In 2014, the election policy of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) included a promise to "revise and update" India's nuclear policy. It gave rise to the conjecture that the Narendra Modi government, upon being elected, would believe revoke India's promise of no first use (NFU) of nuclear weapons. In a dialogue to ANI, Modi quelled those speculations by asserting that NFU won't be revoked. "No first use is a mirror image of our cultural birthright," Modi added.
Not just Dan officer like Modi, but scholars too had once tried to make clear India's nuclear bearing using the influence of culture. Rajesh Basrur, an expert on South Asian security, had argued that simplicity and command are part of India's "nuclear-strategic culture". Culture can definitely be one of the factors but nuclear posture is first and primarily determined on the basis of structural realities.
As another scholar, Kanti Bajpai, argued in a 2000 paper, India's nuclear posture after the 1998 tests evolved through a debate between three different schools of nuclear thinking: rejectionism; pragmatism; and maximalism. The final posture corresponds to the school which is more aligned with structural realities at that point in time. That India chose NFU in its draft nuclear doctrine (1999) and official nuclear doctrine (2003) was a result of structural factors favoring pragmatists.
However, in recent times, we have seen a number of statements from sitting and retired senior member of the nuclear refuge organization quizzical the NFU policy. No less than the then defense minister, Manohar Parrikar, uttered qualms over the utility of NFU in November 2016. Most recently, Lt Gen (retd.), BS Naval, previous commander-in-chief of the Strategic Forces Command, has called the NFU policy a "formula for disaster" and argue for plummeting it forthwith.
It is true that India still formally sticks to an NFU policy but it is hard to deny that the agreement around NFU has weakened and that the maximalist position has grown stronger.
How have structural factors diluted the NFU agreement?
First, NFU policy suits a power which wants to deter just nuclear wars. In other words, if a nuclear weapons state is contentedly placed on a conservative (or, more broadly, non-nuclear) front with respect to its adversaries, it does not need to intimidate first use of its nuclear bombs. India was, and continues to remain, a stronger conservative power compared to Pakistan. While China was conservatively stronger, India felt somewhat secluded due to the difficult terrain on the Himalayan border. Now, China's impressive communications and massive military modernization have effectively worn the Himalayan bumper. Now, the conformist disparity between India and China is not just huge but also more palpable. This is putting a huge force on India's NFU policy.
Second, India's conventional benefit has been rounded by Pakistan through clever use of sub-conventional assets (read terrorists) and danger of using tactical nuclear armaments against any Indian conventional answer to a 26/11 type of an attack. India's nuclear doctrine, that professes massive vengeance even against the use of midget nukes, does not help. Preventive counterforce (CF) strike, if they can be executed, seems to be a way out of this problem. Nadal has openly advocated this strategy and Shivshankar Menon, the former national security advisor, has indicated directness to the idea.
Third, India today has admission to much better known than it had in 2003 when it at large it's nuclear doctrine. In their forthcoming paper, "India's Counterforce Temptations", two US-based scholars,counterforce (CF) , list out the technologies that enable a CF posture for India. New Delhi now has more armaments and more precise ones. It has high-quality observation platforms. It cans admission commercially obtainable distant sense technology. It is mounting MIRVs (multiple separately targetable re-entry vehicles) and investing in missile and air defense systems. While most of these developments may be relevant for China, they also make India more competent than ever before of executing CF strike against Pakistan. However, it should be noted at this point that India is still a long way away from possessing the ability to execute successful CF strikes. And it may never reach there because Pakistan is rapidly growing its weapon store size and civilizing the survivability of its nuclear weapons.
India's solid fuel armaments have enabled it to move towards canisterised systems for storing its land-based ballistic armaments. Such systems can reduce rotate times — earlier India used to rely on a physical partition of workings to prevent unauthorized use — and hence are apposite even for the anticipatory strike in case the rival is shown to be readying its nuclear assets for use. Canisterisation has further enabled India's nuclear deterrent to move to the seas. With INS Arihant, a nuclear propel ballistic missile submarine (SSBN), India has a believable sea-based deterrent. With a couple of more SSBNs, it can boast of a genuine nuclear triad. But SSBNs involve pre-mating of warheads with ballistic missiles, and hence increase the strain on command and control, especially with the NFU policy intact. Both canisterisation and sea-based avoidance thus increase the strain on NFU policy.
These three changes have created a more favorable ground for nuclear maximalists. There is no single strategic culture that is impervious to changes in structural realities.
