Context-Recently Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that the future of India’s ‘No First Use’ (NFU) policy on nuclear weapons depended on “circumstances”. Mr. Singh’s statement has raised apprehensions on the likely             revision of India’s NFU policy and nuclear doctrine.

What is ''No First use'' Policy

1. "No First Use'' is a pledge taken by a country to not use nuclear weapons as a means of warfare unless a rival nation resorts to such an action first. China was the first to pass such a resolution after it became a nuclear power in 1964, portraying it as an indication of the "purely self-defensive nature" of the country's nuclear strategy.
2. India adopted the "No First Use" policy after the Pokhran II tests in 1998, asserting that its newly acquired arsenal will be used only as a deterrent. The then Atal Bihari Vajpayee government affirmed its commitment to the goal of a "world free of nuclear weapons", but reserved the right to exercise "massive retaliation" if another nation should strike first. Pakistan made no such commitment.
3. The Indian doctrine also stated that it will not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear powered states, and would strictly control the export of such materials and technologies. The onus of authorising retaliatory attacks was placed on the civilian political leadership, led by the Prime Minister.

India's Nuclear doctrine

India’s official nuclear doctrine is codified in a 2003 document, which takes cues from the 1999 draft doctrine.  Since then, there has been no official communiqué about India’s nuclear policy from the government, with developments primarily being discussed on the basis of one-off statements by ministers, retired bureaucrats and military officials. Since 2003, India’s nuclear doctrine has had three primary components:

1. No First Use: India will only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack on Indian territory, or Indian forces. A caveat is made about their possible use in response to a chemical or biological attack.
2. Massive Retaliation: India’s response to a first strike will be massive, to cause ‘unacceptable damage’. While the doctrine doesn’t explicitly espouse a counter-value strategy (civilian targets), the wording implies the same.
3. Credible Minimum Deterrence: The number and capabilities of India’s nuclear weapons and delivery systems should merely be sufficient to ensure intolerable retaliation, also keeping in mind first-strike survival of its relatively meagre arsenal.

The advantages of an NFU 

• First, a hair-trigger alert, to ensure that the other side does not get a chance to strike first, does not have to be maintained and so forces and equipment can be in a relaxed posture; nuclear forces can be maintained in a de-mated condition waiting for orders from higher echelons to go to a higher alert status, thus ensuring that command and control stays firmly with the civilian political leadership, which is a very important aim.
• Second, since there is no first use alert requirement, the chances of reacting to a false alarm are nullified.
• Third, the onus of taking the decision to escalate to a nuclear use lies on the adversary and not on the party having an NFU doctrine.
• Fourth, a first use would result in international opprobrium and weigh heavily on a country with a first use posture.
• Fifth, a first use posture still requires a country to have survivable second strike capability as there is nothing such as a “splendid” first strike implying 100% decapitation of the adversary’s assets and leadership.
• And last, a NFU doctrine is cheaper to implement; for India, which has many economic targets to achieve, this is a very important factor.

Factors militating against revisiting our nuclear doctrine:

There are many factors which militate against revisiting our nuclear doctrine and sacrificing the restraint it encapsulates by for instance abandoning NFU some of which are enumerated below:

1. All the gains enjoyed by us in the international community by the restraint of our nuclear posture would be frittered away. These do not merely constitute intangibles but entailed the termination of sanctions, support for our entry into the multilateral nuclear export control regimes as well as our civil nuclear cooperation agreements.
2. It would enormously complicate and increase the expenditure incurred by us in regard to our command and control mechanisms which would have to be reconfigured to engage in calibrated nuclear war fighting.
3. It would weaken the possibility of our engaging in conventional warfare insulated from the nuclear overhang.
4. It would encourage the use of tactical nuclear weapons against us under the illusion of no massive response.
5. It would facilitate the painting of South Asia as a nuclear flashpoint and thereby encourage foreign meddling.

Some frequently asked questions and answers

Qns 1.What does the Defence Minister’s statement mean, and does it indicate a likely change in India’s NFU policy and nuclear doctrine?

• It is not sure if it is really a revision of India’s NFU policy because all he said was that in future the policy might change. That has always been the case. The doctrine is only valid for as long as the government says it is valid. It would be foolish to suggest that doctrines cannot change or that they will hold for all times and under all circumstances. All he was suggesting was that we cannot guarantee that the doctrine will hold for all times.
• This is possibly a signal to Pakistan that it should not take India’s restraint for granted for all times to come, but I think even that would possibly be an exaggerated reading of the statement. I think Rajnath Singh’s statement is somewhat different from former Union Minister Manohar Parrikar’s statement. He had said at a book launch that he doesn’t understand why we have to wait until we hit back. That was a lot more problematic even though it was clarified subsequently that his statement was his personal view rather than the government’s policy. I don’t see Mr. Singh’s statement as signifying a change in the doctrine. And obviously if we did change the NFU policy, that would not be particularly useful.

Qns 2.In the last few years, India’s conventional posture has undergone a major shift. This was evident in the 2016 surgical strikes and this year’s Balakot airstrike. It also disproved the old belief  that under a nuclear overhang,     the room for conventional manoeuvre is closed. In that context, isn’t stability in the nuclear realm better for India so that there is room in the conventional  domain?

