Widening the Nuclear Trigger
Sabil Francis
Research Scholar, JNU
No matter what is said about civilian control over nuclear weapons, technology will ensure that they will remain in more hands than one. Since a Pakistani missile can destroy
New Delhi
in five minute, the power to launch a nuclear counter strike against
Pakistan
will have to be dispersed. The Indian nuclear draft doctrine holds that the ultimate decision to launch nuclear missiles, will be a decision taken by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, However, the demands of technology will make this difficult. Put it simply, if Pakistan attacks New Delhi with atomic weapons, wiping out senior government officials then a nuclear counter strike will have to be launched by relatively junior middle level army officers. The history of the Cold War is instructive in this regard.
In the early years of the atomic era the nuclear key was firmly in civilian hands. U.S President, Harry Truman, who ordered the atomic destruction of
Hiroshima
and
Nagasaki
, in 1945 said in 1949: “As long as I am in office the nuclear weapon will be delivered into the hands of the military only by specific order.” He wanted nuclear control to be in the hands of the Atomic Energy Commission; but with advances in Soviet nuclear technology, it became impossible to keep the nuclear trigger in the of the President's hand. The first US plan for a nuclear attack on the
Soviet Union
, drawn up in Oct.1945 recommended that the dropping of 20 atomic bombs on the biggest Soviet cities in the event of war. However, these plans had to be shelved when Soviet missiles gained the capability to reach the
United States
. In Eishenower's time a Soviet nuclear missile would take half an hour to reach the
United States
, but in the years this followed, that gap steadily decreased. As
Washington
came under the threat of being wiped out, the command over nuclear weapons was decentralised.
By the 1960s, captains in the army, officers in change of the minuteman missiles, and even junior grade officers had the to launch nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union A 1959 Presidential order envisaged that nuclear missiles could be launched against the Soviet Union if “the urgency of time and circumstance does not permit a specific command from the President of the United States”.
One of the key issues in creation of a
US
nuclear doctrine arose when it was discovered in the 1950s that the separation of command between various adjuncts of the military had resulted in the drawing up of separate war plans. This ensured that everyone was bombing the same target which led to the concept of “minimum deterrence” in 1949. The assertion was made that the US will “depend primarily upon a great capacity to retaliate, instantly, by means and at places of our own choosing”, of Curtis Le May, the commander of US strategic forces, said “If I see that the Russians are amassing their planes for an attack, I’m going to knock the shit out of them before they take off the ground” At the heart of the civilian-military tussle for control over nuclear weapons was the civilian need for a flexible nuclear plan that took into account the possibility of a negotiated outcome to a nuclear duel, and the military preference for quick decisive action to ensure that any war would be won by military rather than political means.
Military planners also stressed an offensive rather than a defensive doctrine, which meant seizing the initiative. Such offensive plans called for pre-emptive strikes if the
Soviet Union
was actively considering a nuclear strike against the
United States
, a bigger budget, and a greater delegation of nuclear authority. Such plans favoured a total decimation of the
Soviet Union
. The same thoughts cannot be far from the minds of military planners in
India
and
Pakistan
. This is all the more dangerous, as the military is in power in
Pakistan
. The choice before both countries is to develop an arsenal that can decimate the other or rely on minimum deterrence. The former is much easier for
India
, the latter for
Pakistan
.
Pakistan
will eventually move to a position of minimum deterrence, but the question is will junior Pakistani officers concur? Destroying
India
, may seem attractive to them fortune prevented the Cold War from going out of control. The question is whether the same will hold true for
South Asia
, especially when the nuclear trigger is decentralised.
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