Anything to Pakistan’s nuclear nightmares?

A prominent member of Pakistan’s strategic community Professor Zafar Nawaz Jaspal recently shared a YouTube link of a talk by him at a seminar in which he concludes that Narendra Modi’s electoral compulsions in an election year in India could mean that a nuclear crisis is on the cards.

He reasons that Modi - whose finger is on the nuclear trigger in India - is ‘ideologically extremist.’ Jaspal considers this as increasing India’s propensity for nuclear first use in a counter force mode. Ideology-induced nuclear butterfingers could make a crisis go nuclear.

Jaspal’s only claim to fame is not his berating of his son intruding in on his online seminar appearance once. Instead, he has the authority of a professorship backing him. He has been on the strategic circuit for over two decades. He has engaged with Indian interlocutors earlier on issues of regional strategic stability.

He makes his case cherry-picking and knitting together nuclear aspects that have been aired in the strategic discussion over the recent years. A known hardliner – unexceptionably so since all kinds of perspectives make for a ‘happening’ strategic community – he, predictably, goes over the top in his findings.

India can hide from a debate, dismissing Jaspal’s scenario off-hand. It is also easy to show up Jaspal’s case as part of Pakistan’s longstanding deterrence strategy of projecting South Asia as a nuclear flashpoint, intended to attract external intervention in ‘the most dangerous place on earth.’   

However, clear is that among Narendra Modi’s ‘masterstrokes’ must figure India’s decline from its earlier self-satisfying perch as a responsible and mature nuclear power.

The good professor’s argument

Professor Jaspal’s argument has refrain of the Narang and Clary paper on India’s nuclear first use propensities. They discussed political pronouncements, nuclear and military doctrines, and nuclear technological developments to conclude that India is building in counter force ‘temptations.’

Jaspal believes Indian military doctrines are increasingly offensive in intent and content. Taken with the nuclear doctrine, the tendency is towards counter force and counter military targeting, in contrast to the official nuclear doctrine – unchanged since 2003 – that holds on to the unsustainable massive retaliation mantra.

Of nuclear technology developments, he alights on developments in target acquisition, accuracy, hypersonics, cruise missile and glider platforms, multiple warheads and missile defences. He makes much of India’s recent understanding on artificial intelligence and technology with the United States.

This indicates counter force intent, upsetting a strategic balance from mutual deterrence in a balance of terror resting on mutual vulnerability. A degraded nuclear arsenal of an adversary is further whittled by ballistic missile defences taking down any incoming missiles. With escalation dominance assured thus, there would be heightened ‘temptation’ for Indian nuclear first use.

Such use is made more likely due to the complexion of the Indian nuclear decision maker(s). As evidence, he refers to gung-ho declarations of political leaders, making well-regarded nuclear doctrinal pillars merely shibboleths. Two defence ministers have been lackadaisical in their nuclear musings. Thankfully, Jaspal does not allude to the prime minister’s reference to nuclear weapons as not quite Diwali crackers.

Packaging the technological, doctrinal and political indicators, he opines that India’s nuclear use is more likely than not; and that it would be ‘flexible’; and, with No First Use a bygone, it would not only be in ‘response’.

Further - and damagingly - he holds that an ‘ideologically extremist’ decision maker habituated to warmongering rhetoric is more likely than not be persuaded to go nuclear first, and that too with a preemptive option of a decapitating first strike.

Is Jaspal right?

A dim view of the opponent is self-serving. But then the Economist in its turn of the year number styled Modi as ‘Jingo-headed zealot Modi Hindi Dominatus’. Modi, a self-confessed Hindu nationalist heads the Political Council of the Nuclear Command Authority (NCA).  

The implications, that I discussed elsewhere, have not been followed up adequately. Jaspal provides an opportunity. Taking up Jaspal’s critique at peacetime leisure is better than under crisis compulsions.

Any such appraisal can never be enough since nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to the planet. Most strategists have their nationalist thinking cap on so self-censor. ‘My nation, right or wrong,’ can prove a fatal start point.

The leftists have been disarmed (witness the fate of Gautam Navlakha). The political opposition does not want to let another front been opened against it as either anti-national or weak-on-defence. The agenda of the strategic community is set by the national security minders. In any case the ‘community’ is divided, reflecting societal polarization, evidenced by regime’s bellboys gathered as Concerned Citizens for shooting down the Constitutional Conduct Group.

