TY  - GEN
UR  - https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/5236/
ID  - heidok5236
TI  - Elite Perception and Biased Strategic Policy Making : The Case of India's Nuclear Build-up
Y1  - 2004///
AV  - public
N2  - The main objective of the dissertation is to provide an in-depth analytic account of the motives and dynamics of India's nuclear policy making. Within the model, structural conditions of India's regional security environment were permissive to India's nuclear development but not sufficient to make India's nuclearisation imperative for maintaining its self-preservation. The model therefore includes explanatory variables on the unit-level which are outside the classical strategic realm. The period of analysis begins in 1986 when the so called Brasstacks Crisis between India and Pakistan converted the until then modest debate on moral and philosophical aspects of nuclear weapons into a debate on more palpable aspects of warfare and strategy. The discourse gradually intensified, reaching its peak in May 1998 when India conducted several nuclear tests and subsequently declared itself a nuclear weapons state. The period of analysis ends in 2003, five years after the nuclear tests. At this time, the process of ascertaining India's strategic thought regarding the nuclear facts established in 1998 was largely concluded.  The value attached to nuclear weapons was defined by a relatively small section of India's elite, which was able to monopolise the strategic discourse. Their overriding influence benefited from two major structural features: First, throughout most of India's nuclear course, clear institutional policy-making structures were missing, allowing the strategists to influence the country's nuclear course through personal relationships and informal networking. Several reforms between 1998 and 2003 gradually lifted these institutional shortcomings, but were not yet fully able to change the predilection of India's policy elite for impulsive, ad hoc strategic decision-making. The second feature was the role of public opinion. The sensitivity of the nuclear debate towards public sentiments explains how values other than security, especially those related to the country's status and prestige, are attributed to the nuclear issue. The concepts of "status" and "prestige" are socially constructed and exist only because actors attribute a certain meaning to them.  Among the most decisive factors in India' nuclear course was the friction between the two main normative values inherent in the status thinking of India's elite. The first norm, deeply rooted in India's independence struggle and closely connected to Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, was India's quest for social recognition as a morally superior international actor. Nehru's definition of this concept involved the negation of power as a means of foreign policy despite the fact that it thus contradicted the second major normative value attributed to nuclear weapons: the quest for social recognition as a military power. In an attempt to accommodate the contradictions, the strategic elite developed the concept of the "nuclear option". This term was, however, technically meaningless, as "to develop the nuclear option" implied the development of nuclear capabilities. But with regard to the two underlying norms, it was essential. The importance of the idea of equity in the Indian context similarly originated from the struggle for independence and was rooted in India's post-colonial, multi-ethnic society. It played a particularly prominent role in the nuclear realm because of the explicitness of the nuclear order's inequality as laid down in the NPT. The scientists involved in India's nuclear programme perceived their work as part of a competition with Western countries for scientific excellence. The main quality of the work was thereby thought to be its indigenous nature, which explained the strong emphasis of the scientists on self-reliance.  Immediately after the nuclear tests of 1998, the pragmatists among India's strategic elite adopted the view that India's (self-) declaration as nuclear weapons state"completed the architecture of the nuclear order". Implicit to this pragmatic appreciation of the nuclear order after the tests was the general understanding of India's elite that India had a natural right to the superior status associated with the possession of nuclear weapons due to its mere size, its cultural heritage and its democratic achievements (the latter being of particular relevance as distinguishing feature to China and Pakistan). This intrinsically nationalistic approach was inherent to India's nuclear debate since the beginning, but remained largely hidden behind the morally defined normative values attributed to the nuclear issue prior to 1998.  After India's nuclear tests, several of the normative values attached to nuclear weapons either ceased to exist, like the equity norm, or fundamentally changed in outlook, such as the idea of moral exceptionalism and the nationalist norm. The cognitive bias that had distorted elite perception of the international non-proliferation discourse and its major actors lost much of its intensity.
A1  - Frey, Karsten
KW  - proliferation 
KW  -  security 
KW  -  india
ER  -