Political level considerations of nuclear use

INDIA - ARTICLES
#4596, 5 August 2014
Nuclear Use: Need for Thinking on Political-Level Considerations Ali AhmedIndependent Analyst http://www.ipcs.org/article/india/nuclear-use-need-for-thinking-on-political-level-considerations-4596.html In a recent op-ed, 'Counter Pak Nuke Tactics', nuclear strategy expert Manpreet Sethi rightly states in the conclusion that “The purpose of the Indian nuclear weapon is narrow and limited to safeguarding the country against nuclear coercion, blackmail or its possible use.” Sethi, a long time Pakistan military-watcher, is spot-on in her understanding that Pakistan’s military is using the Nasr nuclear missile system to deter India from exercising its conventional advantage in case push comes to shove in the form of a mass terror attack, a’la Mumbai II. It would like to use this to catalyse foreign intervention into moderating India’s nuclear response. Many analysts advocate that, faced with this challenge, India needs to reinforce its existing nuclear doctrine. The existing nuclear doctrine calls for inflicting unacceptable damage in retribution for Pakistani nuclear first use, even if this in the form of a lower order tactical nuclear strike. While many want to strengthen its credibility, a few, such as professors Basrur and Rajaraman, want a shift in thinking on what deters. There is a consensus among the competing schools that nuclear retaliation must greet nuclear first use. The difference is in the nature of the nuclear retaliation. If Pakistan resorts to ‘asymmetric escalation’, to use Vipin Narang’s phrase for escalation across the nuclear firebreak between conventional and nuclear levels of war, the former school argues for holding out the threat of escalation. The argument goes that India can withstand the loss of a couple of cities; Pakistan having just a few, cannot. This will stay Pakistan’s nuclear finger, the objective of deterrence. All India needs to do is to ensure that it unmistakably conveys to Pakistan its implacable intention, even if it is at the risk of a few Indian cities. However, with nuclear warheads in the lower three digits, Pakistan may venture bold to get even. Taking this seriously, the ‘flexible’ response school does not rule out consideration of proportionate response. They believe that the credibility of disproportionate response is questionable. But a proportionate response can be assured and serves to deter equally.  As can be seen, both sides base their arguments on strategic level considerations focused on deterrence. Strategists dealing with deterrence are at a level lower than the political, at which the political decision-maker functions. For a political decision-maker, theirs’ is an important input to inform the nuclear decision but not to determine it. At the political level there are also other considerations over and beyond deterrence. These must override input from the strategic level on the nature of nuclear response.  First are political consequences. The Indian way of life and India as we know it cannot be endangered inordinately. Losing a few cities can perhaps be absorbed, but the communities that have lost cities lose out on life chances. This is particularly so in relation to relatively unscathed neighbours. Perceiving that India has let them down, sub-nationalisms may come to fore. Next are social consequences. These will be long-term from the perspective of environmental effects. The number of nuclear mushrooms that need to sprout across Pakistan to deprive it of a retaliatory capability, stashed away at locations numbering in two digits, will be at least 30. Since Pakistan has second strike capability, the ability to fire back even after receiving a debilitating nuclear strike, it would be able to lob back at least 20. Fifty bombs going off is half the total of the 100 that formed the basis for 2013 estimate by environmental scientists of two billion casualties from nuclear winter induced famine. The price will be paid at the cost of inter-generational equity. Finally are strategic consequences. Winning the war is seldom as important as winning the peace. Though Pakistan will not be on the map, it will remain as a piece of land with severely disadvantaged people. India will have to bear the additional burden of its recuperation for its own stability. It will consequently have to abandon its dream of parity with China for at least half a century. Given these political level considerations, the political decision-maker will have to outthink his strategic advisers. Strategists have a role to play. Their discharging this role is good for deterrence. They keep nuclear dangers at the fore, lest the adversary take these as bluff. However, political level considerations trump strategic level input. Nuclear doctrine is primarily meant for deterrence. The ‘massive’ retaliation school emphasising the dreadful possibilities helps deter, since inexorable escalation can well occur. However, for an NFU abiding power such as India, nuclear employment will be when deterrence has failed. Therefore, a deterrence doctrine can at best inform, but not determine, nuclear weapons employment decisions. Eschewing Cold War thinking helps in sealing off a particular direction, but does not tell which direction to go. While deterrence relevant considerations have found reflection in the discourse, missing is thinking on what the content and checklist political level considerations needs to be for India

