Tag Archives: chemical weapons

India’s Nuclear No-First-Use Policy

08 Tue Apr 2014

Posted by in India, Nuclear, South Asia

≈ Comments Off on India’s Nuclear No-First-Use Policy

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

With the release of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s manifesto on April 07, a spurious news story appeared in Reuters that claimed that the BJP was reconsidering India’s nuclear “no first use” policy. The article does not attribute the information to anyone, except to say that “sources involved in drafting the [manifesto]” revealed the NFU policy to be under consideration. The BJP’s manifesto, for its part, only states that the Party plans to study, revise, and update India’s nuclear doctrine to make it relevant to current challenges – a reasonable goal, considering that the present policy was formed over a decade ago. While some have recoiled in horror at the suggestion, it is hard to imagine the abnegation of NFU as a destabiliser in South Asia amidst the already volatile situation.

India’s present position on NFU was adopted soon after its Shakti nuclear tests in 1998. The Draft Indian Nuclear Doctrine (1999) commits the country’s nuclear arsenal to a purely retaliatory function and a posture of credible minimum deterrence (2.3).‡ The doctrine also states that India will not threaten use or use nuclear weapons against states that do not possess nuclear weapons of their own and are not part of a nuclear alliance with another power (2.5).

There has been some criticism that India’s continuing advances in missile technology and production of fissile material indicates a departure from the stated posture of credible minimum deterrence. However, the doctrine clearly explains that ‘minimum’ is a dynamic concept that is dependent upon technological imperatives and the strategic environment (2.3). Furthermore, India ensures credibility by maintaining “sufficient, survivable, and operationally prepared nuclear forces” along with a “robust command and control system,” intelligence, planning, and training (2.6). Finally, the DIND seeks credibility in second strike capability, a goal achieved by maintaining a nuclear triad (3.1).

As of the present, India and China remain the only two nuclear weapons states that have an explicit NFU policy, though there have been some doubts about China’s nuclear posture in the past couple of years. No other NWS – Britain, France, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, or the United States – gives such a guarantee. Understandably, some strategists in India have asked why Delhi should remain an outlier in this regard.

It is worth considering under what circumstances India would be provoked into using or threatening the use of nuclear weapons to understand the utility of NFU. The most obvious situation is to respond to an opponent from using chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons against India. In fact, not doing so would indelibly destroy all credibility in the Indian deterrent. The NFU commits India to the development of a second strike capability that can survive any nuclear strike by an enemy. Ironically, the NFU that is intended to dampen nuclear zeal fuels it by way of the pursuit of technology to miniaturise nuclear warheads, develop launch capabilities from the sea, and mating multiple warheads onto a single missile.

A second reason to use nuclear weapons would be to preempt an enemy’s imminent CBRN – chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear – strike against Indian assets. This is not outside the scope of the DIND: Section 2.3(a) states that appropriate measures shall be invoked to counter even the threat of release of nuclear weapons. Critics persuasively argue that a preemptive nuclear strike will convert a potential enemy first strike on India into an assured attack; therefore, “appropriate measures” should not include a nuclear preemption. However, supporters of a preemptive strike argue equally persuasively that it is equally if not more immoral for India to stand by and absorb the first strike at the cost of critical infrastructure or the lives of tens of thousands of its citizens.

A third circumstance for the use of nuclear weapons would be to retard a massive conventional onslaught. This is unlikely in India’s case: despite the sorry state of its military, India maintains a theoretical conventional superiority over Pakistan. Against China, India is aided by the treacherous terrain of the Himalayas. If China can move tens of thousands of soldiers with tanks and artillery support across the rooftop of the world and into the Gangetic plains, a NFU would be the least of the things ailing Indian defence.

