Global Security Newswire

Even a limited Pakistani nuclear attack involving short-range weapons would invite a drastic response from India, the Times of India reported on Tuesday.

"India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons, but if it is attacked with such weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on its adversary," said former Indian foreign secretary Shyam Saran, who now heads the National Security Advisory Board. "The label on a nuclear weapon used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is irrelevant from the Indian perspective."

Islamabad is believed to have developed tactical nuclear weapons to counter India's "Cold Start" strategy -- the capacity to rapidly send military troops into Pakistani territory.

"Pakistani motivation is to dissuade India from contemplating conventional punitive retaliation to sub-conventional but highly destructive and disruptive cross-border terrorist strikes such as the horrific 26/11 attack on Mumbai," Saran said. "What Pakistan is signaling to India and to the world is that India should not contemplate retaliation even if there is another Mumbai because Pakistan has lowered the threshold of nuclear use to the theater level. This is nothing short of nuclear blackmail, no different from the irresponsible behavior one witnesses in North Korea."