The hovering nuclear clouds

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The latest kerfuffle on the nuclear front has been stirred up by comments made last month by a Harvard faculty member of Indian origin at a conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. He opined that India has shifted or is shifting its nuclear doctrine from a retaliatory one to a one based on first-strike, which could well be in a preemptive mode. This means that India might well abandon no first-use, either soon as part of this shift or in face of provocation.

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Anticipating the shift, a back of the envelop calculation done in this column two years back had it that at least 50 weapons would require to be dropped for setting back Pakistan’s retaliatory capability.

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Presuming Pakistan manages to sneak in some of its own nuclear attacks timely and, later, its scattered nuclear forces fire off any remaining warheads in India’s direction, we could add some 20 nuclear strikes, not all of which will be impacting India since the early nuclear use by Pakistan might be in form of tactical nuclear weapons on its own territory against advancing Indian military columns. There would also be some knock-on detonations of Pakistani nuclear weapons subject to Indian strikes. Thus, we have a figure of about a 120 detonations, of which about a tenth could well be in India.

Though India would in this case receive strikes in the lower double digits, these might be tellingly directed at India’s nerve centers. 

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A rough estimate is that India can expect up to 10 nuclear incoming strikes from the Arabian Sea. Assuming DRDO manages to down 5 of these, an overall 15 impacts would be the price to pay for ‘wiping Pakistan off the map’ in George Fernandes’ unforgettable phrase.

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... assuming that two thirds of India’s strikes are airburst, about 25-30 Indian strikes will raise a dust, as would the 15 Pakistani bombs that manage to get through. Thus, we have a figure of about 45 mushroom clouds in the subcontinent, at least some of which would be in urban settings.

It is possible that given the dispensation currently in power in Delhi, there would be no compunction in eliminating Pakistan. Since the nuclear aftermath would provide an opportunity for gaining a firm grip over India, ostensibly to prevent chaos, there are incentives for a regime pre-disposed towards an authoritarian system.

Given this propensity, strategists would be well advised to think one-up. By selling first-strike as a doable proposition, they may end up with a political decision maker - with a self-belief in being a strong man and decisive - grasping the nettle.

How will this turn out?

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India could well manufacture a nuclear trigger in the form of a chemical attack on its forces – a’la Tongking Bay incident that brought the US directly into the Vietnam war. Recently in Syria, purported chemical weapons used by the regime led to the US missile strikes. Similarly, attribution of chemical attacks to Pakistan could open it up for pre-emptive nuclear retribution, with information warfare later cluttering the truth.

Clearly, South Asia is closer to a nuclear conflict than strategists care to let on. They need to take nuclear scaremongering more seriously, and so must the prospective nuclear decision makers.

Given all this, Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be apprised of the possible dangers.

Firstly, Modi would be wise to query the numbers. He should double the numbers of Pakistani warheads credited here as striking India’s solar plexus. It would take considerably more chutzpah than he needed to face the critics of demonetization.

Secondly, he could be arraigned for genocide, if not in front of the International Criminal Court – which India has in anticipation taken care not to sign up to – but in innovative global criminal tribunals set up for accountability.

Thirdly, even if Pakistan is history, the saffronites’ ‘Muslim problem’ would not have gone away. Not only would Pakistani refugees inundate the border-states but they would be a conduit for a jihadi, hybrid war.

In this nuclear era, what should matter to the decision maker is not what we can do to the  enemy but what the enemy could do to us.

The myth of ‘strategic restraint’

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In mid-2013, a group, referring to itself as ‘members of India’s strategic community’, brought out a press statement at their haunt, the Vivekananda International Foundation that read: ‘It is time that policies are devised that will impose a cost on Pakistan for its export of terror to India, and thus change the cost-benefit calculus of these policies and actions. A proactive approach by India towards Pakistan must be the order of the day, as it will yield us much better results than those garnered by policies of appeasement which have regrettably been pursued by us for years.’[1]

The group amongst which was Mr. Doval, current day national security adviser, has since captured the national security policy making establishment. The results are self-evident, with India’s Pakistan policy taking a final policy turn – after several ‘pirouettes’, in one apt phrasing. Today, if prime time strategists are to be believed, India is following a doctrine of strategic proactivism, jettisoning the strategic restraint of the preceding NDA and UPA periods.

