That India's No First Use policy is under threat of the axe in any future review of the nuclear doctrine is apparent from the election time controversy over the mention of a nuclear doctrinal review in the manifesto of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The reference - subsequently toned down - was possibly an attempt by the conservative party to live up to its image as a strategically assertive replacement of the Congress Party.
No First Use Nuclear Policy.pdf
No First Use (NFU) is taken as among the cardinal principles of India’s nuclear doctrine; the others being “credible” and “minimum”.1 Even as developments in India’s deterrent posture, specifically, in the number of warheads, its variegated missile capability and operationalisation of the deterrent, have led to the “credible” potentially superseding the “minimum”, the NFU is also seemingly under threat of eclipse. This is best evidenced by the recent controversy that attended the release of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) manifesto promising to “revise and update” India’s nuclear doctrine. While the manifesto did not anticipate which pillars of the doctrine would face the axe, the very mention led alert nuclear commentators to pre-emptively pitch for continuation of India’s NFU.2
The reaction was prompted by BJP functionaries initially alluding to the NFU as a prospective area of change.3 The BJP probably was reacting to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s call at a Pugwash-Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) conference in New Delhi for adoption of NFU as a new “global no-first-use norm”.4 Since the speech was the government’s swan song on nuclear matters, it is possible that the BJP was reluctant to have its strategic space tied down by the Congress-led administration’s last minute initiative. In the event, the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, seemingly in response to the criticism in strategic circles,5 put a lid on the topic by maintaining that he would give NFU credence since it had the imprint of the BJP stalwart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose moderate image he, Modi, was emulating during the electoral campaign under way.6
1998 Playback?
While a review by itself is unexceptionable, the concerns voiced in wake of the manifesto owed in part to the precedence of the reference in the BJP manifesto of March 1998 to a strategic review including India’s nuclear path. Then, the nuclear tests of May 1998 took the world by surprise by short-circuiting the promised strategic defence review.7 Therefore, the BJP’s utterance set off a small storm in strategic circles. Consequently, the BJP, having gained mileage as a party attuned to national security, but wanting to project a sober image on that score, has stepped back.
Nevertheless, the contretemps indicates the shadow over NFU. While NFU in the declaratory doctrine is useful, it is more important that the posture must itself be evident in the operationalisation of the deterrent. There are apprehensions that developments in nuclear technology and direction of operationalisation make NFU less than credible. The problem this gives rise to is that it would make nuclear trigger fingers itchy in case the recurrent “push” of subcontinental crises comes to a conventional war “shove”.
NFU was first broached in the strategic context of thinking in the 1960s on whether India should go nuclear. Writing anonymously in the late 1960s the writer, possibly K Subrahmanyam, then director of programmes at IDSA, advocated a push for delegitimising nuclear weapons use.8 The measure to this end was to be an NFU treaty for all nuclear powers, requiring their combined response to any breach of the treaty by any nuclear power. It is notable that four decades on the prime minister’s Pugwash-IDSA speech reiterates this idea of a multilateral framework by all nuclear weapons possessing states.
Today, Shyam Saran, currently head of the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), in his “Subbu lecture” in April 2013 in honour of late K Subrahmanyam, describes India’s NFU thus: “…India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but that if it is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on the adversary.”9 This formulation echoes the Draft Nuclear Doctrine put out by the 1998-99 edition of the NSAB that had been chaired by Subrahmanyam which stated NFU as: “India will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail” (para 2.4).10
While seemingly straightforward, ambiguity crept in with the Draft adding a caveat: “India will not resort to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against States which do not possess nuclear weapons, or are not aligned withnuclear weapon power” (emphasis added to its para 2.5).11 The intrusion of the caveat referring to nuclear use against a non-nuclear state aligned to the hostile nuclear power also contradicted India’s “unqualified” negative security assurance further down in the Draft (para 8.2). In effect the caveat qualifies both the NFU and the negative security guarantee.
Past Caveats
The NFU in the 2003 official nuclear doctrine is phrased as: “A posture of ‘No First Use’: nuclear weapons will only be used in retaliation against a nuclear attack on Indian territory or on Indian forces anywhere” (para 2 ii). However, NFU was yet again with a caveat, specifically: “…in the event of a major attack against India, or Indian forces anywhere, by biological or chemical weapons, India will retain the option of retaliating with nuclear weapons” (para 2 vi). This can be attributed to the influence of global strategic culture with India emulating the US which had stated something similar in the run up to the Iraq War II.12 It bears noting that a decade on, Shyam Saran in his lecture retains this caveat, stating that nuclear retaliation would be against use of “such” weapons, meaning weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons.
These caveats suggest a discomfort with NFU. This is best evidenced by psychological slips such as the national security advisor’s gaffe in his 2010 address to the National Defence College (NDC) fraternity at its golden jubilee. He worded NFU as: “No first use against non-nuclear weapons states”.13 Vipin Narang, a knowledgeable nuclear watcher, dismissed this as insignificant, stating, “the most plausible explanation is that the NDC formulation was simply the product of an innocent typographical or lexical error in the text of the speech”.14 The point is telling slips like this are one way to gain a measure of India’s nuclear policy.15
Adversaries are surely alert to these. They also no doubt listen in on the debates within the strategic community where there are strong voices for jettisoning NFU altogether.16 Karnad argues that attempting to fashion a counter strike after receiving a debilitating first strike may be too much to expect from an India that even faces problems from the monsoons. This would be inevitably so for any country on the receiving end of a first strike attempt. However, first strike – the attempt to degrade enemy counter strike ability – is not the only manner of first use. Therefore, a counter strike is very much possible. Recognising this enables preserving the utility of NFU.
