Getting Serious about Thermonuclear Security

Need for New Tests, Augmented Capability and First use Doctrine & Posture

Abstract

India has been an economic and military punching bag for China. This is India’s fault because it has done less than nothing to counter
the pummeling except occasionally reacting (as on the Galwan) and then only defensively. It is time India, a nuclear laggard, adopted
the strategy conventionally weak nuclear weapons states (Pakistan against India, North Korea against the US) have successfully wielded against stronger adversaries by threatening nuclear first use, and by substantiating such threat by laying down short fuse, forward nuclear tripwires. For an India that has historically quailed before China, making this new more assertive stance credible will require significant measures—resumption of thermonuclear testing, emplacing a differentiated two-tiered doctrine that replaces the impractical “massive retaliation” strategy with flexible and proportional response notions pivoting on nuclear first use but only versus China while retaining the “retaliation only” concept for everyone else, and alighting on a tiered posture supported by the buildup of ‘soft’ strategic infrastructure (a separate strategic budget, specialist nuclear officer cadres in the three services, and a mechanism for oversight of nuclear weapons designing activity). It is a doable strategy the Indian government should not shy away from.