Stimson Poll: Vast Majority of Indians Believe Nuclear War Against Pakistan is Winnable

[Riaz Haq]

Vast majority of Indians, including those who oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi, believe that nuclear war is "winnable", according to the results of a Stimson Center poll released recently. They want their country to build a bigger nuclear arsenal than China and Pakistan combined.  Responding to the clamor for more nukes,  Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in 2019 that Indian nuclear weapons were not kept as mere showpieces.  Strong belief about India's ability to win a nuclear war against Pakistan cuts across party lines with 91% of those who support Mr. Modi and 85% of those who don't.  Recently, a group of researchers at Rutgers University considered a hypothetical nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan as they believed such a conflict was the most likely. The group warned that an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange will be catastrophic for the region with tens of millions of immediate fatalities in the war zone, followed by hundreds of millions of starvation deaths around the globe. 

Indians Believe Nuclear War is Winnable. Source: Stimson Center

The poll also finds that the overwhelming majority of Indians are confident their military can defeat both China and Pakistan. They expect that the United States military would come to India's aid in the event of a war with China or Pakistan.  Stimson Center analysts believe that "Indian self-confidence may lead to mistaken popular views of Indian military prowess: India has considerable military capabilities against its most likely regional opponents. Yet Indian confidence that India would likely defeat China or Pakistan may exceed what a careful net assessment might warrant". 

Nuclear Arsenals of India, Pakistan and China. Source: The Economist

The nuclear arsenals of India, Pakistan and China are small but growing faster than those of other nuclear-armed countries, according to a report in The Economist magazine. The combined nuclear stockpiles of China (350 warheads), India (160) and Pakistan (165) now exceed British and French arsenals in Europe (around 500 in total). All three countries are now building their own nuclear “triads”: nukes deliverable from land, air and sea.  

The Stimson survey was conducted by phone with a random sample of 7000 Indians between April 13 and May 14, 2022. Below are its key findings as reported by Christopher Clary, Sameer Lalwani, Niloufer Siddiqui and Neelanjan Sircar:   

1. High levels of support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who likely remains among the most popular national leaders in the world today; 

2. Extraordinary nationalist sentiment among Indians, at high levels compared to prior cross-national surveys using identical question wording; 

3. Troubling signs of intolerance toward India’s large Muslim minority, which helps provide context to recent controversies;  

4. Strong confidence in the Indian government’s ability to defend India against potential domestic and foreign threats;  

5. Expectations among a majority of Indian respondents that the U.S. military would support India in the event of a war with China or Pakistan; and 

6. Large majorities in favor of Indian numerical nuclear superiority against its adversaries. 

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[Riaz Haq]

Nuclear Doctrine?

By Sitara Noor

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/19/pakistan-india-nuclear-weapons...

A comment from a senior figure about “zero-range” weapons could signal a dramatic—and dangerous—shift in Islamabad’s nuclear strategy.

As Pakistan celebrated the 25th anniversary of its first nuclear tests last month, it also appeared to share more details than usual about its current nuclear posture.

Speaking at a seminar hosted by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad on May 24, retired Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai provided new details of Pakistan’s otherwise ambiguous nuclear doctrine. What Kidwai says matters because he is currently an advisor to the country’s National Command Authority (NCA), which controls research and development and all other policy matters concerning nuclear weapons. He’s also the former director-general of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which is responsible for formulating nuclear policy and strategy as well as the security of nuclear assets.

During his address, he reiterated some of the long-standing positions of Pakistan’s nuclear policy, such as the strength of its nuclear triad based on land, air, and sea-based capabilities to deter India—especially the Indian military’s so-called Cold Start doctrine, which envisages a limited war through quick mobilization of unified battle groups to conduct operations inside Pakistani territory without crossing Islamabad’s nuclear threshold. He also discussed what’s known as full-spectrum deterrence—a policy aimed at responding to a range of threats from India. But he went further.

Kidwai expanded the scope of this doctrine by explaining what he called vertical and horizontal dimensions. In his words, full-spectrum deterrence “comprises horizontally of a robust tri-services inventory of a variety of nuclear weapons … [that] is held on land with the Army Strategic Force Command, the ASFC; at sea with the Naval Strategic Force Command, the NSFC; and in the air with the Air Force Strategic Command, the AFSC.”

Most striking was his statement that “vertically the spectrum encapsulates adequate range coverage from 0 meters to 2,750 kilometers [about 1,700 miles] as well as nuclear weapons destructive yields at three tiers—strategic, operational, and tactical.”


Reducing the minimum range to 0 meters is unprecedented and, if implemented, points to a major shift in Islamabad’s nuclear policy thinking.


