Ashley Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2001.

India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture faithfully expresses the mind-set of that extraordinary category – ‘nuclear strategists’. These are people who devote most of their thinking not to the task of how best to de-legitimise and get rid of nuclear weapons but to justifying their possession, operationalising their threat, and, if considered necessary, organizing their actual use. The dominant characteristic of this mind-set is its inability or unwillingness to think deeply about its own highly problematic foundational assumptions and instead to preoccupy itself with thinking as comprehensively as possible within the framework of those accepted assumptions.

Among those assumptions are i) a notion of security overwhelmingly pivoted on territorial protection which in turn prioritises above all else war and military capabilities/preparedness. ii) A standard state-centric notion of ‘national’ security where the presumption of a socially neutral state leads easily to a crude reductionism whereby a narrow category of people in and around the state apparatuses, namely the ‘national security establishment’, become the principle guardians and promoters of security. Apart from these and other very conventional Realist assumptions, there is of course the all-important belief in the efficacy of nuclear deterrence.

Tellis does at one point acknowledge the counterfactual character of this efficacy claim but this is little more than a cursory ritual. For he promptly goes on to make the usual kind of irresponsible and uncontrolled (by historical evidence) speculative claims for the efficacy of, for example, proportionate deterrence. So the small nuclear arsenals of France and China did deter the USSR. How else, apart from assuming Russian benign-ness, can one explain Russian reticence towards them? Of course, the US belongs to a different category. Its arsenal, through the workings of extended deterrence, was a ‘public good’ protecting non-nuclear states in Europe and elsewhere, like Sweden.

The book is divided into essentially four parts: a) explaining why India went nuclear in May 1998. b) Assessing various alternative postures from unilateral disarmament to regional de-nuclearization to ambiguity to recessed deterrence to ready arsenal. c) Elaborating on what Tellis believes is most likely going to be India’s nuclear posture – a "force-in-being". d) Some conjectures on the strategic implications of this for India’s future relations with China, US, and so on. It is part three that needs to be taken seriously.

The first part purporting to explain why India went nuclear manages to accomplish the amazing feat of ignoring completely the rise of Hindutva. In a tome of almost 900 pages the term does not appear even once. Though the study self-confessedly adopts the methodology of conducting interviews with supposedly key people, it never thinks of speaking to RSS leaders though they, not scientocrats or ‘strategic experts’, had a far greater, indeed decisive, input into the BJP-led government’s decision in May 1998. However, this approach gives two advantages to those who would share it. First, it enables ‘strategic experts’ everywhere, in good Realist fashion, to relate to the BJP with a good conscience, without having to bother about the fact that the RSS-BJP represents the most ruthless, authoritarian and pernicious political force that has ever befallen post-independence India. Secondly, it allows the question of why India went nuclear to be answered primarily by reference to the external – the ‘China threat’ in particular.

Tellis is no different from other Indian ‘nuclear strategists’ in displaying a marked unsureness of how to handle the China factor. True, there were no missiles on the Tibetan plateau aimed at India but there is some evidence that shows it is "likely" and "possible" that China was anyway targeting India, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian regions. This is deemed sufficient to justify the seriousness of the Chinese threat and therefore the necessity of India going nuclear. Moreover, there is always the possibility of China’s nuclear arsenal being an instrument of political coercion. After all, this political capability is supposedly intrinsic to nuclear weapons and testifies to their usefulness.

But in case anyone is expecting some serious survey of the historical record to establish the plausibility of this claim that nuclear weapons are effective as instruments of political coercion, they will be disappointed. There isn’t any. The absence of such a survey cannot be said to be surprising, since there is no history whatsoever of Chinese attempts at nuclear blackmail against anyone. Indeed, even the general survey of the results of nuclear blackmail efforts against non-nuclear states by nuclear states provides meager nourishment to the claim about their value as coercive political instruments. Similarly, the fact that a fiercely independent Vietnam (also apparently targeted by the Chinese arsenal) with a 1000-year history of enmity with China and the ability (should it put its mind to it) to eventually acquire nuclear weapons has not chosen to go the India-Pakistan way, must perforce be elided from consideration, since it can hardly be said to strengthen the case made about the seriousness of the China threat.