The jury is still out on whether the shift is indeed as marked as its votaries shout about. After all, a set of ‘surgical strikes’ in wake of the Uri attack, are not qualitatively different from those India has reportedly engaged in over the years, dating back to Sharad Pawar’s stint at the defence ministry’s helm. Only, now India is acknowledging outright what it has been at all along, and, while doing so, noticeably couching its language so as to align its action with international law and with the tenets of limitation in the nuclear age.

There are two divergent inferences from this lack of shift: one that the strategic doctrine does indeed continue to be one of strategic restraint; and, two, that what passed for strategic restraint earlier was instead - unacknowledged and misinterpreted - strategic proactivism. Agreeing with the proactive strategy votaries, here a case is made that the second inference is more in accord with reality.

Contrary to the conventional  thinking, the argument here is that strategic restraint is a myth and that India instead has a healthier record of strategic proactivism, though kept well under wraps till Mr. Modi stepped up to unwrap it in the run up to a consequential round of elections in UP and Punjab soon.   

Those spearheading strategic restraint rummage the cupboard of history to make their case that India has been a power always imposed on by nefarious neighbours, particularly Muslims to its north west. This explains their reject of the last thousand year strategic history of the subcontinent as not quite ‘Indian’ since India’s strategic trajectory was not dictated by natives as much as foreigners, with Muslims settled in India for over half a millennium continuing to be regarded as foreigners, including the likes of southerner Tipu Sultan.

A reading of the introductory chapter to the book India’s Wars,[2] by a member of the – by all accounts - apolitical and secular military brass and on the faculty of an august institution that turns out its future higher commanders, informs as much. He writes that he is ‘inclined to look at the Mughals as foreigners who ravaged India.’ He finds the Haidar-Tipu sojourn in the Deccan as relatively short and therefore not worth including alongside the martial exploits of the contemporaneous Marathas and Sikhs to his dating of the origin of the modern Indian army. He chooses to miss out on an opportunity to rehearse the secular imagery - Ranjit Singh, a Sikh; the Peshwas, Hindus; and Tipu, a Muslim – keeping colonialism at bay. His wards at the National Defence College cannot exit its portals unscathed by such history telling. Since this mythology shall get wider as the Modi era firms in, it is best exposed sooner than later. 

The more popular discourse within strategic circles – reproduced in the book – is that India – ever the ‘good guy’ - has since Independence been on the receiving end of its neighbours. That it did go on to retake PoK in 1949, has left regaining it as the ‘unfinished business of Partition’ – a newly minted interpretation of the phrase used hitherto by its adversary. In 1962, instead of throwing in the towel, Nehru should have chased the Chinese back, and used air power to do so, since they would have been caught on the wrong side of the Himalayas in the fast approaching winter then.

In 1965, India should have proceeded with the war beyond its three weeks since Pakistan was exhausted. In this line of thinking, giving back Haji Pir later at Tashkent is the quintessential example of India’s softness. In 1971, India should have used the PoWs as pawns in getting Pakistan to give up its Kashmir obsession. In the various crises unleashed by mega terror incidents, India should have ‘taught Pakistan a (military) lesson’. That it has apparently finally followed their advice explains the loud cheers following the Uri riposte.

All this papers over India’s proactivism. In 1947, it was first off the military-blocks by refraining from signing the Standstill Agreement even as it interestedly watched the Maharaja borrow its proxies, the Patiala State forces, for operations in Kashmir. Later, the timely arrival of its regular army led to chasing the tribal invaders back to Uri. In 1962, its ‘forward policy’ prompted in some measure the Chinese invasion. In 1965, it pulled the rug from under Pakistan by stretching the war zone to include the Lahore front from Pakistan’s plan to keep it confined to Kashmir. It returned Haji Pir in order to incentivize the firming in the ceasefire line as a mutually acceptable finality. It vivisected Pakistan in a well thought through intelligence, diplomatic and military operation over the better part of 1971. It is foolish to sell the notion that it could have ignored its compulsions under the Geneva Conventions to keep Pakistani troops hostage to Pakistan signing on the dotted line giving away Kashmir. It was assertive all through the eighties, be it in Sri Lanka or internally in Punjab.

