A nuclear debate less obscure

The US would also be having many agendas as it pursues this deal. What is clearly impeding the deal is its resolve to advance its nuclear non-proliferation goals. Ideally the US would want India to roll back its nuclear weapons programme, and if that is not possible, to freeze it and if that also is not feasible then to obstruct it at each step. All the irksome and objectionable clauses in the Hyde Bill reflect this motivation. We should not try and wish away this issue in our desire for better Indo-US relations.

The price issue can only be examined once we are clear of what could be at stake. For that we have to go to the basic question of what should be the aim of our nuclear weapons capability. Having defined our aim we must determine the desired content of the nuclear weapons capability package. Once we have done that it becomes relatively easy to be objective about the price we can pay.

Let us begin by believing what we are being told — that in another twenty years we would be the third largest global economy. This then bestows upon us global responsibilities and also opens us to global threats. Therefore, our military power as also our nuclear weapons power must have a global orientation. We would have to soon graduate from simply looking at threats from neighbours and begin to forge a more comprehensive global security architecture.

So what should our nuclear weapons capability be in the next two decades? It would be fair to articulate that we should aim at deterring other nuclear weapon states from having the capacity to coerce or armtwist us on issues affecting our national interests.

How does this deterrence translate into definable capabilities? Obviously, our nuclear arsenal should be such that it has the potential to inflict unacceptable damage on any other nuclear weapon power/s even in a second strike response. This is what nuclear deterrence means.

What is a realistic assessment of the nuclear weapons capability that we should be looking at? Here we must remember that among other things deterrence is also in the size of the arsenal. This has to be calibrated with considerable care.

Now obviously some assessments of our requirements would have been made. Are they in tune with the capability projection that has just been postulated? Did we, in addressing the problem take the abstract or the normative route, or did we settle for some kind of a balance between these two? There are some legitimate concerns on this score.

Let us briefly look at the normative data. Admittedly the arsenals built up by the Cold War adversaries bordered on the absurd. But look at the picture after the end of the Cold War. Are the US and Russia anywhere on the road to nuclear disarmament? There has been some reduction but their stocks remain huge and no abstract theories can justify the number of warheads still retained by them.

For India there would be considerable merit in ignoring the Russian or American stockpiles. Of the remaining nuclear weapon states, France and the UK are US allies and members of NATO. That leaves China and Pakistan. Objectively, then the Chinese weapons programme ought to be a pragmatic guide to the capability that we should be seeking. Therefore, it may be argued that any weapons projection that approximates Chinese capabilities would not be seriously off the mark.

Consequently, if our nuclear weapons programme is not to be mere tokenism, or a programme that stultifies and limits us to simply countering Pakistani capabilities, we must then aim at achieving in the next fifteen to twenty years, capabilities comparable to China. Obviously we would not be going into a warhead-to-warhead count but be engaging into the totality of the force equation — warheads, types, delivery, surveillance and C4I systems etc.

Having settled this fundamental issue we should examine how we can muster resources to build the nuclear force that we should possess by, say, 2020. Once this analysis is completed our position on the Nuclear Agreement would acquire a much greater level of clarity. Some may say that all this has already been done. If it has, then where is the debate?