IDR Flexible nuclear retaliation

India-Pakistan: Distancing the spark from the nuclear tinderbox

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/india-pakistan-distancing-the-spark-from-the-nuclear-tinderbox/

IDR Blog

In a speech for the Subbu Forum Society for Policy Studies at the India International Center last April, Ambassador Shyam Saran, currently chair of India’s National Security Advisory Board, reiterated India’s nuclear doctrine stating: “…India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but that if it is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on the adversary.”[1]

There are two ways to take Shyam Saran’s views. One is that his public reinforcing of the official nuclear doctrine owed to his possible frustration with his views voiced in his advisory capacity not gaining the desired resonance within government. The second could be that his public voicing of the doctrine ten years after its first formulation was to remind putative adversaries, read Pakistan, of the nuclear worst case possibilities, and thereby reinforce deterrence. In either case it appears that there is movement in India’s operational nuclear doctrine, even as Shyam Saran’s speech maintains that there is little shift in the declaratory one.

The seeming divergence between operational and declaratory doctrine owes perhaps to the misconception that only massive punitive retaliation deters. Firstly, this is not so, owing to lack of credibility, and secondly, India risks a commitment trap that could deliver the worst case. Therefore, refurbishing Indian deterrence requires India to bring about a convergence between its operational and declaratory doctrine through a movement in its official doctrine.

What Saran wants is the obliteration of Pakistan and its people – massive punitive retaliation implies little else – in case it has the temerity to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict. It is not understood how he insists on this in light of Pakistani nuclear inventory having crossed into three digits over the turn of the decade. India cannot hope to remain unscathed in fatally wounding Pakistan, not least because of the environmental catastrophe close at hand. Given this inevitability, the threat lacks credibility.

Realising the escalatory potential and genocidal/suicidal implications of ‘massive’ punitive retaliation, India may have quietly moved to a more appropriate operational nuclear doctrine. This can only be one that keeps the inherent impetus to escalation in any nuclear exchange under maximum check. The manner that this can be best done is in having a proportionate nuclear retaliation doctrine in which every nuclear blow is responded to by a like blow, at least in the initial few iterations.

The message conveyed would be that India has no interest in escalating, even though it can, but would exact a like nuclear price of Pakistan for each nuclear blow it receives. Pakistan, hurting proportionately more, would likely get the message that would also be piped in by other channels too such as diplomatic, political and media alongside.

Saran reasons that there is an inevitability to nuclear escalation. This was the position of the doyen of Indian strategists, K. Subrahmanyam, the one in whose honour Saran was speaking. Once the nuclear genii is released, it is impossible to put back into the bottle.  Therefore, in this reasoning it is best for India to go for the jugular right away. In any case threatening to do so would keep Pakistan’s nuclear finger off the nuclear button since it cannot be certain that India would not do as promised, even if in the process India will suffer dire consequences.

Stating alongside that India would nevertheless survive while Pakistan would be finished, as George Fernandes once famously, did is good strategy in the ‘irrational’ strategic actor mode. Projecting irrational behaviour, as once done by Ronald Reagan and sometimes a role subscribed to by Pakistan, is in theory expected to strengthen deterrence. Given this, it is not impossible that Saran is role playing, projecting an incredible and, therefore, irrational strategy.

His voicing this could be meant to indicate to Pakistan that there are divergences in opinion on nuclear strategy in India that could come to a head in case of Pakistani nuclear first use. Pakistan cannot thereafter be comfortable that India would only behave rationally and persist with proportionate nuclear retaliation instead. Indian hawks might just prevail leading to Pakistan being wiped off the map, even as India copes with the consequences of a Pakistani nuclear last gasp as a broken backed counter strike. Knowing that Indian hawks have commandeered the strategic space in India, Pakistan could in the event be reduced to being more circumspect in its nuclear moves.

