India's Nuclear Proliferation Policy: The Impact of Secrecy on Decision Making, 1980-2010 by Gaurav Kampani

Author:Gaurav Kampani [Kampani, Gaurav]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, General, India & South Asia, Arms Control, Political Science, Asia, History, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781000732733
Google: yBTADwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 51891313
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

Compartmentalization, cognitive biases, and constrained optimizing

The organizational dysfunction associated with the regime of internal opacity had the cumulative effect of stymieing India’s operational nuclear capabilities during the entire decade of the 1990s. The compartmenting of information meant that policy planners and their decision-making counterparts approached problems sequentially. Secrecy concerns similarly prevented problem decomposition and parallel planning by multiple agencies within government. Many technical bottlenecks therefore remained unidentified by planners until pressed by the force of circumstances. Such extreme compartmenting of information also led to weak intra-and inter-agency coordination and planning, especially insofar as command, control and operational planning went. Above all, institutional secrecy and the absence of multiple actors and agency reviews contributed to policies based on erroneous analogies and biases.

When thinking of nuclear operationalization, it is generally useful to draw distinctions between a “device” and a “weapon.” A device can, according to Chuck Hansen, commonly be understood as “…fission and fusion materials, together with their arming, fusing, firing, chemical high explosive, and effects-measuring components, that have not yet reached the development status of an operational weapon…system designed to produce a nuclear explosion for purposes of testing the design, for verifying nuclear theory, or for gathering information on system performance.”68 But a weapon system is considerably different. It involves “the conversion or modification of a nuclear test device into a combat-ready warhead,” which “includes the design and production of a ballistic casing (and any required retardation and impact-absorption or shock-mitigation devices) as well as special fuses, power sources, and arming and safing systems or equipment.”69

If we use the above definitions as the base for measurement, then India did not possess a nuclear weapon until at least 1990. To be sure, Indian nuclear scientists were working on advanced boosted-fission and perhaps even thermonuclear weapon designs by the late 1980s. As early as 1982–1983, they likely planned to test a lighter and more sophisticated version of the 1974 device. But the sequential nature of planning ensured that it was not until 1985–1986 that Rajiv Gandhi’s government put in motion a plan to develop a weapon system of reduced weight and size that was safe, reliable and deliverable. India neither possessed such a weapon system in 1986–1987 when the Brasstacks Crisis erupted with Pakistan nor did it possess such a weapon at the time of the Kashmir Crisis in 1989–1990. Indeed, the doyen of Indian strategists and nuclear consultant to nearly all prime ministers since the late 1970s, K. Subrahmanyam subsequently disclosed that “in the period between 1987–1990 India was totally vulnerable to a Pakistani nuclear threat.”70

Further, until the prime minister reached a decision in 1989 to commence weaponization, the scientific agencies did not seriously engage the air force to resolve the technics of nuclear delivery. Many observers in the 1990s assumed that India’s Jaguar and Mirage combat aircraft were capable of performing nuclear missions. However, the grounds for such claims are suppositions not facts. In India’s case, Prime Minister V.P. Singh recalls DRDO chief Arunachalam briefing him in 1989 that “India could then only assemble nuclear weapons but not deliver them.

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