Talk of zero-range weapons suggests that Pakistan is either going to develop artillery shells as the United States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom did during the Cold War—raising questions of whether it is going to be an M28/M29 Davy Crockett-style recoilless rifle system, the smallest weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, developed during the 1950s as a front-line weapon with yields as low as a fraction of a kiloton—or it could be a hint that Pakistan could possibly lay nuclear land mines across the India-Pakistan border to deter Indian advances. Observers, especially in India, are left wondering whether this statement is based on some existing scientific research and design testing and necessary doctrinal thought process. Kidwai’s statement does not provide any such details, and in the spirit of ambiguity that Pakistan seems to have benefited from, there is unlikely to be a follow-up soon to clear the air.

Indeed, Pakistan has always kept its nuclear policy vague and deliberately ambiguous; nonetheless, its missile ranges are the only aspect that has always been announced publicly through an official press release after every missile test.

[Riaz Haq]

Nuclear Doctrine?

By Sitara Noor

https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/06/19/pakistan-india-nuclear-weapons...

Prior to Kidwai’s statement, the officially announced lowest range in Pakistan’s nuclear inventory was the Nasr, or Hatf-9 ballistic missile, with a range of 60 kilometers (about 37 miles). The solid-fueled tactical ballistic missile was projected to be a response to India’s Cold Start doctrine. When it first test-fired the Nasr missile in 2011, Pakistan received huge flak from both Indian and Western scholars for its potential security risks and command and control challenges. The purported risks of employing Nasr ranged from the lowering of nuclear threshold to the possibility of an accidental or unauthorized launch if command and control of this short-range missile was delegated to local commanders in the battlefield.

The upper limit of 2,750 kilometers refers to the land-based surface-to-surface medium-range ballistic missile Shaheen-3, which was first test-fired in 2015 with the stated aim to reach the Indian islands of Andaman and Nicobar, thereby denying New Delhi the strategic bases for a potential second-strike capability. The upper limit was carefully restricted to 2,750 kilometers to signal that Pakistan’s nuclear missile program is only India-specific and does not pose a threat to any other country in the region and beyond.

Apart from Kidwai’s latest statement, there is no other information available to determine whether the zero-range announcement refers to a technical milestone in Pakistan’s nuclear development or serves as a rhetorical escalation. As an advisor, Kidwai has an important yet limited role in official policymaking, and there is a possibility that this assertion is a reflection of his personal opinion and not a statement of an official position. However, in the absence of any official statement, his declaration will largely be viewed as a new element of Pakistan’s nuclear policy.

The bigger question is what strategic objective Pakistan wishes to achieve by going below the already controversial 60-kilometer range to zero-range weapons. As full-spectrum deterrence is aimed at plugging the perceived gaps in Pakistan’s deterrence posture, the apparent announcement of a zero-range policy within the scope of full-spectrum deterrence seems to have developed partly in response to a growing perception in New Delhi that India’s 2019 airstrikes on Balakot in mainland Pakistan—instigated by an alleged Pakistan-sponsored suicide attack on Indian forces in Pulwama, a small town in Indian-held Kashmir—have called Pakistan’s nuclear bluff.

It is important to recall that in order to defend Nasr’s development and its role in nuclear planning, Pakistani officials have often contended that use of any nuclear weapons on the battlefield would have strategic consequences. While this position might have allayed Western concerns regarding Pakistan’s attempt to lower the nuclear threshold, it may also have inadvertently made the use of Nasr less than credible in the eyes of Indian policymakers.

[Riaz Haq]

Hindu extremists in control of India's nuclear arsenal: NCA adviser


https://tribune.com.pk/story/2378687/hindu-extremists-in-control-of...

Gen (retd) Kidwai says ‘toxic mix of poisonous ideology’ posing a serious threat to strategic stability in South Asia

Adviser to the National Command Authority (NCA), Lt Gen (retd) Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, has warned that threats to the region’s strategic stability have grown because of Hindu fundamentalists’ control of Indian nuclear arsenal.

He was speaking at the 8th Centre for International Strategic Studies (CISS) and The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) workshop on ‘Strategic Stability in South Asia’ on Monday.

“The custodial control of India’s large triad of the nuclear arsenal have now fallen firmly in the hands of an extremist fundamentalist leadership,” he said, adding that the “toxic mix of poisonous ideology and custody of nuclear weapons” was a new phenomenon that was posing a serious threat to strategic stability in South Asia.

Indian National Command Authority is responsible for command, control and operational decisions pertaining to the country’s nuclear arsenal. Its political council is currently led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while the executive council is headed by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. Moreover, few ministers having RSS background are also members of NCA – these include Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.

