Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Even though India's security managers probably have a good idea about where
they would prefer to end up, they are quite unlikely to reveal this information—
for reasons relating both to the exigencies of public diplomacy and the
requirements of deterrence stability—to any one who might have the temerity to
ask.
In their public statements, India's security managers have continued
to emphasize that the relative number of nuclear weapons possessed by India
vis-
à-vis
its adversaries is less important than the fact that even a few surviving
weapons would cause more pain than is worth any of the objectives sought by
the latter. In some instances, they have explicitly affirmed that India is in fact
content to accept nuclear inferiority
vis-à-vis
China, both in terms of numbers
and qualitative capability, because such inferiority does not in any way prejudice
their ability to preserve India's security and autonomy.
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Whether a similar
position would be maintained
vis-à-vis
Pakistan is unclear, despite Jaswant
Singh's insistence that 'the question of an arsenal larger than that of country
X
or
Y
[is] a non-question'.
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The only thing worth stating on this matter is that Indian security managers
traditionally have always believed that New Delhi's strategic preeminence
vis-à-
vis
Islamabad was not simply a fact of life but an operating condition that had to
be assiduously maintained because of their judgment of Pakistan as a risk-
acceptant, if not an irresponsible, state.
On the assumption, therefore, that India continues to enjoy nuclear superiority
over Pakistan, even as it remains inferior by many comparable measures to
China, New Delhi has repeatedly affirmed that the very notions of 'superiority'
and 'inferiority' are politically irrelevant so long as the residual capability to
devastate a certain fraction of the adversary's assets always exists inviolate even
amidst the carnage of war.
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Though partially conditioned by the confidence that
India already possesses nuclear superiority over Pakistan, this affirmation also
draws sustenance from a variety of larger beliefs held in India about: the gradual
decay in the efficacy of nuclear threats since the beginning of the nuclear era; the
strong presumption already existing against any nuclear use; and the
progressively declining thresholds that define unacceptable damage as societies
continue to modernize economically.
Irrespective of these expectations turning out to be correct, they still need to be
translated into a weapons inventory that is consistent with the overarching
concept of 'minimum deterrence'. One of India's most widely read
commentators on nuclear matters, Vijai Nair, has attempted to provide just such
a numerical estimate of how the country's evolving deterrent ought to be sized.
Nair estimates that
vis-à-vis
Pakistan, a nominally weaker nuclear adversary,
India should acquire the ability to target:
