Elite Perception and Biased Strategic Policy Making: The Case of India's Nuclear Build-up
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 ...