[sacw] S A A N Post - 23 Oct 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asians Against Nukes Post
23 October 2000
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#1. India's nuclear doctrine unclear
#2. How a US national missile defence will affect South Asia
#3. No More Hiroshimas!

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#1.

Jane's Defence Weekly
October 18, 2000
ANALYSIS; Vol. 34; No. 16

India's nuclear doctrine unclear

Rahul Bedi JDW Correspondent
New Delhi

BODY:

Ignorance of nuclear issues and power struggles have hampered
India's attempt to agree a nuclear command and control structure.
Rahul Bedi reports

India is yet to agree its nuclear command and control structure, two
years after conducting multiple underground nuclear tests and 14
months after the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) released a
draft nuclear doctrine.

Official sources said "overall ignorance" of nuclear issues
underscored by "turf battles" between government bureaucrats, the
scientific establishment and the armed forces has so far prevented a
"clear-cut enunciation" of a co-ordinated, fail safe Nuclear Command
Authority (NCA). "India's nuclear employment strategy in maintaining
its minimum nuclear deterrence (MND) has not been considered
deeply," an official told Jane's Defence Weekly. Neither, he added,
has the "escalation dynamics" of a pre-emptive strike scenario been
clearly thought through.

The NSAB envisages a policy of no first-use of nuclear weapons and a
triad of nuclear strike aircraft, mobile missiles and sea-based
assets. India's nuclear force is now based on nuclear bombs carried
by Dassault Aviation Mirage 2000H fighters, which will be
supplemented or replaced by advanced variants of the Sukhoi SU-30Mk1
planned to be introduced by 2002; some 100 to 120 Prithvi I and II
short-range ballistic missiles; and a limited, but unspecified
number of Agni I and II intermediate-range ballistic missiles that
have been tested to a range of 2,000km with a 1,000kg payload. One
or more sea-based systems are planned, including weapons launched
from the Advanced Technology Vessel, India's classified nuclear
powered submarine programme that is at least five years behind
schedule and expected to be delayed even further.

The doctrine conceives a capability to shift from peacetime
deployment to "fully employable" forces in the shortest possible
time and the ability to retaliate effectively to a decapitating pre-
emptive nuclear strike. It also wants India to have a "robust"
command and control system organised for "very high survivability
against surprise attacks and for rapid punitive response" (JDW 25
August 1999).

Officials said little or nothing had been done to "firm up" these
proposals. They said India presently had a "rudimentary, defused and
confused NCA" under political, bureaucratic and technical control
with military commanders on the "outer loop" on a strict need-to-
know basis. "Given such a diversified NCA, the efficacy of its
second strike response is likely to be slow," an official said.

The new Chief of Army Staff Gen Sunderajan Padmanabhan's remarks
indicated as much, when he declared after assuming office on 30
September that he would "fine tune" India's nuclear strategy,
doctrine and tactics. "India's military is finally realising the
urgency to place firm nuclear weapon controls in place," an official
said. But it remains to be seen whether it will be permitted more
than a peripheral role, he added.

Other military officials said the absence of an institutionalised
nuclear war fighting doctrine and workable nuclear command structure
made South Asia one of the world's most volatile flash points
between the neighbouring nuclear weapon states (NWS) of India,
Pakistan and China. "This is especially so in the absence of agreed
language and grammar of nuclear responses," said an official, who
declined to be identified.

Indian defence officials privately assert that rival Pakistan's
"Delhi-centric" nuclear weapon programme has always rested with the
armed forces, giving it relatively greater continuity and cohesion.
They said this "single point" control had resulted in Pakistan
announcing earlier this year that its nuclear weapon programme was
being regulated by an institutionalised National Command Authority
comprising an employment control committee, development control
committee and a strategic plans division. There was also a strategic
force command in which the army's component was reportedly in an
advanced state of readiness.

Senior Indian security officials insist that India's nuclear weapons
programme is not country specific, adding that Delhi needs a MND in
a "nuclearised environment", a euphemism for the nuclear arsenals of
Pakistan and China. In a letter to UN Security Council members
France, Russia, the UK and the USA, Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee said fear of China's nuclear capability and mistrust
between the two neighbours had prompted India to undertake five
nuclear tests at Pokhran in the western desert region in June 1998.
Vajpayee also accused China of helping Pakistan become a NWS and of
providing it with missiles.

