India’s nuclear strategy twenty years later: From reluctance to maturation

ABSTRACT

This article traces the evolution of India’s nuclear strategy over the past 20 years, as it went from reluctant nuclear power to a mature nuclear weapons nation. It explores the various doctrinal and postural choices India has made, and confronts, as its threat environment evolves and as its institutions have matured. Most notably, it analyzes various options to address the dilemma of Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons threat, and how India can adjust its nuclear posture and strategy to possibly escape the paralysis induced by that threat.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Notes

1. See, for example, George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999); Scott D. Sagan, ed., Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009); Ashley Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001); Sumit Ganguly, “The Pathway to Pokhran II: The Prospects and Sources of New Delhi’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” International Security 23, no. 4 (Spring 1999): 148–77; Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace (Delhi, India: Harper Collins, 2000); Bharat Karnad, India’s Nuclear Policy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008); Vipin Narang, “Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation: How States Pursue the Bomb,” International Security 41, no. 3 (Winter 2016/2017): 110–50.

2. See Vipin Narang, “Five Myths About India’s Nuclear Posture,” The Washington Quarterly 36, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 143–57; also, Gaurav Kampani, “India’s Long Nuclear Journey: How Secrecy and Institutional Roadblocks Delayed India’s Weaponization,” International Security 38, no. 4 (Spring 2014): 79–114.

3. Prime Minister’s Office of India, “Cabinet Committee on Security Reviews Progress in Operationalizing India’s Nuclear Doctrine,” January 4, 2003. http://pib.nic.in/archieve/lreleng/lyr2003/rjan2003/04012003/r040120033.html.

4. See Shashank Joshi, “An Evolving Indian Nuclear Doctrine?” in Deterrence Instability & Nuclear Weapons in South Asia, edited by Michael Krepon, Joshua T. White, Julia Thompson, and Shane Mason (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, 2015), 69–94.

5. Headquarters Integrated Defense Staff, Joint Doctrine Indian Armed Services (New Delhi, India: Ministry of Defence, 2017), 37.

6. See Vipin Narang and Christopher Clary, “Confusion is Risky,” Indian Express, November 18, 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/manohar-parrikar-nuclear-policy-no-first-use-nfu-atal-bihari-vajpayee-confusion-4381028/.

7. See Gaurav Kampani, “India: The Challenges of Nuclear Operationalization and Strategic Stability,” in Asia in the Second Nuclear Age, edited by Ashley J. Tellis, Abraham M. Denmark, and Travis Tanner (Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2013), 119.

8. See Shyam Saran, “Is India’s Nuclear Deterrent Credible,” Speech at India Habitat Center, April 24, 2013, http://krepon.armscontrolwonk.com/files/2013/05/Final-Is-Indias-Nuclear-Deterrent-Credible-rev1-2-1-3.pdf; also, Lt. General B.S. Nagal (Retd), “Checks and Balances,” Force, June 2014, 12–16.

9. See Narang and Clary, “Confusion is Risky.”

10. See Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014), Ch. 4.

11. M. Taylor Fravel and Evan S. Medeiros, “China’s Search for Assured Retaliation: The Evolution of Chinese Nuclear Strategy and Force Structure,” International Security 35, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 48–87; M. Taylor Fravel and Fiona S. Cunningham, “Assuring Assured Retaliation: China’s Nuclear Posture and U.S.-China Strategic Stability,” International Security 40, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 7–50; Narang, Nuclear Strategy, Ch. 5.

12. See Christopher Clary, Gaurav Kampani, and Jaganath Sankaran, “Correspondence: Battling over Pakistan’s Battlefield Nuclear Weapons,” International Security 40, no. 4 (Spring 2016): 166–77.

13. Shivshankar Menon, Choices: Inside the Making of India’s Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Press, 2016), 117.

14. Remarks by Vipin Narang, “Plenary: Beyond the Nuclear Threshold: Causes and Consequences of First Use” (Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference, Washington, D.C., March 20, 2017). Also, see Vipin Narang and Christopher Clary, “Is India Thinking about Nuclear Counterforce?” Working Paper, 2017.

15. See “Crew Rotation in the Navy,” CBO Report, October 2007, 2, http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/10-31-navy.pdf.

16. See Austin Long and Brendan Green, “Stalking the Secure Second Strike,” Journal of Strategic Studies 38, no. 1–2 (2015): 38–73.

17. See Narang, “Five Myths”; also Gaurav Kampani, “Is the Indian Nuclear Tiger Changing its Stripes?” The Nonproliferation Review 21, no. 3–4 (Fall 2015): 383–98.

18. See Narang, Nuclear Strategy, Ch. 10.

19. See DRDO export product offerings, January 31, 2017, http://web.archive.org/web/20150421214136/https://drdo.gov.in/drdo/English/product_adex_2013.pdf.

20. See Chander and Selvamurthy quoted in T.S. Subramanian and Y. Mallikarjun, “India Successfully Test-Fires Shourya Missile,” The Hindu, September 25, 2011, http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/india-successfully-testfires-shourya-missile/article2482010.ece.

21. The status of the solid-fuel Prithvi 2 missile is presently unknown in the open-source literature.

22. See Menon, Choices, 117.

23. Vipin Narang, Remarks at “Plenary: Beyond the Nuclear Threshold: Causes and Consequences of First Use,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Nuclear Policy Conference, March 20, 2017. https://southasianvoices.org/sav-dc-nukefest2017-potential-indian-nuclear-first-use/#vnr.

24. See Narang, “Five Myths.”

25. Narang, “Five Myths.”

26. Joint Doctrine Indian Armed Services, 37.

27. See Narang, “Five Myths.”

28. See video of January 31, 2015 Agni V test here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnykStFQSKM.

29. Chander quoted in Shiv Aroor, “New Chief of India’s Military Complex Reveals Brave New Mandate,” India Today, July 3, 2013. http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/indias-nuclear-counterstrike-response-time-to-be-in-minutes-drdo-chief/1/286691.html.

30. See Long and Green, 2015.

31. See Narang and Clary, “Is India Thinking?”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vipin Narang

Vipin Narang is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.