If this is the case, then it is strategy of sorts, but rather a dangerous one. It pushes India into a commitment trap. Not following up with its promise detracts from Indian credibility. Pursuit of credibility, in such a case for in-conflict deterrence, may push India down the worst case road, in addition to the advocacy of the irrational by Indian hawks. If the chair person of the NSAB is itself of such persuasion then their stridency will be at a peak.

India can underplay the costs of such irrationality only for deterrence purposes, as Saran may well be doing. However, when push comes to shove, it would not do to believe India will survive, even as Pakistan bites the dust. Not only will India be subject to direct nuclear attack of indeterminate proportions, but the environmental and human aftermath in both India and in Pakistan, will overwhelm the leadership as it emerges from its nuclear command bunker. India as we know it will have ceased to exist as it has many times before in its history.

The problem with persisting with the ‘Subbu doctrine’ is that it does not take into account the water down the Yamuna in terms of India’s conventional doctrinal movement and is oblivious to the water down the Indus in terms of vertical proliferation. Together they compel a revision, not restatement as Saran does. Nuclear hawks are more interested in clobbering Pakistan than preserving India.

Saran’s could well be a preemptive attack on a policy shift underway. He lets on that there is a new Strategy Programmes Staff in the Nuclear Command Authority (that he erroneously refers to as National Command Authority, the term Pakistan uses for its nuclear decision making body). This Staff works on the operational doctrine and the nuclear strategy that emerges there from. Given the irrationality inherent in the official, declaratory doctrine, India can be expected to have moved to a more ‘rational’ nuclear doctrine over the decade since it was adopted in 2004. This movement need not be kept secret but released into the public domain; a call Saran makes in ending his speech possibly to help mobilise support against the shift that appears underway. However, going public helps with transparency, a requirement for healthy deterrence. Pakistan realising that India is not without options can be expected to take the appropriate nuclear counsel.

However, Pakistan’s problem is compounded by the inherent threat in Saran’s parting advice:

A limited nuclear war is a contradiction in terms. Any nuclear exchange, once initiated, would swiftly and inexorably escalate to the strategic level. Pakistan would be prudent not to assume otherwise as it sometimes appears to do, most recently by developing and perhaps deploying theatre nuclear weapons. It would be far better for Pakistan to finally and irreversibly abandon the long-standing policy of using cross-border terrorism as an instrument of state policy…[2]

This suggests that India’s declaratory nuclear doctrine along with its conventional doctrine of proactive offensive designed to coerce a change in Pakistan’s offensive posture at the subconventional level. The threat of being wiped off the map for this continuing with the temerity of periodic terrorist provocations is held out in the formulation that limited nuclear war, forced by Pakistani introduction of nuclear weapons in a non-strategic way into a conventional conflict, is impossible. Even if this proposition is found in the event to be true; it would be somewhat late for India too since it too would be grievously, if not fatally, wounded. Therefore, if the threat is taken credibly then it puts India in nuclear harms’ way.

The next steps suggested by Saran that Pakistan ‘pursue nuclear and conventional confidence building measures’ and ‘an agreement on no first use of nuclear weapons’ are simply not enough, since Pakistan, seeing the incredibility of Indian threat in light of its capability to inflict nuclear harm on India (something it best knows), will not oblige. Therefore, the logic of ‘mutual assured destruction’ that India and Pakistan are in, when not defined in the Cold War terms but in terms more appropriate to the regional predicament, brings up the option of a doctrinal turn away from ‘massive nuclear retaliation’, as currently, to towards ‘flexible nuclear retaliation’.

In case India wishes to remain on the conventional and nuclear track it is on, then it needs to ensure limitation not only in conventional doctrine, that it is already apparently pursuing, but also in attempting to limit nuclear war in case, in the event of conventional conflict, it does not succeed in preventing its going nuclear. It has to in this case abandon the understanding that nuclear use inevitably triggers a spasmic nuclear exchange. Its belief that a ‘limited nuclear war’ is a contradiction in terms only plays into Pakistani hands in that it promotes self-deterrence. With flexible nuclear retaliation made possible operationally through an appropriate doctrine, Pakistan will be more suitably deterred. On the China front, there is little nuclear incentive and there is a mutual commitment to NFU.

