Going ballistic

Agni V,though,is not a weapon of war but a strategic shield. For India,pursuing a no-first-use policy,it is one of the triumvirate of nuclear deterrents the other being the Mirage and Su 30 MKI fighter bombers and the Arihant submarine. And a deterrent is successful insofar as you never have to use it.

Signalling is of great import in defence. That is the reason why India was careful to call Agni V a long-range ballistic missile,cleverly disassociating it from the kind of aggressive ambition that an inter-continental ballistic missile ICBM could imply. It was also a measure of the credibility of Indias pursuit of nuclear deterrence that both the US and China looked at the test launch with equanimity,with the latter even saying that India is not a rival. The test should be situated in the broader strategic context,and that was spelt out by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul last month: that India aims to check global non-proliferation and has been actively engaging with export-control regimes such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime. It would take two more years to operationalise Agni V,but the technological advancement that the perfect test launch marks and the capabilities it opens up are tempered by the fact that India has been a responsible nuclear power. That should not be undermined by the testosterone-fuelled,freewheeling rhetoric around it.