A fourth use would be, of course, the fantasy “splendid first strike.” The term was coined by Herman Kahn to describe a situation when a state could preemptively strike its opponent and eliminate its war-fighting potential or at the very least significantly degrade it by destroying the enemy nuclear arsenal. This scenario, eschewed even by Hollywood, is plagued by uncertainty of success and the consequences of failure. Part of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is road-mobile, making up-to-date intelligence very difficult and the window to act on it minuscule.

There are many arguments in favour of the NFU. One is that it strengthens the Non-Proliferation Treaty by giving fewer reasons for member states to rethink their decision to accede to the treaty. While caution is certainly advisable regarding the proliferation of nuclear weapons, it is difficult to support a treaty that institutionalises what Indian diplomat VM Trivedi called nuclear apartheid; as long as the Nuclear 5 do not take their Article VI disarmament obligations seriously, the NPT stands on weak legs.

Another argument in favour of NFU is that the use of nuclear weapons weakens the nuclear taboo. In a state of crisis, however, one suspects that the weight given to nuclear customs is not much. If such is the faith put in the psychological status of leaders during wartime, an argument can also be made to reverse effect that the use of tactical nuclear weapons will not spiral out of control and that escalation dominance can be achieved.

A third reason to maintain NFU is that in a crisis, a potential first strike gives the enemy less reason to hold back on its punitive strikes against India. Fearing a first strike by India, a weaker state like Pakistan would have an incentive to strike first before an Indian strike destroyed a substantial part of its nuclear arsenal. Though theoretically sound, this argument fails in the South Asian context because Pakistan has made it abundantly clear that in any conflict with India, nuclear weapons would not be their weapons of last resort but of first response. Islamabad’s subscription to this dangerous, low-threshold tripwire is fuelled by Pakistan’s lack of strategic depth geographically to absorb, halt, and repulse an Indian invasion. Thus, any potential benefits of crisis stability are washed away.

A fourth point made in favour of NFU is that such a policy obviates the need for complex command & control systems, tactical nuclear weapons, and strategies for fighting a nuclear war. This seems like wishful thinking. The lack of readiness to fight a nuclear war erodes the credibility of nuclear deterrence, and tactical nuclear weapons may just as easily be used in a second strike against smaller counterforce targets; once war has been undertaken, no peace is made by pretending there is no war.

Ultimately, NFU is a declaratory policy that cannot be verified. Some have suggested that India’s recessed deterrence – the de-mating of nuclear warheads from missiles – provides sufficient verification of Delhi’s continued adherence to NFU. However, de-mated warheads are difficult to maintain once India’s sea leg of the triad becomes operational. A purely declaratory NFU holds little meaning for a cynical and suspicious enemy; the policy can be violated and rationalisations found just as easily as NFU can be declared.

In face of a conventionally superior opponent, NFU might make little sense. Israel and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation serve as such examples. However, India is not in such a position – Pakistan is conventionally weaker and China is kept at bay by geography. Nonetheless, on the battlefield, India has little to gain by adopting a no first use policy. Given Delhi’s problematic policy of massive retaliation, it has nothing to lose either.

What little benefit might be accrued to India comes in the realm of diplomacy. A NFU posture is seen as a sign of maturity and responsibility – strategic weakness and restraint usually are – and an Indian commitment to NFU bolsters its image as a restrained and serious power in contrast to a reckless Pakistan.

Given the negligible benefits of abandoning NFU, it is unlikely that the BJP will do so despite the rumours. If the BJP is serious about bolstering India’s nuclear deterrence, it might start by heeding Lt. Gen. BM Kapur’s words: “If range, target, yield, and mobility of nuclear weapons are made known to the enemy, that is the beginning of deterrence. Openness is itself deterrence.” Or to put in pop culture terms, “the whole point of a Doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret.” By abandoning NFU, the BJP will not make India any safer. Its only achievement will be the exposure of hapless newspaper readers to endless apocalyptic editorials about India and its nuclear programme.

 ——–

‡: The DIND formed the basis of the Indian Nuclear Doctrine that was adopted in January 2003. However, the text of the IND has not been made public.

