India’s Nuclear Weapons: Symbolic or Strategic…or Neither?

Whether it was December 2001 or November 2008, the Government of India did not respond militarily to terrorist strikes within the country, even when evidence of Pakistan’s involvement was available. The question is why? According to the Government of India, the country as a responsible state did not want to escalate a nuclear crisis in the region. This leads to an interesting juxtaposition of nuclear realities in the region: India cannot avenge a terror strike on it soil because it might prompt Pakistan to use nuclear weapons. But Pakistan can continue its strategy of ‘bleeding India by a thousand cuts’ without any fear of India’s nuclear capability. Vipin Narang has a carefully calibrated explanation for this discrepancy in his paper on “Pakistan’s Nuclear Posture: Implications for South Asian Stability.”

[Picture Courtesy: IBN Live]

According to Narang’s analysis, Pakistan deters Indian conventional action through two complementary mechanisms: (1) the threat of authorized nuclear first use in a conventional conflict at some unspecified, but relatively early, threshold; and (2) the “mad-man” mechanism wherein a lower-level military commander decides to take matters into his own hands and release nuclear weapons at a threshold earlier than the NCA may otherwise enforce.
Technically speaking, India’s nuclear posture can be characterized as assured retaliation, whereby India essentially seeks to employ the threat of nuclear weapons to deter aggression but operationalizes weapon systems only for retaliatory strike. India’s nuclear posture is characterized by ‘no-first use’ (NFU) policy. Indian Army chief General Deepak Kapoor had suggested in September last year that India should revisit the NFU option.
Pakistan on the other hand adopts a ‘catalytic’ and ‘asymmetric escalation’ posture. A catalytic nuclear posture, according to Narang, relies on an ambiguous nuclear capability aimed at “catalyzing” third-party—often U.S.— for military or diplomatic assistance to defend the state by threatening to unsheathe its nuclear weapons and escalate a conflict should assistance not be forthcoming.  Asymmetric escalation posture is geared for the rapid (and asymmetric) first use of nuclear weapons against conventional attacks to deter their outbreak, operationalizing nuclear weapons as usable war fighting instruments. Simply stated, Pakistan’s threat to use nuclear weapons even if India engages in conventional warfare raises the risk of nuclear war in the region, keeping the U.S. on its toes.
Narang’s analysis reminds me of Karsten Frey’s comment in his book India’s Nuclear Bomb and National Security: “Nuclear weapons were not developed to satisfy India’s strategic needs, but the other way around.” Given the MAD (mutually assured destruction) aspect of nuclear weapons, India was not expected to use these; its strategic worth lay in deterring attacks on India, an objective that remains unfulfilled. Karsten is perhaps right in asserting that India’s decision to go nuclear had more symbolic worth (quest for global power status) than strategic value (in terms of national security). This assessment leaves us with two questions: 1) Have the 1998 nuclear tests enhanced India’s power status in the community of nations? Example of the Indo-U.S. Civilian Nuclear agreement can be cited to put forth an affirmative reply. There are several factors that made this deal possible and the nuclear tests cannot be cited as a causatic factor in this context. 2) National security continues remain a challenge, especially terrorism. A political solution between India and Pakistan is unlikely, a strategic solution is untenable; what are India’s options?