Behind India's Bomb: The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Deterrence
Article Summary
With its two nuclear tests in 1998, India provoked bitter international criticism and retaliatory tests from Pakistan. But in India's Emerging Nuclear Posture, Ashley Tellis argues that fears about nuclear instability in South Asia may be unfounded-and that the time has come for Washington to rethink its unyielding policy on nonproliferation.
Sumit Ganguly is Professor of Asian Studies and Government at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of the forthcoming Fearful Symmetry: Explaining the Indo-Pakistani Conflict.
The Indian political process Tellis describes is inherently cautious, reactive, and acutely sensitive to fiscal constraints. An important consequence of these structural tendencies, Tellis argues, is that Indian decision-makers are likely to opt for a nuclear weapons program that is strictly limited in scope -- in terms of the numbers of its warheads and delivery vehicles as well as operational readiness -- despite considerable pressure from civilian strategic commentators. The emerging Indian arsenal is composed of weapons and delivery systems with key subcomponents maintained under civilian custody, but [with] those assets as a whole ... not deployed in any way that enables the prompt conduct of nuclear operations. Such assets are, in fact, sequestered and covertly maintained in distributed form, with different custodians exercising strict stewardship over the components entrusted to them for safekeeping.
This "force in being," Tellis argues persuasively, comports well with the stated goals of India's draft nuclear doctrine and the country's perceived strategic needs. It eschews both "recessed deterrence" (a term coined by the Indian strategist Jasjit Singh to describe an arsenal stored in such a way as to require lengthy preparation to assemble and launch warheads), which was deemed inadequate for India's strategic requirements, and the pursuit of a "ready arsenal" (one with nuclear missiles that can be launched at a moment's notice), which would require a costly investment that could provoke adverse Pakistani and possibly even Chinese responses.
The emergent Indian nuclear doctrine, according to Tellis, emphasizes the political as opposed to the military utility of nuclear weapons. This assertion may appear banal, but the distinction is not trivial: both the doctrine and subsequent Indian statements have explicitly underscored that Indian decision-makers view the arsenal as a pure deterrent rather than as an instrument of war. In effect, then, the principal role of India's nuclear force is to protect the nation from the prospect of nuclear blackmail and coercion at the hands of China or Pakistan, and the country's policymakers appear confident that a small nuclear force capable of surviving a first strike will do the job.
The deterrent nature of India's nuclear doctrine is reflected at the operational level of policymaking, about which Tellis provides a scrupulous discussion based on what can be gleaned from open sources. India has unequivocally renounced the first use of nuclear weapons. Though it is tempting to dismiss this commitment as mere boilerplate, there is strong reason to believe that it is actually sincere. It is consistent with New Delhi's declared nuclear doctrine, it permits India to announce its basically pacific intentions toward its adversaries, and it conforms to the expectations of a "force-in-being" that cannot provide rapid recourse during a crisis. The commitment to deterrence through the threat of punishment emphasizes India's lack of interest in using nuclear weapons to pursue either territorial or political expansion and its intention to use them instead simply to give pause to any would-be attacker or blackmailer.
As for targeting strategy, finally, it appears that India is developing a modified countervalue approach -- putting an adversary's civilian assets at risk. This strategy involves making a virtue out of necessity, because a counterforce capability (i.e., one that targets an opponent's military forces) will be both technologically and fiscally beyond India's grasp for the foreseeable future. Tellis aptly sums up India's strategy, therefore, as a "lite" version of the Cold War doctrine of mutual assured destruction.
NUCLEAR RESPONSIBILITY
If Tellis is correct, many of the oft-expressed fears about nuclear instability in South Asia will prove to be unfounded. A small, secure, dispersed, and highly concealed Indian nuclear force, for example, would be invulnerable to a bolt-from-the-blue strike by Pakistan. And the problems of command and control that plague larger, more complex nuclear forces are unlikely to haunt India's decision-makers for quite some time. The likelihood of a regional nuclear confrontation with Pakistan should thus remain quite small.
Nevertheless, India's overt weaponization and Pakistan's response have created a different set of dangers: the region is now subject to what the American strategic analyst Glenn Snyder called the "stability-instability paradox." Given the extraordinary destructiveness of nuclear weapons and the horrific consequences that would follow from their use on the subcontinent, neither side is likely to view them as effective instruments of war. Under the seemingly reassuring shadow of the nuclear umbrella, however, both sides may be tempted to make limited or temporary incursions in strategically peripheral areas. Indeed, the world witnessed the first such move in the summer of 1999, when Pakistani army troops crossed the Line of Control (the working boundary) in Kashmir and held onto territory in the frozen redoubts of Kargil for more than a month.
