Did Pakistan Just Overhaul Its Nuclear Doctrine?

As Pakistan celebrated the 25th anniversary of its first nuclear tests last month, it also appeared to share more details than usual about its current nuclear posture.

Speaking at a seminar hosted by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad on May 24, retired Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai provided new details of Pakistan’s otherwise ambiguous nuclear doctrine. What Kidwai says matters because he is currently an advisor to the country’s National Command Authority (NCA), which controls research and development and all other policy matters concerning nuclear weapons. He’s also the former director-general of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which is responsible for formulating nuclear policy and strategy as well as the security of nuclear assets.

During his address, he reiterated some of the long-standing positions of Pakistan’s nuclear policy, such as the strength of its nuclear triad based on land, air, and sea-based capabilities to deter India—especially the Indian military’s so-called Cold Start doctrine, which envisages a limited war through quick mobilization of unified battle groups to conduct operations inside Pakistani territory without crossing Islamabad’s nuclear threshold. He also discussed what’s known as full-spectrum deterrence—a policy aimed at responding to a range of threats from India. But he went further.

Kidwai expanded the scope of this doctrine by explaining what he called vertical and horizontal dimensions. In his words, full-spectrum deterrence “comprises horizontally of a robust tri-services inventory of a variety of nuclear weapons … [that] is held on land with the Army Strategic Force Command, the ASFC; at sea with the Naval Strategic Force Command, the NSFC; and in the air with the Air Force Strategic Command, the AFSC.”

Most striking was his statement that “vertically the spectrum encapsulates adequate range coverage from 0 meters to 2,750 kilometers [about 1,700 miles] as well as nuclear weapons destructive yields at three tiers—strategic, operational, and tactical.”

Reducing the minimum range to 0 meters is unprecedented and, if implemented, points to a major shift in Islamabad’s nuclear policy thinking.

Indeed, Pakistan has always kept its nuclear policy vague and deliberately ambiguous; nonetheless, its missile ranges are the only aspect that has always been announced publicly through an official press release after every missile test.

Prior to Kidwai’s statement, the officially announced lowest range in Pakistan’s nuclear inventory was the Nasr, or Hatf-9 ballistic missile, with a range of 60 kilometers (about 37 miles). The solid-fueled tactical ballistic missile was projected to be a response to India’s Cold Start doctrine. When it first test-fired the Nasr missile in 2011, Pakistan received huge flak from both Indian and Western scholars for its potential security risks and command and control challenges. The purported risks of employing Nasr ranged from the lowering of nuclear threshold to the possibility of an accidental or unauthorized launch if command and control of this short-range missile was delegated to local commanders in the battlefield.

The upper limit of 2,750 kilometers refers to the land-based surface-to-surface medium-range ballistic missile Shaheen-3, which was first test-fired in 2015 with the stated aim to reach the Indian islands of Andaman and Nicobar, thereby denying New Delhi the strategic bases for a potential second-strike capability. The upper limit was carefully restricted to 2,750 kilometers to signal that Pakistan’s nuclear missile program is only India-specific and does not pose a threat to any other country in the region and beyond.

The bigger question is what strategic objective Pakistan wishes to achieve by going below the already controversial 60-kilometer range to zero-range weapons. As full-spectrum deterrence is aimed at plugging the perceived gaps in Pakistan’s deterrence posture, the apparent announcement of a zero-range policy within the scope of full-spectrum deterrence seems to have developed partly in response to a growing perception in New Delhi that India’s 2019 airstrikes on Balakot in mainland Pakistan—instigated by an alleged Pakistan-sponsored suicide attack on Indian forces in Pulwama, a small town in Indian-held Kashmir—have called Pakistan’s nuclear bluff.

It is important to recall that in order to defend Nasr’s development and its role in nuclear planning, Pakistani officials have often contended that use of any nuclear weapons on the battlefield would have strategic consequences. While this position might have allayed Western concerns regarding Pakistan’s attempt to lower the nuclear threshold, it may also have inadvertently made the use of Nasr less than credible in the eyes of Indian policymakers.

When Pakistan responded with a conventional counterstrike after the Indian attack on Balakot, the view that India had found a way to punish Islamabad with conventional force without risking a nuclear catastrophe seemed to have strengthened in New Delhi. It is possible Kidwai sees that lowering the range down to zero will fill this newly perceived gap and deter future surgical strikes inside Pakistan.

Going down to zero range might also be a reaction to India’s vanishing “no first use” doctrine; indeed, some current and former Indian officials have made statements to suggest that India no longer fully adheres to this pledge.

It may also be an attempt to add additional options to Pakistan’s arsenal of responses, making it difficult or impossible for India to take out Pakistan’s entire nuclear force in a decapitating first strike and also making New Delhi question the effectiveness of its ballistic missile defenses in the face of short-range weapons.

Regardless of the logic, Pakistan’s lowering the nuclear range to zero is problematic for both regional stability and India’s perception that it can fight a limited conventional war against a nuclear-armed adversary.

In response, Pakistan assured other nations that its geography allowed it to maintain assertive control even if the range was as low as 60 kilometers. However, this argument will not stand if a very short-range battlefield weapons system becomes part of the country’s arsenal.

Finally, it raises the perennial question about both India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear preparations without a concrete plan or strategy for escalation control and war termination.

As the longest-serving director-general of the SPD and now as an important part of the NCA, Kidwai has often used various national and international forums to convey policy statements, and they have always been viewed as part of the official narrative. In the absence of any other official communications, Kidwai’s latest statement may be seen as clear signaling—if not an adopted policy.

If Pakistan officially adopts a zero-range policy, such a drastic change in its nuclear posture is likely to receive massive international criticism due to the risks it poses to regional stability. Lowering weapon ranges coupled with India’s ongoing signs that it is departing from a more cautious no-first-use posture is also a stark reminder that instead of engaging in risk reduction measures and enhancing strategic stability, both countries are going further down the path of high-risk behavior.