London: At the same time, the paradox of India’s no-first-use doctrine is that the logic of its geopolitical situation militates against its credibility. Quite clearly, the likeliest “existential threat” to India before its nuclear tests in 1998 was a joint China-Pakistan conventional assault. Such a military confrontation might have posed compelling challenges and serious setbacks, even a threat to major Indian cities, which could not have been ruled out a priori. This is the pressing window of vulnerability in relation to a massive conventional attack against it that Indian nuclear deterrence strategy sought to address.

This is also precisely why India’s no-first-use doctrine is not entirely credible from a Chinese perspective and indeed from a Pakistani one as well, since its armies could conceivably achieve a breakthrough in a joint conventional assault with China. In this case, both China and Pakistan would anticipate a possible Indian nuclear response, which is exactly the purpose of its nuclear arsenal. In addition, India’s nuclear weapons’ status insures against nuclear blackmail of the kind China employed against Taiwan by launching nuclear-capable ballistic missiles in 1996. Similarly, cruise missiles are routinely used by the United States to achieve political goals.

Nevertheless, India’s no-first-use promise, emanating from its highest political leadership and underpinned by societal consensus, does signal some reassurance to Pakistan against a calculated pre-emptive Indian nuclear strike against it. Such a situation posits a measure of stability that is especially important in the context of uncertainty over the operational control and safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. And it is this stability that is reinforced further by the existence of mutual protocols that minimize the dangers of uncertainty and misunderstanding in a generally tense relationship. The importance of a hotline cannot be overestimated even in the knowledge that it may be misused by Pakistan to pursue its own tactical goals against India.

In addition, the Indian quest for an anti-ballistic-missile shield appears to undermine stability and will likely create greater scope for misperception and accidents. In any case, an anti-ballistic-missile shield is vulnerable to being overwhelmed by a larger number of offensive nuclear missiles it induces an adversary to acquire. In fact, the Indian attempt to develop such an anti-ballistic-missile shield has already prompted Pakistan to acquire more and varied warheads and missile capabilities. A tangential issue is the rapid advance, despite technical difficulties, of a United States’ national missile defence capability that will almost certainly be deployed against any unilateral resort to nuclear weapons by a third party. India may be an inadvertent beneficiary, but cannot base its own deterrence policies on it.

However, the existence of an Indian anti-ballistic missile capability will prompt the possible concurrent Pakistani deployment of nuclear weapons for use in battlefield situations. It will also involve wider participation in decision-making authority to launch and jeopardizes Indian security. The response that India will not distinguish between battlefield tactical nuclear-weapon use and a strategic assault does not carry conviction. It was the implausibility of the threat of “massive retaliation” that led to the evolution of “graduated” and “flexible” response in the superpower deterrence context.

The point is to deter through credible threats but avoid instability. All unilateral initiatives need to searchingly anticipate the reaction and behaviour of adversaries in order to forestall a worsened security outcome. The dilemma between credible threats to deter and avoidance of instability cannot be fully resolved, as the history of nuclear deterrence has amply demonstrated. In the India-Pakistan and India-China deterrence equation, radical solutions may be required to curb Pakistan using mutual deterrence to sponsor repeated terrorist attacks against India.

The first option to be exercised is intervening inside Pakistan to impose acute costs for terrorist activity on Indian soil. This policy existed before the 1990s and was subsequently and inexplicably downgraded by India. The threat of a spiral in such a retaliatory proxy war of intervention does exist, but will be more costly for Pakistan to absorb.

Much more dramatically significant will be to treat the China-Pakistan nuclear threat as the product of a single, seamless source since the warheads and missiles originate in China. China also retains potent influence over any Pakistan temptation for their use against India. Let Beijing consider if India will indeed be provoked to behave “irrationally” and attack Chinese cities in the event of the loss of its own. But India’s “second-strike” capability must achieve invulnerability before such an escalating factor is introduced into the equation, in order to deter a possible Chinese nuclear threat, in the interim, against it during India-Pakistan crises.

All it requires is a public discussion, without government involvement, by retired senior military officers and their bureaucratic counterparts to convey an earnest message of a dire possibility that will be hard to dismiss. During the Cold War, a similar threat was in play against the Soviet Union, which may not have found credible that the United States would endanger its own territory to punish a conventional Soviet assault against Western Europe. The United States posture was to suggest that in such a situation a rational calculation should not be taken for granted because the United States might indeed launch a retaliatory strategic nuclear assault against Soviet Russia.

A variety of steps might be taken through purposive acts to fortify Indian deterrence credibility in the light of its understandable caution during the Kargil War and during Operation Parakram. The first on-going endeavour is to attain the invulnerable “second-strike” capability of a triad, which remains urgent. Measures like evacuation drills in major cities, advertised in advance, with foreign observers present to prevent misperception, may be contemplated. On a related question, it needs to be recognized there is no satisfactory way of signalling Indian nuclear deterrence resolve while it simultaneously reinforces conventional forces against China, which implies a contrary intention.

India has some advantage as a status quo power and sufficient conventional defence preparedness may suffice to impose dissuasive costs on enemy incursion into its territory. Newer technologies on stream create the possibility of decimating incoming armies, armour and aerial power, without the need to escalate threats. Indian economic growth and success can underpin such a military posture within a relatively short span of time. Finally, the deployment of Indian nuclear assets should be re-examined immediately by a new government in the aftermath of revelations by Sanjaya Baru that files of the prime minister’s office were shared with the Congress president and her advisers. It cannot be assumed that India’s most vital secrets have remained secure.