Releasing the NSAB draft doctrine in August 1999, National Security
Advisor Brajesh Mishra declared that India had a nuclear command and
control system in place. Sources said this elementary, somewhat
crude system follows a "top down" control regime. Overall authority
rests with the prime minister who is aided by the Cabinet Committee
on Security (CCS), which includes the ministers of defence, home,
external affairs and finance.

An interim National Command Post (NCP) has reportedly been
established somewhere in the vicinity of the prime minister's office
in Delhi. A more permanent post with layered communications is
planned in the Aravalli hills southwest of Delhi, with the
capability to withstand a ground zero nuclear strike based on a US
B61 mod11 earth penetrating nuclear warhead. An alternate NCP is
also being considered somewhere within a radius of 100km-150km from
Delhi.

Under the proposed NCA the National Security Council (NSC), formally
constituted in April 1999, would advise the CCS on nuclear affairs.
According to an official review, the NSC is still "evolving" and
will "take time to mature". The next link in the chain of nuclear
command would be the chief of defence staff (CDS), a new appointment
still under consideration, as the link between the single service
chiefs and the CCS. Below the CDS would be the service chiefs
controlling the nuclear assets in their respective services.

The suggested command and control structure retains single service
authority over strategic nuclear weapons. The Indian Air Force's
proposal that a strategic nuclear command be formed has reportedly
been shelved, principally because of the cost it would entail in
acquiring additional hardware, developing a separate logistic
infrastructure and integrating existing systems.

The designated nuclear forces would operate on two separate
channels, getting orders directly from their respective operations
directorates in "half-code" authorising the use of WMD. The
remaining half of the launch code would be relayed directly by the
CDS working in tandem with the technical control channels headed by
the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defence Research and
Development Organisation. Although considered expensive because of
additional communication networks on different links Indian planners
deem it necessary to ensure adequate checks and balances.

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#2.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/jun/30def.htm

The Rediff Special/Gaurav Kampani

How a US national missile defence will affect South
Asia

As the Clinton administration prepares to make a
decision on whether the United States should field a
limited national missile defence, it has focused
attention on the strategic response from the Russian
Federation and China. Yet any US decision that affects
global nuclear arms control and provokes strong
negative reactions from the Russian Federation and
China will echo strongly in South Asia.

The Link Between Global Nuclear Disarmament and
Regional Unproliferation

Should the United States decide to deploy a limited
NMD, it would come as a serious blow to the post-Cold
War nuclear arms control regime. Possible Russian
responses might include halting further reductions of
its nuclear forces. Similarly China, whose small
long-range nuclear force is likely to be rendered
impotent by NMD, would likely accelerate the
modernisation and quantitative expansion of its
arsenal. The cumulative impact of these decisions
would be to halt any further decreases in the nuclear
arsenals of the nuclear weapon states.

In India, the nuclear lobbyists establish a linkage
between global nuclear disarmament and regional
proliferation. They have long argued that the nuclear
weapon states have no intention of undertaking
comprehensive nuclear disarmament. Should the global
nuclear arms control agenda stall, this argument will
gain strength. The belief that nuclear weapons will
remain in perpetuity will bolster the case of those
who argue that India needs nuclear weapons to keep up
with the nuclear "Joneses" in the international
system.

Chinese Strategic Reaction and South Asia

China has warned that it will respond to an NMD by
accelerating its nuclear modernisation programme; it
has also threatened to expand its strategic deterrent
quantitatively. A possible Chinese response could also
be to maintain its strategic deterrent on a higher
state of alert.

A modernised Chinese nuclear force and a more robust
posture will have a negative cascading effect in South
Asia. Notwithstanding China's declared intentions,
changes in its force capabilities and deployment
posture will influence the nuclear debate in India.
Likewise, New Delhi's nuclear decisions will affect
Pakistan's strategic response.

At present, there is a divide between the nuclear
moderates and the hardliners in India. The moderates
support the concept of a minimal and de-alerted
nuclear force in the low hundreds. The hardliners, on
the other hand, favor a maximalist posture with a
triad nuclear force comprising 400 to 1,000 nuclear
warheads.

Thus far, the moderates, led by Prime Minister Atal
Bihari Vajpayee and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh,
have prevailed in this debate. If current trends
persist through this decade, India will probably field
a modest nuclear force in the low hundreds. There is
also the possibility that India might participate in
the global non-proliferation regime with the exception
of the NPT. Pakistan, which also favours "strategic
restraint," is likely to adopt a similar policy.

