India's Emerging Nuclear Doctrine: Exemplifying the Lessons of the Nuclear Revolution

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India's Emerging Nuclear Doctrine:

Exemplifying the Lessons of the Nuclear Revolution

Executive Summary

After a hiatus of almost 24 years, India startled the world in May 1998 by resuming

nuclear testing at a time when the international community solemnly expressed a desire through

the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to refrain from the field-testing of nuclear explo-

sives. In the aftermath of these tests, India declared itself to be a "nuclear weapon state" and

formally announced its intention to develop a "minimum credible (nuclear) deterrent." In the

face of strong international-and particularly U.S.-pressures to clarify its objectives, the

Indian government affirmed that India would behave as a responsible nuclear power and

promised to enunciate a nuclear doctrine that would corroborate this claim. This paper ana-

lyzes India's emerging nuclear doctrine on both the declaratory and operational levels of policy

and assesses its implications for regional stability in South Asia.

In contrast to the views held by many within and outside India, New Delhi does not

currently possess or desire to build a ready nuclear arsenal, but instead seeks to develop a

"force-in-being," which can be defined as a nuclear deterrent made up of available, but dis-

persed, components that can be constituted into a usable weapon system during a supreme

emergency. The force will consist of unassembled nuclear warheads, with their sub-compo-

nents stored separately under civilian control, and delivery systems maintained without their

nuclear payloads by the military either at varying levels of alert or in storage away from opera-

tional areas. The command of this force will lie solely with civilians in the persons of the prime

minister and the cabinet, while civilians and the military will jointly share custody of the various

strategic assets that make up the deterrent. In the event of deterrence breakdown, both civilian

and military officials would be called upon to integrate the formerly separated components into

usable weapons systems, the custody of which would gradually be transferred to the military.

The Declaratory Level of Policy

The most significant and distinguishing facet of India's declaratory nuclear doctrine is its

consistent claim that nuclear weapons are political instruments of deterrence rather than mili-

tary tools of warfighting. To Indian thinking, the possession of even a few survivable nuclear

weapons capable of being delivered on target in the aftermath of an attack on India, together

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NBR ANALYSIS

with an adequate command system, is seen as sufficient to preserve the country's security. This

emphasis on deterrence means that, for India's security managers, nuclear weapons are most

useful as antidotes to blackmail that might be mounted by local adversaries, while simulta-

neously serving to provide strategic reassurance to India's political leaders. This viewpoint

originates in the belief that the absolute, rather than the relative, performance of these weap-

ons, coupled with the horrendous consequences of even limited use, more than suffices to

make them potent deterrents against any of India's competitors.

India's refusal to treat nuclear weapons as military tools for uses other than political de-

terrence is also rooted in three other issues. The first such issue is the longstanding tradition of

idealist and liberal thought that has defined India's political culture since its formative years. Since

the very beginning of the nuclear age, India has led the charge for "universal and non-discrimi-

natory disarmament." Given this tradition, the decision to acquire nuclear weapons has created

great dilemmas for New Delhi. At the level of doctrine, policymakers see only one defensible

way out of this thorny predicament: to treat the acquisition of nuclear weapons as the "best of

the worst" choices facing India, while simultaneously refusing to define the value of these instru-

ments in militarily translatable terms. The second issue is related to the country's traditional

organization of civil-military relations. India has one of the most rigid and ironclad systems for

ensuring

absolute

civilian control over the military. All decisions pertaining to the nuclear weapons

program have been made solely-often orally-by India's prime ministers relying on the ad-

vice of a few close advisors. India's recent decision to formally acquire nuclear weapons is not

in any way intended to disturb the fundamental structure of civil-military relations, to the extent

that that is possible. The third and final issue relates to the desire of Indian security managers to

avoid the high costs involved in developing a large and costly nuclear inventory and in redesigning

and reequipping conventional military forces for the nuclear battlefield.

The Operational Level of Policy

Despite good intentions on the part of India and its adversaries, deterrence

can

break

down and, consequently, the relationship between deterrence breakdown and potential nuclear

use must be addressed at the level of operational policy. There are four key components to

India's operational policy.

The first component is India's insistence on the no-first-use of nuclear weaponry, an idea

that is remarkably pervasive in Indian strategic thought. There is good reason to believe that

India will uphold this policy in practice, especially since it is consistent with India's nuclear

doctrine at the declaratory level, its traditional attitudes on nuclear disarmament, and its estab-

lished refusal to legitimize nuclear weapons as ordinary instruments of war. The commitment to

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no-first-use allows New Delhi to underscore its pacific intentions toward Pakistan and China

and thereby procure all the political benefits of being perceived as a moderate, responsible,

and peace-loving state in the international system. Such a policy is also consistent with the

concept of a force-in-being, whose dispersed components are not conducive to rapid and

first-use of nuclear weapons. Most important, this policy is unlikely to be violated because

India's strategic circumstances appear to be favorable enough so as to prevent New Delhi

from ever having to use nuclear weapons

first

against any of its adversaries.