A structural anomaly makes Jaspal plausible

The nuclear doctrine of 2003 is not in the open domain in full. Merely eight points from it have been shared in a bout of transparency designed to distinguish India as a responsible nuclear state from its nuclear neighbour, Pakistan.

The Political Council is peopled by ideological firebrands and political nobodies. The latter cannot be expected to keep a check on the former, reliant as they are on the largesse of the former to be in the room in first place. Only the foreign minister can be credited with strategic sense, though living up to his ‘rockstar’ image has been messed up by the Jaishankar’ism: “small economies don’t fight big economies.”

Ajit Doval, as National Security Adviser (NSA), heads the Executive Council charged with implementing nuclear decisions. All the perception management over the past nine years has not papered over his iffy strategic acumen.    

Besides, India nuclear decision-making structure is not so clear as commentators have made out. A text on India’s national security structures has not more than a sentence each on the only two pages it finds mention.

The 2017 Joint Doctrine has it that, “the tri-service Strategic Forces Command (SFC), is the NCA’s operational arm, having its own Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) reporting to the Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC) as well as National Security Advisor (NSA).” That this arrangement continues into the tenure of the second Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), the Permanent Chairman (PC) of the COSC, is an unrecognized anomaly.

Even the cooption of the national security structures into governmental repertoire in the Allocation of Business, makes no mention of a nuclear role for the NSA. The CDS himself is merely military ‘adviser’ to the NCA.

In other words, the SFC reports to two advisers. The term ‘adviser’ ordinarily implies absence of executive authority, having at best a coordination role. This cannot be mistaken for nuclear command and control (C2).

India’s nuclear C2 does not come within the NSCS but is under Prime Minister’s Office, that provides ‘secretarial assistance to the Prime Minister.’ Variously-named the Nuclear Strategy Staff was revealed to exist in a talk a decade back by the chair of the National Security Advisory Board. Working under the NSA, who is the ‘Principal Adviser on National Security matters,’ it serves the NCA.

The missing military

That the PC COSC is not in the chain of command is clear since he, in his capacity as CDS, is ‘principal military adviser to the defence minister.’ Incidentally, the defence minister these days also has another ‘principal adviser,’ a former Military Adviser (MA) to the NSA.

The appointment of CDS has come with an explicit rider that the incumbent is without any command authority other than over three putative joint forces: cyber, special forces and space. That CDS is dispensable is clear from India not having one for a year and not missing him any.

The NCA set-up relegates military advice by not having the PC COSC included in the Political Council as an invitee, on par with the NSA. He is instead elbowing for a place with other relevant-agency heads in the Executive Council, at which incidentally also sits his nominal subordinate, the C-in-C SFC. Though ‘first among equals’, in reality his voice is liable to be over-layed by that of the Service Chiefs also present.

Worse, absent unity of command, the military’s input might suffer from dissonance. This dissonance can only deepen with the MA to the NSA – equivalent to the three NSA deputies in the NSCS - having the NSA’s ear. While the first two MAs were nuclear experts, the last two had no such expertise. As of today, there is no MA, the last incumbent wrangling a double promotion from a three star retiree to four star general.

Nothing is purely political or purely military. The political deliberations in the Political Council are unleavened by the military’s direct input or advice. Evidently, India is still on a strategic learning curve; and it can prove infinitely costly.  

Some might have it that a ‘missing military’ is a good thing. Substantially military considerations are not necessarily the best drivers of nuclear decisions. Such input may be avoidably injected with institutional interests (whats good for the army is good for the country), military biases (such as in favour of offensive options) or militarism (when the instrument is a hammer everything appears to be a nail). 

However, if the NCA is – as Jaspal has it – is a forum commandeered by ideological extremism, the military’s balancing input will be sorely missed. It is a myth that military men are given to bellicism. Instead, temperamentally predisposed civilians are equally likely to be bellicist.

Whether the Executive Council can be held up to a rational-legal standard and can remain mandate-driven is questionable. India’s modernity trajectory today is pronouncedly towards the negative.

Though no data is available, upper caste bureaucrats and technologists are just as likely subscribers of Hindutva thinking as not. Agency heads, hand-picked by a two-person Appointments’ Committee of the Cabinet, are unlikely to compensate vagaries with advice against the grain. Group think might debilitate considerations, Jaishankar’s fawning description of cabinet meetings notwithstanding.

The military at the table can chip in with the necessary sobriety and expertise. It will counter act Modi’s inclination to ride rough shod over procedural aspects, as was the ignoring the Reserve Bank of India in the demonetization decision, or pertinent to the military, the rushing through of the Agnipath scheme of uncertain provenance.

