The strategic implications of a nuclear India

The Strategic Implications of a Nuclear India by Ashley J. Tellis

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fter a hiatus of almost twenty-four years, India startled the world in May 1998 by resuming nuclear testing at a time when the international community solemnly expressed a desire through the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) to refrain from the field-testing of nuclear explosives. On May 11, 1998, Indian prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee tersely announced that New Delhi had conducted three nuclear tests, one of which involved the detonation of a thermonuclear device. As a stunned global community struggled to respond to this development, India announced two days later that it had conducted two more detonations, which purportedly “completed the planned series of underground tests.”1 In the aftermath of these tests, India declared itself to be a “nuclear weapon state”2 and formally announced its intention to develop a “minimum credible (nuclear) deterrent.”3 This article seeks to examine the broader strategic implications of the Indian decision to develop a nuclear deterrent. It focuses on three distinct but related sets of issues: First, how does the formal Indian decision to develop a nuclear deterrent change the strategic environment in Southern Asia? Second, how does it affect the prospects of war and peace in the greater South Asian region? And, third, how will it affect American regional nonproliferation objectives and, in particular, India’s relationship with the United States? This 1 “Suo Motu Statement by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the Indian Parliament on May 27, 1998,” India News, May 16 –June 15, 1998, p. 1. Pakistan, responding to these events, conducted its own nuclear tests on May 28 and May 30, 1998. 2 Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, “XII Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) Debates,” Session II, May 27, 1998. 3 This phrase has been repeatedly used by Indian leaders as a slogan to define their conception of the country’s future nuclear capabilities. See, Mahesh Uniyal, “No cap on fissile material, says Vajpayee,” India Abroad, Dec. 25, 1998.

Ashley J. Tellis is currently Senior Advisor to the Ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. This article was completed while he was a Senior Policy Analyst at RAND, Washington, D.C. and is an expanded version of a chapter in his book India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001). © 2002 Foreign Policy Research Institute. Published by Elsevier Science Limited.

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TELLIS article will argue that India’s prospective nuclearization is unlikely to dramatically alter the prevailing patterns of security competition in the region; that its prospective consequences for deterrence and crisis stability are more or less positive, though tinged with some uncertainty when subjective factors and third-party actions are taken into account; and that so long as it maintains a certain modicum of restraint India’s relationship with the United States is unlikely to be undermined. The article concludes with a brief comment on the role nuclear issues ought to play in the evolving U.S. relations with India. The Effect of Indian Nuclearization on the Security Environment in Southern Asia As has become more evident since the tumultuous events of May 1998, the resumption of nuclear testing signified a dramatic change not in New Delhi’s strategic capabilities, but in its strategic direction. By transforming what was previously a “nuclear capable state” into something resembling a “nuclear weapons power,” the Vajpayee government committed the country to a new trajectory that is unlikely to be reversed by any regime succeeding it.4 The pace of change with respect to nuclearization may vary, depending on the external and internal circumstances facing India, but the strategic decisions already in place will not be rescinded by any future government— even one composed by parties utterly opposed to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Thus, so long as the regional and global nuclear environment remains similar to what it is now, India will not move in the opposite direction of denuclearization, as demanded by the P-5, the G-8, and U.N. Resolution 1172 in the aftermath of its nuclear tests.5 On this question there is complete unanimity among all the major Indian political parties: given that New Delhi has already claimed the status of a “nuclear weapons state,” the slow development of its strategic capabilities will emerge as the new “consensus” position in national politics, and India will therefore remain a nuclear weapons power for the foreseeable future. Its entitative status, especially as it relates to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, will be debated for many years to come, but what seems clear is that the multiple trends underway since the early 1980s will only be reinforced and formalized as a result of the decision to resume nuclear testing in May 1998. These trends include: the continued covert research, development, and slow production of nuclear 4

As one Indian commentator noted, “No government in India will go against the consensus in favour of creation of an adequate nuclear deterrent.” See, M. D. Nalapat, “Eagle’s Eye View: Isolating India to Help China,” The Times of India, June 25, 1998. 5 Security Council Resolution 1172 (1998) on International Peace and Security, adopted by the U.N. Security Council at its 3890th Meeting on June 6, 1998, “urges India and Pakistan, and all other States that have not yet done so, to become Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty without delay and without conditions.” (http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/1998/ sres1172.htm)

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India weapons for existing and new delivery vehicles; the continued research, development, testing, and slow production and acquisition of new delivery systems, including various kinds of ballistic and cruise missiles; and, in general, the continuation of “creeping weaponization,”6 understood broadly as the slow development of the technologies, plans, procedures and organizations necessary for the conduct of effective nuclear operations in an emergency. Since these trends were long under way, India’s 1998 nuclear tests portend an “equilibrium change”7 rather than a radical transformation of the existing regional strategic environment. This evolutionary alteration, however, will be increasingly manifested through overt reminders in the form of, for example, resumed missile testing, continued acquisition of new delivery systems, steady modernization of supporting infrastructure, and increasingly vocal references to nuclear weaponization. None of this, obviously, translates into a new commitment to transparency on the part of New Delhi: The Indian arsenal (like the Pakistani and Chinese arsenals for that matter) will continue to be highly opaque with respect to the details of its architecture and its operational policies, command and control arrangements, and even some aspects of declaratory doctrine. Despite continued opacity in these issueareas, however, New Delhi can be expected to episodically disclose certain elements of its nuclear capability, in part because many of the relevant technologies or organizational capabilities cannot be developed or acquired covertly. Consequently, announcing their presence is probably the best form of public diplomacy, especially if it allows India to garner certain deterrence benefits. In other instances, however, public utterances about India’s strategic programs will be grounded largely by the logic of “costly signaling”—that is, public utterances intended to convey threats, signal reassurance, or highlight political resolve.8 This form of communication has a long history in South Asian regional politics because it serves as a means of “tacit bargaining” with one’s adversaries,9 while simultaneously helping to reassure one’s own

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For more on the factors leading up to this posture, see Ashley J. Tellis, “‘Creeping Weaponization’: The Future of the Indian Nuclear Program?” Paper presented at the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, The Future of Nuclear Weapons: A U.S.-India Dialogue, held at the Wharton Sinkler Conference Center, May 5– 8, 1997, available at http://www.sas.upenn.edu/casi/reports/nuclear/TellisPaper050597.pdf. 7 The term “equilibrium change” is borrowed from Morton Kaplan’s classic work System and Process in International Politics (New York: Wiley, 1957), pp. 6 – 8, where it refers to any movement that contributes to the achievement of new operating levels in an otherwise stable political system. “Equilibrium change,” thus, stands in contrast to “systems change,” which refers to the complete transformation of the “system of action” itself. 8 See A. M. Spence, “Job Market Signaling,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 87 (1973), pp. 355–74, and James Fearon, Threats to use force: The role of costly signals in international crises, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1992, for different but complementary concepts of costly signaling. 9 See Neil Joeck, “Tacit Bargaining and Stable Proliferation in South Asia,” The Journal of Strategic Studies, vol. 13, no. 3 (1990), pp. 77–91, for an excellent discussion of this phenomenon.

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TELLIS populace about the efforts made by state managers with respect to ensuring security. Irrespective of why such public disclosures may be made, any notice of increasing Indian capabilities is bound to accentuate the triangular security dilemmas already existing within the greater South Asian region. This unfortunate development cannot be avoided, since security dilemmas by their very nature arise because the defense capabilities developed by one country invariably threaten the safety of other countries. The only way to avoid security dilemmas, then, is to forgo defensive preparations entirely. Since such pacifist solutions are unlikely to appeal to any state, including those in Southern Asia, both the region and the world at large will have to either find ways of ameliorating these dilemmas or simply learn to live with all the jostling that will accompany the progressive nuclearization of the subcontinent. While India’s “passage to nuclear power”10 will thus have strategic consequences—many of which may be nettlesome though not avoidable— for both Pakistan and China, security competition in the Indo-Pakistani case will likely turn out to be much more discomfiting than any competition involving India and China.11 This judgment is vociferously contested by Indian hawks who, while arguing that “Pakistan is not too weighty a nuclear threat,”12 sometimes hold out the hope that Islamabad’s nuclear forces “may even be complementary should the unitary strategic space of the subcontinent ever be reclaimed with the seeding of an entente cordiale.”13 While such sentiments may appear reasonable to some in New Delhi, they send shivers down the spines of state managers in Islamabad, who find it difficult to understand why some Indian elites fail to recognize that Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities are designed explicitly to prevent the recreation of “the unitary strategic space” that characterized the Indian subcontinent prior to its partition in 1947. Because this outcome must be avoided at all costs, Islamabad is likely to overemphasize the importance of nuclear weaponry, making the Indo-Pakistani pattern of nuclearization relatively more troublesome than its Sino-Indian counterpart. All things considered, the competitive nuclearization of the IndoPakistani dyad is likely to be unsettling simply because relations between New Delhi and Islamabad have been more competitive than cooperative during the past half century. The reasons for this are too many and complex to analyze here in any detail. It will suffice to note that each country has 10

This phrase is borrowed from Brahma Chellaney, “South Asia’s Passage to Nuclear Power,” International Security, Summer 1991, pp. 43–72. 11 For a comparison of the two streams of dyadic competition, see Ashley J. Tellis, “The Changing PoliticalMilitary Environment: South Asia,” in Zalmay Khalilzad, et al., The United States and Asia: Toward A New U.S. Strategy and Force Posture (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001), pp. 203–240. 12 Bharat Karnad, “A Thermonuclear Deterrent,” in Amitabh Mattoo, ed., India’s Nuclear Deterrent (New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 1999), p. 136. 13 Ibid.

