Summary
The world is in a second nuclear age in which regional powers play an increasingly prominent role. These states have small nuclear arsenals, often face multiple active conflicts, and sometimes have weak institutions. How do these nuclear states–and potential future ones–manage their nuclear forces and influence international conflict? Examining the reasoning and deterrence consequences of regional power nuclear strategies, this book demonstrates that these strategies matter greatly to international stability and it provides new insights into conflict dynamics across important areas of the world such as the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia.
Vipin Narang identifies the diversity of regional power nuclear strategies and describes in detail the posture each regional power has adopted over time. Developing a theory for the sources of regional power nuclear strategies, he offers the first systematic explanation of why states choose the postures they do and under what conditions they might shift strategies. Narang then analyzes the effects of these choices on a state’s ability to deter conflict. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, he shows that, contrary to a bedrock article of faith in the canon of nuclear deterrence, the acquisition of nuclear weapons does not produce a uniform deterrent effect against opponents. Rather, some postures deter conflict more successfully than others.
Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era considers the range of nuclear choices made by regional powers and the critical challenges they pose to modern international security.
Country or Region: Pakistan
Malhotra, Aditi, and Sitakanta Mishra
India-based scholars provide a counterpoint to Mark Fitzpatrick’s article on “nuclear rehabilitation” with Pakistan.
From the publisher: Fitzpatrick seems to acknowledge all the problems with nuclear Pakistan – track record of proliferation, a lowered nuclear threshold, command and control prone to human error, warheads not one-point safe, inability to control the terrorists – and still vouches for Pakistan to be recognized “as a normal nuclear state” especially when some may say that Pakistan itself is not a normal state. His compassion is discernible when he says “how long Pakistan must pay the price” for the Khan nuclear proliferation network – “a solitary event.” Drawing a parallel to India’s performance, Fitzpatrick argues that “the time has come to offer Pakistan a nuclear-cooperation deal akin to India’s”.
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Fitzpatrick, Mark
Summary
The arrest and public confession of Pakistani nuclear weapons scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan in 2004 confirmed the existence of a global proliferation network which had, over almost two decades, provided nuclear technology, expertise, and designs to Iran, North Korea, Libya and possibly other countries. Khan was not the only nuclear arms merchant and Pakistan was not the only country implicated in his shadowy network. It spanned three continents and eluded both national and international systems of export controls that had been designed to prevent illicit trade. The discovery of the network highlighted concerns that nuclear technology is no longer the monopoly of industrially advanced countries, but possibly can be purchased off-the-shelf by both states and terrorist groups. The IISS Strategic Dossier on nuclear black markets provides a comprehensive assessment of the Pakistani nuclear programme from which the Khan network emerged, the network’s proliferation activities, and the illicit trade in fissile materials. In addition, the Strategic Dossier provides an overview of the clandestine nuclear procurement activities of other states, along with the efforts made both by Pakistan and the international community to prevent the reoccurrence of further proliferation networks and to secure nuclear technology. The final chapter assesses policy options for further action.
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Fitzpatrick, Mark
Summary
Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – the fastest growing in the world – raises concerns on many grounds. Although far from the scale of the Cold War, South Asia is experiencing a strategic arms race. And the more weapons there are, the more potential for theft, sabotage and nuclear terrorism. Worries that Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons technology might again be transferred to nuclear aspirants have not been expunged. Being outside the nuclear club makes it harder to ensure nuclear safety. Of gravest concern is the potential for a nuclear war, triggered by another large-scale terrorist attack in India with Pakistani state fingerprints, as in the 2008 Mumbai atrocity, this time followed by an Indian Army reprisal. Lowering the nuclear threshold, Pakistan has vowed to deter this with newly introduced battlefield nuclear weapons. Mark Fitzpatrick evaluates each of the potential nuclear dangers, giving credit where credit is due. Understanding the risks of nuclear terrorism and nuclear accidents, Pakistani authorities have taken appropriate steps. Pakistan and India have devoted less attention, however, to engaging each other on the issues that could spark a nuclear clash. The author argues that to reduce nuclear dangers, Pakistan should be offered a formula for nuclear legitimacy, tied to its adoption of policies associated with global nuclear norms.
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Tellis, Ashley J., C. Christine Fair, and Jamison Jo Medby
Summary
This report examines the views of India and Pakistan on the significance of Pakistan’s foray into the Kargil-Dras sector in a limited war that has come to be known as the Kargil conflict. The goal of the analysis is to assess both combatants’ perceptions of the crisis, with a view to evaluating the possibilities of future Kargil-like events and the implications of the lessons each country learned for stability in South Asia. The analysis is based almost exclusively on Indian and Pakistani source materials.The Kargil crisis demonstrated that even the presence of nuclear weapons might not appreciably dampen security competition between the region’s largest states. However, the question remains of whether or not the Kargil war represents a foretaste of future episodes of attempted nuclear coercion if India and Pakistan believe that their nuclear capabilities provide them the immunity required to prosecute a range of military operations short of all-out war.