If there is a counter force or counter military thrust in the nuclear domain, then all the more reason for the military coordinates of the situation to be on the table. There is no such thing as ‘political weapons’, as India holds nuclear weapons to be. They have real world implications that cannot be shied away from.

How much worse can it get?

Advocacy for the military's inclusion presupposes that the military remains uncontaminated by Hindutva, by now all pervasive in the social space and dominant in political culture.

Hindutva’s verities are not professionalism friendly, anachronistically dipping into wellsprings 2000 years old. It has gone out of its way to trammel on institutions. Deep-selection of the military leadership is one conduit for getting to a Hindutva-compliant military. This has debilitated the CDS post, evacuating all promise of the ‘most notable reform’ since Independence.

Hereon it can only get worse. When the baton is passed there is no choosing between prospective receivers, that has a monk as frontrunner.

A warped structure and one struggling with pathologies cannot but materialize Jaspal’s three scenarios of nuclear weapons’ discharge: accident (remember the errant Brahmos); miscalculation (remember demonetization); and desperation (remember Pulwama).

But Jaspal’s is an over-kill

Even so, to hold that Modi might nukes to pull off an election victory is rather a stretch. True, Modi used a security incident in the run up to the previous election to his advantage. He has also tasted blood – gaining another four per cent voters.

However, on strategic matters involving use of force against nuclear neighbours, Modi has been remarkably circumspect – noise on surgical strikes notwithstanding.

Even as the last surgical strike operative got back across the Line of Control, the Indian military operations’ Chief was on television assuring Pakistan that operations had ended. Only filibuster attended Indian response to Pakistan’s Operation Swift Retort. Against China, India’s reticence has been called out for ‘cowardice.’

Jaspal is not the only commentator impressed by information war on India’s turning a new strategic leaf. This writer too initially thought there was a strategic shift from restraint to proactivism. Events have proved otherwise.  

Modi will not use the nuclear card to fetch him another term because of the uncertainty that surrounds such recourse. India’s efforts at force reconfiguration into integrated battle groups has suffered setback recently, showing up its unreadiness – the Himalayan frontier taking priority. Though prioritized, Jaspal is entirely wrong in holding that post-Galwan, India’s nuclear proactivism extends to the Northern front too.

Besides, for an election victory, there are other rabbits to pull out of the hat, for instance, the Khalistan factor or another outrage on Muslims. Purging Mughuls from history curriculum not enough, perhaps a Uniform Civil Code could be trotted out using Modi’s brute majority.

Taking Jaspal seriously

Taking Jaspal’s critique up front, his is a plausible scenario. India could go for counter force strikes - even preemptively - in case Pakistan readies nuclear weapons for battlefield use, with a strategic purpose.

The quantum of nuclear ordnance used will determine attitudes and steps up the ladder. Proportionality – preferably mutually defined prior - and discrimination can act as useful brakes. If and since the two already maintain discreet contacts, these could be upped at the crunch.

Escalate to de-escalate strategies of the two sides need to be exchanged directly between the two. This is a counter-intuitive point, but a nuclear bang can even make the deaf hear. Ideological propensities might go out of the window, though late but hopefully not too late.

The two sides must not rely overly on their respective benefactors. A lesson from the Ukraine War is that patrons usually have their own geopolitical best interests in mind and at heart. In this case, the two superpowers will try to test and wear down the other. South Asia can do without a home-grown Zelensky.

Jaspal is only partially right

Even if Jaspal’s was merely India-baiting, his case will surely gladden hearts in India’s nuclear weapons establishment. They would believe that India deterrence based on a strategy of irrationality has succeeded.

The logic is that if Pakistan fears reaching for its nukes - notwithstanding its full spectrum deterrence doctrine - Indian deterrence would have succeeded.

However, that was true for the period of Indian conventional advantage. Ever since Galwan, no such conventional advantage exists. Pakistan does not need nukes to stave off India.

Instead, in a two-front scenario, India might need nukes to get to a quick verdict on the Western front, in order to be able to concentrate on the other more threatening foe. First use, counter force and counter military ‘temptations’ are more pertinent then. Its in such a scenario, bigotry in the NCA might clinch the nuclear decision.

Jaspal is wrong in believing that such decisions might owe to electoral compulsions. India may yet get to a stage when elections don’t really matter, which is when his scenario will truly kick in.