Limited nuclear war possible, says Shivshankar Menon

National security adviser Shivshankar Menon said on Thursday  a limited war in nuclear conditions to deter adversaries was a possibility, and called for creating a new security architecture for the country. “What India needs is an open, balanced and inclusive architecture to correspond to the new situation that is emerging,” he said while delivering the keynote address at the golden jubilee celebrations of National Defence College, New Delhi.

NSA reiterated that terrorism was a derivative of nuclear deterrence. “Nuclear confrontation or war between major powers is not as likely as the threat from derivatives of nuclear deterrence, namely, terrorism and nuclear proliferation, which are being used to subvert the emergence of a plural, secular and democratic international order in the twenty-first century,” he averred.

Prominent strategic affairs analyst K Subrahmanyam said Pakistan had been exploring the role of terror in war. He said while Winston Churchill had called “deterrence the child of terror”, Pakistan had made “terror the child of deterrence”.

Chinese professor of international relations Shen Dingli began speaking by saying his views were a combination of his personal views and the Chinese government’s position. Shen spoke about global zero, or the total elimination of nuclear weapons, to which, he said, China was committed.

He blamed the US for making China a nuclear state, saying Beijing reluctantly acquired nuclear weapons after the Korean War.
Shen claimed missiles deployed in Tibet were not nuclear-capable and that China’s “no first-use” (of nuclear weapons) was applicable to Taiwan also.

Earlier, president Pratibha Patil said in her inaugural speech that terrorism was the “foremost threat” the civilised world was facing and it had to be confronted with force and in close cooperation with the international community.

Bhutan king Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuk said there was a bright future ahead for both India and Bhutan.