Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
The first modification likely to be institutionalized relative to the baseline
model illustrated in
Figure 5
is the development of institutions, like the National
Security Council Secretariat, charged with generating a 'strategic alert',
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which
warns security managers about the possibility of an impending crisis. Strategic
alerts are different from tactical alerts in that the former signal the possibility of
war, whereas the latter signal the imminence of actual military attack.
Since the Indian nuclear force will be routinely maintained as a force-in-
being, the possibility of strategic warning becomes critical not so much to its
survival—because presumably opacity, mobility, deception and denial in
peacetime ought to suffice as far as ensuring survivability is concerned—but to
the ability of the Indian leadership to deter threats through possible signaling, if
required, and more importantly, to organize for retaliatory actions, should those
become necessary.
In truly low-threat scenarios, the baseline model of command is likely to be
modified by the search for strategic warning which is then used to organize the
relocation of India's dispersed strategic assets, either to increase their
survivability, or to signal the readiness to respond, or to prepare for more
effective retaliation. Irrespective of the intentions underlying such relocation,
Indian security managers would not require the integration of their nuclear
devices, even if conventional deterrence breakdown occurred after the receipt of
strategic warning, because a low-threat scenario—almost by definition—would
leave them confident that they could integrate their weapons without hindrance
after riding out a first strike.
In a high-threat scenario, however, it is likely that the 'baseline' command
system would be modified in the one consequential way illustrated in
Figure 9
:
India's nuclear weapons would be relocated, if necessary, on receipt of strategic
warning. But they would be integrated, ready, and waiting even before nuclear
attacks on India occurred—and irrespective of whether conventional deterrence
broke down in the interim. If Chengappa's description in
Weapons of Peace
is
accurate, the Indian command system did in fact operate in just this fashion
during the Kargil crisis in 1998.
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As time goes by, however, and as India's own nuclear capabilities mature in
different dimensions, it is likely that even the prospectively new baseline
illustrated by
Figure 9
will give way to the more complex and sophisticated
command system depicted in
Figure 10
. Under this model, India's most likely
command system eventually, New Delhi will still maintain a force-in-being as its
standard operating posture in peacetime, with weapons components distributed
across a variety of custodial agencies, both civilian and military.
On the receipt of strategic alert, however, it will relocate its assets if required
by the specific circumstances facing the force at that point in time. But more
importantly, however, it will focus on developing the technical capabilities, the
human competency, the infrastructural support, and the organizational
