed commitment to ``minimum credible deterrence'', the doctrine is based on ideas developed by the United States and Russia as they built up their arsenals to absurd levels. If the plans laid out in the doctrine are embarked upon, they would lead India down a path that promises an arms race and commits the nation to huge expenditures on a system that only furthers insecurity instead of promising increased security.

In contrast to the policies of the previous Governments, all of which have rejected the notion of nuclear deterrence, the doctrine whole-heartedly embraces the idea. Even as recently as 1995, at the International Court of Justice (World Court), India described nuclear deterrence as ``abhorrent to human sentiment since it implies that a state if required to defend its own existence will act with pitiless disregard for the consequences to its own and adversary's people.'' All that has been completely swept aside. Instead, the doctrine claims that ``India's strategic interests require effective, credible nuclear deterrence.''

The real problem with deterrence is that it is merely a mind game; there is no good reason to not expect it to fail. To its credit, the nuclear doctrine does recognise this. So do all nuclear weapon states. This is why they make plans to actually use these weapons. This is reflected in the doctrine by stating that India requires ``adequate retaliatory capability should deterrence fail.'' Further on, it is made clear that this nuclear capability will be used for ``punitive retaliation'' to ``inflict damage unacceptable to the aggressor''. In other words, these weapons would be exploded over some cities, each killing lakhs of people. As is typical of the nuclear debate, the question of how bombing lakhs of innocent citizens in retaliation against some political or military leaders and what good such bombing would do is artfully left aside.

Apart from basic problems with deterrence, the notion that there is or can a stable ``minimum credible deterrent'' is extremely dubious. By definition, a deterrent should be credible. If it is not credible, it cannot deter. But what seems credible to one country may not seem credible to the other. What seems credible to one leadership at one time may not be so under different circumstances. Further, the history of the nuclear arms race during the past half a century demonstrates that despite every nuclear weapon state claiming that it only had the minimum required for its security needs, each state kept increasing its arsenal.

If one were to go by the public articles by some of the authors of the doctrine, the size of the planned arsenal would be well over 300 weapons and include a number of weapon varieties. These would be based on a ``triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and sea-based assets.'' Even to those believing in nuclear deterrence, such an arsenal cannot be considered minimal.

The doctrine also fails to recognise the obvious dynamic nature of the issue - that any attempt to build up such a large arsenal would definitely provoke responses from Pakistan and China. Following the (il)logic of nuclear weapons, such responses would, in turn, require India to react by furthering its arsenal. In other words, there would be an arms race.

There are also contradictions implicit in some of the claims made in the doctrine. On the one hand, it is asserted that ``nuclear weapons shall be tightly controlled and released for use at the highest political level'' with the authority to release these weapons residing in the Prime Minister or the designated successor(s). While the doctrine does not go into the details, installing suitable electronic controls that prevent the use of the weapon unless some code is sent from the ``highest political level'' would presumably ensure this. On the other hand, the doctrine also claims that ``India's nuclear forces shall be organised for... rapid punitive response.'' The ability to quickly respond, i.e., after an attack, would require those possessing the weapons, for example, a military officer, to be able to launch these weapons at short-notice. If the attack were to either destroy the political leadership, i.e., the Prime Minister and the designated successor(s), or cripple the communication system (through, for example, the electromagnetic pulse set off by a nuclear explosion under some circumstances), such retaliation would either be impossible or would require that the military officer had access to the necessary code to launch the weapons in the first place. In the latter case, the officer could have launched the weapon without authorisation to start with; control for the use of the weapons, therefore, rests with the officer and not with the Prime Minister.

Such problems are particularly acute when dealing with submarines because of difficulties in communicating with them while not exposing their location or when dealing with mobile missiles - both of which seem to be within the scope of the planned arsenal. All this raises valid doubts about the bland assurance offered by the doctrine: that an unauthorised or inadvertent use of weapons would not take place.

The doctrine also claims that ``space-based and other assets shall be created to provide early warning...''. Quite apart from the substantial costs and technical challenges involved in building space-based systems, geography makes it impossible to provide early warning in the case of an attack by either Pakistan or China. Satellites typically detect missile launches by looking for the plume from the exhaust - which is substantially hotter than the surrounding area. Once launched, due to the proximity of Pakistan and China to India, missiles would take somewhere in the range of 4 to 8 minutes in most cases to fly to (say) Delhi. This is the time available for warning and is too short to be considered ``early warning''. There is simply no time to ensure that there are no errors and consider responses carefully.

One can compare this period with the 20-30 minute flight times in the case of ICBMs flying from Russia to the U.S. or vice versa. This window of time allows the two countries a little bit of extra time to recheck their signal. Nevertheless, and despite the enormous financial and technical resources invested in trying to make these early warning systems fool-proof, they often did not perform as expected. Information on these failures is largely kept secret. It is known, however, that between 1977 and 1984 the U.S. early warning system showed over 20,000 false alarms of a missile attack. Over 1,000 of these were considered serious enough for bombers and missiles to be placed on alert. There were similar scares on the Russian side as well. At moments of crisis, such malfunctioning may just lead to a nuclear launch.

Another bland assurance offered is the assertion that an ``appropriate disaster control system'' shall be developed to deal with potential accidents (which are called `incidents' in the language of nuclear strategists) involving nuclear weapons. This would be laughable if it were not tragic. An accidental nuclear explosion of even a small nuclear weapon in a city such as Bombay, home to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, India's main nuclear weapons laboratory, could kill lakhs of people. Radioactive fallout from the explosion could spread far and last for centuries. No disaster control system can deal with this meaningfully.

Indeed, it is the doctrine that is a recipe for disaster and needs control. If implemented, it is sure to result in an arms race. Instead of furthering the cause of nuclear disarmament, it only promotes weaponisation and leads India closer to the brink of an atomic abyss. Instead of security, it only leads to vulnerability. The time to step back is now. The doctrine must be firmly rejected and the path of weaponisation must be reversed. Nuclear weapons must be abolished both from the region and the world. That is the only way to true security.

(The writer is Research Associate, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University.)

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