India's Foreign Policy

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INDIA’s NUCLEAR POLICY

Rajesh Kumar Mishra

For almost five decades, the Cold War–steeped world, which witnessed a race for development and deployment of nuclear weapons faced a grand dilemma—whether or not to use nuclear weapons in a severe military crisis. Had there been no review by major nuclear weapon states on the doctrines simply based on mutual assured destruction, there would have been no need for alternatives like limited, flexible or proportionate deterrent capabilities. The process of review in diversifying the role of nuclear weapons led to changes in the size and nature of nuclear arsenals worldwide. Though the phase of bipolar rivalry between the Warsaw Pact and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has ended, stocks of ...