The India-Pakistan Nuclear Relationship

Theories of Deterrence and International Relations

E. Sridharan, E. Sridharan

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000084146
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Arms Control
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Conflict resolution and promotion of regional cooperation in South Asia has assumed a new urgency in the aftermath of the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998, and underlined by the outbreak of fighting in Kargil in 1999, full mobilization on the border during most of 2002, and continued low-intensity warfare and terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. The stability of nuclear deterrence between the two countries is therefore a matter of great urgency and has found a place on the scholarly agenda of security studies in South Asia.

Several books have been written on India's nuclear programme, but these have been mostly analytical histories. The India-Pakistan Nuclear Relationship is a new departure in that it is the first time that a group of scholars from the South Asian subcontinent have collectively tried to apply deterrence theory and international relations theory to South Asia.

1 Introduction: Subcontinental Perspectives on Deterrence Theory, International Relations Theory and South Asia

E. Sridharan

Conflict resolution and the promotion of regional cooperation in South Asia assumed a new urgency in the aftermath of the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998. This urgency was further underlined by the outbreak of fighting in Kargil in May-July 1999, full mobilization on the border from December 2001 to October 2002, and a continuing separatist insurgency and terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. The stability of nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan in a dynamic context is a matter of life and death and forces itself onto the scholarly agenda of security studies in South Asia. While short-term measures to prevent the outbreak of war by accident or miscalculation, and military and non-military confidence-building measures (CBMs) to control conflict are necessary, there is a need to go beyond CBMs and begin thinking through, conceptually, the more long-term difficulties of stabilizing the deterrence relationship as a necessary first step towards comprehensive conflict resolution and lasting peace. This volume attempts to explore the relationship between theories of nuclear deterrence, international relations (IR) theory, and the unique nuclear situation in South Asia.

This is in important ways a new departure. While a number of detailed accounts of the Indian nuclear programme have been published since 1998, all, except most recently, Ganguly and Hagerty (2005), Rajain (2005) and Rajagopalan (2005), are essentially analytical histories and engage at best tangentially with theories of deterrence. And none except perhaps Ganguly and Hagerty (2005) and Rajagopalan (2005) engage substantially with IR theory.¹ And deterrence theory confronts a situation in South Asia that is very different from the context in which such theorizing developed, namely, the US-Soviet confrontation during the Cold War. India and Pakistan, unlike the US and the USSR, were once the same country, they have a common border, and very short missile flight times limiting reaction time to almost nothing.

¹ See, for example, Bharat Karnad (2002); Ashley Tellis (2001); Ashok Kapur (2001); George Perkovich (2000); Raja Menon (2000); Itty Abraham (1999); Sumit Ganguly (1999); Rajesh Rajagopalan (2005); Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty (2005); Arpit Rajain (2005); and a more journalistic account in Raj Chengappa (2000). For an account by K. Subrahmanyam, at times an insider, see Jasjit Singh (1998). For the Pakistani nuclear programme see Samina Ahmed (1999). For a strongly anti-nuclear perspective which also engages with and critiques realist IR theory, see Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik (2000), another anti-nuclear collection being M.V. Ramana and C. Rammanohar Reddy (2003). For an anti-1998 test as also an anti-NPT and anti-CTBT perspective see N. Ram (1999). Our special interest is in the period since the de facto, if opaque, development of nuclear weapon capabilities by both countries, that is, from 1986-87. The works which attempt to engage with deterrence theory and IR theory include, notably, P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Stephen P. Cohen (2003); Devin T. Hagerty (1998); Rajesh Rajagopalan (2005); Rajesh M. Basrur (2005). For views supporting the viability/ stability of a crude form of deterrence see the articles in Jasjit Singh (1998), and Amitabh Mattoo (1999).