By the nineties, it rightly understood that it was in the nuclear age. Internally, it deployed its army to quell the insurgency in Kashmir and Assam. The claim that IK Gujral shut down the R&AW’s external operations itself suggests that these were well in hand; and it also needs noting that the Gujral doctrine of unilateral concessions to neighbors had one notable exception, Pakistan.

In wake of terror attacks, the consistent call in the Delhi-centric strategic community has been to militarily take down Pakistan a peg or two. The army came up with a doctrine to enable India to do so, Cold Start. India’s devotion of a proportion of its liberalization-expanded national cake to gain the wherewithal to do so, indicates strategic proactivism not of the immediate kind but a future oriented one. This does not in any way make it less ‘proactive’, at least not where it matters, in General HQ, Rawalpindi. Alongside, the several attacks on Indian consulates across the Durand Line, suggests that it checkmated Pakistan’s redoubtable ISI in its own backyard, Afghanistan. The insertion of the reference to Baluchistan by Pakistan to the meeting’s outcome as far back as in the Sharm es Shaikh meeting in 2009 indicates that Indian interests in Baluchistan are not particularly recent. Diplomatically, India not only de-hyphenated itself from Pakistan and got up close to the US, but has managed to distance the US from its ‘most allied ally’ Pakistan.    

It is apparent that India’s strategic postures and actions cannot easily be taken as strategic restraint. Instead, strategic restraint was not so much a misnomer, but appears to have been conjured to dull attention to India’s strategic moves. It helped justify the moves as resulting from neighbours ganging up to pose it a ‘two front’ problem. It obscured the security dilemma of its principal neighbour stemming from India’s low-profile strategic proactivism, including of the long-term kind.

Strategic restraint did involve keeping the military sheathed for good reasons, but being militarily restrained does not fully equate with strategic restraint, since strategy has several instruments at its command – intelligence, diplomacy, economic - all of which more than compensated for any military restraint. At tripling of the defence budget over this century cannot by any stretch qualify as military restraint either.

In effect, India has been strategically proactive for long, only now its people are being let in on the state secret. Acknowledging this is the first step back from the nuclear brink. Newly minted strategic proactivism entails not only going too far but also to be seen to be doing to. Against a Muslim red rag held by equally charged religious extremists, this is a sure recipe for nuclear disaster. Averting this requires, as the second step, adopting strategic restraint for real.

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[1] VIF, ‘Press Statement on India-Pakistan Relations by Members of India’s Strategic Community’,

http://www.vifindia.org/event/report/2013/august/09/press-statement-on-india-pakistan-relations-by-members-of-india-s-strategic-community

[2] Arjun Subramaniam, India’s  Wars: A Military History 1947-1971, New Delhi: Harper  Collins, 2016. 

Modi worsens India’s doctrinal muddle

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The current time on the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is set at three minutes to midnight. Had there been such a clock for South Asia, it would have oscillated between four and five minutes to nuclear reckoning.

However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s stopover late last year at Lahore on his return trip from Moscow had the potential to set a hypothetical South Asian Doomsday Clock back by a couple of minutes.

Even so, the terrorist attack on the Pathankot airfield demonstrates that the additional minutes gained between now and nuclear reckoning by the outbreak of India-Pakistan bonhomie may not be good enough.  

What needs to be done is clear: setting back the South Asian Doomsday Clock finally and for good. This would require bringing India’s emerging strategic doctrine i.e the organising principles and ideas on which national security and foreign policy are based  in sync with its military - defence and nuclear - doctrine.

The prime minister’s speech to the military brass gathered aboard INS Vikramaditya for the Combined Commanders’ conference provides a starting point for identifying the doctrinal disconnect that needs reconciling.

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Strategically, better relations are important from the point of view of South Asia being hostage to the success of the next set of would-be jihadis. For illustration, had the jihadis succeeded in destroying a few aircrafts on the Pathankot airfield, the fallout from the attack would have been markedly different.

Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor (NSA) forced on the back-foot by the controversial response, would have been left with little personal option than to recommend a hard response. An embarrassed government with little clue – judging from the ‘foot in mouth’ wrangle its defence and home ministers got it into following the Pathankot episode – would have seized war as the option, even if its foreign ministerruled that out only a fortnight ago.