• Absolutely, we want stability in the nuclear front, but I don’t think that stability was under threat. Pakistan repeatedly raises this bogey of nuclear escalation every time it engages in some action in terms of sending terrorists across. But that is a way of constraining India’s response, as a way of preventing India from responding militarily to those kinds of attacks. The idea is that if you raise the issue, if you bring in nuclear escalation as a threat, it will constrain India’s response. It is always a false expectation, a false argument, because there is no direct link between conventional escalation and nuclear escalation.
• In Kargil, for example, when we started using air power to dislodge Pakistan air forces from mountain heights, initially Pakistan complained about escalation. It said this could lead to nuclear escalation. But pretty soon it was clear that there was no such thing. Similarly, during the 2016 surgical strikes, Pakistan again complained about the possibility of escalation. But in each of these cases we have not seen any escalation. There are several layers in between, and those layers are where Pakistan has benefited because it can’t really escalate to something like Balakot or to surgical strikes.
• So, yes, we want nuclear stability and that nuclear stability exists. It is just an exaggeration by Pakistan that nuclear stability is always under threat and anything we do will put it under immense strain.
• Of late, we have repeatedly shown that we can take action without it escalating anywhere close to the nuclear level.

Qns 3.Talking about the escalation matrix, the strategic ambiguity can lead to a response from Pakistan and then in turn from China, India’s two nuclear adversaries. Pakistan has been trying to put  its nuclear weapons at sea.        The U.S. has walked out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty. How will these developments impact the region?

• First of all, I don’t think any ambiguity has been brought into India’s doctrine as of now. I think India is very clear on its NFU policy.
• On the likely Pakistan reaction, Pakistan is working on what it calls the full spectrum deterrence capability. So, in terms of the arsenal build-up, I don’t think there is going to be any major change except that it will likely show urgency or justification for the large stockpile build-up that it is anyway engaged in. More likely, removal of NFU will put India in a problematic situation because for a credible ‘first use’ you have to build different kinds of capabilities which will mean going on a different trajectory. So, it is most likely that India will get pulled into an arms race if it was to remove the NFU.
• In terms of China’s reaction, I don’t see any material changes happening in response to India’s capability build-up. In any case, it has a lead on nuclear and delivery systems. It will definitely use the opportunity to denigrate India’s status as a responsible nuclear power. So, India’s claim to be a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group or for a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council will come under strain as a result of that.
• Frankly, as far as the response of the rest of the world is concerned, we are already in a situation where arms control is crumbling: the U.S.’s nuclear posture review is talking about limited nuclear war once again. The rest of the world will not care much about this change, except at the rhetoric level where there will be criticism of what is going on. So, my concern is not so much the rest of the world’s response to change in NFU, but what it will be for India itself in terms of investment in financial and technological capabilities to make a first use credible. After all, it’s not just a question of dropping the ‘No’ from NFU, it is a matter of making the first use credible and that is not an easy proposition. There is no chance that India has of carrying out in the first strike a disarming or decapitating strike for the kinds of adversaries that we have and therefore we will be sucking ourselves into an arms race if we were to go for a first use doctrine.

Qns 4. Pakistan has been trying to diversify its nuclear arsenal for many years now and has been trying to bridge the gap between conventional and nuclear. I am referring to attempts to put nuclear warheads on                               conventional submarines following India’s nuclear triad taking shape. Does this blur the line between conventional and nuclear and create new risks?

•  Yes, there is a problem when you use dual-use delivery vehicles and weapons systems. This is the problem we have faced in the past. Say Pakistan is holding its nuclear weapons in some airbase. We may be constrained from attacking that airbase because we wouldn’t want Pakistan to mistake a conventional attack on an airbase as an attack on its nuclear weapons. So, whenever you have dual-use weapons, there is a problem. There is a problem when both may misunderstand a particular platform, base or a submarine as containing nuclear weapons. One may be constrained from attacking that because we don’t want to give the impression that we are going after their nuclear weapons.
• On the other hand, it is an even bigger problem when Pakistan uses these dual-use systems. If a conventional missile or a short-range missile is launched at us, we wouldn’t know whether it is a conventional missile or a nuclear missile and therefore it is possible that one may mistake it as an incoming nuclear attack. Even our own armoury has both nuclear and conventional warheads, which is generally bad practice.

Qns 5. In 2013, after Pakistan introduced tactical nuclear weapons or battlefield nuclear weapons, India clarified that it will not distinguish between strategic and tactical nuclear warheads and the doctrine of massive retaliation       will apply. Following the recent blurring of lines with dual-use technologies, does the nuclear doctrine as it is still hold?

•  I don’t think that makes a difference. I think whatever the Indian position, any attack would be considered a nuclear attack even if it is a tactical nuclear weapon that is used against Indian forces or Indian territory. It will be considered a full-scale nuclear attack. I think that the response to a tactical nuclear weapons attack, especially on Indian forces inside Pakistani territory, will make it difficult for India to justify a full-scale massive retaliation that the Indian doctrine suggests. But the Indian doctrine is also sufficiently flexible. Massive retaliation is one of the options it has in case of a nuclear attack. India can decide to use, for instance, another smaller nuclear warhead in retaliation or a limited nuclear strike. So, it doesn’t mean the doctrine itself has to change in response to that. All the doctrine says as of now is, we will not be the first to attack and we will only retaliate. Our posture and doctrine are essentially retaliation only. We will not initiate.