Add to this a history of wars and a territorial dispute in Jammu and Kashmir marked by a separatist rebellion and low-intensity war against the Indian state supported by Pakistan. This entire situation, in turn, is nested in a US-dominated global order, with a post-9/11 US military presence in Afghanistan, and with nuclear power China neighbouring both India and Pakistan, but which has historically been a clandestine supporter of the development of Pakistani nuclear and missile capabilities. China also fought a war with India in 1962 and the two have a continuing border and territorial dispute. Nuclear deterrence theory and IR theory have not engaged with a situation like this, one which calls out for an exploration of what theory can contribute to the understanding of nuclear deterrence in South Asia, as well as what the South Asian situation can contribute to theory. This volume is also a new departure in the sense that it is the first time that a group of scholars from the subcontinent have collectively tried to apply deterrence theory and IR theory to South Asia.

Of course, deterrence is only about stabilization of conflict and prevention of war, necessary for survival but not in itself sufficient to resolve conflict. Conflict needs to be understood and conflict resolution alternatives and prospects need to be explored by situating deterrence theory more broadly in IR theory, and still more broadly in social science theorizing about political and party systems, ethnic conflict, and the historical process of state formation in modern and contemporary times, while at the same time situating South Asia in the larger extra-regional and global order.

This book is not about tracing the motivations and driving forces of the (more complexly motivated) Indian or Pakistani nuclear programmes, on which there is substantial historical-analytical literature which emphasizes one or more of Scott Sagan’s three causal factors—security, bureaucratic politics and normative concerns (see Basrur 2005: 5,185 n 1). Rather, the book is largely about the explanatory power of deterrence theory and IR theory, particularly the dominant neorealist paradigm, in explaining Indian and Pakistani nuclear behaviour, with a focus on the period after both obtained de facto nuclear weapons capabilities, that is, 1986-87, and especially after the explicit nuclearization of both in 1998. However, since historical motivations and driving forces are an important background, this chapter very briefly runs through some of the explanations in the literature.

All scholars attribute multiple, complex and historically changing motives for the Indian nuclear weapons programme. The most comprehensive recent works published post-1998, Perkovich (2000), Tellis (2001), and Kapur (2001), attribute the underlying motives and drivers of the Indian nuclear programme to diverse factors. Perkovich (2000) argues that domestic factors, including personalities (particularly Bhabha and Nehru), were at least as important as external security pressures, a non-neorealist ‘second image’ explanation that stresses the importance not only of domestic state structures and politics but also psychological factors like the aftereffects of racist colonialism and the desire for international major power status, and economic and technological constraints.² He points out that the nuclear programme began much before the China war of 1962 and China’s first nuclear test in 1964. Tellis (2001: 12) by contrast stresses primarily regional security threats, while including the desire to maintain India’s autonomy as factors. He argues that the prolonged maintenance of nuclear ambiguity rather than rapid movement towards a deployed arsenal was due to the fact that ‘... despite all the strategic challenges it faced, the security environment India had confronted for most of the post-independence period had in general been benign’. Kapur (2001: 203-14) stresses the importance of the Nehru-Bhabha years and argues that although the origins of the programme were non-military, it acquired a built-in defence potential in response to the evolving regional and international system, but one which was never developed to its logical conclusion due to various factors such as weak political leadership, ad hoc and incoherent policymaking structures, and a penchant for legalism and moralism. He attributes the 1998 tests to the pressures building up towards a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) which would have closed the option, plus the political philosophy of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

George Perkovich (2000: 444-45). Also Perkovich (2002: 25-60).

Ganguly and Hagerty (2005: 120-24) attribute India’s nuclear behaviour pattern to a combination of three factors, security against China and Pakistan, a search for international status, and domestic politics, attributing the timing of the 1998 tests to the BJP’s stated electoral commitment, while arguing that a deterrent capability vis-a-vis India was the prime mover of the Pakistani programme and tests. Karnad (2002) traces the origins to the creation of the nascent dual-purpose capability in the Nehru-Bhabha years, thus agreeing implicitly with Perkovich although from a very different policy perspective, while faulting subsequent governments for weak, indecisive and regionally limited policies. Subrahmanyam (1998: 50-53) links the weaponization of India’s nuclear capability since the late 1980s to the maturing of the clandestine Pakistani nuclear programme and its growing nuclear and missile collaboration with China in the 1980s, continuing into the 1990s. He attributes the timing of the 1998 tests to this factor in combination with the indefinite extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1995 and the CTBT negotiations since 1996, which threatened to close the Indian nuclear option, Pakistan’s Ghauri missile test of 6 April 1998, being the trigger. Singh (1998: 9-10, 24-25) emphasizes the driving role of security and not status in the Indian nuclear programme, and argues similarly that the threatened closing of the window due to CTBT was the trigger for the tests. Thomas (2002) attributes the 1998 tests to a combination of long-term national security concerns, post-CTBT, and immediate domestic political pressures.