A flexible nuclear retaliation declaratory and operational doctrine and a nuclear strategy in the event of nuclear first use by the adversary will be in India’s supreme national interest of national survival. The supreme national interest then will be to ensure that the nuclear war is brought to a speedy close at the lowest levels of nuclear use by either side, as posited by the wise thinking general, Sundarji. India needs moving beyond the ‘Subrahmanyam doctrine’, something the strategist in Subrahmanyam himself would no doubt have approved. He would have recognised that Saran’s answer to the question he poses himself and goes on to answer – ‘Is India’s nuclear deterrent credible?’ – cannot have deterrence orthodoxy cripple its continuous evaluation.

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[1] Shyam Saran, ‘Is India’s nuclear deterrent credible?’, Lecture for the Subbu Forum Society for Policy Studies at India International Center on 24 April 2014, http://krepon.armscontrolwonk.com/files/2013/05/Final-Is-Indias-Nuclear-Deterrent-Credible-rev1-2-1-3.pdf (accessed 15 March 2014)

[2] Ibid, pp. 16-17

IDSA COMMENT

Re-visioning the Nuclear Command Authority

Ali Ahmed

September 9, 2009

http://www.idsa.in/strategiccomments/RevisioningtheNuclearCommandAuthority_AliAhmed_090909

In a new book Nuclear Strategy: India’s March Towards a Credible Deterrent, Dr. Manpreet Sethi has recommended a restructuring of India’s Nuclear Command Authority. Since India’s nuclear doctrine is premised on ‘Assured Retaliation’, nuclear retaliatory attacks can only be authorised by the civilian political leadership through the Nuclear Command Authority. Presently, the Nuclear Command Authority, as approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security on 04 January 2003, stipulates:

‘3. The Nuclear Command Authority comprises a Political Council and an Executive Council. The Political Council is chaired by the Prime Minister. It is the sole body which can authorize the use of nuclear weapons.

4. The Executive Council is chaired by the National Security Advisor. It provides inputs for decision making by the Nuclear Command Authority and executes the directives given to it by the Political Council.’

The recommendation is that the Service Chiefs be included as members in the Political Council also. This is an important suggestion deserving of attention. The recommended improvement is persuasively argued. Firstly, it wishes to take the present system that is seemingly an institutionalisation of pre-existing informal networks, a step further. Inclusion of the Service Chiefs in the Political Council would enable provision of informed advice to the political decision maker directly by the end-users. This is all the more imperative given the linkage in the Southern Asian setting between conventional and nuclear deterrence. Secondly, Dr. Sethi believes that the fear of militarisation is overblown since military leaders are demonstrably sensitive to the issue of political control of the military in a parliamentary democracy. Lastly, the argument has it that the presence of military members would enhance credibility of deterrence and would sensitise both civil and military leaderships to each others’ compulsions and preoccupation. The expectation is that this would result in ‘synergy of thought, planning and effort.’

The major point made is that military input would be made available in the Political Council better. This begs the question as to whether the present system adequately caters for this. In so far as the nuclear advisory role of the Service Chiefs is concerned it is through their membership in the Executive Council, as explicated in Para 4: ‘It (the Executive Council) provides inputs for decision making by the Nuclear Command Authority.’ This mandates the Chiefs, as members of the Executive Council, to proffer input as required. The Chiefs are also readily available for direct interaction with the Political Council on invitation. Further, the Defence Minister, who is a member of the Political Council, is privy to their advice. Thus their position can be expected to be taken into account in any nuclear related decision.

What are the implications of having the Service Chiefs as members of both Councils? In such a case not only would they be providing inputs as part of the Executive Council but also sitting in judgment over their own input and that of other members of the Executive Council as part of the Political Council. The key to the argument for change is whether such an arrangement is better. There are some negatives that need to be considered.

