India’s Nuclear Deterrence Must be Professionally Managed

Brig (retd) Gurmeet Kanwal 
(Visiting Fellow, VIF)

Forces by Verghese Koithara
(New Delhi: Routledge, 2012), 294 p, Rs. 795.

Review of Managing India’s Nuclear

India declared itself a state armed with nuclear weapons in May 1998 after the Pokhran tests. Despite the fact that almost 15 years have passed since then, the number of good books on the subject of managing India’s nuclear deterrence can be counted on the finger tips of one hand. This is partly because academics and strategic analysts find deterrence theory and the complexities of nuclear command and control too esoteric and partly because the Government of India has made no attempt to encourage such research. None of the government funded think tanks have thought it fit to conduct research on this issue. It is to the credit of Vice Admiral Verghese Koithara (Retd) that he has dared to enter what may be loosely termed as forbidden territory. In his book Managing India’s Nuclear Forces Admiral Koithara takes stock of the system in place for managing nuclear deterrence, carefully evaluates its efficacy and makes substantive recommendations to enhance its functionality.

India’s nuclear doctrine is built around a ‘no first use’ policy with ‘credible minimum deterrence’. In the interest of strategic stability, India is willing to absorb a ‘first strike’ and will launching punitive nuclear strikes in retaliation to cause unacceptable damage to the adversary if it is attacked with nuclear weapons. India’s nuclear weapons are political weapons meant only to deter the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons against India. It is clearly accepted in India that nuclear weapons are not weapons of warfighting. Hence, India has firmly rejected the use of tactical or theatre nuclear weapons – despite provocation from across its western border. However, India has not publicly demonstrated that it has done what it takes to ‘operationalise’ its nuclear deterrence. This is the essence of Admiral Koithara’s excellent book. In fact, he goes one step further to state that by keeping the armed forces out of the nuclear decision making loop, the authorities have actually undermined the credibility of India’s nuclear deterrence.

Both the NDA and UPA governments have tended to play down discussion of nuclear issues in the public domain. According to the strategic community grapevine, the late Brajesh Mishra, India’s first National Security Advisor (NSA), had issued an informal whip to the effect that no one in government will speak to the media about nuclear deterrence. No discussions or seminars have been held by the three Services to study issues like ‘targeting’ and deterrence breakdown that are in the military domain. Through various acts of commission and omission, successive governments have created the perception that acquiring nuclear weapons was an end in itself for power and prestige and that since nuclear weapons are political weapons and not weapons of warfighting, the barest minimum needs to be done to create nuclear forces that are robust and usable.

India’s nuclear signalling has been marked primarily by the routine flaunting of various models of Agni and Prithvi missiles at the Republic Day parade. No nuclear drills are known to have been held to ensure that the missile groups can deploy in a realistic time frame and that the warheads can be mated with the launchers in real time for early retaliation in the eventuality of a nuclear strike, even though some of these measures may have been practised in secret. Nuclear signalling is an extremely sophisticated art and India appears to have ignored this aspect completely. In view of these major shortcomings, India’s nuclear deterrence tends to lack credibility and is not taken seriously by either military adversaries or by the international community. India must demonstrate its resolve to use nuclear weapons if it ever becomes necessary through a carefully formulated process of signalling and must enhance the quality of its warhead and missile technology. The steps necessary to fully operationalise India’s nuclear deterrence must not only be taken early, but must also be publicly seen to have been taken – within the bounds of security of information and materials.

The author identifies and challenges the four tacit assumptions behind the lack of seriousness in operationalising India’s nuclear forces: that deterrence credibility can be established through technological demonstration; that nuclear force operations are largely a technical matter; that transition from general to immediate deterrence through alerting is not a very demanding exercise; and that force survivability is not a critical issue. He also mentions a fifth one: in a crunch situation the US will be there to call upon. He goes on to successfully demolish all of them through the force of logic.