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on April 08, 2014.

2013, From Mali to Bali: The Year in Review

26 Thu Dec 2013

Posted by in Opinion and Response

≈ Comments Off on 2013, From Mali to Bali: The Year in Review

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

So another year is ending – Nostradamus and the Mayans were clearly horrible at this foretelling business, and our exile on this rock continues. The Syrian civil war continues unabated though the government forces of Bashar al-Assad seem to have gained the advantage, the European Union expanded by one more member – Croatia – despite its Eurocrisis, and Fidel Castro still lives to poke the United States in the eye. However, what were the defining moments of 2013? In the long term, it is hard to tell yet – as Groucho Marx said, outside of a dog, a book is Man’s best friend; inside of a dog, it is too dark to read. In the here and now, though, a few events stand out:

January 11 – France intervenes in Mali: Africa has been largely ignored since the end of colonialism there in the 1960s. Cold War struggles in Angola, Rhodesia, the Congo, Mozambique, Ethiopia, or Somalia rarely captured the attention of the world as Korea, Vietnam, or even South Asia did. After decades of neglect, Western powers are now following Islamists into the interiors of the continent; France’s intervention in Mali, soon after action in Libya and in context of its more vocal stance on Syria and the Congo, marks the Fifth Republic’s renewed interest in a global security commons, interestingly under a Socialist president. In the previous decade, France had notoriously blocked United Nations action in Iraq.

February 12 – N Korea’s third nuclear test: Any nuclear test is significant because it furthers a state’s knowledge of one of the most destructive weapons known. This test by Pyongyang is thought to have contributed to understanding warhead miniaturisation and greater fission of the core. If N Korea achieves this, together with its missiles (No Dong, Taepo Dong, Musudan, Unha), it becomes another de facto Nuclear Weapons State.

February 28 – Benedict XVI resigns as Pope: This is the first time since Gregory XII in 1415 that a pope has stood down, and the first to do so voluntarily since Celestine V in 1294. Benedict XVI may not have radically altered the course of history but by showing the ability to give up power, he has probably done more to remind the Church of its founding tenets than most popes in between.

April 2 – Arms Trade Treaty is signed: This treaty is dead on arrival, but it will nevertheless serve as another legal scalpel for powers when convenient, much like the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The aim of the treaty is to control and regulate the sale of conventional weapons, from small arms to battle tanks, prevent their diversion to clandestine buyers, and to restrict their flow into conflict areas. Past records show that such goals are a mirage – when the United States cut off arms sales to Pakistan during the South Asian Crisis of 1971, it encouraged Turkey, Jordan, and Iran to supply Islamabad from their arsenal which would be replenished and upgraded later; when the US Congress forbade the supply of arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, the Reagan White House found a way to divert money to the cause from secret arms sales to Iran.

May 28 – Taksim Gezi Park protests in Istanbul: A minor sit-in grew into a protest which became a nationwide conflagration against Turkey’s ruling Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s slow erosion of country’s Kemalist secularism. The protest, seen in isolation, means little but considering it alongside the corruption probes against several ministers in Erdoğan’s cabinet and the now open war between the AKP and the Gülen movement, the AKP will have a bust time up to the 2015 elections. Most experts give the win to Erdoğan again, but a large part of that is due to the failure of the opposition to come up with a viable candidate and platform yet. One thing is for sure – Turkey is on the simmer. and a place to watch in the new year

June 6 – Edward Snowden reveals covert surveillance by NSA: A Booz Allen Hamilton employee’s revelations about the US National Security Agency’s espionage set off a firestorm around the world. Despite being long past the era in which gentlemen did not read other gentlemen’s letters, the sheer scope of the operation is stunning. Not only did the NSA spy on other enemy governments as intelligence agencies usually do, but they also spied on friendly and allied governments, political leaders, businesses, activists, and actively worked to sabotage privacy and encryption algorithms on the internet. The public heard for the first time names of programmes like PRISM, XKeyscore, and Tempora which were designed to take metadata from phones and internet traffic in a massive attempt at mass surveillance. Whatever one’s views of Snowden are – hero, whistle-blower or traitor – the presence of US surveillance agencies in a country’s most secret networks is a great significance and this leak dwarfs Daniel Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers in potential consequences.