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India found itself in the unfortunate position of functioning as an objective constraint on the hopes, visions, and ambitions of the other. As a result, territorial, ideological, and power-political drivers of conflict all interact viciously to make the Indo-Pakistani rivalry much more acute than Sino-Indian competition has ever been.14 This propensity for competition is only magnified by the apparently ineradicable deformities of the Pakistani state, which manifest themselves in excessive fear of Indian intentions and inordinate dread of Indian capabilities. There is good reason to believe that Islamabad’s anxieties may be misplaced on both counts, even if they are otherwise understandable. Ever since 1991, New Delhi has consciously pursued a strategy of looking beyond South Asia to pursue the larger great-power capabilities that eluded it throughout the Cold War. Towards this end, it has attempted to “ignore” Pakistan to the maximum degree possible in order to focus on potentially more profitable policies, such as internal economic reform, technological modernization, and revitalizing its external relations with important countries such as the United States and the rapidly-growing economic centers in East and Southeast Asia.15 Unfortunately, important sections of the Pakistani elite, including the military, trapped by their memory of defeat in the 1971 war, continue to believe that New Delhi’s Pakistan is first order of business remains the destruction of Pakistan and likely to the undoing of Partition. India’s larger conventional capabil- respond with ities—which it maintains in order to service its security reeven more quirements along two fronts—reinforce the deep-seated Pakistani fear of Indian intentions, and Islamabad’s failure to see feverish efforts the constraints afflicting the exercise of Indian military power of its own. results in an exaggerated assessment of New Delhi’s martial prowess.16 A similar misperception about the robustness of the Indian nuclear program has led to the strong belief in Islamabad that New Delhi’s strategic capabilities are much more sophisticated and effective than they actually are. This, in turn, has fuelled an intense Pakistani effort which, though aimed mainly at catching up with India, has resulted in what may actually be a lead in some dimensions of strategic capability.17 The bottom 14

See Sumit Ganguly, The Origins of War in South Asia: The Indo-Pakistani Conflicts since 1947, 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), and Ashley J. Tellis, Stability in South Asia (Santa Monica: RAND, 1997), pp. 8 –11. 15 For more on this strategy, see Ashley J. Tellis, “South Asia,” in Zalmay M. Khalilzad (ed.), Strategic Appraisal 1996 (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1996), pp. 283–307, and Walter Andersen, “India’s Foreign Policy in the Post–Cold War World: Searching for a New Model,” in Shalendra D. Sharma, ed., The Asia-Pacific in the New Millennium: Geopolitics, Security, and Foreign Policy (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2000), pp. 207–23. 16 The limitations of Indian military power vis-a`-vis Pakistan are discussed in Tellis, Stability in South Asia, pp. 12–33. 17 This perception, although contestable on many grounds, is usefully described in Andrew Koch, “India, Pakistan: Nuclear Arms Race Gets Off To a Slow Start,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, Jan. 2001, pp. 36 – 40.

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TELLIS line, therefore, is that Pakistan, for right or wrong reasons, is likely to respond to continued Indian nuclearization with even more feverish efforts of its own. Believing that it faces an enormous task in catching up with its larger, more capable, and hostile rival, Pakistan is likely to ramp up its strategic efforts much more than the objective circumstances pertaining to the relative balance actually warrant. In so doing, it may precipitate a more resolute Indian counterreaction that could lead to the process of competitive nuclearization’s becoming even more interactive. Even if such Indian counterreactions are not forthcoming—if New Delhi’s strategic enclaves do not feel compelled to respond to Islamabad’s innovations in kind—there is a significant danger that the multiple baronies currently existing in the Pakistani nuclear and missile bureaucracies could stimulate the country’s strategic programs far beyond the real requirements of national security.18 The same dynamic, if it occurs in the context of weakening economic performance nationwide and decreasing state capacity, could also fuel the diffusion of strategic technologies well beyond the confines of Pakistan. In any event, internal bureaucratic competition coupled with exaggerated fears on the part of state managers about India are certain to fuel a Pakistani response to Indian nuclearization that goes far beyond what most knowledgeable observers on the outside would view as both essential and prudent for Islamabad’s security.19 What is most tragic about this state of affairs is that its propelling forces are rooted fundamentally in a systematic misperception of the relative balance of capabilities existing in South Asia: India, the nominally stronger military power, is actually weaker than is commonly believed but may not know it, while Pakistan, the nominally weaker military power, is actually stronger than is commonly perceived but does not believe it. The Indo-Pakistani dyad, therefore, bears careful watching in the years ahead. Competitive pressures here are likely to be more acute, in part because the strategic research, development, testing, and acquisition programs in both countries will proceed concurrently and, at least from the Pakistani point of view, may also be overly interactive insofar as Islamabad, seeing itself beleaguered, will bend over backwards to expand its own strategic capabilities to match those it perceives to exist in India.20 The strategic benefits of such a response remain uncertain because expanded Pakistani nuclear capabilities will not attenuate the country’s acute geophysical vulnerability, though they would increase the quantum of deliverable punishments that Islamabad could threaten in any future face-off with India. 18

The structure of the Pakistani nuclear program and the competition between the different baronies within it are described in Shahid-ur-Rehman, The Long Road to Chagai (Islamabad: Print Wise Publications, 1999). 19 See the very apt remarks in George Perkovich, “South Asia: A Bomb Is Born,” Newsweek, Jan. 24, 2000. 20 See Agha Shahi, Zulfiqar Ali Khan, and Abdul Sattar, “Securing Nuclear Peace,” News International, October 5, 1999, for a good summary of Pakistani views on how Islamabad would respond to Indian nuclearization.

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India In any event, the saving grace that mutes the potential for exacerbated competition between both countries remains their relatively strong economic constraints. At the Pakistani end, these constraints are structural: Islamabad simply has no discretionary resources to fritter away on an open-ended arms race, and it could not acquire resources for this purpose without fundamentally transforming the nature of the Pakistani state itself—which transformation, if it occurs successfully, would actually mitigate many of the corrosive forces that currently drive Islamabad’s security competition with India.21 At the Indian end, these constraints may be more self-imposed. New Delhi commands a large pool of national resources that could be siphoned off and reallocated to security instruments, but the current weaknesses of the central government’s public finances and its reform program, coupled with its desire to complete the technological modernization programs that have been underway for many decades, prevents it from enlarging the budgetary allocations for strategic acquisitions at will.22 With these constraints on both sides, future nuclearization in India and Pakistan is more likely to resemble an “arms crawl” than a genuine Richardson–type “arms race.” The strategic capabilities on both sides will increase incrementally but slowly—and in India will have further to go because of its inferior capabilities compared to China’s. This slowness may be the best outcome from the viewpoint both of the two South Asian competitors and the United States.23 In contrast to the frenetic response that Indian nuclearization has already provoked in Islamabad, Beijing’s response to New Delhi’s slowly maturing nuclear capabilities will likely be both muted and modest.24 In part, this is because China has not historically viewed India as a “peer competitor,” and any strategic reactions suggesting otherwise at this point would only undercut Beijing’s traditional attitude of treating New Delhi as a parvenu entity that seeks to punch above its own weight. This does not imply that China is oblivious to the potential threat that India could pose to it in some circumstances. Ever conscious of this possibility, it has traditionally refused to provoke India on any core issues of importance to New Delhi and as insurance targeted India (among other power centers in Asia) with a nontrivial fraction of its nuclear reserves.25 The larger and more sophisticated nuclear arsenal that China has deployed since the 1960s in fact provides Beijing with the ultimate reassurance against any threat New Delhi might 21 The nature of Pakistan’s current economic crisis is succinctly surveyed in Asian Development Outlook 2001 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 122–24. 22 The challenges posed by a slowing reform process and continuing weaknesses in the Indian economy are described, ibid, pp. 112–16. 23 For a good Indian view confirming this judgment, see P. R. Chari, “India’s Slow-Motion Nuclear Deployment,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Proliferation Brief, Sept. 7, 2000. 24 “Country Briefing: People’s Republic of China,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, Dec. 16, 1998. 25 For details, see Ashley J. Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrence and Ready Arsenal (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001), pp. 58 –75.

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TELLIS pose. The gap in numbers and technological capabilities between the mature Chinese nuclear deterrent and New Delhi’s evolving force-in-being is so large that Beijing does not have to respond in any significant way to the incipient Indian efforts at developing a minimum deterrent. Although some commentators have offered dire prognoses of what China might do as India develops its nuclear assets, including a “nuclear buildup [that involves] deployment of missiles in Tibet and other bordering provinces,”26 it is unlikely that Beijing will dramatically change its traditional pattern of nuclear deployments with respect to India in the near term. To be sure, Chinese nuclear capabilities may expand in the decades ahead, but this expansion will be driven more by China’s own modernization efforts (which had been under way for at least a decade prior to the Indian tests of May 1998), its perceptions of U.S. nuclear capabilities, and the future character of the nuclear regime in East Asia (and globally) than by developments occurring southwest of China. Chinese nuclear deterrence vis-a`-vis India is currently so robust that it is difficult to conceive of a scenario where any capabilities India develops over the next decade would allow it to systematically interdict Beijing’s nuclear forces, either for purposes of ensuring damage limitation or achieving counterforce dominance. Given this, there is little China need do in the face of an evolving Indian nuclear capability except what it might choose to do for mainly symbolic reasons. Both the range of Beijing’s missiles and the yields of its warheads already allow it to hold at risk numerous Indian targets from well inside the Chinese periphery, making dramatic alterations in its current deployment patterns or operating postures toward India unnecessary. Reaffirming this judgment, one of the most perceptive Western analysts of the subcontinent concluded that the kind of Indian [nuclear] force [likely to be developed] would not necessarily force China into any additional nuclear-related activity. Although India might eventually achieve a deterrent capability in relation to China, a threat capability is another matter. Unless Beijing were to come to see India as a threatening nuclear power— one that might catch up to China’s capability—it is unlikely to be persuaded to proceed with its program of nuclear modernization more rapidly than would otherwise be the case.27

Beijing’s center of gravity will remain Northeast Asia (and Pacific Asia more generally), not the Indian subcontinent, which can only reinforce its propensity for an otiose response to India. For the foreseeable future, China will continue to remain obsessed with the political challenges posed by the possible independence of Taiwan, the uncertain future of Korea, the prospect of a remilitarized Japan, and the potential hostility of the United States. Faced with so many complex challenges, one scholar has concluded that in the 26

Barbara Opall-Rome, “India Moves May Spur China Nukes Buildup,” Defense News, April 26, 1999. Sandy Gordon, “Can the South Asian nuclear equation balance?” Asia-Pacific Defense Reporter, Oct–Nov. 1998, p. 7. 27

