CNS Reports

by Gaurav Kampani, CNS Research Associate, May 2000

As the Clinton administration prepares to make a decision on whether the United States should field a limited National Missile Defense (NMD), it has focused attention on the strategic response from the Russian Federation and China. However, the potential impact of NMD on South Asia should not be neglected.

Neither India nor Pakistan perceives any nuclear threat from the United States. Neither do they envisage fielding nuclear forces to target the United States. Yet any US decision that affects global nuclear arms control and provokes strong negative reactions from the Russian Federation and China, will echo strongly in South Asia.

The Link Between Global Nuclear Disarmament and Regional Unproliferation[1]

One of the principal drivers behind India's nuclear weaponization is the doctrine of equality in security and disarmament. In the context of nuclear proliferation this means that India would accept a nuclear rollback only as part of a globally negotiated, time-bound, and verifiable nuclear disarmament regime. Unless that happens, India will build, deploy, and maintain a minimal, survivable, and credible deterrent. This doctrine is one of the principle reasons why India continues to reject the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). And it was partially in pursuit of this doctrine that India blasted its way into the nuclear club in 1974 and then reiterated its de facto nuclear status in May 1998.

Should the United States decide to deploy a limited NMD, it would come as a serious blow to the post-Cold War nuclear arms control regime. Possible Russian responses might include halting further reductions of its nuclear forces; qualitative improvements through the deployment of multiple warheads and sophisticated penetration aids would likely follow. Russian officials have also warned that withdrawal from a number of arms control treaties, including START I is likely, and START II will certainly not enter into force. Similarly, China, whose small long-range nuclear force is likely to be rendered impotent by NMD, would likely accelerate the modernization and quantitative expansion of its arsenal.

The cumulative impact of these decisions would be to halt any further decreases in the nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapon states. Current US negotiating positions with Russia on strategic arms control reveal that the United States foresees for itself and Russia a strategically diverse and robust nuclear force in the future. Worse, the United States is not averse to Russia maintaining its nuclear forces on a destabilizing launch-on-warning posture as the price for accepting a limited NMD.

The trouble with US nonproliferation policy with regard to South Asia is that it is contradictory. Whereas the United States advocates a regional nuclear rollback, its policy on missile defense threatens to wreck any meaningful efforts towards global nuclear disarmament.

India's nuclear lobbyists establish a linkage between global nuclear disarmament and regional proliferation. They have long argued that the nuclear weapon states have no intention of undertaking comprehensive nuclear disarmament; that they are interested in perpetuating the divide between the "nuclear haves" and "have nots" in order to maintain their nuclear hegemony. Should the global nuclear arms control agenda stall, this argument will gain strength. It will lead to a renewed drive behind the Indian government's plans to build and deploy nuclear weapons. The belief that nuclear weapons will remain in perpetuity will bolster the case of those who argue that India needs nuclear weapons to keep up with the nuclear "Joneses" in the international system.

Pakistan, which has always sought to match its larger neighbor and maintain parity, will also be pulled into this nuclear competition. Pakistan, too, has rejected the NPT for its unequal obligations. However, Pakistan's security interests are inextricably tied to India's military posture. The overall outcome will be an increasing salience of nuclear weapons in South Asia, which will not only come as a blow to regional arms control initiatives, but also serve as an incentive for other potential proliferators to follow suit.

Chinese Strategic Reaction and South Asia

China has warned that it will respond to an NMD by accelerating its nuclear modernization program; it has also threatened to expand its strategic deterrent quantitatively. China is thus likely to invest in a more robust nuclear triad. Within the triad, as China's strategic long-range strike programs come to fruition, single warhead liquid-fuel missiles will be replaced with longer-range, multiple warhead, solid-fuel systems.

A US NMD could also force changes in China's deployment posture. China currently lacks the technical capability to maintain its nuclear force on a high-alert status. Warheads are stored separately from their missile launchers. Because Chinese missiles are liquid-fueled, they require lengthy launch preparations. China's current nuclear modernization plans will bring it within striking distance of deploying a credible and survivable deterrent. However, NMD could prove to be the decisive factor that might persuade Chinese leaders to transform a small strategic deterrent into a full nuclear war-fighting capability. The theoretical possibility of a disarming US nuclear first-strike under cover of missile defenses, coupled with technological improvements in China's strategic assets and command, control, communications, and intelligence capabilities, could also force a re-appraisal of China's relaxed deployment posture. A possible Chinese response could be to maintain its strategic deterrent on a higher state of alert.

