Detailed Target Planning
The level of "unacceptable damage" may vary from one country to another and may also depend upon the type of regime in power in a country. With development taking place and the transformation of a country's economy from a predominantly agrarian to an industrial one, it would also vary over the years. For example, what the Chinese leadership considers unacceptable today would be far different from what was unacceptable in Mao's China. The story is perhaps apocryphal but Mao is reported to have said that even if the whole world was to be destroyed in a nuclear war, enough Chinese would survive to rule the world. The McNamara level of unacceptable damage had been calculated to be between 200 to 300 Megaton Equivalent (MTE) by Geoffrey Kemp.15 General Sundarji has worked out that "in the case of an adversary being a small country, even up to 1 MTE (say 50x20 KT weapons) might do. Even for deterring a large country, one is most unlikely to require more than 4 MTE (200x20 KT weapons)."16
The ability to inflict unacceptable damage is not related to the size and diversity of the adversary's nuclear force. The cause of deterrence is sufficiently served if the level of damage likely to be inflicted is perceived to be unacceptable. This is why a nuclear arms race, a pet paranoia of Western governments and analysts, is neither necessary nor likely in Southern Asia despite India and Pakistan having overtly declared themselves to be states with nuclear weapons. Kenneth Waltz has written famously "more is not better if less is enough":17
"Those who foresee intense arms racing among new nuclear states, fail to make the distinction between war fighting and war deterring capabilities. Forces designed for war fighting have to be compared with each other. Forces designed for war deterring need not be compared. The question is not whether one country has less than another, but whether it can do unacceptable damage sensibly defined. More is not better if less is enough."
There has not been much Indian writing on the issue of nuclear targeting. Brahma Chellaney, a defence analyst of repute, favours a graduated response to a nuclear strike on India and for this reason advocates the introduction of tactical (or 'battlefield') nuclear weapons into India's nuclear inventory. He writes:18
"Without tactical nuclear weapons, a failed-deterrent situation could uncontrollably spark counter-city attacks, wreaking limitless destruction…After failing to deter an adversary from committing aggression, efforts have to shift to force him to halt aggression. Such intra-war deterrence or compellence can succeed if responses are judiciously modulated to allow for only a stage-by-stage escalation, with (the) opponent's civilian population held hostage but not under attack. If cities are already under attack, the adversary will have little else to lose."
However, the prevalent view of other Indian analysts appears to be opposite to that of Brahma Chellaney. Bharat Karnad, Research Professor, National Security Studies, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, has advocated a primarily counter value targeting philosophy. He writes:19
"(India's) nuclear ordnance will have to be aimed to take out large enemy cities. To, in the main, deter China, for instance, Beijing and the commercial and industrial concentrations on the eastern, southeastern and southern seaboard, including Hong Kong (which sources a third of the burgeoning Chinese exports) and Shanghai, suggest themselves as obvious targets. A secondary list should include prominent Chinese military and weapons complexes, among them, the North West Nuclear Weapons Research and Development Academy (the so-called Ninth Academy) inclusive of the testing site at Lop Nor in Xinjiang, the various aircraft production complexes in Sichuan and Yunnan, which are provinces adjoining India, and specifically the regional military command in Chengdu, the Naval base on Hainan Island and the Bohai shipyard in Huludao, Laoning province, constructed with Soviet help to manufacture nuclear submarines."
Brigadier Vijay K. Nair did pioneering work in analysing the nuclear threats faced by India and in recommending policy options and a force structure during the early 1990s when nuclear weapons were under wraps in both India and Pakistan and to even talk about them was considered an anathema by the Indian intelligentsia. Should deterrence fail, in a retaliatory strike, he recommends:20
Against Pakistan: The assured destruction of six to ten metropolitan centres, the destruction of a minimum of one corps sized offensive formation in its concentration area, the neutralisation of a large number of communications centres, industrial facilities, strategic bridges, military airfields, nuclear installations, hydroelectric and thermal power stations, railway centres and ports which would critically limit Pakistan's war potential.
