Managing the Military
Saturday, January 19th, 2008*These articles on Political Theory are completely optional and are not required reading. However, knowledge of the theories may be useful for your own intellectual pursuits. Think of the articles as a synopsis of an entire college semester, free of tuition and expensive books.*
While you may hear about many of the things that UC Berkeley is excellent at, teaching military policy sadly isn’t quite good here. This is largely because of our particularly (and sometimes irrationally) liberal persuasion, which decides that studying the military is a lost cause. This of course is a rather stupid line of reasoning, because even if we strongly dislike something, that’s no excuse to ignore a study of it (for example, Fascism, economic depression, various diseases).
Luckily, there’s a smattering of individuals in BMUN who have firsthand experience with the military, and presumably military policy. Our Head Chair of UNODC was actually formerly from the Signal Corps of the US Army. We’re also proud to have our Head Chair of UNSC be an officer-in-training for the US Air Force military intelligence branch. Hopefully, we’ll be able to use their experiences to better learn about military affairs and operations.
From a political perspective, I can draw to your attention three aspects of military policy which most concern Political Scientists. These are capability, doctrine, and command and control. While these three categories are applicable to all sectors of the military, we’ll be reviewing them today in the context of strategic nuclear forces.
Capability pretty much means the maximum force that a country has at its disposal. Now, this doesn’t mean that a nation would realistically use 100% of its force for trivial purposes. Imagine it like a car. My car is capable of going as fast as 100 kmph. However, most of the time you won’t find me zooming around that quickly. 
A country’s nuclear capability can be determined by several things, such as long-range missile technology, warhead technology, manufacturing and mining infrastructure, and guidance systems. With the three states that we’re concerned with (China, India, and Pakistan), each of the three has at least strategic regional nuclear capabilities.
Doctrine is a country’s political plan to fight a war with particular weapons. So, going back to my car analogy, I may choose to stay under 100 kmph if I’m not late. But if I’m late, then I might go over 100 kmph. That would be my doctrine for deciding what to do and when to do it. Each state has its own doctrine when it comes to using nuclear weapons. For example, India has a “no first use” doctrine, which claims that it will not be the first one to deploy its nuclear weapons (but it still might retaliate if hit with nukes). China has a similar doctrine, except that it becomes fuzzy when Taiwan is considered (because nuking Taiwan wouldn’t legally be the same as striking a foreign country, as Taiwan is part of China). Note that doctrine can change pretty easily and quickly, while capability takes decades to build and research.
Command and Control refers to the operational systems that keep the weapons in check when they are not used. So in my car, I have to first push down the accelerator before I can zoom around, and it’s fairly certain that I won’t speed up unless I push down the pedal. This of course ensures that my driving record is clean and that accidents are minimal. This also applies to nuclear weapons (although at this point casualties from car accidents are many times higher than deaths from nuclear attack). Pakistan, given its military state, has a very rigid and defined command and control system, that prevents accidental firing of nuclear weapons (National Command Authority). India in comparison lacks such a clearly defined plan, mostly on account of the military’ role being minimized in comparison to civilian leadership (Nuclear Command Authority). Command and control systems are also what keep nukes out of terrorist hands.