The Arihant in India's Quest for a Grand Strategy

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Comparative Strategy Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ucst20 Lost at Sea: The Arihant in India's Quest for a Grand Strategy Frank O’Donnella & Yogesh Joshib a Department of Defence Studies, King's College London, Strand, London, United Kingdom b Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Published online: 18 Nov 2014.

To cite this article: Frank O’Donnell & Yogesh Joshi (2014) Lost at Sea: The Arihant in India's Quest for a Grand Strategy, Comparative Strategy, 33:5, 466-481 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01495933.2014.962970

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FRANK O’DONNELL Department of Defence Studies King’s College London Strand, London, United Kingdom

YOGESH JOSHI Center for International Politics Organisation and Disarmament School of International Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi, India

India’s ﬁrst nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarine, the INS Arihant, signiﬁes a milestone in its rise to power. However, its development and supportive strategic discourse reveal the absence of an Indian grand strategy. India urgently needs a grand strategy to direct its defense policy.

Introduction India has reached a historical milestone by developing its ﬁrst nuclear-armed submarine, the INS Arihant. India now joins a small group of nations that are able to indigenously develop submarine-launched nuclear weapons technology. The emergence of the Arihant constitutes a critical juncture in India’s status as a rising power and its efforts to operationalize credible nuclear and naval forces. Its deployment in the Indian Ocean will bolster Indian naval force projection, underline India’s intentions to develop a full nuclear triad of land, air, and sea forces, and represent another attribute of the great-power status New Delhi desires. However, the development history of the Arihant, and its reception as an emerging military tool within Indian strategic discourse, reveals certain characteristics of Indian strategic thought and planning. The Arihant has surfaced from an ad hoc and secret development process spanning decades. As the submarine nears completion and its technical details become available, reactions to its emergence in Indian strategic discourse regularly feature suggested missions and roles that exceed those for a nuclear-armed submarine for use as a

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 last resort. These tendencies raise questions about the Arihant’s ultimate strategic purposes. The manner of the Arihant’s development and introduction highlights several aspects of India’s strategy development. The intensive secrecy during development hinders its effective integration into strategic discourse through a realistic appraisal of the potential missions. The Arihant is instead assigned various prospective missions. These recommended missions compensate for the absence of a grand strategy that identiﬁes political objectives for this military resource to meet. Releasing a public national security strategy alongside regular public consultations would permit India to best leverage its intellectual, economic, and military resources. This

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Comparative Strategy, 33:466–481, 2014 Copyright © 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 0149-5933 print / 1521-0448 online DOI: 10.1080/01495933.2014.962970 The Arihant in India’s Quest for a Grand Strategy 467

release would reduce the current distortions in its strategic discourse based upon the details of military technologies.

Theories of Grand Strategy The academic concept of grand strategy is essential as a means for states to organize their resources to meet political objectives. These objectives are designed to advance their interests in the international system, as national polities define these interests. There is no single agreed definition of grand strategy in the literature. The discourse on grand strategy revolves around the question of the degree to which a grand strategy must be fully defined in order to operate. Basil Liddell Hart, a British military historian writing in the mid-twentieth century, defined the role of grand strategy as “to co-ordinate and direct all the resources of a nation, or band of nations, toward the attainment of the political object of the war.”1 This is too limited a definition; it is difficult to distinguish grand strategy here from “strategy,” which is the threat or the use of force to obtain a political objective. Grand strategy can incorporate strategies, but must necessarily involve something broader than the use of force, as force is only one instrument available to a state. Grand strategy should also not be confined to wartime, as states have long-term interests and develop policies to support these in peaceable contexts as well.2 Hal Brands has alternatively offered a succinct definition that integrates more instruments than the use of force. Grand strategy is “the theory, or logic, that binds a country’s highest interests to its daily interactions with the world,” and “at its best, grand strategy represents an integrated conception of interests, threats, resources and policies.”3 This is more useful as a starting point for our analysis. However, to understand when a grand strategy is in operation, we must look to define its components. This leads to the questions of how to identify grand strategy; how to recognize its existence, characteristics, and mode of operation. Can grand strategy only be said to exist when it is extensively publicly articulated, and its following policies dictated to every operational level? Or is greater flexibility possible, in that private recognition of the interests by the government and some broad policy approaches to meet these are all that is needed? As a third option, is it possible for a state to conduct itself in global affairs without a grand strategy? Edward Luttwak, in a recent historical work, suggests that “All states have a grand

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 strategy, whether they know it or not. That is inevitable because grand strategy is simply the level at which knowledge and persuasion, or in modern terms intelligence and diplomacy, interact with military strength to determine outcomes in a world of other states, with their own grand strategies.”4 This argument suggests that grand strategy inherently operates at the level of political leadership. The identification of interests and development of supportive policies automatically produces the grand strategy. Grand strategies may be well or poorly operationalized, but no state exists in the international system without one. There is also a robust debate about whether India possesses a grand strategy. The academic literature on this question divides into two main schools. One school argues that India has an identifiable grand strategy, with the political objective of ensuring a stable external environment conducive to domestic goals of internal cohesion and economic growth. This school admits that there is little in the way of official publications to verify this approach, but insists that it can be elucidated by reviewing government conduct over a period of decades.5 468 F. O’Donnell and Y. Joshi