June 14 – Flash floods in Uttarakhand: A multi-day cloud burst over northern India caused India’s worst natural disaster since the Southeast Asian tsunami hit in 2004. Over 100,000 Hindu pilgrims were stranded in Uttarakhand, the site of the smaller Char Dham. The Indian military rescued tens of thousands of people in Operation Surya Hope but despite their valiant efforts, official records indicate that over 10,000 people perished in the tragedy. For a brief moment, there was some focus on questionable construction practices and dubious licenses issued for development in the region; the death toll made people pay attention to the environmental impact of ill-conceived development, but in keeping with India’s indefatigable inertia, everyone has adjusted swalpa and moved on.

July 3 – Mohamed Morsi removed from power in Egypt: After tempting fate one time too many, the Egyptian military removed the country’s fifth president from power. Morsi is the leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, and came to office via an election some claim was far from honest. The Arab Spring had come to Egypt and toppled Hosni Mubarak who had ruled the country since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. During the election campaign, Morsi had sounded like a moderate traditionalist. Once he assumed office, however, his manipulation of the judiciary and the Islamist accent of the new constitution worried many Egyptians. The Army thus enjoyed widespread support when they acted against Morsi, and while the West debated semantics – whether it was a coup or not – the bloodshed continued in Egypt, turning their Spring into a Winter of Discontent.

August 21 – Ghouta chemical attack in Syria: The use of chemical weapons in war is not as rare as one would like: most recently, they were by Saddam Hussein against Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War; some accuse the United States of waging chemical warfare with its use of Agent Orange in Vietnam though there are some technical quibbles. Chemical weapons have been used on civilians too, most notably in Halabja against the Kurds by, again, Saddam Hussein. So why was Ghouta different? Honestly, it is hard to say, except for that it provided an excuse for the West to intervene in Syria if it wanted to. However, the difficulty of a military adventure in Syria appears to have stayed the West’s hand, as did Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s offer to surrender his entire stockpile of chemical weapons and sign the Chemical Weapons Convention. This reduces the ranks of non-signatories to just four – Angola, Egypt, N Korea, and S Sudan.

September 21 – Al-Shabaab attack Westgate Mall in Nairobi: Four or five gunmen from the terrorist group al-Shabaab killed 72 people and wounded over 200 over a span of three days in the upscale shopping mall of Westgate in the Westlands neighbourhood of Nairobi. The brutality of the attack – how many of the hostages were tortured – shocked the world. This is perhaps the worst terrorist attack on Kenyan soil and one of the larger attacks in the world since the attack on Bombay in November 2008. The terror group claimed that the attack was revenge for Kenya’s role in Operation Linda Nchi (2011) in which the Kenyan military coordinated with its Ethiopian and Somalian counterparts and deployed into southern Somalia in pursuit of al-Shabaab terrorists. After the tragedy, President Uhuru Kenyatta admitted that the rescue attempt had been bungled and promised to set up an inquiry.

November 5 – Indian launches Mars orbiter: One of the few bright events of the year, apart from Sachin Tendulkar’s retirement from cricket (#trollbait!), was India’s launch of its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM). Dubbed Mangalyaan by the media, the project is a first for India and the country becomes only the fifth country to send a mission to the Red Planet after the United States, Russia/Soviet Union, Japan, and the European Union. Of course, one can question if Russia deserves to be in this list given the curse its Mars programme seems to be under – 18 failures and three partial successes. India’s mission may not push on the boundaries of knowledge in any great way, but it represents the development of indigenous technology and skills needed for such a mission. The recent failure of India’s most powerful rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) meant that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had to settle for the smaller Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and hence a lighter payload. The probe is expected to reach Mars by late September next year, almost exactly when the United States’ Maven mission reaches the Red Planet. Despite these disappointments, Mangalyaan is a proud milestone in the history of India’s spacefaring.

