Any state acquiring nuclear weapons must sooner or later form, whether explicitly or not, some set of concepts – some doctrine – about why it has them, what principles should govern their possession and management, and how they might ultimately be used. Doctrine exists at more than one level, though boundaries between levels are not exact. Political doctrine might lay down, for example, that the armoury would never be used for aggressive purposes, or other than as a last resort in the defence of sovereignty; it might also say (or deliberately avoid saying, as French doctrine purported to do at one stage of the Cold War) against which potential adversaries a deterrent posture was required. Strategic doctrine might specify, for example, whether or not first use of nuclear weapons was ruled out, whether there should be a diverse range of delivery systems, and whether the possibility of a hostile “bolt from the blue” attack needed to be reckoned with. Operational doctrine would give specific guidance to military planners, for example on readiness assumptions, the use of warning, and the objectives, scale, variety and targeting principles of nuclear strike options. Though the prime aim of nuclear possession is to prevent war, deterrence loses credibility if scenarios of use are not considered seriously.
During the Cold War the United States, the United Kingdom and France, in differing degrees, progressively gave out a considerable amount of information on these matters, nationally or through NATO. The Soviet Union made few statements about any level of its doctrine. China remains reticent.
Indian official utterances have said a good deal about doctrine at the political and strategic levels. The government refrained from endorsing the proposals of a wide-ranging 1999 report which it had commissioned from a notable advisory group, but in January 2003 it announced an official doctrine, albeit of more limited coverage. Key features of this and other official statements include these:
a. India seeks no more than “credible minimum deterrence”. (“Minimum deterrence” is however a term whose specific meaning has never been easy to pin down.)
b. India is concerned with deterrence of China, not just or even mainly of Pakistan.
c. India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict, save that it reserves the right to use them in retaliation against any attack by biological or chemical weapons (possession of which it has itself renounced).
d. India would retaliate massively with nuclear weapons to any nuclear attack.
e. Control will at all times remain with top civilian political authorities. There will be no pre-delegation down military chains of command.
Pakistan has said less, but some points are clear:
i. It is concerned simply with deterrence vis-à-vis India.
ii. It will be ready to use nuclear weapons if necessary to prevent any loss of sovereign territory.
iii. It is not prepared to make any promise of “no first use”. (As NATO policy during the Cold War illustrated, this is a natural position for any country or grouping perceiving itself as weaker than potential adversaries at lower levels of military force.)
iv. Ultimate control over nuclear weapons will always rest in the hands of the President.
Scarcely anything in utterances by either country reaches into the field of operational doctrine. That is not surprising; in the early years of their capabilities none of the five NPT-recognised powers had much to say in this regard. There are nevertheless important operational-doctrine questions which any serious possessor of nuclear weapons cannot ultimately evade, even if it prefers to address and answer them in secret. It is at present hard for outside observers to gauge how far this agenda has been tackled in India and Pakistan, or what conclusions may have been reached. The following paragraphs suggest some possible issues.
Against what sorts of target should a final level of strike be directed? At least in the earlier part of the Cold War it was taken almost for granted (partly because of limited delivery accuracy) that weapons would be launched simply upon major cities, but both the morality and the practical sense of this was increasingly challenged. Such problems might have an extra dimension in a confrontation between close neighbours.
Should there be options for nuclear action short of the ultimate all-out strategic attack? NATO came to recognise that nuclear weapons could not hope to substitute military victory for military defeat, but that they might convey cogent warnings of resolve and danger, and it could be in the interest of either side to exploit whatever chance there might be of halting conflict short of shared holocaust. From another standpoint, if the adversary used a quarter of his armoury and held the rest in reserve, could it be rational to respond in a way that left him with little further to lose by launching the remainder?
Each country would naturally want to avoid any posture in which it might risk being wholly or largely disarmed by a hostile pre-emptive attack on its nuclear forces. But would it not also be desirable, both for crisis stability and to prevent uselessly costly arms-racing, to refrain from making dispositions that might seem to a mistrustful adversary to reflect an aspiration to acquire such a pre-emptive capability oneself? That became a key premise of valuable US/Soviet arms control deals.
A related issue is whether there should be plans, or at least options, for nuclear launch on the basis of tactical warning, for example by radar detection. Warning might in practice be very short or even non-existent in the South Asian setting, given geographical closeness. But in any event such concepts sit uneasily with the important aim of stability in time of crisis – that aim points towards having forces so shaped, in character and deployment, that “use or lose” dilemmas do not have to be faced when time is short or information uncertain.
That in turn raises awkward questions about whether deployment should be optimised for peace-time control and economy, or for survival in crisis or conflict. These desirable objectives may pull in markedly different directions, with additional problems arising in the political and operational complications of moving from one posture to another in time of tension.
With several of these issues about operational doctrine there can be, as Cold War experience showed, a significant convergence of interest even between potential adversaries. They may therefore be among the candidate subjects for the strategic dialogue now being undertaken between India and Pakistan.