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India South Asian context, “China’s apprehensions seem to turn mainly on being drawn into an arms race on its periphery that it would rather ignore. It has lived with far greater missiles than an Agni pointed at it.”28 While this is generally true, China’s foreign policy towards the South Asian states has always been far more subtle and multifaceted than it is usually given credit for. Beijing certainly seeks to avoid active interference in the affairs of the Indian subcontinent. Yet, this historical preference has not translated into a neglect of its southwestern periphery. Rather, China has consistently sought to maintain and expand the autonomy of the smaller South Asian states while avoiding any entreaties that could result in Beijing’s having to lead and sustain a balancing coalition against New Delhi.29 Beijing’s assistance towards Islamabad’s nuclear weapons program illustrates this dynamic clearly. While it is often asserted that “China seems to believe that it is not in its interest to assist any new nuclear weapons power along its borders, including Pakistan,”30 Beijing has repeatedly acted contrary to this belief when strategic assistance is seen as providing a useful means of avoiding potentially deeper political commitments to the security of the Pakistani state. It covertly assisted Islamabad’s nuclear and missile programs because, among other reasons, this had the happy consequence of ensuring Pakistan’s security at low cost to Beijing while simultaneously diverting New Delhi from its pursuit of a larger global role. If the Indian decision to resume nuclear testing signals a greater commitment on the part of New Delhi to actively reshaping its immediate security environment, it is unlikely that China would want to compound the failures of its past strategy by engaging in an unnecessary arms race with India. No matter what such a race would do to New Delhi over the long haul, it could prevent Beijing from dealing effectively with the more complex problems confronting it in Northeast Asia and beyond. For all these reasons, it is likely that continued Indian nuclearization would evoke at best a muted response from China in the policyrelevant future. The Effect of Indian Nuclearization on War and Peace Decisions in Southern Asia The analysis above suggests that the most obvious immediate implication of nuclearization in India (and in South Asia more generally) is a weak 28

Jeremy J. Stone, “Four Civilizations Gently Collide At Arms Control Conference,” F.A.S. Public Interest Report, (March–April 1994), p. 1. 29 Leo E. Rose, “India and China: Forging a New Relationship,” in Sharma (ed.), The Asia-Pacific in the New Millennium: Geopolitics, Security, and Foreign Policy, pp. 224 –38. For a somewhat different view in its details, see John W. Garver, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001). 30 Joseph Cirincione, “Foreword” in Ming Zhang (ed.), China’s Changing Nuclear Posture (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999), p. vii.

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TELLIS arms race instability ensuing between India and Pakistan, but not between India and China. India’s (and South Asia’s) nuclearization is also unlikely to have radically deleterious effects on the international nonproliferation regime, when one considers that the “costs” of proliferation here have already been absorbed by the regime’s willingness since 1967 to treat these states as exceptional.31 The future burdens on the regime will also be minimized by continued U.S. efforts to limit this exceptionalism. So long as current nonproliferation efforts continue unabated, there is no reason other candidate proliferants should be able to escape the regime’s constraints as India, Pakistan, and Israel all did previously for unique historical reasons.32 When considering these twin consequences of Indian nuclearization, it is important to keep especially the first phenomenon in perspective. The low-grade arms race instability that is predicted in the Indo-Pakistani dyad will occur mainly because of concurrent nuclearization, which usually engenders problems of simultaneous competitive adjustment. These instabilities are likely to be absent in the Sino-Indian case, where the problem is simply one of catching up at the Indian end. Even in the Indo-Pakistani case, however, the expected weak form of arms race instability can be avoided if Islamabad focuses on developing a deterrent that is sufficient for its own needs without attempting to match India’s capaArms race bilities across the board.33 In the nuclear age, it is simply instability more profitable for a state to focus on increasing the survivcannot by itself ability of its own deterrent rather than attempting to expand the threat posed to an adversary’s assets. If Pakistan invests its undermine resources in a manner consistent with this orientation, the deterrence. arms race instability that would otherwise ensue in the subcontinent could be attenuated. In any event, the saving grace is that arms race instability, even were it to occur in the strong form, cannot by itself cause deterrence breakdown. It may involve a waste of economic resources, always an undesirable outcome in South Asia, and lead to an episodic upsurge in discordant “atmospherics,” fuelling mutual suspicions about the political 31 George Perkovich, “Think Again: Nuclear Proliferation,” Foreign Policy, Fall 1998, pp. 12–13. The “demonstration effects” often feared as emerging from nuclearization in South Asia are also greatly exaggerated, as is discussed in Muthiah Alagappa, “International Response to Nuclear Tests in South Asia: The Need for a New Policy Framework,” AsiaPacific Issues No. 38, June 15, 1998, pp. 3– 4. The causal consequences of Indian and Pakistani nuclearization are likely to be most relevant only in the case of proliferation decisions made in Iran, but even here it is hard to conclude that Iranian-Pakistani rivalry—which has been exhibited, for example, in Afghanistan—lends itself to resolution through the acquisition of nuclear weaponry by Tehran. Should such an eventuality materialize, it will be owed more to Iran’s fears of the United States and its desire to consolidate an Iranian hegemony in the Persian Gulf than to Indian and, by implication, Pakistani decisions to acquire nuclear weaponry. 32 The reasons that make these three countries unique are examined in systematic detail in T. V. Paul, Power versus Prudence: Why Nations Forgo Nuclear Weapons (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), pp. 125–141. 33 For the dilemmas and tensions facing Pakistan in this regard, see Farah Zahra, “Pakistan’s Road to a Minimum Nuclear Deterrent,” Arms Control Today, vol. 29, no. 5 (1999), pp. 9 –13.

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India intentions of the two antagonists. This outcome, too, is undesirable. But if this is the worst consequence of South Asian nuclearization, it is still better than many other outcomes that can be imagined for the region. There are at least two other issues requiring further analysis from the policy perspective. These relate to the effects of India’s nuclearization on deterrence stability and crisis stability, and especially on that subset known as “first-strike stability.”34 Although many regional analysts have offered relatively optimistic prognoses of the prospects for both deterrence and crisis stability in Southern Asia, these prognoses have been grounded almost entirely in abstract and a priori discussions of how war and peace challenges might emerge in the region. The aprioristic nature of the discussions is not surprising because the Indian, Pakistani, and, to a lesser degree, Chinese nuclear deterrents have not yet materialized in their final form. Operations analysis is difficult when many of the weapons and delivery systems, training and deployment patterns, and general operational routines have not yet been developed and institutionalized. Even if detailed analysis of these issues can be conducted, classification problems would inevitably intrude to prevent a systematic discussion of the results. The conclusions advanced below must therefore be treated as indicative rather than determinative. Where deterrence stability is concerned, both the Indo-Pakistani and the Sino-Indian dyads will likely experience reasonably high levels of stability in the policy-relevant future because the two most important states, China and India, are not currently locked into the pursuit of any reciprocal revisionist objectives. Both India and China have also adopted a pacific posture with respect to their outstanding territorial disputes.35 Pakistan, in contrast, is the most prominent revisionist entity in South Asia, given its commitment to altering the prevailing status quo in Kashmir. But even Islamabad has for all practical purposes ruled out the alternative of securing political change through the pursuit of nuclear or conventional war, though it continues to engage in nuclear coercion at the subconventional level and could occasionally lapse into the temptation of engaging in shallow cross-border operations in order to attract international attention to its claims on Kashmir.36 These actions, in turn, might provoke comparable Indian counterresponses, but such eventualities probably represent the current limits of premeditated war 34 For various views on these issues, see Franc¸ ois Heisbourg, “The Prospects for Nuclear Stability between India and Pakistan,” Survival, vol. 40, no. 4 (1998 –99), pp. 77–92; Michael Quinlan, “Nuclear Tests in the Subcontinent: Prospects and Significance for the World,” International Relations, vol. 14, no. 4 (1999), pp. 1–14; Brahma Chellaney, “After the Tests: India’s Options,” Survival, vol. 40, no. 4 (1998 –99), pp. 93–111; Sumit Ganguly, “India’s Pathway to Pokhran II: The Prospects and Sources of New Delhi’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” International Security, vol. 23, no. 4 (Spring 1999). pp. 148 –77; and Brahma Chellaney, “Challenge of Nuclear Arms Control in South Asia,” Survival, 35:3 (1993), pp. 121–36. 35 Surjit Mansingh, “India-China Relations in the Post-Cold War Era,” Asian Survey, vol. 34, no. 3 (1994), p. 285 ff. 36 Tellis, Stability in South Asia, pp. 55– 62.

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TELLIS in South Asia.37 The prospects for deterrence stability are therefore relatively high, because no South Asian state is currently committed to securing any political objectives through the medium of major conventional, and by implication nuclear, wars of unlimited aims. This condition is only reinforced by the high levels of “defense dominance” obtaining at the military level. Deterrence stability in South Asia today flows from the Indian, Pakistani and Chinese inability to successfully prosecute decisive conventional military operations quickly, especially in the context of wars of unlimited aims. As research elsewhere has demonstrated, India’s gross numerical superiorities over Pakistan are misleading and do not enable it to rapidly win a highintensity land war, even if it acquits itself favorably in the air and naval campaigns occurring in the theater.38 India and Pakistan can both defend their territorial integrity adequately with the forces they currently have in place, but would be hard pressed to dramatically change the territorial status quo through a quick conventional, or even nuclear, attack. The Sino-Indian balance along the Himalayas is similarly stable for now because the Chinese do not have the logistics capability to sustain any major conventional conflict in support of their more ambitious territorial claims, while the strong and refurbished Indian land defenses, coupled with the Indian superiority in air power, enables New Delhi to adequately defend its existing positions but not to sustain any large-scale acquisition of new territory. Consequently, deterrence stability exists along this frontier as well.39 In the final analysis, this situation is made objectively “meta-stable” by the fact that neither India, Pakistan, nor China has the strategic capabilities to execute those successful damage-limiting first strikes that might justify initiating nuclear attacks either “out of the blue” or during a crisis. Even China, which of the three comes closest to possessing such capabilities (against India under truly hypothetical scenarios), would find it difficult to conclude that the capacity for “splendid first strikes” lay within reach. Moreover, even if it could arrive at such a determination, the political justification for these actions would be substantially lacking given the nature of its current political disputes with India. On balance, therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that a high 37

The possibility of “proactive” Indian counterresponses is discussed widely in New Delhi under the rubric of “limited war,” and the following sources either advocate or describe a variety of actions consistent with this policy: M. D. Nalapat, “No More Waffling,” The Times of India, Jan. 18, 2000; Satish Nambiar, “Make the Army Fighting Fit, Paddy,” Hindustan Times, August 20, 2000. See also, C. Raja Mohan, “Fernandes unveils ‘limited war’ doctrine,” Hindu, Jan. 25, 2000; and “Jawing About War,” Times of India, Jan. 29, 2000. It should be noted, however, for all these discussions about “limited war,” and despite the occasional Indian small-unit attacks on Pakistani positions at the Line of Control, New Delhi has carefully refrained from pursuing any military strategies that would provide Islamabad with either the excuse or the opportunity to brandish its nuclear capabilities. 38 Tellis, Stability in South Asia, pp. 5–22. 39 Ashley J. Tellis, et al., “Sources of Conflict in Asia,” in Zalmay Khalilzad and Ian O. Lesser, eds., Sources of Conflict in the 21st Century (Santa Monica: RAND, 1998), pp. 156 –58.