However, quantitative and qualitative improvements in
China's nuclear capability would undermine the
moderates in India and Pakistan. A higher Chinese
alert status would invariably increase threat
perceptions in New Delhi and Islamabad successively;
it would intensify pressure in both Capitals to
accelerate the integration of nuclear weapons into
their respective armed forces and improve operational
readiness -- actions that will have adverse
consequences for nuclear crisis stability in South
Asia.

An NMD could also create pressures on the governments
in India and Pakistan to modernise their nuclear
arsenals through the resumption of nuclear tests and
thereby prevent efforts to bring the CTBT into force.
Moreover, it could also stymie efforts to negotiate a
global FMCT. Although India and Pakistan have ruled
out an immediate moratorium on fissile material
production, neither country is averse to accepting a
fissile material cap as part of a globally negotiated
treaty. Both countries hope to use the interregnum
until such a treaty is negotiated, to augment their
stocks of fissile material. However, the expansion of
China's nuclear arsenal could change India and
Pakistan's strategic calculus, causing both countries
to seek delays in negotiating an FMCT.

China could also react by ending its informal
commitment to abide by the Missile Technology Control
Regime (MTCR) and resume missile sales to South Asia
and the Middle East. Resumption of Chinese missile
sales to Pakistan above the MTCR limit would
invariably exacerbate the missile race between India
and Pakistan.

Strategic Mimicry: The Effect on India's National
Security Perceptions and Strategic Culture

A US decision to deploy NMD, because of the military
and strategic contents of the decision, its
ideological undercurrents of absolute security,
negative consequences for global nuclear disarmament
and the aggressive unilateralism inherent in the US
policy, will influence strategic beliefs in South Asia
perceptibly. Above all, NMD would provide the
strategic elites in the region a paradigm to remodel
their own national security behaviour.

Arguably, the effects of the US decision will be felt
more strongly in India than in Pakistan. Unlike
Pakistan, which is more concerned with maintaining
regional parity with India, India's ambitions are
extra-regional. India regards itself as an emerging
great power. India's global ambitions and history of
colonial subjugation have made its power elites
acutely sensitive to notions of equality, especially
in matters relating to sovereignty and national
security. Negative images of India being a "soft" or
weak state top these elite's self-perceptions. They
share visions of transforming India into an
"effective" state by partially reproducing and
adapting the development and security paradigms of
their more successful counterparts.

Although Indian analysts find incredible the US's
identification of ballistic missile threats from
"rogue" states as justification for a continental
missile defence, for them it is symbolic of the US's
aggressive national security culture that pro-actively
seeks to identify the remotest conceivable threat and
then institutes measures to defeat it. Although
disdainful of the US's alarmist attitude, Indian
strategic analysts also admiringly seek to imitate
such aggressive cultural behavioural norms.

Following the US example, several leading Indian
defense scientists such as the Scientific Advisor to
the Indian government, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, have
begun lobbying for a limited anti-missile defence that
would provide protection against a small Pakistani
nuclear force. An Indian national missile defence
would force Pakistan to seek countermeasures or to
expand and diversify its nuclear arsenal.

Finally, for both India and Pakistan, NMD would also
signify a shift from multilateral efforts at
preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction
and their delivery systems to unilateral defensive
measures, the most powerful indicator yet from the
United States that it doubts the efficacy of the
non-proliferation regime in stemming such threats. It
would communicate the presumption that states must
rely on their own resources and technical means to
deter and ward off threats to national security, as
against investing comparable resources in building a
common global community of security interests. This
would complement the argument of nuclear protagonists
in India and Pakistan that nuclear weapons are
essential to safeguard national security and retain
strategic autonomy.

Conclusion

A US decision to deploy a limited NMD will have
negative and destabilising effects in South Asia. It
will come at the expense of furthering global nuclear
disarmament. Worse, changes in China's nuclear
modernisation and deployment plans in response to a US
NMD will have a cascading impact in India and then in
Pakistan. Finally, NMD will provide a cultural model
for the power elite in the region to mimic, not only
in the hopes of advancing their own states' security
interests, but also to keep pace with emerging
paradigms of modernity and security in the
international system.

This is a condensed version of an "Issue Brief" that
was published recently by the Center for
Non-proliferation Studies, Monterey, CA, USA. The full
brief is available at:

Gaurav Kampani is a Research Associate at the Center
for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey. The views
expressed in this article are solely those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the position of
the CNS or the Monterey Institute of International
Studies.

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#3.

http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php3?id=2895&type=Pageone&theme=A

The Statesman,
23 Oct 2000

No More Hiroshimas!

