A few words about Indian defence policy. This had seriously affected modernisation and preparedness. It was only inevitable that defence expenditure and defence modernisation would be restored and this process has begun. Our experts feel that we must possess conventional capability of a sufficiently high level in order to lift the nuclear threshold as much as possible. This assumes importance since conventional war has not been made obsolete by nuclear weapons.
War remains a possibility among nuclear weapon states below the nuclear threshold.
But the danger of escalation to nuclear exchange should make us rethink about initiating even a conventional war. We had understood the dynamics of limited war especially after India declared its nuclear weapons status nearly two years ago. The Kargil War, therefore, was handled within this perspective with results that are their for every one to see. Pakistan on the other hand had convinced itself for decades that under the nuclear umbrella it would be able to take Kashmir without India being able to punish it in return. We can state with some degree of satisfaction that nearly two years after we declared India to be a state with nuclear weapons there is better understanding of the imperatives of our security and the restraint that India seeks to exercise in its nuclear weapons policy and posture.