The second school argues that India has no appreciable grand strategy. Arguments in this school may not necessarily go as far as that of George Tanham, who famously argued that India also lacked an underlying strategic culture thinking about the use of force, but cohere around an understanding that India’s external conduct is ad hoc and reactive.6 There are no commonly understood political objectives to plan policies around. These arguments are more convincing due to their support by several Indian diplomats. One has remarked of his work, “You make up your own goals, which is hugely enjoyable and has impact. But it would be nice to have direction from time to time.”7 This article argues that an Indian grand strategy is non-existent. This absence is dis- cussed as it relates to the fielding of the Arihant and its political integration into strategic discourse. For a grand strategy to be effectively communicated, it must be externally identifiable. Luttwak’s point about grand strategy as merely the viewpoint of decision makers at the apex of their political systems overlooks the problems that can occur when this viewpoint is not coherently communicable. But a larger problem also arises when components of the polity do not share the objectives or means to attain them. While there are efforts among various elements of the Indian government to supply strategies ostensibly in support of the grand strategy—India has produced army, air force, naval, and nuclear doctrines—these are all based upon the various authors’ ideas and biases regarding what the grand strategy should be. In the absence of a recognizable grand strategy that they can formulate doctrines to support, the doctrines instead also seek to fill this grand strategy gap. The development history and contemporary discourse involving India’s emerging nuclear-armed submarine fleet captures these dynamics of developing military technology in the absence of grand strategy. Strategic analysts outside the government are developing political and military missions for new military technologies, naturally responding to the lack of clarity regarding the objectives of their intended missions. For India to best leverage the military technologies it develops, the government must fill this gap and develop a grand strategy that recognizes the optimal contribution of each asset toward agreed political objectives. This will reduce the domestic incoherence and international misperception surrounding India’s strategic intentions, and provide the most efficient means of allocating resources toward its political objectives. Continuing in the present trajectory will substan- tially reduce the security benefits new military technologies bring, as their purpose becomes subject to debilitating internal and external speculation, and efforts to generate individual missions for these technologies further hinder initiatives to develop a bigger picture for Indian security. The developmental history of the Arihant highlights these issues. The closed, opaque

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 nature of the Arihant’s project management, and ad hoc solutions to technical problems that ﬂow from the limitations of this excessive secrecy, continually recur as reasons for its complicated and long-delayed realization.

India’s Quest for a Naval Deterrent The dispute over the origins of India’s naval nuclear program highlights the level of official secrecy on this topic. According to one source, the Indian Navy and the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) conducted an internal study on naval nuclear propulsion in 1967.8 According to one source, the idea for India to acquire a fleet of nuclear submarines was first floated by the Soviet Union in 1968 under Admiral Sergey Georgiyevich Gorshkov. However, American gunboat diplomacy during the 1971 India–Pakistan war initiated the strategic rationale for sub-surface naval nuclear assets for the navy.9 The foray of the nuclear-armed aircraft carrier USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal was humiliating The Arihant in India’s Quest for a Grand Strategy 469

for India, which traditionally considered itself the sole authority in the Indian Ocean.10 Therefore, as Ashley Tellis notes, the nuclear submarine was “originally intended as an attack boat capable of stalking superpower fleets operating in the Indian Ocean.”11 In fact, under the naval expansion plans of the Indian navy developed in the early 1980s, nuclear submarines were hardly considered as strategic nuclear delivery systems; rather, they were given a limited tactical role.12 India’s nuclear ambiguity may partly be responsible for the limited role of nuclear submarines prior to its declaration as a nuclear power in 1998. Most sources attribute the following commencement of research and development work on naval nuclear propulsion to the early 1980s, when India officially embarked on the Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV) project—a pseudonym for nuclear submarines.13 The responsibility to develop a working reactor for India’s nuclear submarine was entrusted to the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), India’s premier nuclear science and technology research institution. The Indian navy, however, was made the custodian of the ATV project. Like India’s nuclear weapons program, this project was also shrouded in official secrecy, with a handful of people aware of the project. The ATV project faced difficulties from the very beginning. BARC had great difficulty in producing a viable naval reactor design and developing uranium enrichment technology.14 To aid the project, the Soviet Union loaned a Charlie-class nuclear submarine, rechristened as INS Chakra, to the Indian navy in 1988.15 This marked the first time a foreign navy had operated a nuclear submarine of a nuclear weapon state. Though Russian naval per- sonnel operated the vessel’s reactor, Indian sailors gained experience in handling a nuclear submarine and the working of the reactor.16 The collapse of the Soviet Union had a deleterious impact on India’s submarine aspirations by reducing technological assistance to the Indian naval nuclear program. The new successor state—Russia—also became an active member of the non-proliferation regime, now spearheaded by the United States and targeting Indian nuclear activities throughout the 1990s.17 These factors combined to further delay the ATV project. India’s nuclear weapons tests in 1998, combined with the ascent of Vladimir Putin in Russia and his interest in an assertively independent Russian foreign policy, breathed new life into the ATV project. Putin sought to restore the Soviet defense relationship with India, while the 1998 nuclear tests allowed India to subsequently openly pursue nuclear force development. However, even although India’s draft nuclear doctrine of 1999 outlined a triad of land-, air- and sea-based nuclear delivery vehicles for India, the secrecy around

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 the ATV project continued. Major milestones were also being reached in the ATV project during this period. By 2001, the miniaturized naval reactor was ready for testing at the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam.18 The naval reactor went critical in November 2003, after which work on its integration with the hull of the nuclear submarine began at an undisclosed location on India’s eastern coast near Vishakhapatnam.19 The level of secrecy around the project is evident from the fact that the Indian government declined to provide any clariﬁcation on the ATV project even to India’s parliamentarians.20 The intensive secrecy guarding the ATV program has inhibited Indian strategic discourse surrounding the possibilities that a nuclear-armed submarine grants to India. With little concrete public information on the intended destructive capabilities and geographical range of the ATV, non-governmental strategic discourse on the integration of the ATV into an Indian military strategy is at best limited speculation. Even as these technical attributes latterly enter the public domain, there is a visible lag hindering integration of these into 470 F. O’Donnell and Y. Joshi

strategic discourse. The absence of an ofﬁcial public national defense strategy for India also further inhibits the strategic discourse surrounding the Arihant. As will become apparent in the later sections, the Arihant’s emergence is stimulating new thinking in Indian nuclear and naval policies; but this new thinking belies the absence of a public national security strategy. Much of the discourse thus focuses on developing missions around the Arihant as a tool, rather than locating the Arihant within a broader grand strategy for India that recognizes the best role for its status as a nuclear-armed submarine as opposed to other conventional assets. The Arihant’s current technical development embodies these characteristics. It is slowly gaining technical credibility, but the secretive nature of its development leads to ad hoc solutions to development problems. These tendencies also generate uncertainty regarding the missions the Arihant is ultimately intended to fulﬁl.

