The fundamental rationale of this volume is to explore the evolving prospects of Indian deterrent force posture in South Asia primarily under the essentials of nuclear revolution and more especially with regard to its induction of sophisticated technologies, restructuring of its deterrent force posture, and the evolving competing military strategies. It broadly aims to analyse India’s posturing for a punitive counterforce strategy when it is largely perceived that the Indian military establishment is striving hard to find gaps to wage limited strikes against parts of Pakistan in order to achieve its political and military goals. Furthermore, it aims to understand the motivations of the evolving aspects of Indian deterrent force posture that broadly covers India’s restructuring of its Nuclear Draft Doctrine (DND), the ballistic missile development programme, including that of its sophisticated air-defence and Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) systems, and the possibility of conflicts between China and India and India and Pakistan given their transforming strategic force postures and their adversarial behaviour against each other in the South Asian region. In doing so, as India appears to be maintaining the escalation dominance to its advantage by pursuing a comprehensive counterforce targeting strategy, this volume under the rubric of nuclear revolution broadly asks how India’s evolving deterrent force posture is perceived in Pakistan and how this perception in turn enables the latter to produce effective countermeasures, thereby leading to the Cold War-type Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and creating mutual vulnerabilities in South Asia. These intriguing and interconnected concepts with regard to India’s evolving nuclear strategy under the banner of nuclear revolution are discussed in the following sections of this chapter, followed by their detailed analysis in the subsequent chapters.
It is important to note that India remains diplomatically and politically active in exploiting strategic and political opportunities across the globe by cementing its strategic partnership agreements with the major powers, including with the US. In this way it has successfully enhanced its image as a rising regional power. Nevertheless, India is confronted with challenges and limitations when it comes to its evolving nuclear strategy. However, despite the Indian DND and nearly two decades of its nuclear development since the 1998 nuclear tests, it has not comprehensively articulated the essentials of its nuclear policy such as the nuclear policy of “minimum deterrence,” its doctrinal restructuring of “No-First Use” (NFU), or its retaliatory strategy of a “massive retaliation.” Each of these core ingredients has inherent flaws that may not remain consistent with what was earlier conceptualized. The evolving prospects/patterns of India’s deterrent force posture appear to be making India restructure its DND, which in turn could enable it to craft a strategy for both power projection and security maximization, however limited and ambiguous these could be. India’s evolving deterrent force posture may enable India’s security planners to include a greater number of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), increasing the number of its nuclear-capable aircraft potentially for its new aircraft carriers, the development of Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles (MIRVs) while MIRVing most of its missiles, including those of its battlefield nuclear weapon Prahaar that is ready to be deployed carrying multiple warheads, planning for more nuclear weapon tests for modernization purposes that could include the hydrogen bomb in the near future, development of advanced BMD systems, deployment of nuclear submarines, and development of its Cold Start Doctrine (CSD) for carrying out limited attacks against Pakistan. All these deterrent forces, potentially bolstered by the introduction of new technologies, such as a sophisticated air defence system (S-400) and drones, including supersonic missiles, provide India with incentives not only to strike first, but also to keep the escalation dominance option to its advantage. For example, in October 2018, India and Russia signed a $5.2 billion deal to supply the S-400 system to New Delhi. The air defence system is scheduled to be delivered to India by 2020. Reportedly, it has an estimated range of 250 kilometres with possible provision to upgrade it to 400 kilometres.1 The S-400 has the capability to counter threats from ballistic missiles up to 400 kilometres away, as well as from Unmanned Ariel Vehicles (UAVs). This deal was signed despite the Trump Administration’s threat to impose sanctions on India under Washington’s recently adopted Countering of America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). However, so far, no sanction has been clamped on India. The S-400 system is expected to have a quantum impact on the strategic stability of South Asia. While elevating its escalation dominance in the South Asian region for a variety of reasons, India is not only intentionally or unintentionally accelerating the severity of the security dilemma by increasing its security while reducing the security of its adversary, but is also potentially producing conventional asymmetry between India and Pakistan. Presumably, the more the conventional asymmetry is built up between the two, the more complex it will be to mitigate the security dilemma, and the more difficult it will be to build trust and cooperation under the conditions of the security dilemma.