A modernized Chinese nuclear force and more robust posture will have a negative cascading effect in South Asia. Notwithstanding China's declared intentions, changes in its force capabilities and deployment posture will influence the nuclear debate in India. Likewise, New Delhi's nuclear decisions will affect Pakistan's strategic response.

At present, there is a divide between the nuclear moderates and the hardliners in India. The moderates support the concept of a minimal and de-alerted nuclear force in the low hundreds and oppose further nuclear tests. Also, the moderates support India's signature and ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and eventual accession to a multilaterally negotiated Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT). The hardliners, on the other hand, favor a maximalist posture with a triad nuclear force comprising 400 to 1,000 nuclear warheads. They advocate the resumption of nuclear testing to develop lighter thermonuclear and enhanced radiation warheads for a potential MIRVed ballistic missile force; the hardliners are also skeptical of the value of an FMCT.

Thus far, the moderates, led by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and his Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, have prevailed in this debate. If current trends persist through this decade, India will probably field a modest nuclear force in the low hundreds. There is also the possibility that India might participate in the global nonproliferation regime with the exception of the NPT. Pakistan, which also favors "strategic restraint," is likely to adopt a similar policy.

However quantitative and qualitative improvements in China's nuclear capability would undermine the moderates in India and Pakistan. A higher Chinese alert status would invariably increase threat perceptions in New Delhi and Islamabad successively; it would intensify pressure on governments in both capitals to accelerate the integration of nuclear weapons into their respective armed forces and improve operational readiness - actions that will have adverse consequences for nuclear crisis stability in South Asia.

An NMD could thus create pressures on the governments in India and Pakistan to modernize their nuclear arsenals through the resumption of nuclear tests, and thereby prevent efforts to bring the CTBT into force. Moreover, it could also stymie efforts to negotiate a global FMCT. Although India and Pakistan have ruled out an immediate moratorium on fissile material production, neither country is averse to accepting a fissile material cap as part of a globally negotiated treaty. Both countries hope to use the interregnum until such a treaty is negotiated, to augment their stocks of fissile material. However, the expansion of China's nuclear arsenal could change India and Pakistan's strategic calculus, causing both countries to seek delays in negotiating an FMCT.

China could also react by ending its informal commitment to abide by the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). Chinese officials have warned the United States against modifying the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and deploying an NMD or cooperating with Taiwan on a Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system. Chinese officials believe that TMD would complement an NMD. They also draw links between offensive and defensive missile systems and have argued that Taiwan could use technologies acquired for a missile defense to develop offensive systems.

Should China interpret US-Taiwanese cooperation on theater missile defense as a violation of the MTCR, it could retaliate by resuming missile sales to South Asia and the Middle East. For example, China sold complete M-11 ballistic missiles to Pakistan in the early 1990s. It also helped the latter build a missile production plant in Fatehgunj. Although China has stopped transferring complete missile systems, a 1999 CIA National Intelligence Estimate concludes that, "China continues to contribute to missile programs in some countries." Resumption of Chinese missile sales to Pakistan above the MTCR limit would invariably exacerbate the missile race between India and Pakistan.

The other link to South Asia might be joint Chinese-Russian or an independent Chinese decision to develop its version of a national missile defense system. An Indian government that finds the credibility of its strategic deterrent reduced by a Chinese national missile defense capability would be less amenable to any form of nuclear arms control.

Following the US example, several leading Indian defense scientists such as the Scientific Advisor to the Indian government, Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam, have begun lobbying for a limited anti-missile defense that would provide protection against a small Pakistani nuclear force. Apparently, India has begun exploring the feasibility of modifying and deploying Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles in an anti-ballistic mode; it is also seeking joint cooperation with Russia to develop anti-ballistic missile systems. An Indian national missile defense would force Pakistan to seek countermeasures or to expand and diversify its nuclear arsenal.

Strategic Mimicry: The Effect on India's National Security Perceptions and Strategic Culture

A US decision to deploy NMD, because of the military and strategic contents of the decision, its ideological undercurrents of absolute security, negative consequences for global nuclear disarmament, adverse impact on the nonproliferation regime, and the aggressive unilateralism inherent in the US policy, will influence strategic beliefs in South Asia perceptibly. Above all, NMD would provide the strategic elites in the region a paradigm to remodel their own national security behavior.