Arihant Technical Force Development: Current and Future Capabilities The ATV is India’s flagship project aimed at developing the third leg of the nuclear triad, as outlined in the draft nuclear doctrine issued in 1999. Under this project, a number of S-class submarines will be developed within the next two decades.21 The first vessel in this class—the S-2, popularly known as INS Arihant, the destroyer of enemies in literal translation—was launched by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 26, 2009.22 The Arihant, when fielded, will be India’s first nuclear-powered submarine capable of launching ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads from the depth of the ocean. It is reported to have four sea-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) tubes. These can host up to 12 ballistic missiles capable of hitting targets at a range of 500–1,000km (short-range), or four ballistic missiles with a range of 3,500–4,000km (intermediate-range).23 The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is entrusted with the task of developing the delivery vehicles. The short range ballistic missile is codenamed Sagarika/K-15, and recently rechristened BO-5.24 It is 10.4 meters in length, and can carry a 5-ton warhead 750 kilometers.25 After missile tests in November 2012, DRDO claimed that the missile is almost ready for integration with INS Arihant.26 The K-4/K-X naval intermediate range ballistic missile is also under development.27 Little is known about the development trajectory of this missile system, except that it borrows heavily from the technological lessons learned under the Agni project and is based on the design of Agni III.28 India is additionally developing a Dhanush-type missile to be

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 mounted on surface ships but capable of carrying nuclear warheads weighing up to 500 kg to targets located 350 km. DRDO is also planning to develop multiple independent re-entry vehicle (MIRV) technology.29 Once achieved and successfully integrated with the existing missile systems, it will greatly increase India’s capability to deliver nuclear payloads, whether as part of a ﬁrst strike or second strike. If this technology fructiﬁes, it could lead to a tremendous increase in India’s ability to deliver nuclear payloads from sea or land beyond the current maximum of 12 nuclear warheads presently envisaged on each nuclear submarine. The reactor fuel for the vessel likely comes from Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) uranium enrichment facilities at Rare Materials Plant at Rattehalli.30 This plant had started producing highly enriched uranium in 1991. According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, India’s inventory of highly enriched uranium stands at 0.8 ton of 90 percent enriched U-235.31 According to analyst M. V. Ramana, the Ratnehali plant has a current capacity of 4,500 separative work units a year (SWU/y), capable of producing around 25 kg The Arihant in India’s Quest for a Grand Strategy 471

of 90 percent enriched uranium.32 Though sufficient for the first vessel, this capacity may be inadequate for the fleet of four to six ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) that the Indian navy envisages in the near future.33 However, India has made both qualitative and quantitative changes to its highly enriched uranium producing capacity.34 A joint team of Indian navy and the Department of Atomic Energy at the Indira Gandhi Center for Atomic Research at Kalpakkam developed the reactor for INS Arihant under the pseudonym Plutonium Recycle Project (PRP). In early 2009, successful integration of the naval reactor with the submarine was achieved by the scientists and technicians of the DAE and Indian navy. In August 2013, the miniaturized nuclear reactor in INS Arihant went critical, a major milestone clearing the decks for full operationalization of the submarine in 2014.35 Having achieved criticality, the vessel is now ready for extensive sea trials in the Bay of Bengal. Work on the second and the third vessels of this kind—the S-3 and S-4—is already underway.36

Technical Challenges Though India has made considerable progress in developing a robust underwater deterrent, a number of problems need to be overcome before an active and capable nuclear triad can be fielded. Given the Arihant’s history of delayed deadlines, it is not hard to foresee that a fully operational nuclear submarine force of 4–6 vessels would take 10–20 years before India could boast of any meaningful undersea deterrent force.37 The first technical challenge is the successful integration of ballistic missiles with the nuclear submarine.38 Second is the operational success of the miniaturized nuclear reactor under the duress of extensive sea operations. Third, the first few submarines, including INS Arihant, are unlikely to be a major component of India’s nuclear deterrent force. In fact, some sources in the navy have characterized the commissioning of the INS Arihant as a technology demonstrator rather than a robust deterrent projector.39 In fact, some also doubt the performance of these vessels given that INS Arihant and other similar vessels of the S-Class belong to the first and second generation of SSBNs. As one commentator argues, “It is only when the S-5 vessel with a new design and a powerful nuclear reactor is launched, which could be two decades away, can India hope to have a semblance of sea-based deterrence against China.”40 Fourth, strategic analysts are concerned over the range of ballistic missiles, which form the armament of India’s future SSBNs and consider it “grossly insufficient” for effective deterrence.41 Many argue the limited range of Sagarika is a case of concern because the

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 submarines would have to move very close to enemy shores in order to fire these missiles for effective destruction of the opponent.42 Many are also concerned with the nuclear delivery capacity of the K-15 and other armaments of INS Arihant, such as the size of the nuclear warhead, which will be delivered by these ballistic and cruise missiles, and whether India has sufficiently miniaturized warhead designs in order to successfully integrate it with these rather small missile platforms.43 These technical doubts and external reliance upon Russia illuminate the ad hoc nature of the Arihant’s development. These are the consequences of overwhelming domestic secrecy limiting speedy rectification of mistakes, and the lack of a coherent official plan toward the Arihant that would flow from a sense of India’s ultimate political objectives and how best to allocate resources toward these goals. The Arihant fleet also faces numerous challenges that may complicate its operationalization. Its arrival is stimulating discourse on relevant issues in India’s civil-military relations, nuclear strategy, and strategic relationships with major rivals and partners. However, 472 F. O’Donnell and Y. Joshi

these disparate discourses are shaped by the secretive nature of the ATV program. Its opacity, and the lack of ofﬁcial strategic planning guiding its development and intended military role, has led to the Arihant being misread in the discourse as a remedy for several Indian strategic challenges. There is little granular discussion on the limited possible military missions of the Arihant or a need for a public national security strategy that optimally integrates the Arihant. The discourse on the Arihant instead substitutes for that of an Indian grand strategy. This is a consequence of the ambiguity caused by the insular extemporaneous nature of the Arihant’s technical history. These characteristics are also highlighted in the organization of India’s nuclear civil-military relations, which control the Arihant’s development.