Among scholars emphasizing domestic and ideological factors, Abraham (1998) locates the nuclear programme in the influence of the ‘strategic enclave’ of scientists and key policy-makers, and in the Nehruvian state’s and Indian elite’s desire for the symbols and accoutrements of modernity and power. Hymans (2002: 139-60) argues that the main driver of the programme was ‘oppositional nationalism’, a combination of fear of the enemy and pride in one’s nation that fuse to form a component of national identity, and makes strong leaders seek symbols of power. He argues that ‘oppositional nationalism’ fits the BJP’s ideology and draws an interesting comparison between Gaullist nationalism and the French programme and the BJP’s Hindu nationalism and the 1998 tests. Anti-nuclear and Left writers such as Bidwai and Vanaik (2000), and Ram (1999) focus on the ideology of the BJP as the overwhelmingly important motivating factor behind the 1998 tests with Ram arguing that it was done in a ‘...preconditioned, pre-programmed way...’ without ‘...any kind of objective or professional appraisal of the policy requirements...’(ibid.: 16, 55). But neither clearly and adequately explain the pre-1998 programme or the 1974 test, with Bidwai and Vanaik asserting that it was done for internal reasons, to shore up Indira Gandhi’s and the Congress party’s slipping popularity, goaded on by the scientists’ lobby and made possible by the maturing of the necessary technological capability (ibid.: 218-20). Ram, in fact, makes a distinction between the legitimacy of the preand post-1998 policies, supporting the former policy of ‘walking on two legs’, that is, a policy of independence and rejection of discriminatory controls such as the NPT and CTBT, combined with conditional self-restraint in not testing and weaponizing, that is, adhering to non-weaponized or recessed deterrence conducive to stability (Ram 1999: 46-52).

The motives behind Pakistan's nuclear programme were always much clearer and more straightforward. It was always aimed at securing a deterrent capability vis-a-vis not only India’s nuclear capability, but also against India’s superior conventional capability (Ahmed 1999; Chakma 2002; Zuberi 2003).

However, these explanations of India’s nuclear programme, from the point of view of this volume, are inadequate. Even for explanations based primarily on security considerations, four aspects of India’s behaviour are left unexplained (or explained only in an ad hoc manner for the pre-1998 period). First, the choice of the power to be deterred, namely, Pakistan much more than China; second, the slow pace and the rhetorical and operational Pakistanfocussedness of the nuclear and missile programmes; third, the 24-year gap between the 1974 and 1998 tests; fourth, the lack of sufficient follow-through after the 1998 tests both in terms of additional testing of nuclear devices and of missiles by India, given the stated concern about China.

The main concern of this volume—that of the explanatory power of deterrence theory and IR theory, particularly neorealism—is either not addressed or addressed only in passing in the historical-analytical accounts of India’s and Pakistan’s programmes and nuclear behaviour since the 1998 tests. Does deterrence theory explain Indian and Pakistani nuclear behaviour? Specifically, does it adequately explain the four features of India’s behaviour pattern, mentioned earlier? Post-1998, is deterrence working and likely to be stable in a dynamic context of creeping weaponization and possible future crises, not to speak of past crises both before and after 1998? Does Indian and Pakistani nuclear behaviour, including the Indo-US nuclear deal of 2005-6, yet to be finalized at the time of writing, take into account possible new threats and crises deriving from the possible actions of the United States, China and/or other nuclear powers, including possible preventive/pre-emptive actions? If not, how adequate are deterrence theory and neorealist theory, developed in the context of the US-Soviet Cold War, and what new theoretical departures are necessary?

There are various views on deterrence theory and neorealism expressed mostly in passing in the existing literature. As already mentioned, the most comprehensive critiques are by anti-nuclearists...