{"id":51359,"date":"2019-08-19T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogadmin.forumias.com\/?p=51359"},"modified":"2019-08-19T16:35:25","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T11:05:25","slug":"7-pm-an-intervention-that-leads-to-more-questions-19th-august-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-an-intervention-that-leads-to-more-questions-19th-august-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"7 PM | An intervention that leads to more questions | 19th August, 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Context:\n<\/strong>India\u2019s\nNo First Use Nuclear policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>More\nin news: <\/strong>On\nthe first death anniversary of Prime Minister Atal Behari\nVajpayee,&nbsp;Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh&nbsp;tweeted that India\u2019s\n\u2018future\u2019 commitment to a posture of&nbsp;No First Use of nuclear weapons\n\u2018depends on the circumstances\u2019.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>India\u2019s\nnuclear doctrine<\/strong>:\nThe Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in 2003 said that it had \u2018reviewed\nprogress in operationalising India\u2019s nuclear doctrine.India\u2019s nuclear doctrine can be summarized as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Building\nand maintaining a credible minimum deterrent.<\/li><li>A\nposture of &#8220;No First Use&#8221; nuclear weapons will only be used in\nretaliation against a nuclear attack on Indian Territory or on Indian forces\nanywhere.<\/li><li>Nuclear\nretaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict\nunacceptable damage.<\/li><li>Nuclear\nretaliatory attacks can only be authorised by the civilian political leadership\nthrough the Nuclear Command Authority.<\/li><li>Non-use\nof nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states.<\/li><li>However,\nin the event of a major attack against India, or Indian forces anywhere, by\nbiological or chemical weapons, India will retain the option of retaliating\nwith nuclear weapons.<\/li><li>A\ncontinuance of strict controls on export of nuclear and missile related\nmaterials and technologies, participation in the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty\nnegotiations, and continued observance of the moratorium on nuclear tests.<\/li><li>Continued\ncommitment to the goal of a nuclear weapon free world, through global,\nverifiable and non-discriminatory nuclear disarmament.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>No\nFirst Use Policy:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The\nno-first-use policy that is India would not be the first\nto launch a nuclear weapon, but retained the right to retaliate in response to\nan atomic strike, was formulated by the\nNational Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government in 1998. The doctrine\nstates, \u201cThe fundamental purpose of Indian nuclear weapons is to deter the use\nand threat of use of nuclear weapons by any State or entity against India, and\nits forces. India will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will\nrespond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Factors that prevent against revisiting our nuclear\ndoctrine:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are many\nfactors which counter against revisiting our nuclear doctrine and sacrificing\nthe restraint it encapsulates by for instance abandoning NFU some of which are\nenumerated below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>All the gains enjoyed by us in the international\ncommunity by the restraint of our nuclear posture would be frittered away.\nThese do not merely constitute intangibles but entailed the termination of\nsanctions, support for our entry into the multilateral nuclear export control\nregimes as well as our civil nuclear cooperation agreements.<\/li><li>While\nrevoking the commitment to NFU does not necessarily equate with abandoning\nrestraint, it does leave India\u2019s doctrine more ambiguous. Ambiguity, in turn,\ncan lead to miscalculations, as India found out with Kargil (1999), where it\nwould appear that Rawalpindi misread India\u2019s resolve to carve out space for\nconventional military operations despite the new nuclear overhang.&nbsp;<\/li><li>It would enormously complicate and increase the\nexpenditure incurred by us in regard to our command and control mechanisms\nwhich would have to be reconfigured to engage in calibrated nuclear war\nfighting.<\/li><li>It would weaken the possibility of our engaging in\nconventional warfare insulated from the nuclear overhang.<\/li><li>It would encourage the use of tactical nuclear weapons\nagainst us under the illusion of no massive response.<\/li><li>It would facilitate the painting of South Asia as a\nnuclear flashpoint and thereby encourage foreign meddling.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Conclusion:\n<\/strong>India\u2019s nuclear strategy builds on the\nprinciple of restraint, and despite being a non-signatory to the Nuclear\nNon-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), its policies have been greatly consistent with\nthe key provisions of NPT that apply to nuclear-weapon states. India\u2019s declared\nnuclear doctrine of 2003, which stands by principles such as credible minimum\ndeterrence, No-First-Use (NFU), non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear\nweapon states, remains a fundamental document till date. The Indian government\nhas not shown any indication that it is attempting to deviate from these\ndeclared norms. India\u2019s record when it comes to observable and measurable\nbenchmarks of responsible nuclear behaviour is a largely positive one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Source:\n<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/an-intervention-that-leads-to-more-questions\/article29127586.ece\">https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/opinion\/op-ed\/an-intervention-that-leads-to-more-questions\/article29127586.ece<\/a><strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Context: India\u2019s No First Use Nuclear policy. More in news: On the first death anniversary of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee,&nbsp;Defence Minister, Rajnath Singh&nbsp;tweeted that India\u2019s \u2018future\u2019 commitment to a posture of&nbsp;No First Use of nuclear weapons \u2018depends on the circumstances\u2019.&nbsp; India\u2019s nuclear doctrine: The Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in 2003 said that it&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/7-pm-an-intervention-that-leads-to-more-questions-19th-august-2019\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">7 PM | An intervention that leads to more questions | 19th August, 2019<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":49370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/7-PM.png?fit=1000%2C500&ssl=1","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704260592},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}