A medium-level official of the US State Department suggested in a speech to the Confederation of Indian Industries that India should further define its minimum credible deterrent. The official would have done well to get some tutorials on the subject from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She has explained to the US Congress, even while praising India’s restraint, that the size of India’s arsenal would be determined by local dynamics.

India’s nuclear doctrine has two components that go together — no first use and a credible minimum deterrent. In traditional Western strategic thought nuclear strategy envisaged a first strike, deliberately aggressive, to disarm the adversary and thereafter a second strike capability after the adversary’s retaliation. The US and the Soviet Union were two nuclear weapon powers which could have wiped out civilisation several times over. Nuclear confrontation between them was a zero sum game. The conventional Western mind would have to rid itself of such cold war dogmas to understand India’s nuclear doctrine.

India, China and Pakistan are functioning in a world where there are two other far more powerful nuclear powers, which — if they so choose — are in a position to intervene and influence the nuclear exchanges among this lower order of nuclear weapon powers. Therefore these nations have to factor into their calculations the possibility of punishing interventions by the two foremost nuclear powers. The use of nuclear weapons by any nation is not in the national security interest of any nuclear power. The expectation by lower order nations, therefore, will be the possibility of intervention. The US Quadrennial Defense Review talks of the possibility of loss of control over weapons by a nuclear capable nation and of preparations to deal with such a situation. This kind of planning should make powers like Pakistan uncertain about the consequences of a first resort to nuclear weapons.

... contd.