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Sagan, Scott D et al
From the publisher: Nuclear-armed adversaries India and Pakistan have fought three wars since their creation as sovereign states in 1947. They went to the brink of a fourth in 2001 following an attack on the Indian parliament, which the Indian government blamed on the Pakistan-backed Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist organizations. Despite some attempts at rapprochement in the intervening years, a new standoff between the two countries was precipitated when India accused Lashkar-e-Taiba of being behind the Mumbai attacks late last year.
The relentlessness of the confrontations between these two nations makes Inside Nuclear South Asia a must read for anyone wishing to gain a thorough understanding of the spread of nuclear weapons in South Asia and the potential consequences of nuclear proliferation on the subcontinent. The book begins with an analysis of the factors that led to India’s decision to cross the nuclear threshold in 1998, with Pakistan close behind: factors such as the broad political support for a nuclear weapons program within India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the intense rivalry between the two countries, the normative and prestige factors that influenced their behaviors, and ultimately the perceived threat to their respective national security.
The second half of the book analyzes the consequences of nuclear proliferation on the subcontinent. These chapters show that the presence of nuclear weapons in South Asia has increased the frequency and propensity of low-level violence, further destabilizing the region. Additionally, nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan have led to serious political changes that also challenge the ability of the two states to produce stable nuclear détente. Thus, this book provides both new insights into the domestic politics behind specific nuclear policy choices in South Asia, a critique of narrow realist views of nuclear proliferation, and the dangers of nuclear proliferation in South Asia.
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Raghavan, V.R.
From the publisher: This article examines the possibility of limited war between India and Pakistan, and the potential of such a conflict triggering a nuclear war. It examines the considerations that could push each of the two countries to fight a limited war. It discuses how such a war might be wages and the circumstance that would likely precipitate an escalation to a nuclear exchange. The doctrinal beliefs and decision making processes of the two countries are examined to trace the likely escalatory spiral towards a nuclear war. The article concludes that the probability of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan is high in the event the two countries engage in a direct military conflict.
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Narang, Vipin
From the publisher: Existing nuclear deterrence scholarship evinces a pervasive “existential bias,” assuming that once a state merely possesses nuclear weapons, it should be able to deter armed conflict. The empirical literature expresses this bias by simply dichotomously coding a state based on whether it has nuclear weapons, thereby treating all nuclear states as equivalent. Thus, whether nuclear weapons deter conflict, and how much is required to do so, is unclear. This article shifts the unit of analysis away from nuclear weapons to postures, hypothesizing that different nuclear postures are distinct and generate differential deterrent power, particularly amongst the non-superpower states which comprise the lion’s share of nuclear powers. I find that an asymmetric escalation nuclear posture uniquely deters conflict initiation and escalation. Not only do small arsenals have little deterrence success, but I find that even assured retaliation postures fail to deter intense conventional conflict. This suggests that the deterrence dividend is distributed unequally across nuclear powers, and that states may need to do more than simply acquire nuclear weapons to successfully deter conventional attacks.
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Mistry, Dinshaw
Abstract
This article tempers the argument of deterrence optimists, who make the case that nuclear deterrence has maintained the peace between regional nuclear rivals. In particular, it challenges the assertion by Kenneth Waltz that “nuclear deterrence has passed all of the many tests it has faced” among regional rivals in South Asia. Examining two major regional military crises, this article notes that, first, nuclear deterrence was not the key factor ending these crises. Instead, nonnuclear factors involving American diplomacy, which provided the participants with timely exit strategies, ended the crises. Second, if these crisis-ending factors had not been present, there was a strong possibility of significant military escalation, and nuclear deterrence would not have averted such an escalation. The article concludes by noting that, in regions where deterrence optimism is not well supported, Washington may continue intervening in crises between nuclear rivals, and, anticipating such a U.S. approach, regional rivals could become involved in repeated military crises over the long term.
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Sokolski, Henry D
From the publisher: This book, completed just before Pakistani President Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in November 2007, reflects research that the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center commissioned over the last 2 years. It tries to characterize specific nuclear problems that the ruling Pakistani government faces with the aim of establishing a base line set of challenges for remedial action. Its point of departure is to consider what nuclear challenges Pakistan will face if moderate forces remain in control of the government and no hot war breaks out against India.