Arguably, the effects of the US decision will be felt more strongly in India than in Pakistan. Unlike Pakistan, which is more concerned with maintaining regional parity with India, India's ambitions are extra-regional. India regards itself as an emerging great power. India's global ambitions and history of colonial subjugation have made its power elites acutely sensitive to notions of equality, especially in matters relating to sovereignty and national security. Negative images of India being a "soft" or weak state top these elites' self-perceptions. They share visions of transforming India into an "effective" state by partially reproducing and adapting the development and security paradigms of their more successful counterparts.

Indian analysts are thus likely to interpret the US decision as the beginning of the end of strategic nuclear arms control that had its origins in the late 1960s. With NMD conceivably interrupting any further reductions in the US-Russian strategic arsenals and forcing a Chinese buildup, it would signal for India the beginning of a post-Cold War nuclear arms race. The NMD will symbolize the limits of strategic nuclear arms reductions. Its key message would be that nuclear arms are central to national security and hardliners in India and Pakistan are likely to conclude that they are better off keeping their nuclear weapons and their delivery systems.

For both India and Pakistan, NMD would also signify a shift from multilateral efforts at preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems to unilateral defensive measures, the most powerful indicator yet from the United States that it doubts the efficacy of the nonproliferation regime in stemming such threats, and that proliferation of long-range delivery systems such as ballistic missiles and other weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical, and biological, is inevitable. The lesson drawn in India and Pakistan would be therefore to continue investments in nuclear weapon and missile capabilities, not only to deter identified nuclear adversaries, but also as a hedge against strategic uncertainty.

A return to unilateralism in US foreign policy would be to signal the absence of confidence in global nonproliferation norms, institutions, and regimes. It would communicate the presumption that states must rely on their own resources and technical means to deter and ward off threats to national security, as against investing comparable resources in building a common global community of security interests. This would complement the argument of nuclear protagonists in India and Pakistan that nuclear weapons are essential to safeguard national security and retain strategic autonomy.

Although Indian analysts find incredible the US's identification of ballistic missile threats from "rogue" states as justification for a continental missile defense, they regard it as symbolic of the role that ideology and domestic politics play in national security decision-making; for them it is also symbolic of the US's aggressive national security culture that pro-actively seeks to identify the remotest conceivable threat and then institutes measures to defeat it. Although disdainful of the US's alarmist attitude, Indian strategic analysts also admiringly seek to imitate such aggressive cultural behavioral norms.

Finally, several Indian analysts regard the US's propensity to pursue its national security agenda unilaterally, and often in complete disregard to the legitimate security concerns of other states, as the most critical evidence of US hegemony in the post-Cold War international system. In their view, one increasingly shared by the strategic community in Russia and China, there is thus an urgent need to create countervailing strategic military capabilities to restore some discipline to US behavior.

Conclusion:

A US decision to deploy a limited NMD will have negative and destabilizing effects in South Asia. It will come at the expense of furthering global nuclear disarmament. Because India and Pakistan draw linkages between global disarmament and regional unproliferation, the goal of seeking a nuclear rollback in South Asia will recede further on the horizon. Worse, changes in China's nuclear modernization and deployment plans in response to a US NMD will have a cascading impact in India and then Pakistan, outcomes that will probably lead to the defeat of the US attempt at institutionalizing some form of "strategic restraint" in the region. More alarmingly, pressures for modernization might force governments in New Delhi and Islamabad to break their self-imposed nuclear test moratorium; resumption in nuclear testing would prevent efforts to bring the CTBT into force. Similarly, India and Pakistan might seek delays in negotiating an FMCT. Finally, NMD will provide a military, security, organizational, and cultural model for the power elites in the region to mimic, not only in the hopes of advancing their own states' security interests, but also to keep pace with emerging paradigms of modernity and security in the international system.

[1] The term "unproliferation" pertains to disarmament or eliminating capabilities.

 

Author(s): Gaurav Kampani Related Resources: Americas, Asia Pacific, Missiles, Reports Date Created: 30 May 2000 Date Updated: -NA-