November 24 – Interim Nuclear Agreement concluded with Iran: The deal represents nothing but a declaration of good faith to conduct negotiations, and establishes conditions for both the E3+3 (France, Germany, Britain + Russia, United States, China) and Iran that they may assuage the other side’s concerns. What is most important about this deal is that it has finally broken the jinx on Iran’s discussions with the West and achieved an agreement. Iran has been accused of being a year away from nuclear weapons capability since the early 1980s (!) and sanctions became tougher over the last eight years. In the last coupe of years, the threat of war loomed large as Iran inched closer to the West’s red line on Tehran’s nuclear development. Psychologically, this deal has readied many leaders to the idea that Iran is a country that can be negotiated with and has silenced the war drums for now. News of this potential breakthrough has already seen several businesses prepare to flood Iran’s market with their services the moment a final agreement is reached on the Middle Eastern state’s nuclear question.

December 7 – Bali Package signed at 9th WTO meet: The World Trade Organisation finally signed a trillion-dollar agreement in Bali at the Ninth Ministerial Conference. The deal has been widely hailed as an engine for growth, particularly for developing countries. It was agreed to simplify customs procedures so that goods could move quickly from state to state, and India finagled an exemption on the WTO’s limits on stockpiling, subsidies, and guaranteed pricing to farmers; in effect, the United Progressive Alliance’s new and ambitious food subsidy remains safe. The agreement is also expected to create some 20 million new jobs, most of which will be in developing countries. There are still wrinkles to be worked out, but those goals, such as duty-free trade, have been declared as eventual goals and put off for a later date. By stepping away from an all-or-nothing approach, the WTO was able to secure an arrangement beneficial to all at a pace acceptable to all.

Requiescat In Pace…

  • March 05 – Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela (59)
  • March 14 – Ieng Sary, Deputy Prime Minister of Cambodia (88)
  • April 08 – Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (88)
  • May 12 – Kenneth Waltz, Professor of Political Science (89)
  • December 05 – Nelson Mandela, President of South Africa (95)
  • December 14 – Peter O’Toole, Actor (81)
  • December 23 – Mikhail Kalashnikov, Arms designer (94)

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on December 28, 2013.

When Was The Last Clean War?

01 Sun Sep 2013

Posted by in Middle East

≈ Comments Off on When Was The Last Clean War?

Tags

, , , , , ,

What started out hopefully as an Arab Spring but became an Arab Winter in many countries has become an Arab Nightmare in Syria. When US president Barack Obama punted the decision to attack Syria for the probable use of chemical weapons against its own civilians, it was a subtle confirmation of what everyone knew to be true – there was no easy way out. For two and a half years, the Syrian civil war has raged on with no sign of respite; worse, from a Western, liberal perspective, each side makes the other look better.

Washington’s initial reluctance to interfere in Syria stemmed from its awareness that it had a reputation in the region of always propping up dictators, and it did not wish to taint a potential homegrown liberal movement. As chants turned into bullets, the United States urged regional players to take a bigger role in bringing peace to Syria.

The United States was also tied down by many constraints – it had economic woes at home, it was already in Afghanistan and trying to get out of Iraq, it faced strong opposition from Russia, Iran, and perhaps China, on Syria, and it had Iran’s nuclear programme to contend with. Outsourcing Syria’s rebellion to cash-rich Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar seemed the sensible solution. Whether as a result of this outsourcing and subsequent selective funding or other factors, Syria’s opposition today is composed of an unexpectedly large number of jihadists, from the infamous Jabhat al-Nusra to the rapidly growing Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The United States has, therefore, since found it difficult to justify arming the same rebels it was fighting elsewhere.

