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National Security Doctrine for Global Reach continues....
When the Prime Minister announced on May 11, 1998 the conduct of three nuclear tests, it was (despite the raw tribal euphoria that followed), essentially nothing new for informed observers of the nuclear scene. It was only a year later when the National Security Advisory Board propounded the “Indian Nuclear Doctrine” that a justification was given in terms of India developing a “minimum nuclear deterrent” with second strike capability [National Security Advisory Board: “Indian Nuclear Doctrine” Strategic Digest, Institution of Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), New Delhi, September 1999].
In 1995 the Narasimha Rao government, in an in-depth analysis by the same scientists who had ably conducted the May 11 tests, had already concluded that the available research in scholarly journals and inter-institutional academic exchanges were sufficient data, and thus all the worthwhile computer simulation could be carried out without conducting fresh tests.
India has thus come a long way from modern India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s declaration “No Bomb ever” to the thirteenth Prime Minister Mr. Vajpayee’s resolve that “Sanction or No Sanction, Bomb we shall have”, a transition in fifty years, ironically just as the world consensus and experience was going the other way, viz., against Nehru’s professed way of universal disarmament, India is going for the Bomb just as the world experience was discounting its utility.
I have no moral hatred for the Bomb as Prime Minister Morarji Desai had. In fact I can claim to be the initiator of the N Bomb national debate in the 1960s [see my “Systems Analysis of India’s Strategic Needs” Economic and Political Weekly (Apr. 1969)]. But nevertheless I have to point out that forty years later, the ground realities and the international parameters have so substantially and dramatically changed that we may have to skin the same cat differently today. Or to use Deng Xiao Ping’s phrase, the colour of the cat does not matter as long as it catches mice. What we need is, therefore, deterrence, for which alternative exist today.
to be continued....
( This account is maintained by Har Anand Publication)