In addition to the security dilemma and conventional asymmetry on a number of deterrent force mega projects because of the escalation dominance that goes into India’s advantage, India will certainly be highly confident, particularly in the presence of such rapid forces development and modernization ventures that may develop into unique cognitive inferences and beliefs held by India’s military and civilian leadership that they may successfully undertake pre-emptive counterforce strikes against the Pakistani deterrent forces before they are even deployed or used against the former. India could also develop certain flawed inferences and beliefs that they could initiate limited strikes against certain targets in Pakistan without even letting Pakistan deploy its nuclear forces, and even if Pakistan were to deploy its deterrent forces, India would then either intercept these using, say, incoming ballistic or cruise missiles through its deployed defensive forces or quickly pre-empt them before they are used for retaliatory purposes against India. Reacting according to general inferences and beliefs without realising what the other side may do is mostly flawed and dangerous for the policymakers.2 This in turn could have unintended consequences for South Asian strategic stability, especially when there is a high chance of rapid escalation from a minor crisis to a larger military conflict, consequently leading to the unthinkable catastrophe that no one wants. Thus, the Indian security leadership’s beliefs about waging a limited war for limited military or political objectives could quickly accelerate into a larger war between the South Asian rivals.
Fearing these developments and force modernization by India, Pakistan is actively producing effective countermeasures in order not only to plug the widening deterrence gaps, but also to convince its adversary through the logic of deterrence by denial and punishment—that is, if India attempts to pre-empt Pakistani deterrent forces inside Pakistan despite the reality that Pakistan also possess credible nuclear forces, then Pakistan’s security leadership may communicate by sending a clear message to India that this will have unintended consequences with an unacceptable punishment that would benefit neither of the South Asia rivals. The cognitive inferences and the system of beliefs that India and Pakistan have developed against each other in their doctrinal postures for limited strikes and retaliations are fraught with potential risks of escalation and accidental war in South Asia. For example, when it comes to competing military strategies in South Asia, India considers that it may have developed the capability to wage limited pre-emptive strikes without letting Pakistan use its nuclear forces, while Pakistan may have developed inferences that Indian security leadership might not trigger a massive retaliation if and when Pakistan uses its short-range nuclear forces when absolutely required. These instances may create a vacuum when each side considers the other side is bluffing, thereby raising the prospect of accidental escalation that could quickly spiral out of control.
In sum, the major concepts with regard to India’s evolving nuclear strategy highlighted briefly here are linked conceptually with each other, and each of these intriguing concepts has particular meaning and policy implications for the South Asian region, as this volume attempts to analyse in the subsequent chapters. First, it is important to elaborate the significance of this study, followed by brief summaries of each chapter.
Significance of the Study: What New Concepts does this Volume Talk About?
This volume primarily covers India’s evolving deterrent force posture as part of its broader nuclear strategy in South Asia in order to find out how the induction of new technologies, restructuring of deterrent force postures, and competing military strategies bring challenges to India’s Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) and Command, Control, Communication, and Intelligence (C3I) capabilities when both China and Pakistan may develop effective countermeasures to create vulnerabilities for India’s ISR/C3I assets in general and South Asian strategic stability in particular. In addition, this volume analyses important and emerging aspects of India’s evolving deterrent force posture. It attempts to go beyond what is mentioned in the existing literature, lays down a detailed conceptual framework under the essentials of nuclear revolution, and attempts to make a promising contribution to the existing literature in areas not substantially covered by previous authors. This volume systematically covers key futuristic aspects of Indian deterrent forces as part of its evolving nuclear strategy. The study attempts to be different and innovative in multiple aspects from the previous studies on South Asian nuclear issues. For example, credible studies in the past merely covered the historical narrative of various issues. These issues within the existing literature are part of the historical analysis, which undoubtedly is important to understand the contemporary challenges within South Asia. Moreover, some books cover the political aspects of either Pakistan or India. Others cover the socio-economic imperatives of South Asia. Still others largely talk about the South Asian nuclear weapons development programme while linking strategic weapons with the deterrence stability and instability paradox. However, this study covers India’s evolving deterrent force posture underpinned by the theory of nuclear revolution when it comes to combinations of conventional and nuclear forces development and the strategic implications it intentionally or unintentionally poses for the South Asian region in particular. This volume talks about how the contemporary restructuring of India’s evolving deterrent force posture influences India’s nuclear strategy in general and how this could affect the polices of its adversaries: primarily China and Pakistan. This is not substantially discussed in the existing literature covering the strategic and nuclear issues of South Asia. The volume attempts to examine why and how India has restructured its evolvin...