NEW DELHI – The Shakti series of underground tests 20 years ago were thelast, stifled, hurrah of the Indian nuclear weapons programme. Stifledbecause the thermonuclear device tested on May 11, 1998 was a dud, and thelast hurrah because the weapons unit at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,Trombay, thereafter, went into eclipse, its best and brightest abandoningit. After all, what scientific and technological challenge is there whenthere are no advanced fission, fusion and tailored-yield armaments todesign and develop?
Worse, official Indian thinking on deterrence is contradictory. Mired inminimalism, it has relied on threats of “massive retaliation”. Thismandates responding with a large number of nuclear bombs to dissuadePakistan from nuclear “first use” and, therefore, an extensive nucleararmoury of our own. So, the nuclear deterrent cannot be “minimum”.
The confused nuclear milieu has been obtained by the Indian governmentunder three prime ministers — Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh andNarendra Modi. With the ‘no testing’ pre-condition of the 2008 nuclear dealwith the United States in mind, it has decided that, the country’sstrategic arsenal is perfectly adequate now and in the future with just the20 kiloton (KT) weapon/warhead, the only tested and proven weapon in theinventory.
Also, under American pressure, the Indian government has put the brakes onthe 12,000km-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) project andthe testing of the indigenous MIRV (multiple independently-targetablere-entry vehicles) technology to launch several warheads from a singlemissile that’s been available for the last 15 years.
In this period, countries who prize their strategic security acceleratedtheir capability build-up. North Korea shrugged off US pressure, answeredAmerican bullying with brinkmanship of its own, successfully tested atwo-stage 250-350 KT hydrogen bomb, for good measure acquired the HwasongICBMs able to hit US cities, and silenced US President Donald Trump.
Nearer home, Pakistan, ahead of India with 130 nuclear weapons/warheads andcounting, boasts of the most rapidly growing nuclear arsenal. It has four50MW weapon-grade plutonium (WgPu) producing reactors operating in Khushab.
Meanwhile, India has yet to build the second 100MW Dhruva WgPu reactorsanctioned in the mid-1990s. North Korea and Pakistan programme run byChina which guarantees that Islamabad too will brandish thermonuclearweapons of Chinese provenance.
Delhi eschews anything similarly disruptive (like nuclear missile-armingVietnam) because our leaders are more intent on polishing the country’sreputation as a “responsible power” and winning plaudits from the US forshowing “restraint” than in advancing national interest.
So, the country’s strategic options end up being hostage to the interestsof foreign powers. India’s do-nothing policy has eroded its relativesecurity, and its stature in Asia and the world as a strategicallyautonomous and independent-minded country.
India can recover its strategic policy freedom by taking several steps. Itshould fast forward the second Dhruva military reactor and ICBMdevelopment, and test-fire the MIRV-ed Agni-5s.
In lieu of nuclear testing, which Indian prime ministers have not resumed,two things need to be done to configure and laboratory-test sophisticatedthermonuclear weapons designs. The laser inertial confinement fusionfacility at the Centre for Advanced Technology, Indore, needs to berefurbished on a war-footing, and a dual-axis radiographic hydrodynamictest facility constructed.
As regards the software of hard nuclear power, the nuclear doctrine has tobe revised — something promised in the BJP’s 2014 election manifesto.Without much ado, the newly-founded Defence Planning Committee shouldrework the doctrine to stress flexible response, with ambiguity enhanced bypublicising the fact of doctrinal revision and the jettisoning of the “nofirst use” principle, but nothing else.
India will thus join the rest of the nuclear weapons crowd in keeping everyaspect of its nuclear policy, doctrine and strategy opaque. There are goodreasons why, other than in India, there’s no enthusiasm for nuclear“transparency”.
In keeping, moreover, with the passive-defensive mindset of the governmentand expressly to throttle aggression by a militarily superior China,technologically simple, easy-to-produce, atomic demolition munitions haveto be quickly developed for placement in the Himalayan passes that theChinese Liberation Army is likely to use, backed by forward-deployedcanisterised Agni-5 missiles for launch on warning. The onus for India’snuclear first use will thus rest entirely with China. – Hindustan Times
*Bharat Karnad, member of the nuclear doctrine-drafting group in the FirstNational Security Advisory Board, is the author of the forthcoming bookStaggering Forward: Narendra Modi and India’s Global Ambition*