Civil-Military Relations While technical development of the Arihant is still a work in progress, so too are the civil- military mechanisms and strategic planning underpinning the Arihant project. The political governance of India’s nuclear program, like that of its wider defense policymaking, has always been civilian-led and indeed weighted heavily toward civilian over military opinion. The fear of a prospective military “man on horseback” usurping democratic governance, a common enough phenomenon in early post-colonial states, haunted India’s founders.44 This is reflected in the design of India’s civil-military institutions. Prior to the 1998 tests, there was an informal nuclear command chain concentrating authority in the prime minister’s office. Following the tests, the government established new institutions to manage policymaking. The two new institutions are the National Command Authority and Strategic Forces Command, which were both publicly announced in the 2003 nuclear doctrine.45 The prime minister, aided by the Cabinet Committee on Security consisting of senior civilian cabinet officials, makes the final decisions on national security issues. Along with the national security advisor, they form the top, “political,” tier of India’s National Command Authority concerning the use of nuclear weapons. The National Security Advisor heads the second, “executive,” tier. It arranges among its members, including the military head of the Strategic Forces Command, how to execute the nuclear decisions.46 Below the National Command Authority, the Strategic Forces Command forms the second nuclear policymaking institution. This is headed by a rotating military chair and the three military service chiefs, and exists to coordinate execution of nuclear decisions. In stark contrast to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, then, the military only attains prominence far 47

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 down the nuclear command chain. This is due to the civilian fear of a powerful military. This institutionalized civilian mistrust of the military becomes especially problematic in the nuclear context. It has thus far been possible to limit military influence over nuclear policy down to the ground level; the nuclear warheads are held in the custody of the civilian DAE and DRDO agencies and only given to the military in the final stages of an ordered nuclear strike. This practice is possible with air-dropped bombs and land-based ballistic missiles, but not with an SSBN force. The nuclear warheads are mated to the SLBMs and then fitted to the Arihant before it sets sail. For the Arihant to fulfill its intended role as a seaborne nuclear deterrent, then, the navy must be trusted with full operational control of operational nuclear weapons. This issue becomes more pointed when the nature of seaborne deterrence means there may be instances when the submarine has lost contact with New Delhi, and the servicemen on board have to make their own independent judgment on whether to use nuclear weapons. Given the disinclination of civilian officials to afford the military a significant role in The Arihant in India’s Quest for a Grand Strategy 473

defense policymaking, it is unclear whether they are willing to countenance this level of military discretion on the use of nuclear weapons. However, the Arihant will not be able to serve its intended role without addressing this question of greater military operational discretion.48 Also, if the navy is permitted the full operational responsibility needed to deploy the Arihant, this could generate pressure for it to attain a higher advisory role in the nuclear command chain, given its custody of a fully armed component of the nuclear triad.49 Similarly, the other two services may then pressure for full custody of their nuclear assets and an end to DAE and DRDO control. Whatever larger role in nuclear policymaking the navy plays will likely extend to the other services. The challenge of operationalizing this new technology sharpens the issues surrounding India’s civil-military relations, and may therefore force structural and relational changes in how the military is treated within defense policymaking. Analyzing the Arihant also sheds light on challenges facing India’s nuclear strategy, which ﬂows from the nuclear command chain outlined above. India’s nuclear strategy is intended to provide the political guidance for the Arihant’s development and operational missions. The effects of the emergence of the Arihant, in stimulating growing Indian discussion on a new nuclear strategy demonstrate its tendency to be substituted for a strategy.

Nuclear Strategy The fielding of the Arihant raises further questions about India’s long-term nuclear vision. At an official level, there have been no public developments in nuclear thinking since India’s last nuclear doctrine was released in 2003. However, as India’s technical nuclear capabilities improve, there is a growing constituency within India for a less restrained nuclear strategy. The Arihant could support such a future direction for Indian nuclear strategy by broadening India’s nuclear options. Since its nuclear tests in 1998, India has developed two nuclear doctrines: a semi- official document developed by the National Security Advisory Board in 1999 and a very similar official doctrine finalized in 2003.50 The central tenets of these doctrines are a no-first-use policy and a force posture of a nuclear triad, but one shaped by the principle of “credible minimum deterrence.” However, there are some differences between the 1999 and 2003 doctrines, with the latter moving toward lowering India’s nuclear threshold and promising “massive retaliation” in the event of a nuclear strike upon Indian territory or

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 forces. The emergence of the Arihant coincides with increasing interest in Indian strategic discourse for the restrained principle of no-first-use to be abandoned, and for India to move toward some form of flexible response. Following the 1998 nuclear tests, the government convened a National Security Advi- sory Board, consisting of retired officials, academics, and strategic analysts, to formulate a draft nuclear doctrine. The centerpiece statement of the doctrine is a no-first-use policy. The doctrine sought to identify no-first-use as demonstrative of an overall new Indian approach of seeking “credible minimum deterrence.” This concept sought to communicate that India would forswear maximal nuclear policies for their own sake, and instead build an arsenal sufficient to deter adversaries. A second official doctrine was released in January 2003. It retained most of the thinking from the 1999 draft, including the concept of credible minimum deterrence, but diverged on two main points: redefining the threshold for the no-first-use policy and the nature of retaliation should India be attacked. 474 F. O’Donnell and Y. Joshi

