LoC is elastic 8212; Security advisor

The defense and foreign policy analyst was addressing a meeting of the Indian Council of World Affairs in the city on Friday.

The Kargil situation would not escalate into a total war because both countries had nuclear weapons, he said speaking on the relevance of nuclear deterrence. 8220;But it doesn8217;t deter from conventional pin-pricks, which is what Kargil is.8221; The Kargil situation would eventually result in both sides sitting down to negotiate after the Pakistani intruders had been expelled, he predicted.

International opinion was building up in favour of a de-escalation of the conflict since the West feared an escalation of the situation in thesub-continent.

Kargil was all about India not pushing its advantage in 1971. The country was naive was not extending the LoC at a time when it had the advantage of having captured 93,000 Pakistani troops. All the Simla agreement said was that the border issue would be negotiated at a later date.

But Pakistan could never be the real threat. 8220;India will be gravely hurt in a nuclear war, but Pakistan stands to be annihilated,8221; he said.

8220;Pakistan is the catspaw, deal with the cat,8221; said Karnad, adding that the real adversaries were the US and China.

Karnad is currently formulating India8217;s nuclear doctrine and the Strategic Defence Review mapping out the future on the NSC8217;s advisory board. He said that the government8217;s declaration of no-first use made immediately after Pokharan-II had created problems for the country8217;s nuclear deterrent. This appeared to be a bid to burnish India8217;s reputation for being peace loving.

8220;There is no such thing as a survivable second strike,8221; said the analyst, referringto a hypothetical scenario where India retaliates with nuclear weapons after its cities have been hit first. 8220;You can8217;t handle the first showers of a monsoon, can a state or central government sit back and launch a second strike?,8221; he asked.

The five nuclear weapon states had imposed a nuclear hegemony and were now in the process of perfecting thermo-nukes or micro yield fusion weapons. These fourth-generation nuclear weapons had a yield of less than one tonne. Furthermore, sub-critical tests of these weapons were allowed by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty CTBT 8220;How are you going to stop them?8221;.

The answer was to immediately go in for Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles ICBMs tipped with thermonuclear weapons. 8220;The PSLV is ready as an ICBM. All we have to do is to cut down two stages and voila, it8217;s an ICBM,8221; said Karnad.

This deterrence was not just paranoia, but a fact of life, he said. For if Yugoslavia or Iraq had even one nuclear weapon, there would have been no air strikes onthem.

He calculated a defence expenditure of Rs 700,000 crore over the next 30 years to build up a credible deterrence comprising ballistic missile submarines SSBNs and ICBMs.