nuclear-news

India’s confused nuclear weapons policy

Nuclear weapons have limited, not augmented, India’s strategic options, BY:RAMESH THAKUR , THE AUSTRALIAN . November 29, 2011 “….India’s nuclear weapons policy remains confused. ……..Under prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s formative influence, India’s nuclear policy used to be that of a disarmament champion informed by a strategic vision. By contrast, its policy as a nuclear-armed state since 1998 has been ad hoc and episodic.

……Before 1998, India refused to let interests come in the way of principles. Since 1998, India has defined national security so narrowly that values are not allowed to “infect” interests. ……..Recent decades have involved a flexing of muscle devoid of value-promoting notions of good governance.

India is the proud possessor of nuclear weapons, but projects little sophisticated sense of how to use them for deterrence, defence or compellence guided by strategic doctrines. Pakistan has concluded that India’s non-response to serial terrorist provocations is the product of nuclear stalemate in the subcontinent, meaning that, far from augmenting, nuclear weapons have further limited India’s strategic options.

In the meantime, the poverty of India’s moral leadership is reflected in the near-total lack of nuclear disarmament leadership. India needs to bestir itself to make the transition to a norm entrepreneur once again.

Does India seek nuclear abolition? Does it wish to join the NPT-licit powers in converting the NPT from a de jure nuclear prohibition into a de facto non-proliferation regime? Or would it be happiest with the early collapse of the NPT regime and relaxed at proliferation?

Without these answers, India’s nuclear policy will remain ad hoc, reactive and hostage to events and forces outside its control.. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/nuclear-weapons-have-limited-not-augmented-indias-strategic-options/story-e6frg6ux-1226208508350

November 29, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | India, weapons and war