The new doctrine lowered the threshold of the no-first-use policy. The 1999 draft stated that India would only use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear strike on its territory or forces. However, the 2003 doctrine introduced the new prospects of India issuing a nuclear response to a biological or chemical attack on its territory or forces, and regardless of how far afield from Indian territory its forces were when they were attacked. This shift highlights an official desire to assign the nuclear force a greater role in Indian defense by lowering its threshold of use and explaining for the first time how it relates to unconventional threats India may face.51 The second main change was on the kind of nuclear response an adversary could expect from India. The 1999 draft left flexibility to the discretion of the prime minister by leaving the volume of retaliation and the targets India would attack open-ended. However, the 2003 doctrine now asserted that “nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage.”52 These transitions from the 1999 to 2003 doctrines signal an effort to make the nuclear force operationally usable, and develop its role as a real military as opposed to a symbolic political tool in Indian statecraft. While the main principles of no-first-use, credible minimum deterrence, and developing a nuclear triad remained in place in the 2003 document, it still evidenced a weakening of the underlying norm of restraint and corresponding drive to assign the nuclear force a more prominent role toward the specific military threats India may face. The 2003 doctrine was the last major Indian government statement on the issue. Since then, the Indian nuclear force has seen the emergence of the Arihant and other milestones such as the Agni-V ballistic missile. India has also witnessed a changing strategic environment, including improved U.S.-India relations following the U.S.-India nuclear deal, alongside increasing American naval deployments in the Indian Ocean; China evincing growing interest in asserting sea territorial claims; and an expanding Pakistani nuclear arsenal. These changes have not been reflected at an official level by an exercise such as a strategic posture review. However, at the societal level, a robust debate is now taking place on how the nuclear force should operate in this regional context. A prominent school in this debate argues that the trend of lowering the nuclear threshold should be continued. These arguments advocate for India to develop a form of flexible response strategy, further lowering the threshold of use and creating ambiguity as to where India’s red line separating conventional and nuclear use would lie. 53 Jaswant Singh, a former external affairs minister in the previous BJP government, made a notable contribution to this school in 2011. He argued for an end to no-first-use on

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 the basis that Pakistan’s nuclear force threatened to be double that of India, and China’s nuclear force was as comparatively large and technologically advanced to that of India.54 The Arihant enters the water at this time of growing interest in an Indian nuclear doctrine more permissive of a broader military role for the nuclear force. The Arihant’s emergence will add to India’s growing nuclear ambiguity. Rungs on the Indian nuclear escalation ladder can be easily monitored by other states with regard to India’s air-delivered and land-based ballistic missiles. However, the Arihant will create greater ambiguity and flexibility for the prime minister regarding India’s nuclear red lines. The Arihant will also create further ambiguity in moving the peacetime deployment of India’s nuclear force away from de-mated, de-alerted weapons toward immediate operational readiness. This would signal a move away from the declaratory principle of “credible minimum deterrence.” The nuclear force will also grow in numerical size as the Arihant fleet is fielded. In these ways, the emergence of the SSBN force heightens the Indian debate on the future of its nuclear doctrine. The Arihant in India’s Quest for a Grand Strategy 475

The school in favor of ﬂexible response does not consider that assigning the nuclear force a greater role in Indian security might negatively affect India’s broader global image and diplomacy. The entry of the Arihant into India’s contested nuclear strategy, and the implications of its operationalization in undermining the image of “credible minimum deterrence,” demonstrates the isolation of nuclear debates from any overarching concept of a grand strategy. As the Arihant is a naval as well as a nuclear vessel, its emergence is having similar effects on separate Indian debates on naval projection. This illustrates that the ultimate issue is one of grand strategy, integrating all military tools in service of a political mission, rather than merely one of nuclear strategy.

Naval Projection and Regional Security The effects of the Arihant on India’s nuclear policy are similar to those on its naval aspirations; its arrival as a strategic asset is stimulating greater support for Indian assertiveness within its strategic discourse. This support substitutes for rather than complements a broader strategy to guide India’s rise in the twenty-first century. The Arihant’s capabilities can only serve a prior national foreign policy and defense strategy, rather than generate a strategy around these capabilities. As well as the above nuclear debate, the introduction of a nuclear-armed submarine fleet is also affecting Indian discourse on general naval force projection. The political future of the Indian Ocean, and the potential collaboration or competition of great-power and regional navies in shaping this future, is one of the most salient topics in world capitals today. While Indian strategists agree that the Indian Ocean question in the early twenty-first century is central to India’s future, the specific naval measures India can take to safeguard its interests, and indeed what its specific interests are, are undecided. Naval strategists laud the arrival of the Arihant as a demonstration of Indian technical capability and resolve to be a credible regional player. However, discourse on its intended contribution to Indian naval projection is clouded by the absence of a consensus on the overall maritime objectives the Arihant could potentially support. While the Arihant is stimulating discussion on the potential naval roles it could serve, this discourse is taking place in the wrong order: the overall strategy should be designed first, and then the tools for specific supportive military roles, rather than vice versa. Indian naval discussions, similar to discourse about land and air projection, share