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Kapur, S. Paul
From the publisher: Scholars attribute conventional violence in a nuclear South Asia to a phenomenon known as the “stability/instability paradox.” According to this paradox, the risk of nuclear war makes it unlikely that conventional conflict will escalate to the nuclear level, thereby making conventional conflict more likely. Although this phenomenon encouraged U.S.-Soviet violence during the Cold War, it does not explain the dynamics of the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan. Recent violence has seen Pakistan or its proxies launching limited attacks on Indian territory, and India refusing to retaliate in kind. The stability/instability paradox would not predict such behavior. A low probability of conventional war escalating to the nuclear level would reduce the ability of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to deter an Indian conventional attack. Because Pakistan is conventionally weaker than India, this would discourage Pakistani aggression and encourage robust Indian conventional retaliation against Pakistani provocations. Pakistani boldness and Indian restraint have actually resulted from instability in the strategic environment. A full-scale Indo-Pakistani conventional conflict would create a significant risk of nuclear escalation. This danger enables Pakistan to launch limited attacks on India while deterring all out Indian conventional retaliation and attracting international attention to the two countries’ dispute over Kashmir. Unlike in Cold War Europe, in contemporary South Asia nuclear danger facilitates, rather than impedes, conventional conflict.
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Hibbs, Mark
From the publisher: 2011 was a watershed for nuclear power. In March, all eyes focused on Japan, where the world’s third severe accident at a nuclear plant unfolded. The accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station will have a paradigm-changing impact on the global future of nuclear energy, though its scope and direction still remain to be seen. The author reviews reassessments undertaken around the world after the accident in Japan and underlines Europe’s critical role in whether the future of nuclear energy will be global. Japan’s nuclear safety shock was sudden and dramatic. But 2011 also witnessed an incremental escalation of continuing crises in North Korea, Iran, and South Asia in the absence of effective global nuclear governance. The author points to the politicization of the International Atomic Energy Agency, its limited authority, and the inability of major powers to cooperate effectively as reasons that nuclear governance remains ineffective. This breakdown in global nuclear governance will also challenge the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which sets the rules for nuclear commerce. The author reflects on 2011 and highlights what to look out for in 2012.
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Ganguly, Sumit
Abstract
An examination of the onset, evolution, and termination of the 1999 and 2001–02 crises between India and Pakistan suggests that nuclear deterrence is robust in South Asia. Even though the 1999 crisis erupted into a war, its scope and dimensions were carefully circumscribed. Despite its conventional capabilities, India chose not to cross the Line of Control (the de facto international border in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir), and it avoided horizontal escalation of the conflict. India’s restraint cannot be attributed either to timely U.S. intervention or to a concern about avoiding a bellicose international image. Instead a highly jingoistic regime, which had defied international public opinion the previous year through a series of nuclear tests, chose to exercise restraint because of Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons. In 2001, despite grave Pakistani provocation through a series of terrorist attacks, India could only respond with a strategy of coercive diplomacy.
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Dasgupta, Sunil, and Stephen P. Cohen
From the publisher: One of the most remarkable attributes of India as an independent state has been its reticence to use force as an instrument of policy. From the delay in sending troops to defend Kashmir in 1947 to the 24-year hiatus in testing nuclear weapons before 1998, Indian decisions on military force have come as an unwelcome last resort, and with rare exception, have been counterproductive, solidifying the wisdom of restraint. India’s rapid economic growth, ambitious military modernization particularly the 1998 nuclear tests and rapprochement with the United States have raised the prospect of India’s rise to great-power status, including an end to the country’s enduring strategic restraint.1 With more options available, will India finally abandon its long-standing international political—military posture? The consequences of an end to restraint could be revolutionary, but the doctrine’s strong roots and its survival despite failures, including against China and Pakistan suggest that it will endure.
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Cotta-Ramusino, Paolo, and Maurizio Martellini
From the publisher: Landau Network, an Arms Control Italian institution that regularly is consulted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, proposed to organize a visit to Pakistan, with the purpose of having a better understanding of security problems concerning nuclear weapons and nuclear material, of the situation of nuclear scientists and experts, of the development of Pakistani nuclear strategy, of Pakistani approach to arms control and confidence building measures and more generally to have a better understanding of the prospects of nuclear disarmament in the Indian subcontinent. After September 11th Pakistan has been at the epicenter of the antiterrorist campaign and collaborated with the antiterrorist coalition. But the impact of the Afghan war has been profound on Pakistan, and such issues such as the presence of radical Islamic movements, the existence of a relevant support for the Talibans inside Pakistani society and, at the same time, the continuing confrontation with India may have serious effects on the nuclear situation in Pakistan and in the subcontinent.
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