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India degree of deterrence stability, at least with respect to wars of unlimited aims, exists within the greater South Asian region. Obviously, these judgments say little about inadvertent wars or wars brought about by miscalculation or misperception, the likely causes of any deterrence breakdown in the future.40 It is pertinent to note, however, that historically the subcontinent has not witnessed any conflicts brought about through pure inadvertence or misperception, and while conflicts rooted either in miscalculation or in catalytic causes have indeed occurred, it is not unreasonable to expect that the acknowledged presence of nuclear weapons now on all sides would inhibit any interactive sequences that could lead to the most serious forms of deterrence breakdown in the future. As Avery Goldstein argued, “Indians are likely to refrain from military operations that can escalate to the nuclear incineration of Pakistanis (and vice versa) not because they have mastered Brodie, Schelling, Waltz and Jervis, nor because they care about their neighbors, but rather simply because they care about their own countrymen.”41 While this argument is both reasonable and reassuring, two gnawing uncertainties remain. The first derives from the presence of weak state structures, and by implication, the possibility of deficient strategic decisionmaking, especially in Pakistan. The severe motivational and cognitive biases that have historically afflicted Pakistan’s higher decision-making institutions on matters of war and peace do raise fears about the prospect of extreme responses that might be precipitated in a crisis.42 If overwhelming fear and helplessness combine with a suicidal destructiveness to overpower reason and inhibit the systematic processing of information during an emergency, it is possible that immoderate actions might occur irrespective of whether the objective circumstances warranted such decisions. These failures of rationality, which could be compounded by exigencies of domestic politics, civilmilitary discord, and biased and unreliable intelligence, could in principle occur both in India and in Pakistan, but if the historical record is any indication, the consequences are likely to be far more troublesome in the latter than in the former.43 Although the fearsome potency of nuclear weapons is supposed to minimize the possibility of just such catastrophes, there is by now a sufficient margin of uncertainty to entertain the fear that catastrophic deterrence breakdown in South Asia could arise as a result of various 40

For different avenues toward deterrence breakdown, see Tellis, Stability in South Asia, pp. 55– 62. Avery Goldstein, “Scared Senseless? The South Asian Nuclear Tests,” E-Notes (Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute), June 5, 1998, p. 2. 42 For a trenchant review of these biases, see Altaf Gauhar, “Four Wars, One Assumption,” The Nation, Sept. 5, 1999; Ahmad Faruqui, “Failure in Command: Lessons from Pakistan’s Indian Wars,” Defense Analysis, 17:1 (2001); and Ahmad Faruqui, “Pakistan’s Strategic Myopia,” RUSI Journal, Apr. 2000. 43 See Neil Joeck, Maintaining Nuclear Stability in South Asia, Adelphi Paper No. 312 (London: IISS, 1997), pp. 28 –33. 41

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TELLIS pathological forms of “cognitive closure”44 in both countries, but especially in Pakistan. The second uncertainty derives from the possibility of catalytic wars. Catalytic wars are conflicts brought about either by the actions of third parties or by the principals involved with the intention of entrapping third parties into intervening in an ongoing conflict. Such wars have occurred with some frequency in South Asia in the past, with disastrous results in at least one instance. Catalytic wars are particularly problematic from the perspective of deterrence and crisis stability because they could occur (i) without the consent or control of the competing states as “local insurgents or separatists may take initiatives that could be difficult to control,”45 and (ii) as a result of aggressive actions of the state itself which, despite the poor prospects of any lasting military success, are nonetheless pursued in the “belief that outside actors would intervene to stop the war before [protracted conflict or irretrievable defeat] was reached.”46 In any event, the greatest damper on the temptation to abet or initiate such wars, particularly at the Pakistani end, is the growing recognition in Islamabad— corroborated amply during the Kargil crisis—that the United States and the other great powers, including Pakistan’s most steadfast ally, China, have no interest in supporting any Pakistani revisionism that involves the use of force initiated by Islamabad or by its surrogate allies battling India.47 This development, coupled with the fact that India’s economic, political and conventional military strength already provides it a large measure of safety against threats to both its external security and its internal integrity, offers the best hope that deterrence stability will not be undermined by threats of catalytic war. There is, however, another more remote but nonetheless real threat where the issue of catalytic war is concerned. This contingency is rooted in the possibility that “Pakistan’s inability to solve its internal problems [could] become a security problem for India.”48 If the events leading up to the 1971 war were replicated in Pakistan in the future, the South Asian region could well experience another episode of deterrence breakdown, with even more catastrophic consequences this time, as an imploding Pakistan employed all the means at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, in a “Samson Option” designed to punish what is perceived as Indian aggression, irrespective of whether New Delhi was in fact behind the insurgent challenges leading up to the potential breakup of Pakistan. The threats embodied by catalytic war, when conjoined with the challenges imposed 44

The best analysis of this phenomenon in its many variants can be found in Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 117– 406. 45 Joeck, Maintaining Nuclear Stability in South Asia, p. 17. 46 Ibid, p. 29. 47 Sherjeel Rizwan Zeb, “A New Kashmir Policy,” Defence Journal, Aug. 2000. 48 Joeck, Maintaining Nuclear Stability in South Asia, p. 24.

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India by cognitive closure especially in Pakistan, will thus continue to subvert the otherwise relatively high prospects of deterrence stability in South Asia.49 If the contours of the problem of deterrence stability in South Asia can be readily discerned, the same may not be true with respect to crisis stability. In part, this is because the still evolving Indian and Pakistani nuclear capabilities do not lend themselves just yet to the kind of analytical modeling that would justify any strong claims about the first-strike stability of these deterrents. If, however, the desired Indian deterrent is operationalized in the manner currently favored by Indian security managers, as a “force-inbeing”—that is, as a deterrent consisting of available, but dispersed, components that are constituted into usable weapon systems primarily during a supreme emergency—then such a posture would be heavily biased in support of crisis stability.50 The evolving Pakistani nuclear deterrent appears to be similarly biased in favor of crisis stability, although exemplifying critically important differences from its Indian counterpart in command-and-control arrangements, deployment patterns, and readiness rates.51 Completing this generally irenic picture is the highly slack operating posture of the Chinese deterrent: Beijing’s nuclear capabilities are currently neither intended nor deployed for the conduct of prompt operations, and China’s strategic forces as a whole still lack the capability to execute “limited deterrence” missions.52 For at least another decade, the Chinese nuclear deterrent will be oriented primarily towards conducting relatively simple forms of “delayed second strike.” This in effect implies that even China’s strategic forces, although much more sophisticated than any in South Asia, share an important characteristic with the latter: a 49

These fears have acquired new currency in the post-Kargil era for three reasons: in Pakistan, resolving the Kashmir dispute has become the central, and nonnegotiable, issue to be tackled first in any future discussions with India; in India, dealing with the Kashmir insurgency has moved beyond “reactive” strategies to a contemplation of various military operations conducted at, if not beyond, the Line of Control; and, in both countries, there is no evidence of a willingness to shift the traditional political positions on Kashmir in the hope that a resolution of the issue might be made possible. See Paul Mann, “India Derides Nuclear ‘Alarmism’,” Aviation Week & Space Technology, April 3, 2000, pp. 29 –30. 50 The doctrinal underpinnings of this posture are analyzed at length in Ashley J. Tellis, “India’s Emerging Nuclear Doctrine: Exemplifying the Lessons of the Nuclear Revolution,” NBR Analysis, May 2001, and the posture itself is described in great detail in Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture, pp. 252– 476. 51 Unfortunately, there is still no comprehensive analysis available in the open literature about Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities and its strategic posture. The best available analyses to date remain Zafar Iqbal Cheema, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Use Doctrine and Command and Control,” in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan and James J. Wirtz, eds., Planning the Unthinkable (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 158 –181; Rodney W. Jones, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Posture: Quest for Assured Nuclear Deterrence—A Conjecture,” Regional Studies, 18:2 (Spring 2000), pp. 3–39; Rodney W. Jones, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Posture: Arms Race Instabilities in South Asia,” Asian Affairs, 25:2 (Summer 1998), pp. 67– 87; Rodney W. Jones, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Posture,” Dawn, Sept. 14, 1999; and Rodney W. Jones, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Posture—II: Arms Control Diplomacy,” Dawn, Sept. 15, 1999. 52 Alastair Iain Johnston, “China’s New ‘Old Thinking’: The Concept of Limited Deterrence,” International Security, vol. 20, no. 3 (Winter 1995–1996), pp. 5– 42.

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TELLIS relatively relaxed routine operating posture heavily biased towards crisis stability.53 While this posture augurs well for crisis stability where sudden emergencies are concerned, it becomes less relevant when long intervals of strategic warning are available or when a crisis evolves slowly. Under these circumstances, the nuclear capabilities in all the relevant states would progressively increase in readiness depending on the rate at which strategic components are alerted, integrated (if necessary), and mobilized in accordance with preplanned contingency procedures. Once such activities are under way, the relatively low peacetime readiness of the various strategic forces would no longer provide crisis stability, because operational dormancy disappears irrevocably once the process of strategic alerting is completed. Unfortunately, little can be said about crisis stability among the different dyads in such circumstances, not least because any defensible conclusions would require evidence from dynamic combat analysis. This would require force-on-force calculations in the context of various threat scenarios, which would have to integrate significant amounts of detailed technical data about the numbers and characteristics of nuclear weapons and their associated delivery systems, the numbers and hardness of strategic targets, the systemic effectiveness of the targeting system “Splendid first (both technical and organizational), the extent of battle damstrikes” would age assessment capability, and the general flexibility and be difficult to performance of the command system. Data about these variachieve in most ables that would support robust conclusions in the context of Indo-Pakistani and Sino-Indian counterforce exchanges are scenarios. either unavailable or not publicly accessible. Consequently, the only conclusion that can be offered publicly about crisis stability in the presence of generated nuclear forces in any relevant dyad is that crisis stability is likely owing to certain objective characteristics distinguishing each competitor’s nuclear capabilities. These include the high degree of opacity surrounding critical nuclear assets and command nodes in each of the three countries; the relatively high degree of mobility that defines each competitor’s present and prospective delivery systems; the relatively small numbers of nuclear weapons present on all sides, and, except for China’s, the relatively small yields of these weapons; and, finally, the general lack of sophisticated C3ISR (command, control, communication, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), BDA (battle damage assessment), and automated mission planning capabilities necessary to support effective nuclear warfighting operations on all sides. These characteristics, when considered in their totality, suggest that “splendid first strikes” would be difficult to achieve in most of the plausible 53

This is well recognized by Indian observers of the Chinese military. See, for example, Savita Pande, “Chinese Nuclear Doctrine,” Strategic Analysis, vol. 23, no. 12 (2000), pp. 2011–36.