The hesitation to act even after the use of chemical weapons last week – not for the first time – underscores the lack of a viable opposition as well as a workable attack plan. Legality has rarely stood in the way of national interest before, yet the notion of norm defence – chemical weapons, as WMDs, should never be used in warfare – seems to have galvanised many. Yet were it so simple: on the one hand, hitting Bashar al-Assad’s air force, missile sites, and chemical weapons factories may weaken him, but on the other, the rebellion is fractured and the probable replacement for Assad is even worse.

This is assuming, of course, that the strikes will be successful and Assad can be weakened or should be: special weapons will be required to destroy chemical weapons storage facilities because the heat and blast from regular explosives would only disperse the agents. Even then, it is not such an easy task. As one scholar has noted, we should be clear whether we want to protect Syrians or punish Assad – it will be difficult to do both.

Syria is a reminder, as if Iraq wasn’t, that there is only so much the force of arms can accomplish. Even if hostilities continued for another year and both sides were driven to the negotiating table by exhaustion, sectarian differences within the country, the Lebanese powder keg, and foreign influence from every power worth its salt would wreck the country and possibly partition it. There is no pretty option left for Syria save war exhaustion or outright victory.

Syria is also a reminder, as were Iraq and Afghanistan, that the sort of goals the West professes to wish to see can only be achieved through sweat and blood – local as well as their own, and over many years. The West has no stomach for empire anymore, and the Rest will resist it tooth and nail; therefore, any notions of surgical strikes, let alone quick interventions or regime change, must be viewed with scepticism. TLAM strikes may help ease frustration and may even serve short-term interests, but the sort of transformations wished for will need decades…if they happen at all.

Another interesting question one might ask is why the burden of intervention falls on the United States. Regional powers have for years been large recipients of US and European military hardware – Riyadh has spent billions on its air force, Jordan trains regularly with the USAF, and Turkey derives the benefits of being a NATO member. Frank Jannuzi, executive deputy director of Amnesty International, suggests, however, that a better long-term alternative to missile strikes is to impose an arms embargo on Syria and hold those responsible for war crimes accountable via the International Criminal Court. Though applaudable, the idea highlights the deadlock in the United Nations Security Council and the body’s repeated failure to address human rights issues.

Yet Syria did not just happen; a sequence of events, perhaps started fortuitously for some, in conjunction with another sequence of responses, brought it to this juncture. US interest in Syria at this specific juncture is for one primary reason: to isolate Iran. If Assad falls and Hezbollah loses its base, it will weaken Iran even further. Therefore, Washington has encouraged Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey to support the Syrian Islamists. Ironically, the US routinely bombs these same groups or their kin in Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Similarly, the United States has had to rely on questionable allies in Afghanistan too as its sanctions on Iran are getting in the way of a fully committed fight against the Taliban there. The question arises, just how much is the US willing to watch disintegrate to win on its terms in Iran?

It is no secret that Russia has been wary of increasing US reach in the Middle East and Central Asia; the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, pressure on Iran, bombing of Libya, and the assistance to the rebels in Syria via allies has left Russia nervous. Syria is one of Iran’s few remaining allies, and Tehran is not going to abandon it, chemical weapons or not, to the US. As in Afghanistan, Washington can expect a pushback to its extended Iran policy in Syria. If Moscow’s S-300 air defence system arrives in 2014 – there is little reason to doubt that Assad will not hold on until then – a no-fly zone, under discussion for a while, becomes even harder to implement.

This is not to ignore the myriad other reasons for the pig’s breakfast in Syria; however, it might do everyone some good to ponder about the wisdom of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as allies in a war against dictators and terrorism. The Good Book says that all the armies of the world will gather together at Megiddo at the end of the world. That is hopefully a long way away, but today, most of our hypocrisies have gathered not too far away, in Syria.

This post appeared on Daily News & Analysis on September 02, 2013.