Currently, NFU suits India strategically since there is little incentive for India to use nuclear weapons. The Draft of 1999 had required India to maintain “highly effective conventional military capabilities” in order to raise “the threshold of outbreak both of conventional military conflict as well as that of threat or use of nuclear weapons” (para 2.7). There is an internal contradiction in this requirement. India’s conventional strength when leveraged by its limited war doctrine has led to Pakistan’s lowering of the nuclear threshold.
Pakistan’s Approach
For Pakistan, nuclear weapons are also meant to deter conventional war, in the fashion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in the cold war era. This is distinct from India’s concept that these deter not war but nuclear weapons, as was articulated most recently by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at his IDSA address, thus: “that the sole function of nuclear weapons, while they exist, should be to deter a nuclear attack.” Being at variance conceptually, Pakistan has emulated the NATO in its induction of the Nasr,17 a tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) to attempt checkmate India’s “Cold Start”.
Raising the threshold entails getting Pakistan to accede to NFU. It is possible that India’s efforts since the early 1990s in this direction are prompted by this need. Since Pakistan has studiously avoided such commitment, India may be using the threat of abandonment of NFU as last ditch pressure to get Pakistan to sign on. In a hark back to the 1994 non-papers by J N Dixit, then foreign secretary, one of which was on NFU,18 most recently India reiterated the NFU in Saran’s offer that stated, “An agreement on no first use of nuclear weapons would be a notable measure….” His warning alongside of “inexorable” escalation, yet another hangover from the Subrahmanyam era, is to use India’s doctrine of “massive” nuclear retaliation to bring to bear on Pakistan the dangers stemming from introduction of nuclear weapons into a conflict. Since the threat held out first in the 2003 official nuclear doctrine has not worked, perhaps India is using NFU abandonment as a pressure tactic.
Pakistan, by not adhering to NFU rules in “first use”, thereby, worries India. This brings to the fore the option of “first use” for India since Pakistani first use preparations may prompt pre-emptive nuclear strike thinking on India’s part. Among the implications is a jettisoning of the NFU policy. Arguably this is when NFU would be most needed, so as not to be stampeded into nuclear decisions by possibly false or misleading intelligence of Pakistani preparations. Also, a display of nuclear preparation will form part of nuclear signalling during conflicts. An NFU can tide India through, with the risk being worth bearing.
For India that “credible” supersedes “minimum” is already apparent.19 It is in the middle of demonstrating technological capability in all dimensions: missile defence, nuclear submarines, submarine launched ballistic missiles, multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles, ballistic missiles, command and control measures such as the national command post, warheads ranging from 200Kt to sub kiloton levels, cold tests, silo based and mobile delivery systems, miniaturisation, military surveillance and communication satellites, etc. Though a step behind in numbers, it has the capacity for a warhead surge, given that it has over eight tonnes of reactor grade plutonium that can also be used to fashion warheads.20 The surveillance capability and the number of warheads it could reach when combined with the missile defences and an invulnerable nuclear submarine-based second strike capability enable a potential first strike capability. This by definition has a negative implication for NFU.
Assertion of Strategic Culture
The impending review is seen politically as an expression of India’s strategic culture that has been overly restrained. This is taken as emboldening India’s adversaries. Fashioning of a new strategic culture has been underway over the past quarter century involving a move towards an assertive India that is not averse to proactive and offensive deployment of military power. The NFU has faced attacks from the segment of strategic community so inclined.
Though the NFU is important to retain so as to prevent the aggressive subculture in India’s strategic culture from gaining an upper hand, this subculture is likely to be energised with the possible advent of the BJP in government. The last time it was at the helm it moved India’s strategic culture further towards assertion, best exemplified by its banging its way into the nuclear club. This time round it would likely want to make similar waves since its leader, Narendra Modi, may wish to project his “56 inch” chest. The NFU policy is a readily available issue that also provides an opportunity for adherents of the assertive subculture to take over the reins of strategic policy and the dominant position in the strategic community. Declaring NFU void will be a consequential signal to Pakistan that India means nuclear business.
India’s NFU pledge is therefore in an existential crisis. While the BJP may not abandon NFU since escalation dominance capability is not quite in place yet, a review is certain since India’s nuclear doctrine saw two iterations in the party’s last tenure as against none during the Congress reign and the changed circumstance since its adoption entail review. Since there are two potential areas of changeover – a distancing from “massive” nuclear retaliation and the NFU – it is possible that both may be done simultaneously. In order to keep deterrence on an even keel, a step back from “massive” nuclear retaliation can be compensated by abandoning NFU. What needs doing alongside is reminding the nuclear establishment that even if NFU does not figure in the declaratory doctrine, it could continue to inform the operational doctrine. This will preserve the one element that could preserve south Asia from a nuclear fate brought on by Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling’s conceptualisation famously put as: “He thinks we think he thinks…he thinks we think he will attack; so he thinks we shall; so he will; so we must.”21
