Greetings from Pakistan where, when it comes to nuclear strategy, people say little but act expeditiously. In India, on the other hand, people write much and act slowly. <\/p>\n
India now has a coterie of first-rate thinkers on nuclear issues besides K. Subrahmanyam, including Raja Mohan, Rear Adm. (ret.) Raja Menon, Rajesh Basrur, Gurmeet Kanwal, and Bharat Karnad (who had a class with Bernard Brodie but thinks more like Herman Kahn). <\/p>\n
In my view, one of the best and most overlooked Indian strategic analysts is Vice Adm. (ret.) Verghese Koithara. His book, Crafting Peace in Kashmir, Through a Realist Lens (2004), has a chapter on \u201cNuclear Danger\u201d that is well worth reading. Here\u2019s a sampler:<\/p>\n
\u201cTill it acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan had been protecting its highly vulnerable nuclear facilities in Kahuta and elsewhere through conventional deterrence, not defence. Its high card had been the vulnerability of a big concentration of Indian nuclear assets, close to the economically central city of Mumbai, to Pakistan F-16s coming over the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe requirement to keep warheads and delivery systems (and perhaps even the fissile and non-fissile sections of the warhead) separate for reasons of security and survival could add to design and maintenance problems relating to safety. The relatively small number (six at best) of explosive tests carried out by each country, and that too in a time-constrained manner, raises worries about design safety, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as continuous real-time monitoring of the opponent\u2019s nuclear delivery systems is concerned, both sides are effectively blind.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPakistan\u2019s strategy is aimed at deterring a conventional threat from India, while India\u2019s is aimed at deterring a nuclear one from Pakistan. Since a conventional confrontation is easier to develop and must almost invariably precede a nuclear one, Pakistan\u2019s deterrence has to function much more actively than India\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the conventional military balance continues to shift in India\u2019s favor, Pakistan\u2019s reliance on its nuclear capability will increase and so will its effort to lower the nuclear threshold. Thus Pakistan\u2019s strategy is likely to emphasize not just \u2018first use\u2019 but \u2018early first use\u2019 in the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPakistan\u2019s effort would be to maximize nuclear uncertainty in times of crisis while India\u2019s would be to minimize it\u2026 Pakistan would like to establish that nuclear risk-taking and its consequences in South Asia resemble Russian roulette with the outcome relying on chance, while India would want to prove that it would resemble a game of chess with the outcome determined by rational logic and relative superiority.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verghese writes that further Indian nuclear testing of thermonuclear weapons would depend on confidence levels from prior tests. Indian strategic analysts are divided on whether such testing is necessary. Raja Mohan is satisfied with boosted fission-type yields; Bharat Karnad is not.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Greetings from Pakistan where, when it comes to nuclear strategy, people say little but act expeditiously. In India, on the other hand, people write much and act slowly. India now has a coterie of first-rate thinkers on nuclear issues besides K. Subrahmanyam, including Raja Mohan, Rear Adm. (ret.) Raja Menon, Rajesh Basrur, Gurmeet Kanwal, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5629,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5629"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386735\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}