India should not be sucked into an arms race
It is hoped,
therefore, that even in the face of developments that seem to be moving towards an arms race in the region and beyond, India will be able to steer clear of
unnecessary move
Manpreet Sethi
India closed 2016 with the successful test of its long-range ballistic missile, the 5,000-km-range Agni V. The country heralded the New Year with the test of Agni IV, a ballistic missile with a range of 4,000 kms.
Both these delivery systems are important constituents of Indias credible minimum deterrence. Since deterrence presupposes the capability to punish the adversary, it necessarily rests on the ability to threaten something that is dear enough to make its loss unacceptable. Agni IV and V bring the major cities of China within the range of Indias nuclear harm and thus are considered critical to deter China from indulging in nuclear blackmail or coercion.
The next milestone for India is an operational fleet of nuclear-powered submarines equipped with long-range missiles. This capability is a work in progress and is steadily moving towards enhancing Indias nuclear deterrent.
Do these successive developments amount to India being in an arms race?
Not at all. In fact, India is building and testing these systems, which had been declared by the country in its draft nuclear doctrine of 1999. The developments taking place now are only translating the vision of the doctrine to build sufficient, survivable and operationally prepared nuclear forces. If India remains true to the doctrine of credible minimum deterrence, it is unlikely that it will feel the need to enter into a nuclear arms race with others.
The same, however, cannot be said about Pakistan and China.
Pakistan appears to be in an arms race that it claims is with India. But the race to acquire more fissile material capacities and stockpiles, nuclear warheads, types of weapons, and delivery systems, would be better attributed to its own vision of full spectrum deterrence. Egged on by the need to deter a conventionally superior India (that appears threatening because of its own pursuit of terrorism against India), Pakistan is engaged in an open-ended nuclear build up. It is a race it is running with its self-created phantoms, not India.
China, meanwhile, is in an arms race with the US. Having stayed with a minimalist vision of deterrence for about four decades after 1964, it has been over the last 10-15 years been engaged in building newer and more modern nuclear capabilities with an eye on the US ballistic missile defence. Fearing a degradation of its nuclear deterrent if the US could defend itself against incoming missiles, China is keen to flaunt a bigger and better (BMD-penetrating) nuclear weapons capability.
The United States, meanwhile, after having been in a nuclear weapons reduction mode for sometime, appears to have stopped the trend. Rather, nuclear modernisation is the flavour of the moment. President Obama exits office after having approved a budget of $1 trillion to be spent over three decades for the purpose. President-elect Donald Trump has indicated the intention to stay the course and even tweeted a challenge for an arms race. Russia has already been engaged in modernising its nuclear capabilities over the last few years. The issue of nuclear, chemical and biological terrorism in South Asia has been the centre of debate in the international press since the establishment of Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. The acquisition of chemical and biological weapons by IS has exacerbated the frustration of the international community that these weapons have fallen into the wrong hands. Pakistan is aware of the lethality of the groups brutal tactics in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Indian intelligence recently sounded the alert after reports that the spread of IS in Pakistan and Afghanistan poses a great security threat to India. An Indian intelligence official told Hindustan Times that the presence of IS in Jalalabad and other parts of Afghanistan poses a serious threat to India. IS and other terrorist groups want to acquire nuclear and chemical weapons through theft, as gifts, or by purchasing them. According to research reports, some governments, including in Syria and Iraq, have been providing weapons training and funds to jihadist groups.
The availability of biological and nuclear explosives in South Asian markets, the nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan and their changing relations with China, the US and Russia have raised serious questions about the jihadists intentions of retrieving modern nuclear missile technologies. Pakistan and India have been updating their nuclear arsenal for a decade. In 2000, Pakistan established the National Command Authority and, in 2003, India set up a Nuclear Command Authority to manage their nuclear weapons. Since India has not conducted any military attack inside Pakistan, the latter has claimed that this is evidence of its nuclear deterrence at work. In 1999, during the Kargil war, Pakistan-backed militants attacked across the LoC. India was in a panic and could not devise a plan to respond to the Pakistan-backed mujahideen incursion. The Indian military leaders had decided to enter a limited war against Pakistan but as Indian secret services (RAW) failed to truly interpret Pakistans motives, the planned war was postponed. In his book, RAWs chief Major General V K Singh regrets the performance of his intelligence agency during the Kargil war: After the Kargil intrusion in 1999, the government constituted the Kargil Review Committee to go into the intelligence failure that contributed to the fiasco. When the report was placed before parliament, about 15 pages dealing with intelligence were removed, on grounds of security. Not one of the honourable members sitting in the house questioned the implied insult and aspersion on their integrity. Just two years after the Kargil war, an attack on the Indian parliament led to a six months standoff. The Kargil war offered scholars an opportunity to analyse how nuclear states had entered into a dangerous war.
Unless US-Russia relations improve in the coming years, it is clear that both countries have enough insecurities for their respective nuclear programmes to feed on. Their behaviour and actions will have an impact on the global nuclear picture because as China mirrors these developments, downstream ripples will be felt in India and Pakistan.
So, given the imminent nuclear mood, it is likely that the temptation of each nuclear player to take its cue from developments happening in its adversary is high. India too could be sucked into an arms race. The temptation to strive for capabilities being built by adversaries missile defence, MIRVed missiles, hypersonic missiles, increased numbers of warheads and missiles will be compelling. The intuitive response to these developments, and indeed a persistent clamour from security hawks, would be to match every development of the adversary with action at our own end. Pakistans tactical nuclear weapons and MIRVed (Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicle) capability of China are good examples of debates in Indian strategic circles on the need to build such capabilities.
However, the important point to remember before internalising the logic of mirror imaging any capability is to keep a clear eyed focus on the role of nuclear weapons and the purpose of nuclear deterrence. Nuclear deterrence is a simple concept built on the promise of assured retaliation to punish the adversary enough to negate any gains he hopes to make.
Imposing punishment with nuclear weapons is not difficult. Given the destructive potential of the weapon (the huge damage caused to life and property by a single 15 kiloton weapon on Hiroshima may be recalled) and the densities of population in China, India and Pakistan, not many weapons would ever be needed to cause damage that a sane nation could find acceptable.
Faced with an intransigent China, India under the center-right government led by Narendra Modi is busy revaluating its China policy. Modis initial outreach to China soon after coming to office in May 2014 failed to produce any substantive outcome, and he has since decided to take a more hard-nosed approach. New Delhi has strengthened partnerships with likeminded countries including the United States, Japan, Australia and Vietnam. India has bolstered its capabilities along the troubled border with China, and the Indian military is operationally gearing up for a two-front war. India is also ramping up its nuclear and conventional deterrence against China by testing long-range missiles, raising a mountain strike corps for the border with China, enhancing submarine capabilities and basing its first squadron of French-made Rafale fighter jets near that border. More interesting is a significant shift in Indias Tibet policy with the Modi government deciding to bring the issue back into the Sino-Indian bilateral equation.
The writer is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi
