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"Ironically," Dr. Narang has written, "China doubts India's no-first-use 
pledge for the same reasons the United States doubts China's: that in a 
crisis, no rhetorical pledge physically prevents the state from using nuclear 
weapons first." For India's nuclear strategists, this is a good thing: China's 
fears should deter it from a large-scale war. 
The TNW challenge 
From the east, though, the threat is more complex. In the wake of the 2001-
2002 India-Pakistan crisis, the Indian Army began acquiring the resources 
to fight limited conflicts at short notice — in essence, wars of punishment 
for acts of terrorism. Pakistan responded by growing its Tactical Nuclear 
Weapons (TNW) arsenal, for use against advancing Indian formations 
inside its own territory. Last year, eminent diplomat Shyam Saran lucidly 
explained the thinking. Pakistan hopes "to dissuade India from 
contemplating conventional punitive retaliation to sub-conventional but 
highly destructive and disruptive cross-border terrorist strikes." 
From Cold War experience, Pakistan likely knows its nuclear-weapons 
strategy makes no sense. In 1955, historian David Smith has recorded, a 
NATO exercise code-named Carte Blanche concluded that a war using 
TNWs would leave two million dead in the north German plains. Exercise 
Sagebrush later concluded that all participating military formations would 
also end up being annihilated. Exercise Oregon Trail, conducted from 
1963-1965, showed that when forces concentrated to fight conventionally, 
they "offered lucrative nuclear targets" — but if they "dispersed to avoid 
nuclear strikes, the units could be defeated by conventional tactics." 
Pakistan's generals know expert studies, like that of A.H. Nayyar and Zia 
Mian, demonstrate that TNWs would be near-useless in stopping an Indian 
armoured thrust into Pakistan. The generals know that TNWs have to be 
dispersed, vastly increasing the risks of miscalculation by local 
commanders, accidental use, or even theft. Ejaz Haider, a Pakistani 
strategic commentator, has bluntly stated that the confused state of the 
Pakistan's TNW doctrine "essentially means we don't know what the hell 
to do with them." 
India doesn't either. Purely symbolic gestures like revoking the no-first-use 
policy will yield no dividends, though. If Pakistan is desperate enough to 
use TNWs, thus inviting an Indian second strike, it certainly won't be 
deterred by a threat to unleash Armageddon first. Backing down on no-
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first-use will, moreover, deny India the fruits of being seen as a responsible 
nuclear-weapons state, one of the reasons Mr. Vajpayee made his call in the 
first place. 
It isn't clear, though, that reason will prevail: Mr. Mahmood, after all, isn't 
the only crazed South Asian in shouting distance of a nuclear bomb. In 
1999, as war raged in Kargil, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh journal 
organiser had these words for Mr. Vajpayee: "Arise, Atal Behari! Who 
knows if fate has destined you to be the author of the final chapter of this 
long story. For what have we manufactured bombs? For what have we 
exercised the nuclear option?" 
It is critical that voices like these be nowhere near the ears of the leaders 
whose hands hover over our nuclear button. 
Praveen Swami is an Indian journalist, analyst and author specialising on 
international strategic and security issues. 
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