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The Rediff Special/Colonel Anil Athale (retd)

Indian nuclear doctrine: not a day too soon

The greatest fear throughout the Kargil conflict was a possible escalation to nuclear war. More than intelligence, military or political failure, the Kargil intrusion was a failure of Indian 'deterrence' vis-a-vis Pakistan. What the whole episode revealed was the extent to which Pakistan could go in order to annex Kashmir.

The National Security Board has indeed done a great service by putting together a draft and, what is even more praiseworthy, released it for debate before it is adopted.

For too long defence and security policy was treated as a holy cow and major decisions were taken behind close doors. This not only affected the quality of those decisions but also kept the people in the dark and India lost out on vital public support. An informed public opinion is the greatest asset of a democratic polity and the involvement of people in such crucial areas as nuclear doctrine is the right step.

It is true that the timing of the move has obviously been dictated, at least partially, by the forthcoming elections. But one cannot fault the Bharatiya Janata Party for wanting to take credit for its legitimate achievements. The opposition has been woefully wrong in taking a purely negative stance and only criticising the government without putting up any alternative formulations.

The draft has several salient points. While on the one hand it fully commits India to 'no first use' it also talks of a triad of land-based, sea-based and air-based system. The draft has totally skirted the issue of costs as well as strategic defence. But these obviously need further refinement and can be worked out. But at first reading, the statement that the Indian posture is not country-specific poses a dilemma.

Deterrence is an amalgam of psychology, threats of use of force and diplomacy to achieve political objectives without recourse to war. But deterrence is neither omnipotent nor omnibus. It is on the other hand issue- and country-specific. India had often publicly declared its lack of faith and non-belief in the strategy of deterrence.

It appears that the concept of deterrence is not understood well in India. In the classical approach, practised in India, use of force is the last resort to achieve political ends. Guns are the last argument of the kings! This is a sequential process with diplomacy as the first step and the armed forces making contingency planning and training to be ready for use should diplomacy fail.

As opposed to this, the concept of deterrence means a constant state of war. There is no division of period between planning and use. In the deterrence regime the threat of use of force is continuously brought to bear upon the deterred adversary. During the Cold War and deterrence phase of the United States-Union of Soviet Socialist Republic relationship, both the countries were in constant readiness to go to war instantaneously.

Thus for thirty years of the Cold War, at the level of threat, there was very little difference between an ordinary day and a crisis. Holding the adversary hostage was a factor constant to the deterrence regime.

Since deterrence is basically a product of capability plus intent, credibility is as important as physical capability. All means are used to constantly convince the adversary about one's will to use force. Successful deterrence thus means a fine tuning of ''all the activities of a nation'' to convince the credibility of use of force. This is a major departure from the past history.

The Indian national psyche is essentially defensive and reactive. The world as well as our potential adversaries perceive India as a 'soft state.' In the light of this the nation has a difficult task ahead to convince the world that it will indeed 'use' its nukes should the need arise. There is thus a huge credibility problem. Lack of political consensus on this issue has been increasingly evident after Pokhran II.

But by putting the issue of deterrence doctrine firmly on the national agenda, the BJP in a way has ensured that irrespective of the election results, the nation will have to make a decision on this vial issue. Atal Bihari Vajpayee has thus done a great service to the nation by bringing into the open the issue of national security. No future government will be able to backtrack on this major step.

Colonel Anil Athale (retd), a Pune-based defence analyst, is a former head of the War History division at the defence ministry.

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