The events of September 11 have made most Indian strategic analysts forget the biggest security story of the past 10 years up to that point: India's nuclear programme and the tests at Pokhran in May 1998. Ashley Tellis' new book should get us over this amnesia and rekindle the conversation on matters nuclear in this country.

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This massive book on our nuclear posture is a fitting companion tome to George Perkovich's equally massive intervention, India's Nuclear Bomb, published in 1999. Dense, detailed, analytical, systematic and reasoned in its judgements and prescriptions, India's Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrence and Ready Arsenal is a classic of its kind and will adorn the shelves of strategic studies' libraries for many years. When you have read Perkovich and Tellis, you can probably sweep the rest of your library on India's nuclear programme into the dustbin.

INDIA'S EMERGING NUCLEAR POSTURE By Ashley Tellis Oxford Price: Rs 895 Pages: 765

Tellis (not to be confused with the other Ashley Tellis, a Mumbai resident who, I believe, writes on literary issues) is an Indian-American at RAND, the US Air Force's think tank. After a brilliant academic career at the University of Chicago, he proceeded to build a reputation for fine strategic analysis and meticulous, hardnosed briefings for his demanding air force bosses. He is now senior advisor to the US Embassy in Delhi.

While this is Tellis' biggest book, he is not just a specialist on India; indeed, the book represents something of a return to things Indian for him. For most of his career, he has done bread and butter strategic issues for the air force and has also co-authored a number of books and reports on diverse subjects-Chinese grand strategy, defence and development and ethnic conflict, to name just a few.

India's Emerging ... has been long awaited both in the US and in South Asia, and it must be said that the book does not disappoint. It is not an easy read, nor is it meant to be. It is a solid piece of research laced with hundreds of footnotes-and a tour de force. At 765 pages, it has everything you would ever want to know about India's nuclear posture, at least as it can be culled from the public record. It is not so much an audit of actual Indian capabilities, though there is information even on this, as it is an intellectual audit. Tellis has combed through the writings of almost anyone who has written anything of value on India's nuclear weapons posture. It is a massive, critical reconstruction of that copious literature, rearranged into Tellis' various categories and compartments, which seeks to describe the state of the art of Indian nuclear thinking and practice.

While Perkovich's book gave us a detailed history of the Indian nuclear programme, Tellis' book moves on to try and answer the vital logical questions that follow in the wake of the 1998 tests: how big should the nuclear weapons programme be? What kind of doctrine should guide the use and disposition of nuclear weapons? Where do things stand at present in terms of the construction of the deterrent and will the deterrent deliver?

Tellis' overall answer is that India is moving from a "recessed deterrent" to a "ready arsenal": it is proceeding, apparently unstoppably, from a fairly clandestine, fuzzy programme to something much more overt and defined. This posture will still be rather modest, but it will be much closer to full weaponisation. Tellis' analysis on the whole supports the case of nuclear pragmatists in India who have argued that a small, finite, relatively relaxed deterrent is adequate for our security needs.

This stone-cold, sober book is a must read for pro- and anti-nuclear groups in India. Pro-nuclear readers will find much here to clarify their thinking on the nature of India's posture and its adequacy. Anti-nuclear readers will get a better idea of what direction Indian military planners are likely to take in the years to come and how to structure a systematic assessment of the Indian programme in the future.

If you are interested in India's nuclear choices, this is one of two indispensable intellectual companions and guides-how ironic that they should both come from Americans.