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April 20, 2003
REVIEWS: Do nuclear weapons give strength?
Spanning over seven hundred pages, the book is a recent addition to the impressive literature on India’s nuclear programme and strategic thinking. Its five chapters try to bring a new perspective to the debate on India’s nuclear build-up by framing his core argument in the context of the evolution of strategic thinking or the lack of it in India. This is the third book this reviewer has seen on the subject in the last five years denoting the systematic analysis that is being conducted next door.
The basic argument of the book is that there has always been a tension between the moral politik and realpolitik with the Indian leadership not being able to decide which direction to take in terms of building up a capability and devising a strategy. In fact, a related notion is that the Indian leadership has always lacked strategic thinking and the ‘balls’ to give the direction which the programme needs.
Clearly, what Bharat Karnad, a senior fellow in security studies at the Centre of Policy Research, New Delhi, believes, and true to his reputation as a ‘hawk’ advocates, is that India deserves a higher position in the hierarchy of nations, something that it could have achieved purely through acquiring a necessary nuclear weapons capability. However, the position taken by various Indian leaders, starting from Nehru, was that there has always been a distinction between what should be done and what cannot be done. And this has not allowed the leadership to do what was necessary.
For instance, the author is deeply concerned about American diplomatic pressure on New Delhi that has often resulted in India compromising the development of the nuclear programme.
In fact, the first three chapters are about moral politik in Indian politics. The author’s argument is that leaders like Mahatama Gandhi had a contradictory approach to policy making. The ‘policy-wise vague ideas and values’ of Gandhi, in Karnad’s view, established a fallacious basis for decision-making, a thrust that the successive leadership could not recover from.
Therefore, leaders like Indira Gandhi and others always shied away from taking decisions at critical times. Instead they yielded to external political pressures. The author pursues this argument further in the second chapter called “Setting the Scene for Moral Politik” and applies the theory to Nehru as well. The historical references given in this section show contradictions in Nehru’s approach. On the one hand, he was willing to criticize nuclear weapon states. On the other, he wanted India to acquire nuclear capability as well.
The contradictions were not limited to the nuclear programme only. Nehru, in Karnad’s view, wanted to be part of the western elite group of nations, hence, he adopted a condescending attitude towards third world governments. However, he could never muster the courage to achieve this goal. In fact, one of the theses of the book is that Nehru was so greatly influenced by the west that his policies were influenced by this mindset, including his approach to non-alignment.
It was such policies that created problems, especially when Nehru had to seek help from the west to defend his country during the war with China. In short, Nehru was not as dynamic a leader as one would imagine. The author believes that the Indian leader was certainly not a pacifist but posing to be as one that had problems for policymaking. There is criticism of the bureaucracy as well for not standing up to its responsibility.
Although impressive in the details on domestic politics, the book surprisingly takes up a large number of pages to make its real statement that does not begin until the fifth chapter. Granted that the author is extremely frustrated at his country’s leadership’s inability to win the country its proper place in global politics that could be gained by re-configuring strategic thinking, it would only be fair to say that Karnad takes a lot of time getting to his critical points.
What one finds most interesting in the book is some of his conclusions which would be of special interest to Pakistan’s strategic community. For instance, he argues that the Pakistan threat has been overplayed by New Delhi, or, to be precise mishandled by it. The author believes that Pakistan is not such a huge threat as India has turned it into. While not compromising on the Kashmir issue at all, the author’s suggestion is that India should give confidence to Pakistan by not deploying certain categories of missiles.
He is of the view that New Delhi has let itself be drawn into a conflict with Pakistan where the smaller adversary holds the initiative of using nuclear weapons. He is of the view that all that needs to be done is to raise a special force that could fight low-intensity conflict in the same manner as Islamabad does — increasing the adversary’s cost of infiltration through counter-infiltration.
The absence of such defensive layers on India’s side actually forces it to succumb to pressures posed by Pakistan. One understands the logic, but it would be worrisome for Islamabad if people in Delhi were actually listening to Karnad. However, what he doesn’t seem to have worked out is the strategic equation that would develop with greater internal conflict in the region.
Furthermore, the author believes that a strategic re-positioning is necessary because to get into the higher league of nations India actually needs to focus on China and the US. This would not only require building strategic capability but getting away from the useless confrontation with Pakistan.
The problem that one finds with the book is that it squarely focuses on the nuclear capability as the only tool for reaching the status of a world-class nation. There is absolutely no realization of the fact that socio-economic development is also a tool that would make India a great nation rather than what its military potential would do. What is equally problematic is his approach to the cost analysis of military build-up.
Despite the gaps, one would like to include Karnad in a debate and hear more of his views. One only hopes that he had spent less time dwelling on the inability of the leadership and focused more on the on-ground strategic reality.
Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy
By Bharat Karnad
Macmillan, 2/10 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110 002
ISBN 0333-93822-4
724pp. Indian Rs795
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