India will retaliate massively even if Pakistan uses tactical nuclear weapons against it and would retaliate to a “smaller” tactical attack in exactly the same manner as it would to a “big” strategic attack, The Times of India reported Shyam Saran as saying on Tuesday.
Saran is the convener of the National Security Advisory Board.
He said with Pakistan developing “tactical” nuclear warheads, that is, miniaturising its weapons to be carried on short-range missiles.
Articulating Indian nuclear policy in this regard, Saran said, “India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but if it is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on its adversary. The label on a nuclear weapon used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is irrelevant from the Indian perspective.”
This is significant, because Saran was placing on record India’s official nuclear posture with the full concurrence of the highest levels of nuclear policymakers in New Delhi.
Giving a speech on India’s nuclear deterrent recently, Saran placed India’s nuclear posture in perspective in the context of recent developments, notably the “jihadist edge” that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability had acquired.
Saran argued that as a result of its tactical weapons, Pakistan believed it had brought down the threshold of nuclear use. “Pakistani motivation is to dissuade India from contemplating conventional punitive retaliation to sub-conventional but highly destructive and disruptive cross-border terrorist strikes such as the horrific 26/11 attack on Mumbai. What Pakistan is signalling to India and to the world is that India should not contemplate retaliation even if there is another Mumbai because Pakistan has lowered the threshold of nuclear use to the theatre level. This is nothing short of nuclear blackmail, no different from the irresponsible behaviour one witnesses in North Korea,” he said.
One of the main reasons for Pakistan miniaturizing its nukes is actually to keep its weapons from being confiscated or neutralised by the US, the report believes. “Pakistan has, nevertheless, projected its nuclear deterrent as solely targeted at India and its strategic doctrine mimics the binary nuclear equation between the US and the Soviet Union which prevailed during the Cold War,” Saran said.
Warning Pakistan, he added, “A limited nuclear war is a contradiction in terms. Any nuclear exchange, once initiated, would swiftly and inexorably escalate to the strategic level. Pakistan would be prudent not to assume otherwise as it sometimes appears to do, most recently by developing and perhaps deploying theatre nuclear weapons.”