Admiral Koithara focuses a sharp lens on the systemic weaknesses plaguing the management of India’s nuclear deterrence. He has stated that inadequacies in the management of nuclear forces have degraded India’s deterrence, “Not just by the inability to conduct operations in a safe and reliable manner, but also by revealing a lack of seriousness of purpose.” He bemoans the fact that the armed forces have been kept away from functional involvement in managing deterrence and asserts that, “Nuclear forces of every NWS are... closely controlled by the national leadership. But in every one of those countries, except India, these forces are managed by the armed forces under the supervision of the political leadership.” He points out that the command and control structure is patently flawed where even the Defence Minister is a peripheral figure in nuclear decision making. He recommends a return to the erstwhile Defence Committee of the Cabinet with the three Chiefs as permanent invitees.

India still does not have a Chief of Defence Staff to provide ‘single point military advice’ to the Prime Minister. The three Services Chiefs are members of the Executive Council of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) headed by the NSA and not of the Political Council of the NCA headed by the Prime Minister. As such, their inputs would reach the PM only indirectly in a moment of crisis. This system of isolation of the three Chiefs is unsuitable for long term nuclear planning. Though India has a Strategic Forces Command (SFC) for managing its nuclear forces, the C-in-C SFC reports directly to the NSA in practice and keeps the Chairman CoSC informed. Also, India does not have full fledged nuclear planning staff like Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division and nuclear planning is not seamlessly integrated across the ministries and the departments. The author writes, “Using inadequately prepared nuclear forces to generate deterrence will be similar to the inadequately-supported forward policy that India had adopted along the Tibet border in 1959.

This remarkable book would have been much richer if the author had taken stock of Pakistan’s unbridled for additional fissile material beyond its legitimate needs and its quest to acquire tactical nuclear weapons like the 60-kilometres range Hatf 9 (Nasr) missile, which is inherently destabilising, and its efforts to tip its cruise missile Babur with nuclear warheads. The lack of serious confidence building and risk reduction measures between the two countries has also not been covered, nor has India’s long standing support for total disarmament been addressed. However, no book can cover the entire nuclear landscape.

This book must be read by all personnel of the armed forces, particularly the senior officers. It must be prescribed reading for the Higher Command courses of the three Services. It must also be read by the political leaders, scientists and bureaucrats or technocrats who are involved in national security decision making and managing India’s nuclear forces.

Prepare Against Pakistan Nukes

Satish Chandra 

Distinguished Fellow,VIF

The rapidity of Pakistan’s nuclear weaponisation in recent years has been under constant scrutiny in the United States and has been well-documented in articles in the ‘Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Nuclear Threat Initiative’ as well as in numerous reports of the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Regrettably, this does not appear to have been the subject of as much independent analysis and comment in India as in the US despite the fact that Pakistan’s nuclear weapon programme is clearly India-centric. Accordingly, the CRS’ latest report of June 26, 2012 titled ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues’ merits attention.

Addressing widespread apprehensions, particularly in the US, about the possibility of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the hands of jihadi elements, the report tends to suggest that Pakistan has put in place adequate security systems to obviate such a development. It, however, concedes that ‘the collapse or near-collapse of the Pakistani government is probably the most likely scenario in which militants or terrorists could acquire Pakistani nuclear weapons’. It may be recalled that much the same point had been made by former president Prevez Musharraf. The attacks by jihadi forces with inside help on Pakistani military bases, most notably at the Mehran Naval Base in May 2011 and recently at Kamra, would suggest that the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of militants is much higher than the CRS report would have us believe.

Significantly, the report places the Pakistani nuclear warhead stockpile at 90-110 as against 60-80 for India and suggests that vigorous moves are underway in order to effectuate a ‘quantitative and qualitative improvement in Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal’.