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India warfighting scenarios that might confront each state in the relevant dyads. It is therefore reasonable to hope that crisis stability would obtain even in the presence of generated nuclear forces, but this conclusion admittedly could be readily subverted in practice—and with horrendous consequences—if subjective elements like hasty decision-making, strong motivational and cognitive biases, and strategic solipsism undermine the stability made possible by the objective elements identified above. The fact that the nuclear capabilities of none of these states are structured for the conduct of prompt operations, counterforce attacks, and extended warfighting campaigns seems to have eluded many commentators in the United States who, especially in the aftermath of the nuclear tests of May 1998, spewed forth assertions that one scholar correctly described as “more visceral than thoughtful.”54 Examples include claims that both sides “would . . . have weapons on aircraft or missiles capable of striking with as little as 3 min[utes] warning”55 and that “India or Pakistan might opt to Launch on Warning (LoW) of attack.”56 These assertions are misleading and without evidence and could skew U.S. policy in directions that are either fruitless or counterproductive. As things stand today, there is simply no evidentiary basis for the claim advanced, for example, by Evan Medeiros that India and Pakistan “are working themselves into just about as unstable a posture as you can imagine. . . . It’s a nightmare.”57 Claims such as these are doubly misleading. They derive from assertions of some technical deficiency in force architecture that are used to justify the conclusion that strategic stability in South Asia is at risk. More often than not, the empirical evidence necessary to support such syllogistic conclusions does not exist. If anything, the data available thus far suggest exactly the opposite: that India’s effort to develop a force-in-being is more supportive of strategic stability than many other kinds of deterrent postures imaginable.58 Even more important, these conclusions overlook the true sources of potential instability in South Asia: the inability to process information adequately because of weaknesses in the data collecting and decision making institutions; the high degree of cognitive and motivational biases or solipsism afflicting security managers and strategic bureaucracies; and, finally, the volatility in civil-military relations, especially the tussle for 54

Goldstein, “Scared Senseless,” p. 1. Cirincione, “Viewpoint,” p. 102. 56 Thomas Withington, “Nuclear dilemmas seize Asia,” Jane’s Intelligence Review—Pointer, Dec. 1998, p. 13. 57 Cited in Tony Emerson, “Asia’s Ground Zero,” Newsweek (International Edition), April 22, 1996. 58 This realization underlies the growing calls for reform in the U.S. nuclear force posture and most advocates here in fact urge Washington to adopt a nuclear posture that in practice mimics the one currently followed by India. See, for example, Harold A. Feiveson, ed., The Nuclear Turning Point: A Blueprint for Deep Cuts and De-Alerting of Nuclear Weapons (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 1999); Bruce G. Blair, Global Zero Alert for Nuclear Forces (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1995); and Matthew G. McKinzie, Thomas B. Cochran, Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, The U.S. Nuclear War Plan: A Time For Change (New York: Natural Resources Defense Council, 2001). 55

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TELLIS power occurring at the core of at least Pakistan. These problems, if unresolved, will be more corrosive of strategic stability, especially crisis stability, because they could generate a variety of provocative actions even when these are, objectively speaking, both inappropriate and unnecessary. It is regrettable that these sources of instability appear to have eluded most of the Western commentators who otherwise have strong opinions about the quality of security competition in South Asia. The Effect of Indian Nuclearization on U.S. Regional Nonproliferation Objectives Since the general bias in favor of both deterrence and crisis stability inherent in the Indian and Pakistani (and Chinese) nuclear postures is often underappreciated, it is not surprising to find some analysts still arguing that “the United States must unequivocally demand that India and Pakistan join the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapon states.”59 Still others have urged a “nuclear rollback in South Asia”60 based, at least initially, on the lessons learned from previous anti-proliferation successes elsewhere in the world. There are several reasons why past examples of rollback have limited applicability to South Asia.61 More to the point, the U.S. government beginning with the Clinton administration has wisely chosen not to pursue such chimerical goals but instead has focused its attention on securing a more limited objective: the institutionalization of a nuclear restraint regime covering both India and Pakistan. This search for a restraint regime is essentially premised on the fact that nuclear capabilities in South Asia are here to stay, and while their eradication may be a distant goal that Washington still formally aspires to under the logic of the NPT, slowing down the pace of development, testing, and deployment of regional nuclear forces is perhaps the best the United States can hope to achieve for the time being. Pursuing this more circumscribed objective is eminently sensible and accords better with the prevailing realities in the region, but even here success is not assured. There are five broad components to the restraint regime that the Clinton administration advocated in its separate bilateral discussions with India and Pakistan. These involve: (i) urging India and Pakistan to sign the CTBT and support an early completion of the FMCT; (ii) urging India and Pakistan to avoid nuclear weaponization and the creation of a ready arsenal; (iii) urging India and Pakistan to avoid further missile testing, production and deployment; (iv) urging India and Pakistan to institutionalize strict export 59 Samina Ahmed and David Cortright, “Preventing a Nuclear Arms Race in South Asia: U.S. Policy Options,” Policy Brief, No. 2, The Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, Jan. 2000. 60 Toby F. Dalton, “Towards Nuclear Rollback in South Asia,” Current History (Dec. 1998), pp. 412–17. 61 Neil Joeck, “Nuclear Proliferation and Nuclear Reversal in South Asia,” Comparative Strategy vol. 16 (1997), pp. 263–73.

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India controls on the diffusion of strategic materials and technologies to other actors; and (v) urging India and Pakistan to resume a diplomatic dialogue toward the resolution of their outstanding political differences.62 Defining the objectives of the restraint regime in this broad, generic way allows for a brief assessment of the critical issues involved with regard to each of these goals—at least where India and its future minimum deterrent is concerned. In the immediate aftermath of the May 1998 tests, the Vajpayee government announced that India would be prepared to convert its selfimposed moratorium on nuclear testing into a formal commitment. The conditions required for such a commitment were not specified but presumably were to be hammered out in negotiations with the United States. Just prior to the fall of Vajpayee’s BJP government in May 1999, the Indian state began the arduous process of securing a national consensus in support of formally signing the CTBT—a demand issued by the United States in order to preserve the successes achieved thus far in the realm of global nonproliferation and to limit the emerging Indian (and Pakistani) nuclear arsenals to the lowest qualitative levels possible. The Indian efforts at creating a national consensus in favor of signing the treaty, however, appear to have floundered on two counts: the failure to secure a complete withdrawal of the American sanctions imposed after the May 1998 tests prior to any Indian signature, coupled with the U.S. Senate’s own refusal to ratify the treaty prior to the review conference in September 1999. Both these issues are very important to New Delhi: the first holds the hope of consolidating the momentum in the improvement of U.S.-Indian relations, and the second is critical because of India’s belief that America’s failure to ratify the CTBT would allow China to renege on its own commitments to the treaty—with all the consequent implications for Indian security. Given the uncertainties clouding both these issues at present, the Bush administration’s initial disinterest in the CTBT, and the growing recognition in India that the May 1998 nuclear tests were less successful than originally advertised, it appears that a formal Indian accession to the CTBT is now further away than ever, despite public statements by several senior scientists, including the former chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, that signing the treaty would in no way crimp the country’s ability to maintain an effective deterrent.63 More disquieting in this context is that several moderate Indian political parties who might otherwise have been expected to sign the treaty were they in power have now urged the government not to sign the CTBT if it cannot be linked to a specific timeframe for global nuclear disarmament.64 On balance, therefore, India is 62

Details about the restraint regime can be found in Chidanand Rajghatta, “US restraint regime for India, Pak covers N-capable aircraft,” Indian Express, Nov. 13, 1998. 63 “Signing CTBT will not weaken country,” Indian Express, May 10, 1999. 64 “Congress not for CTBT now,” Indian Express, May 10, 1999. The intent of the Congress Party on this question is still unclear because the same report suggests that the refusal to back a national decision on signing the CTBT may also be linked to the exigencies of electoral politics.

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TELLIS likely to maintain its self-imposed moratorium on testing in the near term but unlikely to sign the CTBT any time soon. Withholding its consent is perceived as the only leverage India has with respect to both the withdrawal of U.S. sanctions and the surety of ratification by all the established nuclear weapon states.65 In contrast to its diffidence over signing the CTBT, India has supported initiating the negotiations that would lead up to the Fissile Materials Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).66 On this issue, the Indian position is generally identical to that of the United States, which argues that the FMCT should apply only to future stockpiles of fissile material and should involve no efforts at creating any transparency over the past stockpiles owned by various nuclear powers. While the broad policies of the two countries are thus congruent, the devil as usual lies in the details and it is still too early to tell whether India will sign the final version of the treaty, if one is negotiated over what may be its objections to various specifics. In any event, having a draft treaty for signature is many years away, and what India’s position will be by then is anyone’s guess.67 For the moment, Indian policymakers seem willing to support a treaty that complies with U.S. interests, even if India has a much smaller stockpile of fissile materials than many Western New Delhi assessments suggest. One should not infer from this willingness, however, that India’s fissile materials inventory must believes therefore be bigger than is commonly believed. Rather, all uncertainty that can be said is that India today appears willing to support about inventory a treaty that is still several years away from completion but provides greater even then might sign such an instrument only if it preserved deterrence. complete opacity over past inventories. Its acquiescence in such circumstances would not be because it had larger-thanexpected holdings of fissile materials but because it believes that continued uncertainty about the true size of its inventory provides greater deterrence benefits than a larger but completely transparent stockpile. Irrespective of what India’s eventual position on a future FMCT text might be, New Delhi has already rejected Washington’s interim demand that India declare a “voluntary” moratorium on the production of fissile materials pending the successful negotiation of the treaty.68 This action indicates that New Delhi will continue

65

The Bush administration’s lack of enthusiasm for the CTBT has only provided India with further respite. Although New Delhi is unlikely to utilize this hiatus to resume nuclear testing, its continued unwillingness to sign the CTBT today implies that it is still not bound by any legal commitments that prevent it from resuming nuclear testing. 66 “Negotiating an FMCT,” The Hindu, Nov. 19, 1998. 67 For a survey of Indian concerns about a prospective FMCT, see Brahma Chellaney, “India’s Nuclear Planning, Force Structure, Doctrine and Arms-Control Posture,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol. 53, no. 1 (1999). 68 C. Raja Mohan, “India Rejects U.S. Suggestion for Moratorium on Fissile Material Production,” The Hindu, Sept. 13, 2000.