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 the same rivals of Pakistan and China. However, Chinese geostrategic ambitions enjoy far more attention in naval circles than those of Pakistan. This is partly due to the geo- graphic and technical reality of Pakistan as a primarily land-based territorial threat, against which signiﬁcant Indian land forces are already arrayed. By contrast, China is additionally a sea-based threat with an increasingly ambitious and competent navy. The Indian navy has also long prioritized development of full blue-water expeditionary capabilities to safeguard the Indian Ocean rather than a more limited force tailored toward Pakistan’s coastline in the Arabian Sea. This technology trajectory also encourages a primary focus on China, as the more realistic contender for Indian Ocean dominance compared to Pakistan.55 These tendencies characterize the discourse on the introduction of the Arihant. Indeed, the progress of India’s naval development echoes that of its nuclear force. India in both domains is already able to reach desired Pakistani targets, but not those of China, and ways to achieve this latter objective therefore occupy the majority of these discourses. However, 476 F. O’Donnell and Y. Joshi

these discourses often overstate the ways that the Arihant can specifically contribute to altering these situations with Pakistan and China. As directed against Pakistan, the Arihant is primarily viewed as providing India with assurance in second-strike nuclear capabilities. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is estimated by several sources to be larger than that of India, and Islamabad appears intent on developing delivery vehicles such as the Nasr to bolster its first-use nuclear strategy.56 The Arihant therefore will act as a guarantee of nuclear retaliation against Pakistan should it attempt a first strike to eradicate India’s land- and air-based nuclear forces. This new capability, it is argued, could therefore compel Pakistani moderation.57 At the same time, the greater nuclear assurance provided by the Arihant could support a more aggressive Indian stance against the Pakistani cross-border incursions that do occur. The Arihant could therefore encourage and support greater adventurousness in responding to these incursions, including efforts along the lines of the “Cold Start” rapid cross-border strike strategy. The Pakistan-specific discourse on the Arihant evidences a continuing perception within India of Pakistan as traditionally a land-based threat. Its dominant role in the discourse with regard to Pakistan is to bolster Indian land-based conventional and nuclear defenses.58 The exclusively seaborne dimensions of India–Pakistan competition, including the prospect of future nuclearized naval competition, remain a less popular concern.59 Indeed, Indian analysts tend to dismiss the possibility of Pakistan fielding a nuclear- armed submarine fleet in the near future.60 This naval aversion is further amplified by the institutional disinterest of the navy in Pakistan and of the mainly littoral focus that a Pakistan-based naval posture would require. The navy has long been far more compelled by a grand vision of blue-water projection, a conceptual domain in which China rather than Pakistan serves as the main competitor. Indeed, the 2004 and 2009 Indian naval doctrines detailed the requirement for an SSBN fleet in order for the navy’s vision of full-spectrum capabilities to be fulfilled.61 The Arihant more clearly dovetails with this Mahanian vision for India’s navy, and as such the majority of the Indian discourse concerning the Arihant focuses upon China. However, the combination of Indian uncertainty of China’s maritime intentions and the sheer range of threats Beijing could potentially pose—including containment via an encircling “String of Pearls” system of bases, blockade of trade straits and ports, and extractive violations of exclusive economic areas—has led to a popular Indian perception of the Arihant as a symbol of Indian naval resolve to somehow counter all of these threats. The specific ways for this resolve to be translated into executable policies, and the policies that the Arihant can realistically support, have not been fully thought through in the discourse.

Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 China’s growing naval ambitions receive extensive diagnosis within India. These are frequently seen to include the establishment of a “String of Pearls” system of bases, such as the Gwadar port in Pakistan and other prospective anchorages in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Chinese ships in transit from one port to the next could form a ring of containment limiting Indian naval activity. The common formulation in strategic discourse, given the unclear nature of how China would go about implementing this String of Pearls, is for the Arihant to be described as part of a laundry list of technical progress in each element of the Indian navy. It is mentioned in the same context as the Andoman and Nicobar forward naval post and the Vikrant aircraft carrier, as symbolic of a brave Indian “expeditionary” naval outlook to counter the red menace. However, there is less focus on the discourse on the speciﬁc role the Arihant can serve in posturing against China.62 The other capabilities mentioned in the list, especially con- ventionally armed frigates, submarines, and supportive bases, are much more important for credible Indian naval projection. The Arihant can only serve as a last-resort backstop against The Arihant in India’s Quest for a Grand Strategy 477

imminent Indian annihilation. While China does host significant maritime ambitions, India will best counter these by integrating its naval development into a holistic strategy that assigns each tool an optimal role.63 The emerging Arihant-class fleet may also lead to shifts in India’s great-power relations with the United States. The United States is increasingly pursuing a policy of benign neglect toward India’s nuclear force development. Washington refused to directly criticize India’s announcement of the Agni-V missile in April 2012, instead calling upon all states to exercise nuclear restraint in general; the same diplomatic formulation used for questions on Israeli nuclear activities.64 Indian sailors intended to pilot the Arihant have also been quietly hosted onboard the USS Annapolis nuclear submarine to observe its operation.65 However, this increasing strategic alignment of Washington with India’s nuclear plans may not lead to reciprocation in terms of movement by New Delhi toward Washington’s outlook for the Indian Ocean. India’s maritime discourse has long evidenced a streak of mare nostrum toward the Indian Ocean, and a desire to prevent any other power, including the United States, from dominating the region.66 While Washington and New Delhi hold regular naval exercises, Indian officials are extremely hesitant to further expand these for fear of losing Indian strategic autonomy.67 Increasing Indian naval self-confidence, as cultivated by the arrival of the Arihant, may strengthen the wishes of Indian officials to maintain a certain distance from the United States. New Delhi with the Arihant at its disposal may feel it needs Washington increasingly less in order to pursue its interests in the Indian Ocean. However, while the aspiration toward strategic autonomy propels these sentiments, this mistakes the means for the end. There is little notion of the ultimate political objectives that “strategic autonomy” is then selected as the best diplomatic approach to achieve.68 The Arihant thus looks set to amplify this tendency in Indian strategic discourse. The Arihant could therefore encourage greater Indian strategic independence in great- power diplomacy because New Delhi feels its nuclear-armed submarine fleet reduces re- quirements for diplomatic and naval support from Washington. However, India will best leverage the Arihant only through a realistic appraisal of the strategic roles it cannot fulfill. To be properly utilized, the Arihant must be recognized to be a last-resort nuclear weapon. The principal Indian Ocean challenges India faces, mostly from China, are better addressed by development of conventional naval forces and supportive ports, which will far more clearly communicate “resolve.” Above all, a single coherent official national security strategy will give India’s naval projection the clarity and purpose frequently found lacking in these domains. Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 Conclusion The Arihant stands as a major technical achievement for India. The experience of developing and fielding a nuclear-armed submarine fleet, and the new strategic opportunities this provides, could lead to significant changes to India’s civil-military relations, nuclear strategy, naval projection, and, more broadly, the future of strategic competition in the Indian Ocean. However, the manner of its development and emergence has highlighted the missing link for Indian power projection: the absence of a recognizable grand strategy that can unify national instruments, in optimal ways depending on their character, toward political objectives. The pervasive secrecy surrounding the decades-long ATV project obstructed strategic planning to integrate the eventual technology into a national security strategy. Frequent delays and management tensions were partly caused by external forces, but also due to 478 F. O’Donnell and Y. Joshi

