NuClearly Put - The Logic of No First Use Strategy

Having given much thought to the value of the NFU strategy even before the tests in 1998, this policy was enshrined in the nuclear doctrine in 1999. [...] 6 The country then had the nuclear wherewithal and a comprehensive targeting strategy to ‘prevail’ with the first use of nuclear weapons. [...] Moreover, by placing the onus of escalation on the adversary while retaining the initiative of punitive nuclear retaliation, NFU lessens the possibility of deterrence breakdown and thus encourages the possibility of ‘no use’ instead of ‘sure use’. [...] While these developments are worrisome, do they merit abandoning the NFU or attaching conditionalities to it? Would the threat of using nuclear weapons in response to conventional attacks on nuclear assets enhance deterrence? Would not the same dilemmas of first use arise, as already mentioned in the earlier part of the article? To arrive at some answers, it is first imperative to undertake a cons. [...] One hopes there are no nuclear hawks among the leaderships of any of our major political parties.”9 (Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Centre for Air Power Studies [CAPS]) Notes: 1 George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact of Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press,.