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India to expand its fissile material stockpile for all the strategic reasons described earlier, even as it persists in maintaining a pervasive opacity over the size of that stockpile. And this, in turn, suggests that Washington is unlikely to secure part of its original second goal, despite the fact that there are no differences in principle between India and the United States on this issue. While India’s general stance with respect to the CTBT and the FMCT, when taken at face value, is not diametrically opposed to U.S. interests, its position on the second and third components of the restraint regime— nuclear weaponization and missile development—stands greatly at variance with American preferences. The rationale for pursuing these twin objectives at the U.S. end is ultimately based on two beliefs: first, that a nuclear-free South Asia is safer than a nuclear South Asia, and second, that the South Asian region is a volatile area that represents the most likely locale for a future war fought with nuclear weapons.69 The first belief may appear to be a natural consequence of the larger nonproliferation policy pursued by the United States, but it exemplifies something more than just an ordinary anti-proliferation prejudice. In many cases, it represents the private, considered judgment of many U.S. policymakers that the prevailing command structures, acute resource constraints, and limitations of rationality conspire to make New Delhi’s security hostage to the weakest links in Islamabad’s security system and, as such, warrant ridding the region of nuclear weapons altogether.70 The second belief, in contrast, is based on the more widely-held impression that the ongoing regional disputes, including the low-intensity war in Kashmir, present numerous opportunities for escalation that could catastrophically spin out of control. Indian policymakers may concede the legitimacy of the concerns underlying the first belief (though rejecting the inference inherent in the second that New Delhi might up the ante in an acute crisis), but they are nonetheless unwilling to contemplate any alternative that precludes the development of a nuclear deterrent of some sort at this point in time.71 They will admit that a “ready arsenal,” configured for the prompt conduct of nuclear operations, is not desirable from the viewpoint of Indian interests. On this basis at least, they will acknowledge that nuclear capabilities ought to be arrayed only with a relatively long fuse. Different entities within the Indian establishment have proposed various desirable response times, ranging from hours to days, and while both the urgency and the extent of actual retaliation

69

Strobe Talbott, “Dealing with the Bomb in South Asia,” Foreign Affairs, 78:2 (March–April 1999). The best example of this argument in the public literature has been formulated by Stephen P. Cohen, Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: Strategic Considerations Reconsidered, Report of the IPCS Seminar held at the India International Centre, New Delhi, Jan. 4, 1999, and available at http://www.ipcs.org/issues/articles/166-ndicohen.htm. 71 See Anita Katiyal, “No freeze on N-capability, US told,” Times of India, Nov. 26, 1998. 70

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TELLIS in wartime may be conditioned more by adversary actions than by New Delhi’s preferences, Indian security managers today are adamant that their reluctance to deploy a “ready arsenal” does not translate into a termination of nuclear weaponization and missile development.72 India will therefore continue to weaponize its nuclear capabilities, American preferences notwithstanding. Weaponization here will proceed in both senses of the term: in its loose sense referring to the progressive development of the plans, procedures, technologies and organizations necessary for the conduct of effective nuclear operations, and in the strict sense of developing, testing and integrating nuclear payloads with specific delivery vehicles.73 In both cases, however, the processes of weaponization will remain primarily covert, and India’s nuclear capabilities are at a stage where, so long as New Delhi does not revert to full-up nuclear testing in the field, most of its weaponization can be carried out clandestinely and perhaps with minimal notice. Washington’s desire to have New Delhi commit to avoiding any weaponization is premised on the belief that “latent nuclear capacities” alone ought to suffice for purposes of ensuring Indian security. Whether or not this belief is true, the decisions arrived at in New Delhi after the May 1998 tests suggest a different vision of adequacy: for better or worse, India (and, for that matter, Pakistan) has decided that developing a “constitutable deterrent” rather than maintaining merely “latent nuclear capacities” is the most appropriate course of action today. Consequently, and consistent with U.S. preferences, India will eschew developing a “standing force” of the sort represented by a ready arsenal. But, it will move beyond the minimal posture represented by the American demand for maintaining “latent nuclear capacities” to something resembling a middling alternative: this “constitutable deterrent” will take the form of a force-in-being, which requires completed weaponization, even if it precludes the deployment of active, ready, standing nuclear forces. Since the weaponization required by this force-in-being will be completed for most part surreptitiously, at best India will promise to carry out this process in as non-provocative a fashion as possible. Most likely, however, it will demur from complying with the U.S. demand for avoiding weaponization by pointing to the fact that a force-in-being—which the country believes is essential for its security today—requires the completion of weaponization in both the broad and narrow senses referred to earlier. A similar judgment holds with respect to the demand that India cease missile development, testing, production, and deployment. This component of the restraint regime is premised on the belief that aircraft-based deterrents

72

Rahul Bedi, “India Confirms Nuclear Policy,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, Dec. 23, 1998, p. 7. For an extended discussion of the differences between the narrow and broad meanings of “weaponization,” see Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture, pp. 173–79. 73

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India are more stable than missile-delivered weapons because the short reaction times embodied by the latter, the inability to recall missiles once launched, and the deep concerns about the limitations of rationality and the character of the command-and-control systems in both countries but especially in Pakistan all demand an effort to suppress the development and deployment of nuclear-armed missiles in South Asia.74 However valid these concerns may be, the U.S. government has correctly recognized that ballistic and cruise missiles will be developed or acquired, tested, produced and deployed by both India and Pakistan for different reasons. Islamabad will acquire ballistic missile systems primarily because its airborn symptoms face severe constraints on penetrativity in any operations against India. India will develop ballistic missile systems primarily because none of its air-breathing platforms, current or prospective, have the required range to reach critical targets located deep within the Chinese landmass. Both states, appreciating the greater simplicity of missile attack operations, the lower probabilities of intercept, and the enhanced survivability enjoyed by mobile missiles in the field, will therefore continue to make nuclear-capable missile systems the mainstay of their strategic deterrents over time. Recognizing this, the Clinton administration did not focus on getting India to eliminate its missile development program altogether but rather on encouraging it to terminate the development, testing and production of new missiles after the current programs are concluded. In effect, the administration sought to limit the possibility of an open-ended missile development program in South Asia where newer and more lethal missiles are continuously developed not out of strategic necessity but rather out of bureaucratic momentum. At this point, it is unclear whether this objective can be successfully achieved. In part, this is because the optimal versions of the missiles required by India for its force-in-being will not be available in operational form for at least five to seven years and the number of missiles necessary may require production to persist for what may be the better part of the next decade, if not two. This development and production process may spawn better and more improved variants of the basic designs now being developed, with the result that testing and production of newer systems may continue for a long time to come.75 Any promise made now by New Delhi not to develop follow-on systems after the current R&D efforts are completed

74 The conventional wisdom about the problematic nature of the missile race in South Asia can be found in Ben Sheppard, “South Asia’s Ballistic Ambitions,” in Raju G. C. Thomas and Amit Gupta (eds.), India’s Nuclear Policy (Boulder, Co., Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), pp. 171–200. 75 This problem is further complicated by the fact that it is presently unclear which of India’s many missile programs are real and which are merely notional. For a survey describing the breadth of India’s missile programs, see Anupam Srivastava, “India’s Growing Missile Ambitions: Assessing the Technical and Strategic Dimensions,” Asian Survey, vol. 40, no. 2 (2000).

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TELLIS therefore has uncertain credibility at best, and at worst will be completely unenforceable. All that the United States can achieve at this juncture is to communicate the gravity of its concerns and, hopefully, secure from New Delhi a better understanding about the limits of India’s missile ambitions. Acquiring such an understanding would enable the United States to discuss how such capabilities may or may not comport with India’s present desire for a “minimum” deterrent, while simultaneously communicating to the New Delhi that future improvements in U.S.-Indian strategic ties will remain contingent on the degree to which India can be relied upon both to act in accordance with its own commitments and to avoid directly threatening the United States. In contrast to the knotty problems posed by nuclear weaponization and missile development, the last two components of the restraint regime urged by the United States face much better prospects of attainment. Without too much difficulty India will improve national controls on the diffusion of strategic technologies because it is in its own interest to do so. Many of these regulatory mechanisms already exist in Indian law (though they could be better systematized), and wherever lacunae are discovered it is reasonable to expect that New Delhi would remedy them. It is clearly not in India’s interest to encourage further proliferation, and for that reason it is most likely to comply with U.S. requests in this matter more than in any other out of sheer self-interest.76 Almost all the producers of the most important kinds of strategic technology in India—meaning nuclear and missile technologies— also happen to exist in the public sector, where New Delhi’s writ runs firmly. None of these enterprises are controlled by authorities that enjoy any excessive autonomy within the Indian state; consequently, the chances that one or more of these organizations might pursue their parochial interests, irrespective of how that is reconciled with the objectives of the state writ large, is highly remote. In any event, the United States ought to carefully monitor India’s trade in critical materials with various countries of concern. It is entirely possible that private Indian firms, particularly in the chemical (though not nuclear) industry, could on occasion succumb to the lure of engaging in suspicious trade either because of the commercial benefits involved or because the transactions in question happen to skirt the technol76

It is important to recognize that India already has an extensive system of laws and regulations controlling the export of dangerous materials but this regulatory system has been designed primarily to support national political priorities rather than the international nonproliferation regime. Adjusting the existing system to support the latter objective certainly requires improvements in the details but, more importantly, requires securing Indian acquiescence in support of the various strategic technology control regimes even though New Delhi historically has been—and continues to be—a key target of these regimes. Resolving the tensions inherent in this situation will require great effort and resourcefulness on the part of the United States in the years ahead. A good review of the problems and challenges here can be found in Richard T. Cupitt and Seema Gahlaut, “Non-proliferation Export Controls: U.S. and Indian Perspectives,” in Gary K. Bertsch, et al., Engaging India (New York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 169 –90.

