Pakistan has announced the formal integration of strategic elements of all three services with the appointment of the Commander, National Strategic Command (NSC). It’s a four-star appointment and the man in charge is Lt Gen Aamer Raza from the armoured corps, who supersedes six other officers.
Dawn reports that the NSC is a creation of the 27th constitutional amendment of last year, which abolished the post of chairman, chiefs of staff committee and created the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF), currently held by Army Chief Gen Asim Munir.
The NSC commander is appointed by the prime minister on the recommendation of the CDF from among serving generals and serves a three-year term.
The National Strategic Command Authority, headed by the prime minister of Pakistan, remains, Dawn said, and it will have the final authority to employ nuclear weapons. But the buzz is it will be strictly informational rather than operational.
“Operational control” over the strategic forces will vest in the NSC commander, with the Strategic Plans Division continuing as a secretariat.
The makeover basically centralises the nuclear assets employed by each service, army, navy and air force, under a single command. This is not as innocuous as it may appear. It sends out the message to India (and other countries) that in the event of another Op. Sindoor-like confrontation, Pakistan can move quickly up the escalation ladder.
“If conventional deterrence fails, he has the back-up of nuclear deterrence, which we call as part of his full spectrum deterrence strategy,” says Brig Arun Sahgal (Retd) of the Forum for Security Initiatives, a think tank.
“So India has to be prepared for a minimum of two or three rounds of escalation. If you want to teach him a lesson or cause credible damage, you have to go two or three rungs.”
There’s an element of risk here. Would India wish to go down that route? Brig Sahgal believes that Pakistan will threaten the use of nuclear weapons but “this is a sham, it’s a joke. He does not have the gumption to use nuclear weapons against us.”
Why would he when India has already promised “massive retaliation” in the event of a nuclear strike? It is also hard to see why the Pakistani army leadership would wish to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, in this case Pakistan, which they run and many would say own, since they have first call on its resources.
