Like other powers, over the last two decades India has reevaluated its military strategy, tactics, and doctrine. The doctrinal reassessment is regional- centric, seemingly planned to gain regional influence with the intention of acquiring a great power status. The structural changes in the overall Indian military strategy involve its nuclear doctrine, which is quite worrisome for Islamabad.
Particularly disconcerting, Indian doctrinal restructuring, although like any other modern state, is shrouded in ambiguity. This is likely to intensify the “fog of war,” and would unfortunately create more uncertainty, especially during crises or conflicts. Generally, regional and global powers develop advanced R&D programs to build up state-of-the-art weapon systems. Advancements in technologies have made these weapons more accurate, lethal, and endowed with more capacity to handle diverse tasks and roles even at greater distance.
The main objective is to develop the lethal weapons necessary to secure its national security goals in this anarchic international system. 3 In the nuclear age, the mere existence of nuclear weapons induces rivals to particularly vigilant behavior due to their state of mutual vulnerability. 4 Essentially, nuclear doctrine here means the strategy of deployment and employment of nuclear forces for posing threats in response to a crisis situation that a country’s leadership may face at the hands of an opponent.
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Dr. Zulfqar Khan is a Professor and Head of the Department of Strategic Studies at the National Defence University, Islamabad, Pakistan. He can be reached at hodsns@ndu.edu.pk or zulfqarkhan8@gmail.com. Ahmad Khan is a Ph.D. Scholar at the Department. Contact him at ahmad_ishaq669@yahoo.com. The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and should not be taken to represent the views of NDU.
THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY ▪ S PRING 2016