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India ogy control regimes maintained by the United States.77 Should such transactions be detected, Washington ought to call India’s attention to these activities while simultaneously communicating to New Delhi that the evolving U.S.Indian rapprochement will be constrained if India cannot demonstrate due sensitivity to critical American concerns about trade in strategic materials with potential adversaries of the United States. New Delhi is also likely to sustain the public dialogue with Pakistan on matters of mutual concern, despite the ambiguous outcome of the Agra summit between President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee. The Indian dialogue with China, which was interrupted by the May 1998 nuclear tests, has now resumed—with hopeful portents.78 Resuming the dialogue with Pakistan has taken longer as New Delhi, upset by the events at Kargil and the continued violence in Kashmir, appeared determined to isolate Pakistan and penalize it for as long as possible through a new policy of “malign neglect.” Yet, even Indian policymakers recognize that a dialogue with Pakistan has to be resumed and sustained, if for no other reason than it serves the interests of all actors concerned. At the moment, New Delhi’s interest in continuing talks with Pakistan centers primarily on seeking a cessation of violence in Kashmir and a reduction in cross-border infiltration and terrorism. If Pakistan is seen to embark on even tentative steps in this direction, India will have no choice but to continue the process that was interrupted by the tragic events associated with Kargil. At the very least, such a dialogue would help to reduce the political temperatures at a time when all South Asian states could use the breathing room offered by these confidence-building measures to address the more pressing problems related to the continuation of economic reform or the preservation of order in domestic politics. Continued political dialogue would also help to clarify the nature of strategic intentions on all sides with the objective of reducing surprises, assisting evolutionary change and, over the long term, changing the antagonistic perceptions that are currently held by each side. In the near term, this dialogue would also allow each country to adjust to the changes in strategic capabilities that may be occurring on the opposite side without the need for an exaggerated response of one’s own.

77

The most significant problems in this regard historically have not been in the nuclear arena and have rarely involved Indian governmental activities directly. Rather, Indian private sector exports of certain dual-use materials (which are often feared to be precursors for chemical and biological weapons programs in some emerging proliferants) have been the principal object of American concern in the past. Avoiding these problems in the future will require both sides to understand the complex admixture of the commercial and strategic aspects of modern trade and the limits on state control over private transactions imposed by India’s democratic political system. It also requires both sides to develop an appreciation of how certain policies vis-a`-vis particular states could contribute to increasing the threat posed to one or the other side. 78 For a good assessment of these developments, see J. N. Dixit, “Beijing on Our Mind,” The Hindustan Times, August 2, 2000.

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TELLIS Thus, it may slow the pace of nuclearization at the margins, or at least slow the pernicious competitive action-reaction cycle.79 All these benefits, however, are unlikely to carry over into a resolution of the “core” disputes, especially in the case of India and Pakistan. The issue of disputed territories in the Sino-Indian case is a different matter: despite Beijing’s general reluctance to specify the “line of actual control” along the Himalayan border, it is possible that China would move towards a speedy and satisfactory resolution of all its border disputes with India were it convinced that New Delhi posed no genuine threat to its fundamental interests.80 Except for the Aksai Chin, which hosts the strategic lines of communication between Xinjiang and Tibet, the disputed Himalayan territories are important to Beijing only as useful instruments for intimidating India whenever necessary. In contrast, Indo-Pakistani territorial disputes, especially those relating to Kashmir, are highly emotive and involve claims which are considered to be intrinsically valuable on both sides: Indian and Pakistani claims over Kashmir in particular are in “absolute” conflict and it is highly unlikely that any amount of dialogue will ever resolve the issue to the satisfaction of both. In a power-political sense, the Kashmir dispute is unresolvable because Pakistan, the side most committed to changing the status quo, also happens to be the weaker of the two disputants, while the stronger entity, India, not only feels uncompelled to alter its current claims but also can sustain the existing structure of political control in Kashmir indefinitely and at minimal cost to its body politic. For all these reasons, the best that can be expected of the present Indo-Pakistani dialogue, at least where the Kashmir dispute is concerned, is the gradual attenuation of violence and a return to civility in the disputed state; the evolution of a “working relationship” between New Delhi and Islamabad; and a gradual accommodation both in India and Pakistan to the reality of divided control over the Himalayan state.81 On balance, therefore, the restraint regime sought by the Clinton administration is likely to enjoy only mixed success, at least as far as India is concerned. New Delhi will likely maintain its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear testing for a while longer, even as it declines to sign the CTBT in the absence of normalized relations with the United States and in the face of incomplete ratification of the treaty by the established nuclear powers. It has 79

For some good ideas that pertain to this issue, see W. P. S. Sidhu, Brian Cloughley, John H. Hawes, and Teresita Schaffer, Nuclear Risk-Reduction Measures in Southern Asia (Washington, D.C.: The Stimson Center, 1998). 80 Recent reports suggest that, during meetings of the “experts group” in November 2000, China has in fact agreed to exchange maps of the “middle sector” for the first time. See, “Sino-Indian ties looking up: Jaswant,” The Hindu, Nov. 25, 2000; “Indo-China border meeting to compare maps,” Times of India, June 11, 2001. For a Chinese military view of the larger problems bedeviling Sino-Indian relations, see Nan Li, From Revolutionary Internationalism to Conservative Nationalism (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace, 2001). 81 For a very good statement on what this implies for the United States, see Howard Schaffer, “Reconsidering the U.S. Role,” Washington Quarterly, Spring 2001, pp. 201–209.

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India supported the initiation of negotiations leading up to the conclusion of an FMCT in Geneva, though its final response to the draft treaty that may emerge from such a process obviously remains uncertain. In the interim, however, it will not agree to any moratorium on the production of fissile materials. New Delhi will continue to pursue both nuclear weaponization and the development and production of various missiles, especially the Agni series currently underway, though these efforts will not materialize immediately in the form of ready and standing nuclear forces. India will seek to establish a robust national control regime to prevent the onward diffusion of strategic technologies, and it will sustain the dialogue it has tentatively initiated with Pakistan (while continuing the current dialogue with China) so long as these discussions produce a modicum of respite from violence, and even if they do not lead to a conclusive resolution of all the outstanding disputes currently existing between these states. Whether Washington will be satisfied with this record of mixed achievements emerging from the current U.S.-Indian dialogue is unclear, in part because the strategic objective of improving U.S.Indian relations has still not been cogently articulated by the United States. There is no doubt, however, that the dialogue initiated by the Clinton administration in the aftermath of the May 1998 tests has resulted in the most intense and consistent conversation Since May 1998 about national interests ever conducted in the history of bilateral relations between the two countries, and the Bush India and the administration, too, remains committed to continuing this U.S. appreciate dialogue, even though it is likely to pursue a different set of each other’s strategic “benchmarks” in comparison to that articulated by its concerns better. predecessor. At the end of the day, therefore, the greatest achievement of this process may turn out to be that the two sides have come to steadily appreciate the strategic concerns of the other a little better than they did before the events of May 1998.82 At the Indian end, the very fact that such a dialogue has occurred is itself important because it serves to redress New Delhi’s traditional grievance about being treated less than seriously by the United States. At the U.S. end, the dialogue has been useful insofar as it has allowed Washington to persuasively make the case for some kind of strategic restraint even as it has enabled senior American officials to catch a glimpse of India’s ability and willingness to modulate its ongoing strategic programs with an eye to securing certain joint benefits. The general opacity about most details relating to New Delhi’s desired nuclear force architecture and its operating posture remains a source of some anguish and frustration and, hence, it is not surprising that several U.S. diplomats have gently urged New Delhi to display more transparency with respect to its nuclear deterrent. These calls have 82

This, at any rate, appears to be the Indian reading of current U.S. pronouncements on the nuclear issue. See, “U.S. recognises India’s n-concern,” Hindu, Sept. 3, 2000.

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TELLIS usually centered on understanding the question: “How many missile systems and warheads does India need to have a minimum nuclear deterrent?”83 American requests for transparency on this issue have been driven primarily by a desire to prevent India and its neighbors from inadvertently locking themselves into an action-reaction cycle that inevitably escalates into an arms race. These requests are also driven, however, by the desire to avoid continual surprises and by the need to secure concrete and tangible manifestations of restraint, especially with respect to force levels, composition, and posture.84 Consistent with its prevailing practices on strategic matters, India has opposed these demands for transparency. This opposition has sometimes been articulated on the rhetorical grounds of defending sovereignty but more substantially may be rooted in the fact that India still does not know what its force-in-being will look like when it is eventually completed. This is not surprising since the nuclear deterrent desired by New Delhi is still several years, possibly up to two decades, away from completion. In any event, while the desire for greater transparency in Indian intentions and capabilities is understandable, any transparency in force size, structure, and posture could become problematic if it brings the tensions between political restraint and first-strike stability to a head. This issue becomes particularly relevant when the nuclear deterrents in question are composed of relatively small and potentially weak forces that, however conducive they are to the objective of furthering political restraint and other nonproliferation objectives, could become dangerous magnets for attempted disarming strikes in the context of a crisis. Because Indian and Pakistani nuclear capabilities are relatively weak, it is probably better, from the perspective of larger U.S. interests, that these capabilities remain hidden by a dense veil of secrecy. Continued opaqueness represents their best defense against what may be even episodic temptations of preemptive attack. To the degree that these temptations can be successfully neutered through the institutionalization of pervasive uncertainty, the critical American objective of preserving deterrence and crisis stability in the region will only be further enhanced, even if some other nonproliferation preferences have to take a back seat in the process. If the prevention of war, including nuclear war, and the diffusion of strategic technologies ought to become the new goals of American nonproliferation policy in the region, the United States should concentrate on shaping the character of the evolving Indian (and Pakistani) nuclear arsenals so that they comport with the following injunctions. 83

“Nukes: Mind your business, U.S. told,” Economic Times, Jan. 7, 1999. These concerns have been cogently articulated by the former U.S. ambassador to India, Richard Celeste, in several statements made in New Delhi during December 1998 and January 1998. For a useful report of Celeste’s argument, see K. V. Krishnaswamy, “Celeste defends demand on deterrence,” Hindu, Jan. 23, 1999. 84

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India ●

●

●

Keep ‘em small: a modest Indian arsenal suits American grand strategy more than a large arsenal so long as its constituent capabilities are safe, survivable, and reasonably effective.85 Keep ‘em stealthy: a surreptitious Indian force can avoid the high costs of ensuring survivability by means other than opacity, and since mobility is a special form of stealth, mobile delivery systems should be encouraged, not proscribed.86 Keep ‘em slow: an Indian arsenal that embodies anything other than a rapid-response capability does not subvert either Indian or American interests since it helps to dampen escalation and because, if it has to be employed in extremis, “revenge is a dish best eaten cold.”87

