Bottomline | Bluff and Bluster

Trump’s statement on nuclear weapons is display of poor understanding and bravado

Pravin Sawhney

President Donald Trump shocked the world by his October 30 message on social media. He wrote: ‘because of other countries’ testing programmes, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our nuclear weapons on an equal basis.’ Later in his interview to the 60 Minutes channel, Trump said that Russia, China, North Korea and Pakistan were testing; he refused to make a distinction between nuclear tests and testing of systems used for delivery of nuclear weapons.

Spurred by Trump’s interview, Indian analysts started saying that India too, which conducted nuclear tests in May 1998, needed to re-valuate its position on this issue. Especially when prominent Indian scientists in the know of things had publicly cast doubt on the success of India’s thermonuclear device test. It is argued that proven thermonuclear weapons are necessary for deterrence against China.

While Trump’s pronouncement is understandable, coming as it is from a politician, India’s so-called military theorists’ lack of understanding of warfare is shocking.

Let’s start with the wisdom of the Cold War (1945-1991) when two nuclear super-blocs (Nato and Warsaw Pact) while pitted against one another managed to avoid a hot war which both agreed would end up with Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). While both sides were monitoring each other, much of the nuclear literature in public space came from Nato, especially the US, which led it.

However, it was the General Staff (GS) of the Soviet Union which had a far better understanding of the nuclear and conventional wars. While both sides understood the destructive power of nuclear weapons, the western strategy was based primarily on deterrence. The Soviet GS approach to nukes was based on having a coherent warfighting capability which meant employment of nonnuclear techniques for (a) achieving operational objectives by deep strikes in conventional war and (b) having advantage on nuclear escalation control over the opponent.

To start from the beginning, in the Fifties, the US realised that the Soviets had an overwhelming ad