Here Modi’s outlining of the military doctrine at the conference kicks in. He articulated it thus: “We need capabilities to win swift wars, for we will not have the luxury of long drawn battles.”

Little does Modi’s speech writer know that neither of these – ‘swift wars’ nor ‘long drawn battles’ – are in India’s interest. While long drawn battles are self-evidently unaffordable, ‘swift wars’ on that account are no more appealing, since wrapping up wars swiftly is easier said than done.

A potential scenario on the western front illustrates this. 

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If India generates a 1965 war like situation on the western front - in which its valiant forces actually crossed the Ichhogil Canal only to be called back - the denouement this time round would be different. It is unlikely that, Pakistan would give up the fight like it did in 1971.

It could instead be stampeded into hasty decisions. Pakistan’s foreign secretary has only last September officially let on that Pakistan would go nuclear with tactical nuclear weapons.

India’s possible nuclear response has been reinforced by Modi in his speech thus: “Our strategic deterrence is robust and reliable, in accordance with our nuclear doctrine, and our political will is clear.”

In effect, he promises retaliation will be in accord with India’s nuclear doctrine: ‘massive’ irrespective of the type of nuclear first use by Pakistan. Such an exercise of ‘political will’ by India’s Political Council of its Nuclear Command Authority would certainly be genocidal and since Pakistan has a lead on India in terms of warhead numbers, it would also be suicidal.

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The doctrinal disconnect has been brought out by the military advisor in National Security Council Secretariat, who writing in a Ministry of Defence think tank’s publication, Journal of Defence Studies (p. 61), says:

"If the nuclear shadow demanded war avoidance as a political outcome, the operational sphere attempted to keep alive the notion of victory despite the risk of mutual annihilation ... operational doctrines that are not nested in a realistic political context."

While it appears that Modi’s strategic doctrine is a product of his national security staff, he has inherited a military doctrine predicated on a ‘short war’. He acknowledges that there is much to be done. In his speech, he said, “we look to our Armed Forces to prepare for the future. And, it cannot be achieved by doing more of the same, or preparing perspective plans based on outdated doctrines....”

The problem is that his solution in the speech is based on ‘outdated doctrine’. The prime minister feels “our forces and our government need to do more to reform their beliefs, doctrines, objectives and strategies.” Rectifying the disconnect between strategic and military doctrines must be on in the busy Sardar Patel Bhawan, the site of the National Security Council Secretariat.

Clearly, India cannot resolve the doctrinal muddle alone, it has to do so in league with Pakistan. Doctrinal reconciliation is predicated on Modi keeping up the promise in his reference to “the NSA-level dialogue (designed) to bring security experts face to face with each other.” That the two NSAs met once again, this time in Dubai, is a positive sign towards this end.

Even so, Modi appears to hedge his bets. His caveat to his changed Pakistan policy is indicative: “we will test their intentions to define the path ahead ... But, we will never drop our guard on security and we will continue to judge progress on their commitments on terrorism.”

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Putting off foreign secretary talks suggests that India has not quite turned a corner. While Pakistan has taken action to rein in the Jaish-e-Mohammad it can be hazarded that its chief Maulana Masood Azhar would be back on the streets sooner than later, giving India another excuse to ease up on talks.

This is no way to push back the South Asian Doomsday Clock. Only doing so ensures that “the effort is worth it, because the peace dividends are huge and the future of our children is at stake.” There would be no future in case the next bunch of jihadis pushes the Clock across the midnight hour.

The Chennai floods and India’s strategic underside

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The floods in Chennai for a second time round bring home that our metropolises are quite incapable of withstanding disasters. If natural disasters continue to perplex the administration across the country, be it in Srinagar or Garhwal earlier, it can well be imagined what nuclear conflict aftermath would wreck. In Chennai, it took longer to react since the army was absent, with its Southern Command over at its winter manouvers, Exercise Drad Sankalp. Therefore, public interest is warranted and public interest a must, even in arcane issues of nuclear strategy.

Recent obituaries on the death of Sandy Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor, prompted a return to the Kargil War. Sandy Berger apparently defused an India-Pakistan nuclear crisis during the war, quite like another national security official, Robert Gates, had done once previously in 1990. Alongside, excerpts from an Indian war correspondent’s just released memoirs of the period also make a mention of the nuclear dimension to the conflict.