Time and again, we see the resort to what is, but a standard trope of ‘nuclear strategists’. The profoundly ahistorical, speculative and therefore implausible (or at best weakly plausible) character of the claims made for the efficacy of nuclear weapons are sought to be disguised through a diversion – unsubstantiable assertions nonetheless about nuclear weapons efficacy which are combined with a very conscious displacement of the discourse to expositions (that are often highly technical) about operationalising deterrence in varying circumstances and conditions. Thus, so much of what is supposed to be responsible nuclear strategic thinking becomes multiple scenario-building and even war-gaming thought-experiments. At one point, Tellis, having to acknowledge that no notion of sensible deterrence can explain the ridiculous overkill capacities of the US and USSR in the Cold War can only assign the reason for this to the unfortunate acceptance of the doctrine of "deterrence by denial" at various rungs of the escalation ladder rather than reliance on the robust and simple ‘virtues’ of "deterrence by punishment". But in case, one is led to think this puts Tellis firmly in the anti-warfighting camp, we are also informed that these multiple and redundant capacities also played a part in reinforcing deterrence between the superpowers. There is no major rupture between nuclear warfighters and others, only a slippery slope. Dispute here belongs to the domain of ‘respectful’ differences within the same club of nuclear strategists, differences which count for much less than their common opposition to anti-nuclearists outside.

In part two, where a survey of alternative postures is carried out, there is the same resort to historically implausible assertions to explain why consistent Pakistani proposals, between the mid-80s and 1998, for South Asian and bilateral (India-Pakistan) nuclear renunciation were not to be taken seriously. They were simply a bluff. Though conceding some merit to Pakistani fears concerning the country’s inadequate strategic depth, Tellis has to fall back on the claim that Pakistan’s security ‘objectively’ demanded nuclear weaponization, despite the whole historical record that Pakistan’s nuclear diplomacy (though not its preparations) was always reactive to India. So, contrary to that section within the Pakistan establishment (which before May 1998 was in a minority) that advocated nuclear weapons acquisition to counter India’s conventional military superiority, Pakistan would still never have crossed the Rubicon if India did not do so first. It is far more plausible (and backed much more strongly by the historical evidence) that before May 1998, Pakistan was always much more amenable to a ‘non-nuclear parity’ solution to its relationship with India. Such a conclusion, however, does not sit comfortably with the thesis presented in this book. In short, parts one and two of Tellis’s study, are his poorest sections.

Part four dealing with possible futures is better for two reasons. In case, any reader was still unaware of this before coming to the last section, Tellis is an American nuclear strategist not an Indian one. He is part of the US ‘security establishment’ out to advance American global hegemony, which can then be rationalized as a universal good through some variant or the other of the ‘hegemonic stability’ thesis. Tellis belongs to the American hard right even if he is not going to be as blunt as say, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who talks of the world today being divided into American "tributaries" (much of the world) and "vassals" (Canada, Western Europe, Japan), left-out aspirants to tributary or vassal status or anything in-between, and potential challengers (Russia, China, Iran). Tellis will talk more politely of ‘converging national interests’ of the US and India. But his vantage point gives him a clarity about the actual relationship of forces and distribution of power between states that suffers from none of the illusions or bombast so common to the post-Pokharan II Indian ‘strategic community’. India should not waste its time thinking it can play the US card against Pakistan or China. The asymmetry of power between the US and India is just too enormous and it is India that must see how it can re-jig its foreign policy perspectives to fit into the US’s "grand design". In Brzezinski’s language this would amount to India contenting itself with being somewhere between a tributary and a vassal, and coming to love it, because this is in its – you’ve guessed it – ‘national interest’.

