India S Nuclear Doctrine

At A Time When The World Is Rife With Speculation About India S Nuclear Programme, India S Nuclear Doctrine Presents An Informed And Lucid Account Of The Country S Nuclear Policy Since 1948, Through Pokharan I And Pokharan Ii.The Author Argues Effectively That While Remaining Committed To Its Advocacy Of Complete Nuclear Disbarment, India Is Only Too Aware Of Its Need To Maintain Nuclear Deterrence So Long As Weapons Of This Nature Remain With The Other Nuclear Powers. World Peace, However, Is India S Priority And The Author Makes A Dynamic Case For The Claim That He Weapons Of Nuclear India Are No Threat To International Peace And Security.

India has come a long way from being a nuclear pariah to a de facto member of the nuclear club. The transition in its nuclear identity has been accompanied by its transformation into a major economic power and underlines a pragmatic turn in its foreign-policy thinking. This book provides a historical narrative of the evolution of India’s nuclear policy since 1947, as the country continues its pursuit for complete integration into the global nuclear order. Situating India’s nuclear behaviour in this context, the book explains how India’s engagement with the atom is unique in international nuclear history and politics. Aided by declassified archival documents and oral history interviews, it focuses on how status, security, domestic politics, and the role of individuals have played a key role in defining and shaping India’s nuclear trajectory, policy choices, and their consequences.

This book examines the Indian nuclear policy, doctrine, strategy and posture, clarifying the elastic concept of credible minimum deterrence at the center of the country's approach to nuclear security. This concept, Karnad demonstrates, permits the Indian nuclear forces to be beefed up, size and quality-wise, and to acquire strategic reach and clout, even as the qualifier minimum suggests an overarching concern for moderation and economical use of resources, and strengthens India's claims to be a responsible nuclear weapon state. Based on interviews with Indian political leaders, nuclear scientists, and military and civilian nuclear policy planners, it provides unique insights into the workings of India's nuclear decision-making and deterrence system. Moreover, by juxtaposing the Indian nuclear policy and thinking against the theories of nuclear war and strategic deterrence, nuclear escalation, and nuclear coercion, offers a strong theoretical grounding for the Indian approach to nuclear war and peace, nuclear deterrence and escalation, nonproliferation and disarmament, and to limited war in a nuclearized environment. It refutes the alarmist notions about a nuclear flashpoint in South Asia, etc. which derive from stereotyped analysis of India-Pakistan wars, and examines India's likely conflict scenarios involving China and, minorly, Pakistan.

Publisher Fact Sheet The definitive history of India's long flirtation with nuclear capability, culminating in the nuclear tests that surprised the world in May 1998.

In this book, the leading authority on India's nuclear program offers an informed and thoughtful assessment of India's nuclear strategy. Basrur shows that the country's nuclear culture is generally in accord with the principle of minimum deterrence but sometimes drifts into a more open-ended view.

"This book brings together the many pieces of India's nuclear puzzle and the ramifications for South Asia. The author examines the choices facing India from New Delhi's point of view in order to discern which future courses of action appear most appealing to Indian security managers. He details how such choices, if acted upon, would affect U.S. strategic interests, India's neighbors, and the world."--BOOK JACKET.

India s nuclear tests on May 11 & 13,1998 ended the country s three decade old, self-imposed restraint on its emergence as a nuclear power. India announced that it was now a nuclear weapon state. A new phase in India s security calculus, therefore, has begun. This volume attempts to explore and explain the whole range of issues related to Nuclearisation, in order to extrapolate logical policy positions that the country would need to evolve at various levels.