The second component of India's doctrine at the level of operational policy is its insis-

tence that nuclear weapons, when used, will be oriented toward punishment alone. On a

practical level, India simply does not possess the capabilities to utilize its nuclear weapons in

the more demanding offensive or defensive modes. An offensive use of nuclear weapons would

require, among other things, a large nuclear arsenal and incredibly accurate delivery systems

maintained at high levels of readiness, as well as robust strategic defenses capable of coping

with the adversary's ragged retaliation efforts. A defensive use of nuclear weapons aimed at

denying the adversary his objectives would be only mildly less demanding. In contrast, the

retaliatory use of nuclear weapons solely for purposes of punishment can make do with small

numbers and primitive types of nuclear weapons, simpler standard operating procedures,

relatively higher levels of civilian custody and control, and fewer financial resources. More-

over, in the event of a breakdown in deterrence, such an objective is the only alternative

available to a state seeking both to eschew nuclear warfighting and avoid offering its adversar-

ies the hope that they could pursue their strategic goals by means of some limited forms of

nuclear use.

The third component of India's operational doctrine is delayed-but assured-retalia-

tion. Indian security managers believe that, for purposes of deterrence, the ability to retaliate

with

certainty

is more important than the ability to retaliate with

speed

. This viewpoint is a

function of India's desire to maintain its traditionally strict system of civilian control over all

strategic assets while both minimizing the costs of maintaining a nuclear deterrent and maximiz-

ing the survivability of its relatively modest nuclear assets.

The fourth component of India's operational doctrine concerns New Delhi's targeting

strategy, which will almost certainly focus on "countervalue" targeting. Broadly defined,

countervalue targets consist of the resources necessary for the sustenance of a modern soci-

ety, including population centers like cities; critical economic and industrial production facilities

such as petroleum refineries, arms and munitions production facilities, and electric power plants;

and national infrastructure assets like communications systems, transportation networks, and

power grids. Given the modest capabilities of India's nuclear force, countervalue targets alone

can inflict the appropriate level of punishment for any nuclear transgressions against India.

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NBR ANALYSIS

New Delhi does not possess the capabilities to ensure successful attacks on "counterforce"

(e.g., nuclear weapons, storage sites, delivery systems) or "countermilitary" (e.g., conven-

tional military forces, high-value military resources, strategic air capabilities) targets, except in

a very limited sense. In contrast, effective and significant attacks on urban centers can gener-

ally be carried out with fewer and less sophisticated nuclear weapons, which also require less

accuracy in delivery. Because urban centers are fixed and concentrated targets, they are easy

to find using primitive methods of navigation and thus lend themselves to attack by a variety of

delivery systems.

Implications for Regional Stability in South Asia

If there is anything conspicuous about the emerging Indian nuclear doctrine, it is its essen-

tially conservative character. Indian policymakers conceive of their strategic nuclear assets as

serving an important but limited end of policy: the deterrence of an adversary's "ultimate"

threat to the security of the homeland but not for defensive operations, like warfighting, and still

less so for exploitative purposes, like compellance. In that sense, the emerging Indian nuclear

doctrine fully reflects the lessons of the nuclear revolution, which posit that nuclear weapons-

thanks to their enormous, almost "absolute," destructive capability-have severed the rela-

tionship traditionally existing between the instruments of violence and the accumulation of

international power.

Given these considerations, India's evolving nuclear doctrine is likely to be conducive

to-rather than subversive of-strategic stability in South Asia. Since India believes that its

nuclear weapons are useful primarily for deterrence and secondarily for retribution-in case

deterrence fails-New Delhi can size its nuclear force accordingly. India's nuclear doctrine

therefore provides some assurance that its nuclear arsenal will ultimately consist of a "mini-

mum" deterrent rather than something more expansive. But, despite the claims of many Indian

analysts to the contrary, India's nuclear doctrine does not represent a new or particularly

unique contribution to the theory of nuclear deterrence. This conclusion ought not to be misun-

derstood. India's deterrent posture, as exemplified by the notion of the force-in-being with its

separated weapon components, centralized but devolving control, and strict civilian supremacy

over its core strategic assets, does represent a unique approach to maintaining a nuclear arse-

nal. But the

doctrine

that regulates the development, deployment, and use of these capabilities

is not particularly exceptional because it exemplifies what the nuclear revolution would de-

mand of

any

state that was status quo in geopolitical orientation and relatively secure as far as

its basic geostrategic circumstances are concerned.

From the perspective of U.S. policy, the best news about India's emerging nuclear doc-

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trine is that it might dampen rather than accelerate strategic competition in South Asia. As far

as the competition between China and India is concerned, both states have more or less strong

commitments to no-first-use policies; both states routinely maintain their nuclear capabilities at

relatively low levels of readiness; and, most important of all, both states are doctrinally com-

mitted to using their nuclear weapons primarily as instruments of retribution in case of deter-

rence breakdown rather than as tools of defense and warfighting in pursuit of operational

advantage. In addition, neither side currently possesses the technical capabilities to use its

nuclear weapons as warfighting instruments in any but the most primitive ways imaginable.

The situation involving India and Pakistan is more problematic, but nonetheless offers

hope for continued stability. The Indo-Pakistani rivalry involves dynamic security competition

entailing a high degree of routine violence that is manifested through the active struggle over the

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