By C R IRANI
After more than half a century of the holocaust that
was unleashed over the Japanese city of Hiroshima ó
the first atomic bomb dropped on innocent civilians ó
it is necessary for the peace and sanity of the world
that we recall the horror, lest we forget. I remember
as a teenager being outraged by the excuses trotted
out by Anglo-American propaganda. It was to bring the
war to an early end, they said, so that American
troops could go back home and Europe could reorder its
life after the aberration that was Nazi Germany and
the end of that Austrian corporal who rose to be
dictator of the whole of Germany; let us remind
ourselves, by a democratic mandate of an election
fairly won. More crimes are committed in the name of
democracy that we dream of, just as more loot is
organised by our politicians even as they protest how
their hearts go out to the poor whom they claim to
serve. So to get back to the wartime allies, they
planned attacks on five, not two Japanese cities, the
order went out to start with Hiroshima any time after
August 3 depending on weather conditions. August 6 was
a clear day; a preliminary air raid was organised and
soon after the all clear sounded and people came out
into the streets, the three B-49 bombers came overhead
and one of them dropped the bomb. Was it the intention
to maximise casualties? It exploded 580 metres over
the city, the offending aircraft banked sharply and
although the captain said it shook with the force of
the blast, it was able to report complete success,
just as the Americans never cease to remind us of the
complete success of the sneak Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbour and the reported excitement in the phrase of
the Japanese pilots ó Tora, tora, tora!

NO description can match the emotion of the visit. The
superb exhibition, the preservation of the famous dome
ó an empty shell now accepted as a world heritage
building, so that what caused it is banished for ever.
The statue of the innocent teenager who was a child of
two, who suffered from leukaemia as a sequel to the
exposure to the dirty bomb and who died young
suffering untold pain, dislocation and complications
and to whom a memorial has been built by her fellow
students. Then there is the memorial bell, it is
tolled once a year at the exact hour that the bomb was
dropped, at 8.15 a.m.and then the two minutesí silence
at noon through the country, in memory of those
hundreds of thousands of innocents who died, were born
deformed, suffered agony so that the world may know
peace in our time. The museum is graphic and very
moving, as only the Japanese and those who suffer can
make it, but there can be no record of the hundreds of
thousands who were instantly reduced to ashes beyond
recognition.
When President Truman decided to end the war quickly
in American interests, did it enter his calculation
that the lives were Japanese, not even German for
instance! The Bomb had been ready, it was not used in
Europe. One is driven to the conclusion that the
decision was taken based on the utterly unsound
premise that when it comes to respect for human lives,
some are more, or depending on the point of view, less
human than others. It is not a pretty thought, but I
can tell you that many Japanese will voice it sotto
voce. Who is so dogmatic as to say that they are
wrong! The Americans, who were the occupying power,
brought Japan into the modern world, this must be
conceded. But no work could be done on preserving the
story of Hiroshima and starting on the museum until
after General McArthur had left.
Fifty-five years later the debate still continues over
nuclear weapons. President Clintonís precious CTBT is
repudiated by his own Congress, and for frankly
political purposes and in furtherance of party
political advantage; it has nothing to do with the
merits of the debate. If the world is to make progress
towards a nuclear-free future for mankind, it must be
necessary to follow through in order to outlaw all
nuclear weapons. To retain those considered vital for
the protection of American interests ó whatever the
phrase used to cover them ó is well short of what is
necessary. We have seen what such interests can
produce, not once but twice. I found great support
everywhere in Japan for a closer understanding between
our two countries on this issue. And it makes a lot of
sense. The Japanese alliance with America includes a
nuclear umbrella so it is not as simple as it sounds.
It can be conceded, however, that Japan and India have
not even begun to talk seriously over the issue.

It is to the credit of the Americans that they are
ashamed of what they have done but to retain a sense
of proportion they must lead the United Nations into
making worthwhile progress towards banning all nuclear
weapons. Once certain interests are regarded as more
special than others it does violence to logic. The
limits of American power are recognised by the United
States themselves. Only their real friends will tell
them that they must progress further and faster and
shed the element of hypocrisy in their attitude.
Nearer home, the Japanese Prime Minister has come
calling. He does not enjoy the kind of authority and
reputation that Vajpayee enjoys here. But Atal Behari
Vajpayee is returning the visit sometime next year. If
we are going to make it a worthwhile visit, work must
start now. It is late already.
And as we go to bed each night let us resolve solemnly
and sincerely - No More Hiroshimas!

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