These assertions echo those made in a 2011 Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris report published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which inter alia said that Pakistan has the world’s fastest growing nuclear stockpile and at current rates of expansion its 90-110 warheads could, over the next 10 years increase to 150-200 warheads; its stockpile of highly-enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium, as estimated by the International Panel on Fissile Material in 2010, were sufficient to produce 160-240 warheads; its current rate of production of fissile material is sufficient to produce 10-21 nuclear warheads annually. This capability will be enhanced as it is building two new plutonium production reactors and an additional plutonium reprocessing facility; its two squadrons of F16 A/B aircraft with a range of 1,600 kms have for long been earmarked for delivery of nuclear bombs. In March 2011 a new squadron of F16 C/D was also acquired for this role; it has three operational ballistic missiles: the Ghaznavi (Hatf-3, range under 400 kms), the Shaheen (Hatf-4, range over 450 kms) and the Ghauri (Hatf-5, range over 1,200 kms). In addition, it has three other ballistic missile systems likely to see early induction notably the Shaheen II (Hatf-6, range over 2,000 kms), the Abdali (Hatf-2, range 180 kms) and the Nasr (Hatf-9, range 60 kms). Pakistan is also developing two nuclear capable cruise missiles namely the ground launched Babur (Hatf-7, range 600 kms) and the air/sea launched Ra’ad (Hatf-8, range over 350 kms).

Unlike India, Pakistan does not have a ‘no-first-use’ policy and not only is its nuclear arsenal India-specific but also the threshold for its use is disturbingly low. This is corroborated by Pakistan’s focus on short range nuclear capable ballistic and cruise missiles. One may also refer to the interview given to the Landau Network, an Italian arms control organisation, in January 2002, by General Khalid Kidwai, the director general of the Strategic Plans Division of the National Command Authority of Pakistan wherein he indicated that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were ‘aimed solely at India’ and would be used against it if India attacked Pakistan and conquered a large part of its territory, or if India destroyed a large part of either its land or air forces, or of India sought to strangle Pakistan’s economy or if India attempted to destabilise Pakistan’s polity or created large-scale internal subversion.

The rapidity of Pakistan’s India-centric nuclear weaponisation, the low threshold at it which it is likely to resort to a nuclear attack, its propensity to military adventurism, and its readiness to act as China’s cats paw, makes it incumbent upon us to ensure that the credibility of India’s nuclear deterrent is never in doubt. This calls for speedily undertaking a host of measures. India should think of enhancement and upgrade of its nuclear weapon arsenal with a view to inflicting unacceptable damage simultaneously on both Pakistan and China as they may well act in collusion. This would call for a nuclear warhead arsenal running at least into the low hundreds that can be launched from air, land and sea both by surface craft and submarines. Land-based missiles should be mobile and located in camouflaged and hardened shelters. A sufficiently large, diverse, and survivable nuclear arsenal is essential in order to deter an enemy from contemplating the resort to a nuclear attack.

The creation of a chief of defence staff in order to provide 24/7 leadership, guidance and oversight to our strategic forces command and to ensure the speedy development of an effective nuclear force must be done. Fail-safe procedures for the effective deployment and operation of our nuclear deterrent in all situations should be established. Alternative chains of command should me made fully functional so as to ensure an element of automaticity in the effectuation of a prompt and devastating retaliatory nuclear strike in the event of decapitation of our nuclear command authority.

Importantly, our ‘no first use’ policy needs to be tweaked by suggesting that if India is subjected to a nuclear attack by a country aided by a nuclear weapon state it would not merely react with nuclear weapons against the country, which initiated the attack, but may also do so against the abetting nuclear weapon state. Hopefully such a move may cause China to refrain from such collusive action with Pakistan and perhaps even induce it to act as a restraining influence on it.

Finally, the fact that India’s nuclear arsenal is being assiduously nurtured and that India has the political will to use it needs to be clearly signalled. The former can be achieved by holding regular meetings of the nuclear command authority and publicising the same as also the upgrade of our nuclear arsenal. The latter would be automatically signalled if we are uncompromising in addressing all security-related issues with firmness and despatch.