The constrained evolution of India’s nuclear doctrine since Pokhran II

This piece is part of the series, 25 Years Since Pokhran II: Reviewing India’s Nuclear Odyssey

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Since the 1998 nuclear tests, the India nuclear doctrine has undergone only minor changes, despite considerable pressure to initiate a shift. The subsequent analysis is only focused on the declaratory nuclear doctrine. In the initial iteration of the doctrine, which was also known as the Draft Nuclear Doctrine (DND) released in August 1999, the three central pillars of the DND were commitment to “Credible Minimum Deterrence (CMD)”, “No First Use” (NFU), and “punitive retaliation” (PR) against an adversary’s first use of nuclear weapons. Deterrence credibility, the weight of punishment to be meted out to an enemy, and nuclear restraint have been subject to considerable debate. In the initial years following the nuclear tests of 1998, changes in India’s nuclear doctrine were primarily occasioned by crises.

Kargil and after: India’s official nuclear doctrine 

Pakistan started the Kargil war with India, pushing through Pakistani soldiers disguised as militants to occupy vacant mountain heights and passes in Indian Kashmir. A combination of robust retaliatory action by Indian forces and international pressure evicted the Pakistanis from the heights of Kargil. Notably, prior to the release of the DND, the government settled on “adequate response” (ADR), which it supplanted with PR. This shift from ADR to PR was occasioned by the Kargil conflict fought between India and Pakistan in the months between May and July 1999. There was a further revision away from PR to “Assured Retaliation” (AR) in November 1999.

A combination of robust retaliatory action by Indian forces and international pressure evicted the Pakistanis from the heights of Kargil.

Post-Kargil New Delhi sought to bring more clarity to the weight of the punishment it would exact against nuclear adversaries. In 2003, the Government of India launched the Official Nuclear Doctrine (OND) replacing the DND. The OND, however, revised the weight of retaliatory punishment stating: “Nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage.” Beyond a massive response to a nuclear first strike, the OND also expanded on nuclear retaliation against first use of chemical and biological weapons by adversaries. During the five years since the atomic tests of 1998, the NFU remained a constant, whereas the retaliatory dimension of the doctrine underwent changes. These changes, which culminated in the OND, were again occasioned by another crisis—the Lashkar-e-Taiba attack against the Indian Parliament in December 2001, which precipitated a yearlong military mobilisation by India to coerce Pakistan into ceasing the use of terrorism as a state policy. Beyond a verbal assurance, Pakistan did not stop the practice of using terrorism against India.

Post-2003: Criticism of the OND becomes more vocal 

Post-2003, no Indian government has undertaken a revision of the nuclear doctrine despite multiple acts of aggression against the country, such as the 26/11 terror strikes against India’s commercial capital, Mumbai, and a whole series of terror strikes against Indian forces in Kashmir, especially the Pulwama suicide terrorist attack that killed 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel in February 2019. If anything, the Modi government responded to the latter terror attack with air strikes by the Indian Air Force (IAF) against the Jaish-e-Mohammad—the group that carried out the attack—terrorist training camp at Balakot in Pakistan. The government under Narendra Modi has retaliated with conventional and sub-conventional measures rather than engineer changes in India’s OND. However, a slew of critics have emerged for the government’s failure to address the three central pillars, namely: CMD, NFU and MR. The latter two tenets of the OND have especially come under sharp criticism. Critics have upbraided governments for them, whether the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) or the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led-National Democratic Alliance (NDA), be it under Atal Bihari Vajpayee or Narendra Modi.

The Modi government responded to the latter terror attack with air strikes by the Indian Air Force (IAF) against the Jaish-e-Mohammad—the group that carried out the attack—terrorist training camp at Balakot in Pakistan.

Critics see NFU as fundamentally “reactive”. Though they do concede some of the advantages for which NFU was adopted in the OND. Firstly, it obviates pre-emption, which would otherwise place considerable pressure on Indian decision-makers to carry out a nuclear First Strike (FS) in the heat of a crisis. Secondly, it helps India avoid the pitfalls of building a technologically advanced nuclear capability deployed on hair-trigger alert, which is a financially costly nuclear posture. Thirdly, the OND also conveys nuclear restraint to the world and India’s adversaries, bequeathing stability. Nevertheless, critics counter the imperative for an NFU, observing that it limits strategic space for Indian decision-makers in crisis situations where they run the risk of the adversary’s fait accompli, leaving them limited room to execute escalation-related measures. NFU is incredible because adversaries are unlikely to restrain or initiate the use of nuclear weapons to limit escalation in a geographically confined conventional war. Indeed, their purpose would be to do everything they can to limit or significantly constrain India’s capacity for escalation by decapitating India’s nuclear Command and Control (C&C) system in a First Strike (FS). Destroying India’s nuclear arsenal as much as possible would be the basic objective if the adversary is to conclude the “war on their terms”. This latter point brings us to the second key pillar against India’s OND—Massive Retaliation (MR). MR in the current OND was preceded by “Assured Retaliation” (AR) in the DND as noted earlier. AR was replaced by MR, which critics equally upbraided noting that it strains credulity for an adversary to wait for a massive retaliatory strike by India in response to FU. If anything, neither of India’s adversaries—the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) and Pakistan—are likely to be restrained in the first use of nuclear weapons when they face the certainty of a massive retaliatory second strike by India. Further, MR lacks credibility because it is fundamentally incompatible or inconsistent with CMD, which is the third key pillar in India’s OND. MR requires that India possess a significantly larger nuclear arsenal than what CMD would allow. In short, a numerically small Indian nuclear force that undergirds CMD cannot service MR; and the retaliatory punishment New Delhi could bring to bear, if any, against China and Pakistan’s nuclear FU would be negligible.

Conclusion 

In a nutshell, India’s OND is fundamentally a compromise document that evolved under constraints to reflect competing demands geared to meeting political requirements. Indian decision-makers have been averse to taking risks on nuclear doctrinal matters since the OND’s release in 2003. Despite all the crises and upheavals since the Pokhran-II nuclear tests, the OND’s purpose, as decision-makers under successive governments appear to have emphatically concluded, is to deter or prevent nuclear war and not to prevent terrorism or sub-conventional violence.

NFU is incredible because adversaries are unlikely to restrain or initiate the use of nuclear weapons to limit escalation in a geographically confined conventional war.

Finally, regardless of the stasis in India’s OND, the technological changes in India’s delivery capabilities are outpacing doctrinal change in the form of a confirmed sea-based nuclear capability (at least against Pakistan), which is growing stronger to meet the challenge posed by the PRC’s still superior nuclear forces; improved missile delivery systems that are canisterised, enabling reduced preparatory time for a nuclear launch; and stronger ground, space and air-borne Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities. Accompanying these technological shifts are organisational changes in the form of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC)—a tri-service organisation established in 2003 and vested with the task of training personnel; and managing, guarding and launching nuclear weapons under the strict Command and Control (C2) and orders of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA) led by the Prime Minister of India. Technological changes will remain the most visible and dynamic at least for the foreseeable future.

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Kartik Bommakanti is a Senior Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation

• International Affairs
• Nuclear Security
• China
• India
• Neighbourhood
• Pakistan
• Kargil war
• NUCLEAR DOCTRINE
• Official Nuclear Doctrine
• Pokhran-II
• technological changes

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