PM Modi, it may be recalled, has maintained an aggressive nuclear stance. In his public rallies he talked about usability of nukes. Under Modi’s watch, his ministers and retired senior officials have signalled changes in the nuclear doctrine, which they later denied. His ministers have also made provocative and irresponsible statements on various occasions.

General Kidwai warned that the threat posed by extremists’ control of Indian nuclear weapons had “assumed a real life character and momentum of its own”. The situation, he noted affects not only the region, but also beyond.

He said the February 2019 air strike in Balakot and the March 2022 missile incidents were examples of extremists committing aggression against the nuclear-armed neighbour, while being oblivious of the consequences.

Rejecting Indian assertion that the BrahMos Missile that crashed in Pakistan on March 9 had been accidentally fired, General Kidwai, who has overseen several tests, said it was not an accident as the launch could not have taken place without political clearance at the highest level and detailed operational and technical planning spanning over weeks.

Pakistan on both occasions displayed restraint and maturity in diffusing the tensions, thereby preventing South Asia from spiralling into potential catastrophes, he maintained.

Referring to the so-called AUKUS submarine deal under which US and UK would proliferate nuclear technology to Australia to build nuclear attack submarines, he warned against making a similar arrangement with India.

Also read: India admits to ‘accidentally’ firing missile into Pakistan

“I have no hesitation in stating that minimum Pakistani counter measures would be put in place if a reckless imbalance is induced in South Asia, it is not a warning, it's a contingency foreseen,” General Kidwai said while recalling that exceptionalism had been repeatedly employed in South Asia in the past in disregard of Pakistani concerns.

History, he asserted, also tells that Pakistan did not let the international exceptionalism stand in its way to address the imbalances created in the past.

Other experts, who spoke at the workshop, discussed the political and technological drivers of strategic stability in the context of South Asia.

They also deliberated upon the impact of Indian and Pakistani strategic cultures, Hindu Rashtra, big-power competition, emerging technologies, trends in export control arrangements, and the military developments under the growing framework of the Quad Axis.

[Riaz Haq]

Why the US is selling India so many weapons
Prime Minister Modi visits the White House, and arms deals follow.

By Jonathan Guyer


https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/6/23/23770369/why-us-sellin...

Both countries are eyeing China’s growing military and technological prowess, and the US is particularly concerned about the perceived threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

But Grossman, who previously spent a decade working on China policy at the Pentagon, says that the US goal of bolstering India’s defense is less about creating a partner who would actively participate in any US-China confrontation and actually more about India providing safe harbor on the continent. “What the United States is really looking for is access to India, in the case of a conflict against China,” he told me. “But the hope is that over time, as we continue our security cooperation, India will kind of bend a little bit, to be more flexible and maybe allow us access at certain times to certain places that can help us conduct operations.”

The US Navy established ship repair agreements with India that would enable the US to service its boats in Indian shipyards, with more agreements forthcoming, according to the White House. Grossman also emphasized that, in 2020, US Navy aircraft refueled on India’s base in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. “They’re letting us do that in peacetime; why wouldn’t they let us do that when the stakes are much higher?” he said.

But even beyond the democratic issues, there are limits to how close this partnership could get in the near term. India remains non-aligned: It hasn’t taken a side in the Ukraine war, nor signed on to the sanctions against Russia. While India is a member of the “Quad,” an informal partnership with the US, Japan, and Australia, it is not a treaty ally of the United States. Grossman said that many in the Defense Department would like to see the US move toward a formal alliance with India.


That would be messy, notably because Pakistan is India’s prime rival and Pakistan is a close partner of the United States. Both countries have nuclear weapons, so if the US were to establish a treaty with India, the dynamics of a potential India-Pakistan conflict would be staggeringly complex for the US and dangerous for the world.

Nevertheless, the US military partnership with India has become a pillar of the Biden administration’s policy toward Asia. Interestingly, the US goes out of its way to not say it has anything to do with China, although analysts uniformly agree that it’s all about China. “The strategic environment that we’re facing in the Indo-Pacific challenges to peace and stability, I think those have animated a sense of Indian purpose more generally,” a senior US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told reporters.

The defense sector, unsurprisingly, is thrilled. Just ask the Asia Group, a consulting firm that advises clients like General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon and was founded by Kurt Campbell, who’s now the Biden White House’s point person on Asia policy.

Campbell’s former firm says the time is now to invest in India. “Companies that postpone entry or expansion in India might miss opportunities to maximize their long-term returns,” Gopal Nadadur, an Asia Group executive based in India, wrote recently. “Defense and aerospace companies like Airbus, Boeing, Dassault, General Electric, General Atomics, Raytheon Technologies and Pratt & Whitney have boosted their engineering and manufacturing operations in India.”