internal incoherence regarding how to assign resources to fix technical problems that arose. Strategic analysts outside the secretive nexus managing the ATV project had little information regarding its capabilities and intentions. This renders it difficult to imagine an Indian national security strategy integrating these capabilities, especially when the ultimate aims of the strategy also remain opaque. Once the Arihant reached technical fruition, strategic analysts sought to develop objectives for it that illustrated the absence of political objectives provided by a recognizable grand strategy. In the discourse on nuclear strategy, the Arihant joins increasing interest in a flexible response nuclear doctrine, and more specifically in providing technical assurance to bolster Indian land defenses against Pakistan. In the field of naval projection, the Arihant is deployed in support of arguments to demonstrate general political resolve. In India’s strategic partnership with the United States, the Arihant could support the strong constituency within India for a foreign policy of strategic independence and distancing from security partners; however, the ultimate aims this strategic independence would serve, which enter the domain of grand strategy, are undefined. The common theme in these discourses is of assigning the Arihant various political and military roles in various domains to fill the gap left by the absence of a grand strategy. An official national security strategy would better structure the development of subordinate strategies and supportive military technologies. This exercise would clarify the political aims all strategies must ultimately serve, as well as the optimal role for each resource the grand strategy draws upon. Greater involvement of the public in this process would ensure the grand strategy is most reflective of societal values, while reducing the misperception of the roles of military technologies that results from the opacity surrounding their development. India will inescapably have a grand strategy due to its existence as a state in the international system. However, the grand strategy it has should be designed to integrate its resources toward political targets, rather than as the sum of various tactics designed around isolated resources toward uncertain aspirations.

Funding and Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank Prof. Harsh Pant, Prof. Rajesh Rajagopalan, and the anonymous reviewer for their comments, and the UK Economic and Social Research Council for funding this collaborative research. Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 Notes 1. B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy (second revised edition) (Toronto: Meridian, 1991), 321–22. 2. Michael Howard, “Grand Strategy in the Twentieth Century,” Defence Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 1–10. 3. Hal Brands, The Promise and Pitfalls of Grand Strategy (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 2012), 3–4. 4. Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009), 409. 5. See, for example, Ashley J. Tellis, Nonalignment Redux: The Perils of Old Wine in New Skins (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 2012); K. Subrahmanyam, “Grand Strategy for First Half of the 21st Century,” in K. Venkatshamy and P. George, eds., Grand Strategy for India: 2020 and Beyond (New Delhi: Institute for Defence and Strategic Analyses, 2012); and C. Raja Mohan, “India and the Balance of Power,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2006): 17–33. The Arihant in India’s Quest for a Grand Strategy 479

6. George K. Tanham, Indian Strategic Thought: An Interpretive Essay (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1992); Harsh V. Pant, “A Rising India’s Search for a Foreign Policy,” Orbis, vol. 53, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 264; and Manjari Chatterjee Miller, “India’s Feeble Foreign Policy: A Would-Be Great Power Resists Its Own Rise,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2013): 14–19. 7. Miller, “India’s Feeble Foreign Policy”:16. 8. Mihir Kumar Roy, War in the Indian Ocean (New Delhi: Lancers, 1995): 114. 9. Bharat Karnad, Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security (New Delhi: Macmillan, 2002): 646–67. 10. G. M. Hiranandani, Transition to Triumph: Indian Navy 1965 to 1975 (New Delhi: Lancers, 2000). 11. Ashley J. Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrence and Ready Arsenal (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001): 575. 12. Ashley J. Tellis, “Securing the Barrack: The Logic, Structure and Objectives of India’s Naval Expansion”, Parts I, Naval War College Review, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Autumn 1990): 31-57. 13. Federation of American Scientists, “The Indian SSN Project: A Open Literature Analysis,” available at http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/india/sub/ssn/part01.htm 14. In fact, India was able to start a uranium enrichment plant only in 1991, and even that at a very small scale. World Nuclear Association, “Nuclear Powered Ships,” available at http://www. world-nuclear.org/info/Non-Power-Nuclear-Applications/Transport/Nuclear-Powered-Ships/#. UdvOnjtHJjY M. V. Ramana, “An Estimate of India’s Uranium Enrichment Capacity,” Science and Global Security, vol. 12, no. 1–2 (2004): 115. 15. “INS Chakra to Be Commissioned Today,” The Hindu, April 4, 2012. 16. Karnad, Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security, 654. 17. William Walker, “Nuclear Order and Disorder,” International Affairs, vol. 76, no. 4 (2000): 710–712. 18. Karnad, Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security, 658. 19. T. N. Rohit, “India Built Nuclear Sub under Codename ‘PRP,”’ Economic Times, August 3, 2009. 20. Government of India, Rajya Sabha, “Acquiring Nuclear Powered Submarines for Indian Navy,” Unstarred Question no. 318, July 14, 2004, available at http://164.100.47.5/qsearch/QResult. aspx 21. Pravin Sawhney, “Is the Navy’s Newest Sub Worth the Price?” The Hindu, April 4, 2012. 22. “India’s First Nuke Submarine INS Arihant Launched,” NDTV, July 26, 2009, available at http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/india-s-ﬁrst-nuke-submarine-ins-arihant-launched-6326 23. Verghese Koithara, Managing India’s Nuclear Forces (New Delhi: Routledge, 2012): 136- 137; Hemant Kumar Rout, “Undeterred by Mumbai Tragedy, India to Go Ahead with Arihant Sea Trial,” New Indian Express, August 19, 2013; Y. Mallikarjun, “India to Integrate K-15 Missiles into Nuclear Submarine Soon,” The Hindu, November 20, 2012. Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 24. Missile Threat website, “Sagarika (K-15),” October 29, 2012, available at http:// missilethreat.com/missiles/sagarika-k-15/. 25. NavalTechnology.com, “Indian Navy’s K-15 SLBM Successfully Completes De- velopment Trials,” January 29, 2013, available at http://www.naval-technology.com/news/ newsindian-navys-k-15-slbm-successfully-completes-development-trials 26. Y Mallikarjun, “India to Integrate K-15 Missiles into Nuclear Submarine Soon,” The Hindu, November 20, 2012. 27. Saurav Jha, “Trends in Missile Development in India: An Interview with DRDO’s Mis- sile Man Avinash Chander,” IBNLive, February 7, 2013, available at http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/ sauravjha/2976/64304/trends-in-missile-development-in-india-an-interview-with-drdos-missile- man-avinash-chander.html 28. Andrew C. Winner, “The Future of India’s Undersea Nuclear Deterrent,” in James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, eds., Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age: Power, Ambition and the Ultimate Weapon (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2013): 167. 480 F. O’Donnell and Y. Joshi