Against China: The destruction of four to five of her metropolitan centres and nine to ten of her strategic industrial centres, thereby radically degrading China's economic growth.
In Brigadier Nair's view, "The core of India's deterrent strategy, to counter the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear strike by Pakistan, must rest on an assured ability to administer retribution of a magnitude that would demolish the national fabric of that country—the deterree (sic) should perceive a threat to its ability to continue to exist as a viable socio-economic system…If India can pose a credible threat of this nature, the political leadership in Pakistan will be suitably deterred." However, in the case of China he feels that the threat of destruction of four to five of her metropolitan centres and some strategic industries would be adequate to achieve deterrence. Despite several references to the complete destruction of Pakistan as a viable political entity, Brigadier Nair offers no justification for these varying perceptions of deterrence between Pakistan and China. (Brigadier Nair has listed 17 targets in Pakistan and only eight in China for a retaliatory Indian nuclear strike.)21
Perhaps the distinction is predicated on a deeply ingrained mindset that India has had enough trouble from Pakistan since its independence in 1947 and if Pakistan was to cross the ultimate Lakshman Rekha (famous in Indian mythology as a line the crossing of which would destroy the intruder through instantaneous combustion; the Indian equivalent of the Rubicon) and resort to the unthinkable, then India might as well ensure that Pakistan finally ceases to exist as a nation state. This view is fairly widespread among Indian analysts. In private conversations with the author, many of them stated that if Pakistan starts a nuclear war, India must ensure that that nation ceases to exist as a political entity; however, none of them was willing to go on record. The ability to cause unacceptable damage does not necessarily mean that a complete nation must be made to pay for the follies of its ruling elite. The modern day dictum that "one nuclear bomb on one city is one too many" is increasingly gaining currency. A credible threat of this nature posed by India would be adequate to deter India's adversaries from uncorking the nuclear genie.
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Squeamishness Does Not Pay
Being confronted by viable and credible nuclear threats, India has no option but to evolve a sensible targeting policy that takes into account India's no first use policy and minimum deterrent based on a small nuclear force structure. "A targeting philosophy," Bharat Karnad writes, "to make deterrence credible and ensure that it works in all circumstances, requires that the nuclear stockpile be large enough to be consequential and that it should be perceived by potential adversaries as being capable of being delivered on target."22 Nuclear targeting is a function that is best performed by a military Joint Planning Staff under the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) or, at present, under the Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee (COSC), till India's higher defence organisation graduates to the CDS system. The credibility of the targeting philosophy, as indeed that of India's deterrence, will also depend on the assessment of the adversaries regarding India's political leaders ability to take hard decisions in consultation with the Services Chiefs and the ability of the armed forces to execute those decisions resolutely.
Nuclear targeting is undoubtedly a complex subject to analyse. Even for a detached professional analyst, it is not easy to write about city-busting counter value strategies. It is quite understandable that civilian analysts and academics should find it difficult to come to terms with the functional details of nuclear targeting—a subject they consider abhorrent. However, most pacifists are so emotionally and intellectually hostile to even a detached discussion of this subject that they appear to lose a sense of balance. In an imperfect world, governed more by the rules of realpolitik than by altruistic and Utopian conditions, it does not pay to be squeamish. Since it is nobody's case that India does not face a clear nuclear threat, including the threat of nuclear blackmail, it should be simple to see that all available intellectual and management talent in the country must be harnessed to draw up coherent plans to vacate those threats.
Herman Kahn has written:23 "To the extent that certain idealists are willing to come to grips with the real world, their suggestions and programmes are much more likely to prove helpful. To the extent that they are unwilling to do this I would suspect that they are, likely to do as much harm as good, but this kind of judgement is so uncertain that I advance it more as a warning than as a criticism…just as it would do the 'militarists' some good to be exposed to some Utopian thinking, it will do the 'Utopians' even more good to be exposed to some military thinking." It is to be hoped that this article has presented neither a militaristic nor a Utopian approach, but a balanced, rational one, to evolving a viable nuclear targeting philosophy for India.