Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security : The Realist Foundations of Strategy/Bharat Karnad. New Delhi, Macmillan, 2002, xxxvi, 724 p., $41. ISBN 0333-93822-4.

Contents: Introduction. I. The cultural context of Moralpolitik : the traditional Indian statecraft, Mahatma Gandhi and the Atom Bomb: 1. The use of force and the traditional Indian statecraft. 2. Vedic Machtpolitik: total war and weapons of mass destruction. 3. India: ‘A land of subjugations’. 4. The use of force and Gandhian values. II. Setting the stage for Moralpolitik: Nehru and India’s US-UK security umbrella: 1. Unsympathetic attitude towards neighbouring countries. 2. Nehru’s tilt to the west. 3. Skewed third-worldism. 4. Non-alignment as bargaining chip. 5. ‘With a little help from our friends, the British’. 6. The making of the western security cushion for Nehru’s India. 7. The downside of the British connection. 8. Seeking an alternative: close Military links with the US. 9. Strong India-Britain Military relations: benefits and costs. 10. The Pentagon’s plans for the Defence of India. 11. The western nuclear umbrella over India. 12. The wages of ‘Playing both sides of the street’. III. Practising atomic age-Moralpolitik: Nehru, nuclear weapons and disarmament: 1. Nehru’s views about armed might. 2. The main influences on Nehru’s thinking about atomic weapons. 3. Getting on the bomb track. 4. Cultural factors. 5. Overzealous Gandhism. 6. Economic factors. 7. The disarmament game. 8. The US’ opposition to Indian N-weapons. 9. Pressuring India on the costs of weaponisation. IV. Hesitant nuclear Realpolitik: 1966-to date: 1. The Indira Gandhi years. 2. The Morarji years. 3. Indira’s return and Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure. 4. ‘Between and betwixt’: VP Singh to PV Narasimha Rao. 5. The years of the CTBT negotiations. 6. The BJP-Government and the Indian nuclear posture. 7. The Indian nuclear draft doctrine. V. The perils of deterrence by half-measures : Why grand strategic vision and a thermonuclear force are a must: 1. The relevance of nuclear weapons in the new millennium. 2. An Indian ‘Monroe Doctrine’. 3. The downside of ‘Partnering’ the United States. 4. The importance of sub-limited warfare capabilities in the nuclear age. 5. Deterrence in the ‘Second nuclear age’. 6. Strategic threats and relations: India-US, India-China. 7. Pakistan as nuclear focus. 8. Thinking sub-optimally. 9. Structuring and sizing a thermonuclear force. 10. Brief histories of the development/acquisition of two strategic weapons systems. 11. The nuclear-powered submarine project. 12. Rethinking nuclear weapons-use scenarios. 13. Costs and affordability. Annexure : Indian nuclear doctrine. Index.

"This book deals expansively with the nature of the Indian strategic mindset and policies. It deconstructs the traditional Hindu machtpolitik, contradicting the image of passivity conveyed by Mahatma Gandhi and his doctrine of non-violence, as well as certain latter-day myths, like India’s being non-aligned during the Cold War, with a view to more dispassionately evaluate both Gandhi’s and Jawaharlal Nehru’s successful policy of moralpolitik. In the first case, it turned British liberal pretensions against the colonial power and, in the other, it allowed India to divorce its rhetoric from reality—to champion disarmament while pursuing nuclear weapons capability, to express abhorrence for military alliances while enjoying the security of the Western nuclear and conventional military umbrella (the US and British military plans to defend India will be revealed here for the first time); and to act as the leader of the Third World while having a First World slant to its policies.

"The gradually changing politics behind India’s covert nuclear weaponisation programme until the first test in 1974, and the subsequent ‘nuclear crawl’ eventuating in the series of explosive tests in 1998, is analysed. As also the changes in the strategic calculus and in the thinking about deterrence and nuclear weapons within the government, the nuclear and defence science establishment, the military and the bureaucracy. The pressures and the pulls over the last five decades to weaponise or to desist from doing so, are revealed as are the measures that were contemplated) like preemptive strikes on Pakistani nuclear facilities) to neutralise threats. The various nuclear force planning options available to India will be weighed, and the case for India’s acquiring a sizeable megaton thermonuclear deterrent slaved to intercontinental ballistic missiles argued both in terms of the strategic threat posed primarily by China, potentially by the United States, only minorly by Pakistan, and of maximum politico-military pay-offs.

"The research for this wide-ranging study is based to a considerable extent on primary sources—hitherto secret information culled from declassified documents in the US National archives and the British Official archives, and on interviews with decision-makers in the Indian nuclear policy-making loop. The author’s experience in defence matters and especially in helping draft the nuclear doctrine, makes this an insider’s analysis and account of India as an emerging nuclear power." (jacket)

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