While the United States cannot provide India with technical assistance to develop its force-in-being, nor should it seek to, it can play many other useful roles. It can condition the eventual size, shape and disposition of India’s evolving nuclear deterrent so as to reduce the threat it poses to larger American interests. To do so, however, it must begin—paradoxical though it may seem— by accepting the fact that India will maintain a nuclear deterrent of some sort for a long time to come. If Washington genuinely accepts and internalizes this reality, it may in fact create political conditions that allow New Delhi to deemphasize the need for both a larger arsenal and a more provocative strategic posture in the future. There is no guarantee that such an approach will work, but it is certain that the opposing approach will fail. A policy focused on explicitly attempting to constrain the Indian nuclear weapons program, or one that makes the growth in U.S.-Indian relations hostage to securing Indian compliance with some unreasonable proliferation benchmarks, will only increase the levels of resistance in New Delhi. It will strengthen the position of the “hawks” within the domestic debate in India and it will compel the Indian government to pursue a far larger and much more open-ended strategic weapons program than it initially intended to. Such reactions will in fact become inevitable because increased American pressures are likely to be viewed as part of the hostile international environment that demands, among other things, expanded—not reduced—nuclear capabilities on the part of New Delhi. If the net result of either increased American pressure or deepened American recalcitrance is a more extensive Indian strategic capability, the United States will have failed on two counts. First, it will have failed to 85

On the threats to stability posed by excessively small arsenals, see the pertinent admonitions in Michael Quinlan, “How Robust is India-Pakistan Deterrence?” Survival, vol. 42, no. 4 (Winter 2000 – 01), pp. 141–54. 86 David A. Shlapak, and David E. Thaler, Back to First Principles: U.S. Strategic Forces in the Emerging Environment (Santa Monica: RAND, 1993), pp. 69 –71. 87 James T. Quinlivan and Glenn C. Buchan, Theory and Practice: Nuclear Deterrents and Nuclear Actors (Santa Monica: RAND, 1995), p. 12.

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TELLIS constrain the size, shape and disposition of the evolving Indian deterrent, and second, it will have failed to entice a rising power such as India into a profitable strategic relationship with the United States that could provide larger advantages to both on a variety of issues ranging from the evolving balance of power in Asia to the emerging challenges of global governance.88 It is important to recognize that left to its own devices, more likely than not New Delhi will pursue strategic programs that are relatively modest in scope and orientation; in the face of external pressures or resistance, however, this native propensity for moderation would be transmuted into domestic decisions that could challenge both U.S. interests and international order. At this point in the U.S.-Indian relationship, therefore, it is likely that a genuine expansion of ties with New Delhi promises more favorable outcomes for American interests across the board in contrast to the traditional U.S. policy which, obsessed with resolving nonproliferation issues as a precondition for deepened bilateral relations, will result in both numerous lost opportunities along a much wider strategic canvas than just South Asia and the defeat of every one of Washington’s nonproliferation goals—if only on an installment plan. As a general rule, therefore, the Bush administration ought to adopt a policy of “calculated indifference” to the Indian nuclear weapons program, but only so long as New Delhi’s choices remain bounded by some conception of restraint.89 The key is to define restraint in a way that is sensitive to India’s security needs while simultaneously preserving that which is most important for American safety and preeminence. In this context, the Bush administration ought to pursue the following objectives—some new, some old—in its ongoing dialogue with India. ●

● ● ● ● ●

India should agree not to resume “hot” testing of nuclear weapons so long as all other nuclear powers abide by the current moratorium on nuclear testing. It should sign the CTBT, if the United States and all the other nuclear weapon states ratify the treaty. It should join discussions of “best practices” for fissile materials safeguards. It should help the FMCT discussions now initiated in Geneva proceed to a successful conclusion. There should be no routine “active deployment” of Indian nuclear weapons in the form of a “ready arsenal.” A better understanding should be secured from New Delhi of India’s missile R&D, acquisition, and deployment plans.

88 For more on these areas of convergence, see Kanti Bajpai, “Add Five ‘Es’ to Make a Partnership,” Washington Quarterly, Summer 2001, pp. 83–94. 89 Gaurav Kampani, “In Praise of Indifference Toward India’s Bomb,” Orbis, Spring 2001, pp. 241–57.

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India ● ● ● ●

India should agree not to research, develop, test or produce ICBMs. India should continue to improve export control regulations and practices. A bilateral dialogue should be pursued on the future of the global nuclear order and the regional nuclear environment. India should undertake nuclear CBMs with Pakistan and China in the context of New Delhi’s bilateral dialogue with both states.

Even as the United States countenances a reorientation in its strategic attitude towards India (and where applicable towards Pakistan as well) by pursuing these and other objectives, there are three important things Washington can do in the near term to influence New Delhi’s strategic choices with respect to its evolving nuclear posture. First, it can play the role of a helpful critic. This contribution is best made privately, through sustained dialog, and through the various official mechanisms now established at the highest levels for ongoing discussions between Indian and American policymakers. By challenging India to think through the kinds of capabilities it needs, the forms in which they materialize, the posture in which they will be deployed, and the doctrine under which they may be utilized, such “intellectual assistance” will be more useful to India (and to Pakistan) over the long term than any quick fixes like transfers of technology relating to control of its nuclear arsenal. The tenor of these discussions, however, is as important as the substance: the United States must not browbeat India into meeting certain political demands but rather ought to focus on understanding where India stands with respect to its strategic programs at any given point in time. Such discussions also provide a good opportunity to inform India about the American experience of managing nuclear forces—including the challenges and problems faced by the United States during the Cold War. To the degree that such discussions are found helpful, they should be emphasized in the years ahead. Second, the United States can begin to share its own assessment about the strategic programs in India’s immediate neighborhood. This contribution may not entail any intelligence-sharing, but it does require a willingness to share certain judgments based on U.S. intelligence information. The utility of this contribution must not be underestimated: the South Asian states today generally possess relatively poor information about the intentions and capabilities of their competitors and consequently are apt to make programmatic decisions with respect to their strategic capabilities based on a pervasive misreading of their threat environment. Given this problem, it is imperative that the United States search for ways to share its own appreciation of the regional strategic situation with each of the actors involved. In some instances, this may involve sharing information—sometimes that available from commercial rather than governmental sources— but irrespective of the speWinter 2002

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TELLIS cifics involved, the objective of such discussions must be to assist India (and other regional states as necessary) make strategic decisions that dampen, not heighten, the ongoing security competition in South Asia. Ultimately, the United States must prepare itself to play the role of an “umpire,” especially in situations where deterrence breakdown or nuclear weapons use is plausible. This will require, among other things, a willingness to expose any attempts that might be made by one or the other regional states to disturb the status quo by means of military, including nuclear, instruments. The challenges associated with this task are many, but Washington ought to prepare for them by at least assessing the nature of the demands entailed, particularly if preventing war is to become a new U.S. policy objective in South Asia. Third, it can transform its stated preference for Indo-Pakistani reconciliation over Kashmir into a clear and articulated tenet of its regional policy. During President Clinton’s visit to the region in March 2000, the United States began to affirm the proposition that disputed boundaries ought not to be redrawn in blood and that the existing Line of Control ought to be respected by both sides.90 Building on this foundation, the United States should encourage both India and Pakistan to negotiate the vexing problem of Kashmir with a view to transforming the existing Line of Control—with the appropriate modifications necessary to increase security—into a new international border. This solution is unlikely to fully satisfy either India or Pakistan, but since every other alternative is fraught with grave risks and could be obtained only through the medium of war, given current Indian and Pakistani preferences on this issue, a future U.S. policy towards South Asia should prepare to strongly endorse any bilaterally negotiated transformation of the Line of Control into an international border. Operationalizing this solution involves several other complicated predicates: urging India to become more responsive to Kashmiri aspirations either specifically or as part of its ongoing redefinition of federal relations; urging Pakistan to restrain both its official support for cross-border insurgency as well the non-official activities of various Islamist groups operating within its territory if for no other reason than Pakistan’s own continued stability; and urging both India and Pakistan to engage in bilateral discussions conducted on the a priori understanding that the absence of politically viable alternatives to the current status quo requires both countries ultimately to prepare their citizenry for the compromises that acceptance of the Line of Control as an international border necessarily entails.

90

“Remarks of the President in Greeting to the People of Pakistan,” March 25, 2000, available at http:// www.clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/SouthAsia/speeches/20000325.html.

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India Conclusion As the United States attempts to cope with the rapidly changing situation in Southern Asia, it should not lose sight of the fact that bilateral U.S.-Indian relations still cry out for a realistic strategic vision that could serve as the framework within which the sometimes competing interests of the two states may be reconciled. The lack of such a vision historically condemned both countries to a bitter “transactional” approach where individual policy initiatives quickly become hostage to either transient political moods or bureaucratic pressures on both sides. Nowhere has this been seen more clearly than on the nuclear issue, a phenomenon that once led two prominent American observers to remark that, “of all the parts of the world where U.S. policy is held hostage by a single-issue constituency, South Asia is one of the worst.”91 During President Clinton’s March 2000 trip to South Asia, the president and Prime Minister Vajpayee jointly signed a vision statement that elucidated the resolve “to create a closer and qualitatively new relationship between the United States and India.”92 With its soaring rhetoric and its lofty goals, this statement represented a welcome first step in the long and delicate process of restoring momentum to the U.S.-Indian engagement. Yet, for all its value, it still remains incomplete insofar as it fails to publicly articulate why engaging India—at some cost of American resources, energies, and attention—is necessary for the success of larger U.S. grand strategic objectives in Asia and beyond.93 Since it fails to amplify this critical issue, the vision statement establishes neither strategic priorities that could help guide bureaucratic choices in both countries nor regulative principles that could influence decision makers when conflicts of interest are to be reconciled. Articulating such a vision and subsequently operationalizing it through means of a presidential decision directive remains the most important task facing the Bush administration as far as improving ties with India is concerned. Until such a strategic vision is forthcoming, the U.S. response to future nuclearization in India and South Asia more generally risks being disjointed and ineffective.

91

Richard N. Haass and Gideon Rose, “Facing the Nuclear Facts in India and Pakistan,” The Washington Post, Jan. 5, 1997. 92 See, “U.S.-India Relations: A Vision for the 21st Century,” The Hindustan Times, March 23, 2000. 93 For a preliminary effort in this direction, see Khalilzad, et al., The United States and Asia, pp. 3– 89.

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