3 December 2020, NIICE Commentary 6573
Shivani Singh
India’s nuclear culture has been a hot topic for debate over the past few years, especially owing to the current dispensation’s supposedly ‘militaristic’ overtures and rather ‘aggressive’ posturing vis-à-vis its neighbours. There has been speculation that this behaviour could potentially spill (or may have already spilled) over into the nuclear domain, suggesting a seismic change in India’s long-held nuclear culture of minimalism and restraint. Given the recent tension on both sides of the border and especially in the backdrop of the on-going global pandemic, it becomes imperative to dissect and analyse the truth of these claims in order to predict India’s future behaviour. This commentary seeks to highlight the past and present trends in India’s nuclear culture and analyse if at all a change in nuclear thinking has taken place.
Nuclear Culture Debate: Relevance Now?
The debate on nuclear culture has become more important in recent times given the varied instances of border tension between India and Pakistan including the 2016 surgical strikes conducted by India in response to the Uri terrorist attacks as well as the 2019 Balakot air strikes conducted by India in response to the Pulwama terrorist attacks. Similarly, the 2017 military standoff at Doklam and the recent altercation at the India-China border in the Ladakh region point to a growing trend towards aggressive military posturing.
These developments need to be seen in light of an impending arms race in South Asia with heavy nuclear modernisation that is underway. India is looking to strengthen its nuclear triad by employing Multiple Independently targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV) warheads onto its Agni ballistic missile and simultaneously making efforts at introducing canisterised versions of the missiles as well as building a credible ballistic missile defense system.
These militaristic overtures have not been dampened by the on-going COVID-19 pandemic. If anything, the global pandemic has further compounded the nationalist, borderline jingoistic fervour in India. This ‘nuclear nationalism’ has been exacerbated under the current circumstances. In the new pandemic-stricken normal, with failing governance systems unravelling itself in the most egregious ways, diversion to overt and combative signalling could be interpreted as a face-saving measure by national governments.
Mounted on the pre-existing trust deficit and security dilemma, what do these developments mean for the future of nuclear dyads and triads in South Asia? Can these developments in the conventional realm spill over into the nuclear space and bring down the nuclear threshold? Most importantly, has this spill-over already happened and ethereally changed India’s nuclear culture? To answer this, it is crucial that India’s past nuclear culture and behaviour is studied in depth and compared with the present trends to be able to better predict the future nuclear behaviour vis-à-vis its neighbours.
India’s Nuclear Behaviour: Past Trends
To determine India’s nuclear culture, it is important to narrow down on the traditional and normative factors that have and continue to shape India’s thinking on nuclear weapons and their use. These factors mainly include external threat perception; economic considerations; anti-nuclear morals and norms; technological imperative; and identity-assertion via promotion of nationalist narratives. It is the sustained priority-ranking of these factors over an extended period of time that defines the nuclear culture, thinking and strategy.
From 1947 to 1998, India’s nuclear behaviour trajectory exhibited traits of ‘accommodationist nuclear culture’. This was because of the sustained preference of economic imperatives like tackling issues of poverty, widespread hunger, balance of payment crisis and rising inflation over an active urge to acquire nuclear weapons. The trade off between a ‘guns vs butter’ economy was all too real for a country like India which was just coming into its own with the ultimate aim of establishing itself as an autarkic economic state. This also meant relying on international assistance and aid to keep the economy afloat in the formative years.
The second-most influencing factor that drove India towards a minimalist and accommodationist nuclear culture was a strong sense of moral anathema against nuclear weapons. Abiding by the principles of peace and non-violence, India had to establish its identity as that of a nation which would never indulge or promote the abhorrence attached with nuclear weapons. This was made abundantly clear on numerous occasions the PM Jawaharlal Nehru, PM Lal Bahadur Shastri and many others.
Other factors that shaped the nuclear culture of India but stood lower on the preference scale included lack of technological advancements, a need for identity-assertion by transcending the post-colonial narratives and instead asserting its sovereign identity and lastly, the external threat perception from China and Pakistan. Hence, it could be said that it was the economic and moral considerations of a budding economy like India that led it to adopt an accommodationist culture which manifested into a minimalist, and restrained nuclear posture.
India’s Nuclear Behaviour: 1998 to Present
In the recent years, one can see a palpable change in the national thinking on issues relating to force and nuclear weapons use. Statements by former and present Defence Ministers like Manohar Parrikar and Rajnath Singh on a possible shift away from the No-First Use (NFU) principle owing to change in security environment have exacerbated concerns of a growing assertive nuclear stance by India. However, these claims merit further analysis.
Following the same priority-ranking scale, the most influencing factor in shaping the nuclear thinking in the past two decades has been the greater accessibility to nuclear-technology and the jump in India’s ability to absorb many of the technological advancements in this domain from around the world. With the economy in a far better shape than the post-independence years, India has not faced an existential dilemma between guns and butter. Greater technology capability and access has thus, in many ways opened up opportunities for a more defensive and robust nuclear posture.
In addition to technology, external threat factors have assumed a greater role in moulding the preferences for use-of force from a strictly accommodative stance to a more defensive, if not an outright offensive stance. This could be seen in India’s responses to both Pakistan’s incursions as well as China’s expansionist motives along the border. However, a point to note is that these changes in force postures remain strictly confined to the conventional realm with extremely bleak possibility of crossing the nuclear threshold on the escalation ladder.
Lastly, an emerging trend can be seen around conflation of political ideologies and ideas with notions of use of force. One can see an upward rise in Hindu-nationalist discourse as a means of identity-assertion of an emerging Hindu majoritarian state. Conventional and nuclear weapons, hence can be expectedly used as tools of consolidating consensus around an ultra-nationalist discourse. The nuclear culture and thinking in India has definitely moved from a strictly accommodationist culture in pre-1998 period to an accommodationist-defensive culture in the post-1998 period.
Conclusion
While the change in India’s nuclear culture might be less definitive and palpable at this point, there is an increasing push towards a more defensive posture owing to factors like greater technological capability and access; growing Hindutva sentiment around identity assertion; and increasing external threat. But this is unlikely to manifest into the nuclear domain and hence the nuclear culture per se continues to remain minimalist and restrained with continued adherence to NFU principle. However, one needs to look out for emerging trend towards aggressive narratives of identity-assertion which might directly impact the conception of use-of-force (nuclear and conventional) in decision-making.