Firstly, nuclear weapons in the Indian schema are political instruments for deterrence. Attacks, which in India’s case can only be retaliatory attacks, can only be authorised by the civilian political leadership. The Political Council is to serve as the forum for deliberations on this score with nuclear decision making being the preserve of the Prime Minister as the head. Therefore, having military members may impact the complexion of India’s approach to nuclear weapons altogether. The argument that the Chiefs be members, alongside civilian ministers, in this Council would be to privilege them beyond the limits of the Indian system of military subordination to civilian control. However, if at all the Political Council is to profit from their institutionalised presence to the degree recommended, then this cannot be with them as co-equals as members, but as a separate nuclear advisory panel subsumed in the Political Council. The recommendation then would require modification along these lines. On such a panel must also figure the National Security Advisor, who it can be expected would be in a position to integrate and present the civilian dimension of input.

Secondly, recourse to organisation theory may help, in particular the Bureaucratic Politics model. The succinct proposition here is ‘where you stand depends on where you sit.’ The corollary is that apex organizational leadership tends to believe ‘what is good for General Motors is good for America.’ Personalities also play a role, especially the ability of the organizational head ‘to stand the heat in the kitchen.’ Thus, advice and solutions do not emerge from a detached consideration of problems in the logic argument-reflection-choice, but by the ‘push and shove’ of agencies, represented by their parochial leadership. Pre-existing action-channels, bargaining games, and power play as the mechanism of choice characterize this model. Decision-makers can thus be viewed realistically as ‘following’ rather than ‘leading’ in an environment of constraints. Further, the organizational head has the brief to protect organizational interests. Key to success is enterprise in getting other agencies committed to the coalition, in order to gain confidence of the primary decision-maker. The personal chemistry between the organizational head and the political decision-maker is also a factor in the effectiveness of the former. In light of this and given the larger Indian cultural milieu, more narrowly its strategic culture and the historical record of policy and decision making, it would be difficult to concede this recommendation without a pause. While granting that the well spring of the recommendation is to avoid this very clutter, it is neglectful of the human dimension of decision making dynamics packaged by organizational theory.

Thirdly, the recommendation is for inclusion of all there Service Chiefs, perhaps in deference to the extant reality of absence of an integrating military authority in the form of a Chief of Defence Staff. Though the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee translates and transmits the requirements of the Political Council to the Strategic Forces Command, instead of naming him alone to the Political Council, the recommendation interestingly requires representation of the three Chiefs. Following from the discussion of organizational theory, divergence in the view of the three could lead to considerable strain in deliberations in the Political Council, which in the time-critical and psychologically intense conditions of ongoing conflict is entirely avoidable. Perhaps, a modification to the proposal could be representation only of the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, or better still, the long pending creation of a Chief of Defence Staff to fulfill the principal military advisory role. The proposal serves as a powerful argument to bring about the necessary conclusion to higher defence organization reforms pursuant to the Arun Singh Task Force recommendations. For this to happen, the services require to be on the same page, an unlikely proposition as things currently stand in this matter.

Lastly, the assumption that the Chiefs would be able to comprehend the full extent of the security predicament in a war gone nuclear due to nuclear ‘first use’ by the opposite side requires examination. Clearly, it is easy to concede that national security is largely vested collectively in their offices and their higher level training and service experience enables them to comprehend national security in a multidimensional manner. However, in the Indian scheme, they are also the operational heads of the three services. In a conflict, military pressures are likely to supersede political considerations. This is a problem with the office of the Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee too, who has at best a first-among-equals position. If Huntington is to be heeded, the military has a characteristic of privileging military compulsions over the political once conflict is underway; even if it is also most reluctant to venture into a conflict in the first place. This characteristic will be heightened were a von Molkean interpretation of Clausewitz as the ‘Mahdi of Mass’ were to be subscribed to. Therefore, the inclusion of military chiefs could affect the manner in which nuclear use is actually viewed during a conflict, with the military view gaining ascendance over the civilian-political view. Thus, even if this is only a possibility, it detracts from the suggested institutional innovation.

In conclusion, stasis is the enemy of perfection. The nation demands nothing less than the closest approximation to perfection humanly possible in its nuclear related decision making. The recommendation imbued with this spirit is therefore a welcome development. Here, the debate initiated has been joined equally earnestly.