Future Direction of India’s Deterrent

Topic: “Future Direction of India’s Deterrent”

Chair: Prof. Rajesh Rajagopalan (JNU)

Speaker: Dr. Vipin Narang (MIT) & Ali Ahmed (IDSA)

Discussant: Dr. Manpreet Sethi(CAPS)

The IDSA Centre for Military Affairs conducted a Round Table on 22 December 2011 on "Future Direction of India’s Deterrent". The event was chaired by Prof. Rajesh Rajagopalan (JNU). The speakers were Dr. Vipin Narang (MIT) and Ali Ahmed, Research Fellow, IDSA. The discussant was Dr. Manpreet Sethi, Senior Research Fellow, CAPS.

Dr. Vipin Narang brought out the nature of India’s deterrent as Assured Retaliation. He suggested that the manner of the nuclear retaliation need not be specified, enabling flexibility in nuclear employment strategy. The inevitability of the retaliation would make for credibility of the deterrent. He therefore advocated moving away from India’s declaratory nuclear doctrine of ‘massive’ punitive retaliation. The other measures that need to be continued with include the second strike capability, delivery systems of requisite range against China and ensuring that the missile capability is qualitatively upgraded.

Ali Ahmed dwelt on the relationship between nuclear deterrence and national security. He opined that an over-emphasis on deterrence could lead to mistaking its management with national security, as occurred between the two super powers during the Cold War. He too favoured a reformulation of India’s nuclear deterrence doctrine to flexible punitive retaliation. He also suggested that non-retaliation as an option against a lower order nuclear strike need not be reflexively ruled out. He averred that the Sundarji doctrine of ending nuclear exchanges at the lowest level possible is a suitable doctrine for India. Towards this end, he proposed enhancing the confidence building measures to the extent of establishment of an NRRC with Pakistan.

Dr. Manpreet Sethi, in agreeing with Dr. Narang, opined that India’s nuclear direction was appropriate. She also seconded the idea that India could shed the formulation ‘massive’ in its declaratory nuclear doctrine in favour of sufficient punitive retaliation to inflict unacceptable damage. This would be enough to serve deterrence since unacceptable damage does not require ‘massive’ levels of nuclear weapons. This would enable keeping both ‘credible’ and ‘minimum’ at the forefront in the doctrine.

The Chairperson, Dr. Rajagopalan, emphasised that irrationality cannot be lost sight of in discussions on deterrence that usually take states as rational actors. Among other issues, he brought out that creation of the sea based second strike force would require careful consideration from command and control, communication and survivability point of view.