India's Escalation-Resistant Nuclear Posture - The Stimson Center

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⎦ ⎣ RAJESH M. BASRUR ⏐ 67 Missile defense is an area in which India seeks to enhance its capability. 21 Government officials are aware of the possibility that the acquisition of missile defenses may trigger an expansionary response in Pakistan. But their interest remains strong, primarily because of uncertainty with regard to Pakistan, including the possibility of a “rogue launch.” There is less concern about the possible cascading effect of the planned US missile defense deployment via China. While there may be good arguments for this relaxed view of missile defense, those are not usually discernible in official thinking. 22 Official understanding of the full implications of missile defense does not seem to be very lucid. There is no clarity as to how much can be defended and to what effect in the context of deterrence stability. One senior bureaucrat closely associated with nuclear policy rather simplistically described missile defense as “an extension of air defense.” Interestingly, missile defense draws considerable support from the scientific community, and not much from the armed forces. One factor which has not been adequately appreciated is that if India obtains significant missile defense capability, Pakistan may well respond by enhancing its penetration capabilities, which in turn would invite a counter-response from India. There is scope here for arms racing, or at least an accelerated crawl. Strictly speaking, since no one is claiming that missile defense will ever be anywhere close to perfect, and since minimum deterrence rests on the principle that even one bomb getting through is too many, this should not matter. Besides, both countries offer each other so many targets along their border that missile defenses will make little difference to deterrence except to those who hold the indefensible view that some targets are expendable or, even more untenably, that only some targets must be defended at all costs. But there is something about the Indo-Pakistan relationship that goes beyond dry logic. Even if the risk of a consequent change in actual posture is not great, the prospect of arms racing hovers in the wings. 23 This is clearly an area that needs close attention in forthcoming negotiations. At some point in the future, differences over missile defense might become a sticking point in Indo-Pakistan negotiations for strategic stability. Pakistan will want to press for Indian restraint on this issue. But the problem is not likely to be serious. The relatively mild reactions of Russia and China to American plans for 21 Though India’s interest in missile defense is often associated with the BJP-led government that was voted out of office in 2004, the Indian search for missile defense capability is a long-standing one which cuts across party lines. The present Congress-led government has affirmed continuity in this respect. See Amit Baruah, “UPA Continuing NDA Policy on Missile Defence,” Hindu, August 20, 2004. 22 For a sanguine view of missile defense, including its potential impact on Indian security, see Rajesh M. Basrur, “Missile Defense: An Indian Perspective,” in Chris Gagné and Michael Krepon, eds., The Impact of Missile Defenses on Southern Asia (Washington, DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 2002). The remaining papers in the volume are less optimistic. 23 Something of the sort is already happening with respect to Pakistan, which is developing missiles with longer ranges – such as the 3,500-km-range Ghauri III – apparently in the belief that more is better. ⎤ ⎡
⎦ ⎣ 68 ⏐ INDIA’S ESCALATION-RESISTANT NUCLEAR POSTURE missile defense deployment, which reflect their perception that substantive political relations are paramount, are indicative in this respect. Looking to the Future There is a strong commitment in India to the present posture of not deploying nuclear weapons and keeping warheads in a disassembled condition. Since this is a key feature of nuclear posture, and the basis of a high degree of stability, I sought to gauge the conditions under which the policy might change. This could occur in different ways. First, the government might decide to assemble warheads and hand them over to the armed forces for mating with delivery vehicles during peacetime. Second, the same may be done only if there is a crisis and the specter of war is in the air. Non-deployment in peacetime has the advantage of stabilizing strategic relationships that are under sustained tension, as is the case between India and Pakistan. It constitutes the nuclear version of non-offensive defense. 24 While most policy makers are supportive of non-deployment for this reason, some do feel that a modicum of “transparency” or visibility would send stronger signals of a soundly organized deterrent. This would include, for instance, a greater synergy of the political, scientific, and military branches of government through regular exercises. But the need for credibility is an inadequate reason for deployment during peaceful times. An adversary’s knowledge that India possesses nuclear weapons, and that these can be assembled in short order, suffices to deter it. The stability-from-experience argument is a better one. Should a crisis occur, the experience derived from regular exercises with deployed weapons (including practice in the mating of warheads within a given time frame) would be invaluable in ensuring a smooth transition to deployment. In the absence of such preparation, the transition to deployment could be problematic, subject to errors and accidents. A stronger objection to non-deployed forces is that a decision to deploy during a crisis could be wrongly interpreted as preparation to go to war. However, the tradeoff between the advantages and disadvantages of deployment is, in my judgment, correctly deemed an acceptable one: the safety and stability aspects of non-deployment in peacetime outweigh the risks. Besides, there is a keen sense among the civilian leadership that handing over nuclear weapons to the armed forces other than in exceptional circumstances is undesirable. For its part, the military has not displayed a strong inclination to obtain direct jurisdiction over the weapons. How would India react if Pakistan were to deploy unilaterally, perhaps covertly? The almost automatic response, if such deployments are detected, would be a matching Indian deployment, to a large extent driven by a sense that Pakistani leaders, with their obsessive revanchism, are not entirely “rational” 24 On non-offensive defense, see Bjørn Møller, Common Security and Nonoffensive Defense: A Neorealist Perspective (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1992). ⎤ ⎡
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India's Escalation-Resistant Nuclear Posture - The Stimson Center

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