India’s Nuclear Policy – Advocating No ‘No First Use’

The Ukraine crisis has re-ignited the nuclear weapon debate once again.

India’s most pervasive nuclear ‘news’ involved two breakthrough events – the nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998. The latter, in particular, overhauled India’s international image as a ‘nuclear power self-constrained by peaceful use’ to a ‘nuclear warring power’. The five explosions of a plutonium nuclear device, Pokhran-II, fundamentally altered India’s global standing, and were succeeded by impromptu nuclear tests by its far inferior rival, Pakistan. The Pokhran-II tests drew rebuke and ire from several countries of the world, including influential powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

It is believed that India’s nuclear ventures have involved the testing of thermonuclear weapons, which are several-fold more dangerous than ‘conventional’ nuclear weapons. It is also estimated that India maintains a nuclear arsenal bearing a considerably greater number of deployable warheads than what has been made official.

The Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) formally established, in 2003, is an institutionalised body that was incepted to materialise Indian inclinations to utilise nuclear warfare as a means of a credible deterrence to dissuade adversarial confrontation and its capacity for war-making in the Indian subcontinent. The control of the NCA rests firmly in the hands of the Indian executive.

Since then, India – despite contrarian views such as those promoted by this author – has rigidly stuck to the doctrine of ‘minimum credible deterrence’. The doctrine was very recently reinforced and reemphasized. This means that India aims to retain just the precise number of nuclear warheads to deter and deny an enemy from attacking its mainland or islands, while actively aiming for global nuclear disarmament through lobbying at international forums, and proactively decrying the prospects of a nuclear war in its neighbourhoods and universally. The prospect of nuclear terrorism and nuclear wars fought in space have significantly contributed to this peculiar Indian aversion.

Advocating No ‘No First Use’: Change Overdue

‘No First Use’ is an avowed parable that signifies the basic tenets of India’s approach to the use and utility of nuclear weaponry. It indicates a disinclination to use a nuclear weapon for the conscious conduct of an attack via the media of land, sea, or air against any measurable scale of strategic rivalry in its region and globally. Rather, ‘No First Use’ is complemented by a second-strike doctrine which asserts that the retaliation to a first strike will be decisive and will intend to inflict ‘maximum damage’ on an adversary.

This doctrine is based solely on an unwarranted compromise ahead of self-interest. It demonstrates a fainthearted willingness to absorb a nuclear attack (be it via tactical/battlefield nuclear weapons or full-fledged ones) and the comprehensive damages caused by it during and post a detonation to people and property amounting to millions and billions in monetary terms, which would effectively result in a case of a ‘war already won’ irrespective of retaliatory strikes taking place in response to the attack.

Maintaining a neutral doctrine which emphasizes a structured ambiguity in Indian nuclear thinking, which means a doctrine that doesn’t assert the tenets of either ‘No First Use’ or ‘First Use’ of nuclear weapons against threatening or static adversaries, will also go a long way in upscaling Indian nuclear paradigms. In this regard, nuclear strategists have long argued that India needs to plug the holes in its nuclear strategy by looking beyond nuclear deterrence. An active nuclear policy must rank India in at least the third position in regard to the possession of a vast nuclear arsenal of say 3,000 active and instantly deployable warheads – slightly lesser than half of what comprise American and Russian arsenals.

India’s Nuclear Arsenals: Figures Shrouded in Ambiguity

The numbers surrounding India’s nuclear and thermonuclear arsenals, consisting of both deployable and reserve warheads, are enveloped in secrecy. Figures ranging from 150 to at least 2,700 have done the rounds of the world wide web.

Several researchers have claimed that – outside the purview of ‘No First Use’ – India already maintains an arsenal of close to 2,000 nuclear weapons. At least 400 weapons in the nuclear inventory is recommended by many experts like Dr Bharat Karnard to considerably strengthen deterrence and, seemingly this has been addressed, as various research indicates India’s stockpile to at least 500 nuclear weapons.

That being said, for an open, inclusive and transparent democracy like India, the numbers obtained from India’s nuclear authorities are likely to be more viable despite the varying contours of confidential nationalism-based interests. The Stockholm-based SIPRI suggests that official numbers have received a spike of at least 10 nuclear weapons in 2020, while India’s geographical rivals in Pakistan and the Peoples’ Republic of China have augmented their stocks, too.

The total figures for the three South Asian rivals – presently on the brink of a two-front war owing to India’s limits to and growing intolerance of military excesses routinely committed by the dubious Pak-China duopoly in India’s northern frontier – stand at 156 for India, 165 for Pakistan, and 350 for China. The research on magnified figures as regards India’s nuclear material reserves is unofficial and may be subject to sensible scepticisms.

There are several reasons why India’s nuclear posture retains several cracks and isn’t extensive in its shape.

Firstly, the international relations theory of offensive realism has taken a backseat in its applicability and application to the desirable overhaul of India’s pre-emptive military strategies. Defensive defence – while having been a hallmark of many Asian countries – does not address the many security challenges that deserve offensive manoeuvring if, for example, India was to attempt to achieve territorial gains in occupied Kashmir. This would bring an end to many decades of prolonged conflict in the north Indian region.

A defensive strategy indicates a suicidal willingness to cast oneself permanently on the backfoot as regards the innumerable security challenges which have resulted in the thousands of unendurable deaths, unreported ones not counting, of Indian security personnel from all walks of the national security apparatus caught in the web of neighbourhood-driven terrorism, left-wing extremism, and emerging threats such as those posed by the vicious global terror behemoth named the Islamic State, or IS.

Secondly, India’s nuclear command lacks the professionalism and the techno-logicalities of the advanced nuclear commands of the world. This has resulted in a hurried centralisation of India’s nuclear discernment, without the development of structured mechanisms that involve more Indian civilian and military leaders, and nuclear, technical, and technological experts. While India has formally and publicly instituted a Command and Control (C2) structure, several top-secret backup structures may enforce a welcome opacity within the Indian nuclear edifice.

Fig. The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), Government of India
Source: Nautilus.org

The post of a Nuclear Security Advisor (preferably a top Government of India bureaucrat or advisor equipped with innumerable years of commendable work experience in the nuclear domain and a repertoire of educational credentials related to the nuclear sciences), to complement the existent and overburdened post of the National Security Advisor (NSA), should also be created. This would ensure that more directed, in-depth, and practicable expertise penetrates and transcends peripheral know-how, and apt attention is accorded to nuclear security as a robust pillar of India’s national security apparatus. The Nuclear Security Advisor can additionally be a post that is deemed to work as a bridge between the Nuclear Command Authority and the Strategic Forces Command.

The above is not a new phenomenon to the spectre of high-profile addendums to the upper echelons of Indian strategic decision-making. The Scientific Advisor to the Defence Minister of India is a post that was created through the fragmentation of the post of the head of India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation, who used to double-up as the Scientific Advisor.

Finally, India will not be able to project itself as a truly boundless and immaculate civilisation, an incredibly technologically advanced ‘middle power’, a credible, reliable, and regular power, or an immense military, economic, and geopolitical superpower without competing with the most advanced nations (mainly the US and Russia) on all fronts. This competition should be inclusive of (and keeping in mind the contemporary and ever-changing dynamics of warfare) the nuclear one.

An arsenal of over 3,000 nuclear weapons (with at least a somewhat comparable number of active warheads to nuclear powers such as Russia and the United States) will truly convey an intention to not just address the strategic implications and the apparent unpredictability of the Pakistan-China security enigma but even to, at some point in its evolving future, seek to provide security to fragile nations globally.

Some of the practical nuclear policies are the resumption of nuclear tests from India’s dedicated testing sites, domestic production or imports through trusted channels of fissionable material for weapons development, the development of thermonuclear weapons such as Hydrogen bombs to ensure that the nuclear inventory remains exhaustive, the active development, and production of low-yield battlefield/tactical nuclear weapons bearing a distinct possibility for first use and also to supplement the existing arsenal of high-yield ones.

More such policies would include the adoption of techniques such as indigenous and advanced versions of Soviet-style fail-deadly automatic nuclear response systems (called the ‘Dead Hand’) or the US’ AN/DRC-8 Emergency Rocket Communications System from the 1960s, and exploring the latest inventions and innovations in the field of nuclear warfare and adopting them for Indian nuclear arrangements are all encouraging steps that would go a long way in reinforcing India’s regional (and global) nuclear dictum.

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