Abstract
The draft Indian nuclear doctrine issued in August–for “public debate”–is unprecedented. In the 54 years of the Nuclear Age, no nuclear weapon state has ever released a preliminary doctrine in a manner expressly designed to inspire public debate and input.
And it has been debated. The response within India and beyond its borders has been spirited, extensive, and often critical. Widely castigated for the scope of the “minimum deterrent” it proposes–a U.S.-style triad, no less–the draft doctrine has been condemned as promoting a new arms race in the region; interpreted as rank electoral gimmickry by a beleaguered caretaker government; rejected by hawks as naïve because of its emphasis on no first use; and pilloried as evidence of delusions of grandeur by an impoverished nation.
Nevertheless, the draft doctrine represents the first attempt, however tentative, at articulating new thinking in Delhi regarding nuclear weapons. It attempts to make the case for nuclear deterrence while urging nuclear disarmament. Squaring that particular circle will be the principal challenge for all the nuclear weapon powers in the next century.
Paragraph 8.1 of the draft doctrine says that “Global, verifiable, and non-discriminatory nuclear disarmament is a national security objective. India shall continue its efforts to achieve the goal of a nuclear weapon-free world at an early date.”
Meanwhile, the preamble notes that some states have appropriated the right to retain nuclear weapons while denying the same capability to others. This is the basic underpinning of the NPT–the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which will come up for review in April. As before, India rejects that formulation as discriminatory at birth, and it has refused to become a party to the treaty.
Ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States, a signatory to the npt, retains about 2,300 nuclear warheads on alert–and thousands more in various states of readiness. Further, many nuclear powers, including the United States, reserve the “right” to use nuclear weapons to retaliate against a non-nuclear attack, conventional, chemical, or biological.
India does not assert that right. The draft doctrine is clear about India's commitment to no first use; it attempts to incorporate the rudiments of deterrence with the nation's historical opposition to nuclear weapons.
Like China, the only other nuclear weapon state committed to no first use, India is willing to absorb a first strike, should deterrence fail. This is a stance of considerable importance and–perhaps–risk. But if the world is to move toward nuclear disarmament, no first use is an inevitable first step.
Beyond that, the draft doctrine also says that India's weapons will not be on alert, a stable posture that many disarmament advocates urge upon the United States and Russia. India is the first state with nuclear weapons to formally articulate such a posture, although China's weapons are, de facto, not on alert.
India is also committed to maintaining highly effective conventional military capabilities that may ultimately lead to a dilution of the importance of nuclear weapons in national security doctrine. How India defines the contours of its nuclear and conventional military adequacy–and whether it will be able to afford it–is something the new government in Delhi will have to grapple with.
The draft doctrine attempts to harmonize contemporary selective nuclear deterrence with the Holy Grail of total nuclear disarmament. This is a slippery path and security planners everywhere are notorious for erring on the side of Cold Warstyle caution.
Nevertheless, the United States could do far worse than to seriously consider that India may be on the right track. One wishes that Bill Clinton, who oversees the world's most sophisticated nuclear arsenal, would seize the initiative with his own “new thinking” about nuclear weapons.
These weapons should be devalued; no first use should be universalized; and the nuclear weapon states–led by the United States–should gradually climb down the Cold War nuclear ladder.
It may be premature to suggest that there will be immediate converts to this way of thinking. But the seeds for nuclear abolition have been scattered for decades by many people and organizations throughout the world, including the government of India. Despite its current status as a nuclear weapon state, India's draft nuclear doctrine makes it clear that India is still an abolition state.