A top Indian official has warned arch rival neighbouring country Pakistan that any use of tactical nuclear weapons by Islamabad will be retaliated massively by India.

New Delhi, April 30/Nationalturk – At a time when Chinese troops have allegedly entered in 19 kms inside its territory in mountainous Ladakh in Indian administered Kashmir, a top Indian official has warned neighbouring country Pakistan that any use of tactical nuclear weapons by Islamabad will be retaliated massively by India.

India’s leading newspaper Times of India reported that convener of India’s National Security Advisory Board Shyam Saran while articulating Indian nuclear policy for the first time, said, “India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but if it is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on its adversary.  The label on a nuclear weapon used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is irrelevant from the Indian perspective.”

According to Times of India, Saran’s statement is significant because he has placed on record India’s official nuclear posture with the full concurrence of the highest levels of nuclear policymakers in New Delhi.

Giving a speech on India’s nuclear deterrent recently, Saran placed India’s nuclear posture in perspective in the context of recent developments, notably the “jihadist edge” that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability have acquired.

‘Pakistan resorting to sort of nuclear blackmail’

“As a result of its tactical weapons, Pakistan believes it has brought down the threshold of nuclear use. Pakistani motivation is to dissuade India from contemplating conventional punitive retaliation to sub-conventional but highly destructive and disruptive cross-border terrorist strikes such as the  26/11 attack on Mumbai. What Pakistan is signalling to India and to the world is that India should not contemplate retaliation even if there is another Mumbai because Pakistan has lowered the threshold of nuclear use to the theatre level. This is nothing short of nuclear blackmail, no different from the irresponsible behaviour one witnesses in North Korea,” he said.

Saran said one of the main reasons for Pakistan miniaturizing its nukes is actually to keep its weapons from being confiscated or neutralized by the US, a fear that has grown in the Pakistani establishment in the wake of the operation against Osama bin Laden. “Pakistan has, nevertheless, projected its nuclear deterrent as solely targeted at India and its strategic doctrine mimics the binary nuclear equation between the US and the Soviet Union which prevailed during the Cold War”.

The official warned Pakistan that a limited nuclear war is a contradiction in terms. “Any nuclear exchange, once initiated, would swiftly and inexorably escalate to the strategic level. Pakistan would be prudent not to assume otherwise as it sometimes appears to do, most recently by developing and perhaps deploying theatre nuclear weapons,” he said.

India and Pakistan, who have both nuclear weapons, have fought three wars and were close to another war in 1998 during Kargil war.

 

Write your comments and thoughts below

Faiz Ahmad / NationalTurk India News

 

[adrotate banner=”41″]