Indeed, whenever Tellis retreats from the terrain of nuclear strategizing to the terrain of more conventional geo-politics, his judgement is both more sober and surer. So China is actually a pragmatic power whose ‘threat’ to India should not be exaggerated. After all, on the border issue, neither respective inclinations nor military capabilities on the ground can alter the essential status quo situation of Chinese dominance in the western, and Indian domination in the eastern sector. In nuclear terms this means India should content itself with being a small nuclear power (SNP) and not try to complicate the US’s larger geo-political-nuclear designs. Thus, part three of Tellis’s study combines analysis with a motivated policy advocacy very much in keeping with the growing, perhaps dominant, view within the US security establishment that it can live with, and perhaps even use, India as a SNP. It is noticeable that Tellis’s tone of quite exaggerated and often unjustified ‘respect’ for the opinions of the likes of K. Subrahmanyam and C. Rajamohan and a host of others in the Indian ‘strategic community’ is not sustained when it comes to Brahma Chellaney and Bharat Karnad. Here a note of exasperation and irritation sometimes slips in. Of course, it is not a coincidence that these two are the most ambitious with regard to India’s nuclear arsenal and the least comfortable with the idea of India aiming only at being an SNP.

But motivated advocacy is no barrier to accuracy of analysis or considered judgement, and it is on this level that part three must be assessed. Here Tellis’s argument is both original and thought-provoking. He suggests that India’s eventual nuclear posture may well be what he calls a "force-in-being", a position between "recessed deterrent" and "ready arsenal". Here recessed deterrent is not a synonym for ambiguity (which is the way it was often used in the past) but a post-1998 perspective that deliberately falls short of further testing, assembly-line production of nuclear weapons and open deployment, but concentrates on developing command-control structures. Where a ready arsenal means open deployment of a robust arsenal complete with all the accompanying processes of targeting, mating and speedy launching abilities, "force-in-being" is a form of non-deployment, de-alerting, and de-mating of the arsenal that would delay a nonetheless assured retaliation by days or weeks (or longer) rather than by hours or days.

The interesting thing about Tellis’s view that India should not overstep the goal of being a SNP, and that the form taken by this should be a force-in-being is his belief that this will be determined not merely by India’s limited technical capabilities, but will also emerge as a matter of doctrine and choice, though India’s Draft Nuclear Doctrine (DND) even with the best gloss on it, does not provide much support for this viewpoint. So will India’s nuclear posture move in this direction? On balance, the alternative perspective to Tellis’s is probably stronger. This trajectory would perceive India’s nuclear posture, for some time to come, as resembling Tellis’s force-in-being. But instead of this being a stable end-point situation, it would be a state of transition to eventual open deployment where preparedness levels would not be those of a force-in-being but of the ready arsenal type. Moreover, other global developments such as NMD development, with its knock-on and ‘destabilising’ effects on Russia and China, tend to further weaken the Tellis argument.

In conclusion, apart from the already commented upon one significant merit of Tellis’s book, there are three other more minor merits. First, it is a useful reference work, full of quotes of who said what, when and where. Second, it is useful for anyone wishing to get a better grasp of the technical limits, problems and complexities regarding the operationalising of a nuclear arsenal. Third, to get a clearer idea of where the US is heading, how it regards other states, and what is in store for the rest of the world in respect of American behaviour, it is the US right, not its liberals, that provide the no-illusions, nakedly arrogant but crystal-clear perspectives. And Tellis belongs very much to this political rightwing.

All reason enough then for anti-nuclearists to read this book. But if it is only to be expected that many or most pro-nuclearists (Indian and American) will revert to in-house back-slapping plaudits for it, it is all the more imperative for anti-nuclearists to provide a much needed sense of proportion and balance in assessment. Ultimately, the mind-set that would defend the acquisition of nuclear weapons, for all its incidental illuminations, is deeply flawed, both morally and politically-intellectually.