29. Ajey Lele, “India Investing in MIRV Technology,” Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, October 22, 2009, available at http://www.ipcs.org/article details.php?articleNo=2987 30. Ramana, “Estimate of India’s Uranium Enrichment Capacity,” 115. 31. International Panel on Fissile Materials, “Fissile Material Stocks,” January 2013, available at http://fissilematerials.org/ (accessed July 19, 2013). 32. Ramana, “Estimate of India’s Uranium Enrichment Capacity,” 120–121. 33. Press Trust of India, “Navy to Operate Five Nuclear Submarines by End of Decade,” Economic Times, April 5, 2012. 34. David Albright and Susan Basu, “India’s Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Program: Growing Capacity for Military Purposes,” Institute for Science and International Studies, January 18, 2007, available at http://isis-online.org/publications/southasia/indiagrowingcapacity.pdf 35. R. Ramachandran, “Reaching a Milestone in Nuclear Technology, The Hindu, August 11, 2013. 36. S. Anandan, “Second Nuclear Submarine Headed for Year-End Launch,” The Hindu, January 14, 2013. 37. Press Trust of India, “Navy to Operate Five Nuclear Submarines by End of Decade,” Economic Times, April 5, 2012. 38. Jaideep A. Prabhu, “India’s Nuclear Triad: Are We Blowing the Trumpet Too Soon?” Tehelka, January 13, 2013, available at http://blog.tehelka.com/indias-nuclear-triad-are-we- blowing-the-trumpet-too-soon/ 39. Sandeep Unnithan, “India’s Secret Undersea Weapon,” India Today, January 17, 2008. 40. Sawhney, “Is the Navy’s Newest Sub Worth the Price?” 41. Arun Prakash, “India’s K-15 Launch: Defence Scientists Do Nation Proud,” India Strategic Journal, January 2013, available at http://www.indiastrategic.in/topstories1894 India K-15 launch defence scientists do nation proud.htm 42. Raja Menon, “Just One Shark in the Deep Blue Ocean,” Outlook Magazine, August 10, 2009. 43. Arun Prakash, “India’s K-15.” 44. S. K. Sinha, “The Chief of Defence Staff,” Journal of Defence Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (2007): 133. 45. Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India, “Cabinet Committee on Security Reviews Progress in Operationalizing India’s Nuclear Doctrine,” January 4, 2003, available at http://pib.nic. in/archieve/lreleng/lyr2003/rjan2003/04012003/r040120033.html 46. Koithara, Managing India’s Nuclear Forces, 101–102. 47. Ibid. 48. Stephen P. Cohen and Sunil Dasgupta, Arming without Aiming: India’s Military Modern- ization (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2010), 90–91. 49. Harsh V. Pant, Contemporary Debates in Indian Foreign and Security Policy: India Nego- tiates its Rise in the International System (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 80–81. Downloaded by [King's College London] at 10:55 18 November 2014 50. Government of India, “Draft Report of National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine,” August 17, 1999, available at http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/india/doctrine/ 990817-indnucld.htm; Government of India, Prime Minister’s Office, “Cabinet Committee on Secu- rity Reviews Progress in Operationalizing India’s Nuclear Doctrine,” January 4, 2003, available at http://pib.nic.in/archieve/lreleng/lyr2003/rjan2003/04012003/r040120033.html 51. Scott D. Sagan, “The Evolution of Pakistani and Indian Nuclear Doctrine,” in S. D. Sagan, ed., Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 219–265. 52. Government of India, Prime Minister’s Office, “Progress in Operationalizing India’s Nu- clear Doctrine,” 2003. 53. D. Suba Chandran, “Should India Give up its NFU Doctrine?” Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, June 24, 2010, available at http://www.ipcs.org/article/india/ should-india-give-up-its-nfu-doctrine-3169.html; Bharat Karnad, “India’s Nuclear Amateurism,” The New Indian Express, June 28, 2013; “Revise ‘No-First-Use’ N-Policy: Jaswant,” Indian Ex- press, March 16, 2011; Ali Ahmed, “The Need for Clarity in India’s Nuclear Doctrine (IDSA Com- ment),” Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, November 11, 2008, available at http://www. The Arihant in India’s Quest for a Grand Strategy 481

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Frank O’Donnell (francis.o’[email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Defence Studies at King’s College London. Yogesh Joshi ([email protected]) is a doctoral candidate in the Center for International Politics, Organisation and Disarmament, School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.