Reportedly, Brajesh Mishra went over to Europe to suggest Americans use their good offices with the Pakistanis to wind up their intrusions in Kargil, or else India would use all measures to evict them. The hint was that India may require crossing the Line of Control (LC) and, following its 1965 War footsteps, would not necessarily restrict itself to the LC sector. This could provoke a nuclear response from Pakistan, necessitating nuclear retaliation by India. The scenario impressed Clinton enough to persuade Nawaz Sharif to call back the Pakistani intruders. The rest as they say is history.

The Kargil War prompted a rethink in India at both levels: conventional and nuclear. However, there was a mismatch between the two. While at the conventional level, India went on to a proactive and offensive doctrine, at the nuclear level it promised ‘massive’ – city busting – nuclear retaliation. A conventional offensive could prompt a Pakistani nuclear counter, leading to reflexive escalation on India’s part that would insensibly put its own cities at risk.

This would have been sustainable in case the conventional offensive was made a remote possibility by measures such as meaningful talks over conflict triggers such as Kashmir. However, while the talks did get underway, as the then Pakistani foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri’s memoirs testify, they could not be sustained and eventually were derailed by Mumbai, 26/11.

The latest Exercise Drad Sankalp has all the hallmarks of nuclear dangers: ‘decisive manoeuvres by mechanized forces on ground in harmony with utilization of the Third Dimension (air power (added)) to ensure complete dominance of the battlefield.’ The highlighted phrases would tend to trigger Pakistan’s nuclear card, officially pointed out finally by its foreign secretary only this September.

The mention of ‘integrated theatre’ concept the finds mention in the press note suggests that the manouvers appear to be prepared for such an eventuality. What the phrase means is that even though the Pakistani frontage has three geographic commands arrayed, they are capable of fighting as one, as was the case in the 1965 War in which General Harbaksh Singh was the de-facto theatre commander. While in 1965, the war was brought to an end with General JN ‘Mucchu’ Chaudhuri pleading lack of artillery ammunition, the integrated theater concept also entails integrated logistics, implying that India could rely on its depth in resources to continue the war despite its going nuclear.

India is evidently still fighting the last war. Deterrence wonks would have it that this ability will strengthen deterrence by implying ‘escalation dominance’, an ability to prevail even if Pakistan goes nuclear and at any level of nuclear exchange(s). However, the Chennai floods bring home that this does not hold for the civilian front. It would be wishful to believe that the civilian front will remain unscathed in war.

The favoured scenario is of Pakistan setting off a few tactical nuclear warheads to thwart India’s mechanized forces. However, with its conventional forces continuing the war – an ability the military exercises underway testify – then it would be yet again bringing its cities under risk. Pakistan, once it has broken the nuclear taboo, will unlikely defensively restrict nuclear salvos to its own territory, hurting itself multiple times over in addition to suffering India’s retaliation. Therefore, India’s prolonging the war despite Pakistan’s introduction of nuclear weapons would open the way for nuclear escalation.

India needs instead to end war immediately on its going nuclear. This was the conclusion of India’s leading nuclear thinker, General Sundarji (Blindmen of Hindoostan, Delhi: UBS Publishers, p. 102) that now needs dusting and readying for doctrinal battle.

Nuclear hawks would have it that this plays into Pakistani hands, enabling that state to get away. India must instead be firm and resolved to inflict punishment. The problem with this argument is India needs to then, alongside, gain ability to withstand punishment. It is debatable whether any society can really ever do so, leave alone India.

As Mr. Modi lands by helicopter to address the military brass assembled for the combined commander’s conference on INS Vikramaditya mid-month, he needs reminding that India would end up as Churchill would have it - a geographic concept – in case India does not lead South Asia off the nuclear path.

His foreign minister’s visit to Islamabad for the Heart of Asia conference has set the stage for more than merely his visit to Islamabad for the SAARC summit. The two national security advisers’ secret meeting in Bangkok heralds a revival of the ‘back channel’. The two must ensure that ‘back channel’ they go beyond nuclear confidence building that is part of the up-front ‘comprehensive bilateral dialogue’ to arrive at a mechanism for nipping the nuclear genie right in the bud.

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