America’s withdrawal from one of the most important arms control treaties of our time is the result of a changing nuclear landscape that challenges policymakers in New Delhi as well.
US president Donald Trump’s announcement to withdraw from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia may have received scant attention in India, but in the West, it has already fueled concerns about a third world war involving nuclear weapons. This may seem alarmist but the fact is that Washington’s decision to walk away from one of its most significant arms control agreements with Moscow has important implications for global security--which India cannot ignore, especially as it deals with a changing nuclear landscape in its own backyard.
Signed during the Cold War, the 1987 INF treaty prohibited the US and the former Soviet Union from developing and deploying ground-based intermediate range ballistic and cruise missiles. However, the treaty did not cover sea-based and air-launched missiles and was only applicable to the US and Russia. This wasn’t a problem at the time, and the treaty was in effective in bringing the two superpowers back from the brink of nuclear war.
Three decades later, however, the situation has changed--with China, North Korea, Pakistan and India all having intermediate-range land missiles. For the US, China’s arsenal is as much a matter of concern as that of Russia who it has accused of cheating on the treaty. US officials including national security adviser John Bolton argue that China’s arsenal poses a threat to US assets and allies in the region--and needs to be brought under an INF-like treaty. China, of course, has little reason to join such a treaty--and, for that matter, so does India.
But that being said, China’s growing presence in the Indo-Pacific is a matter of concern for India, which also finds reflection in Pakistan’s threat perceptions; thereby, creating a new set of concerns and conditions that could destabilise the region. Indeed, this problem is already taking shape as Pakistan follows India’s quest for sea-based nuclear deterrence.
Earlier this year, Pakistan conducted a second round of tests for the Babur-3 nuclear-capable submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM), following the first one in January 2017. It is expected that the Babur-3 will be mated with the Agosta 90B diesel-electric submarine. This should give Pakistan an assured second-strike capability--while land-based and air-borne systems can be destroyed in a first attack, nuclear submarines are considered to be much less vulnerable.
India already has a small sea-based deterrent force. In April 2016, the K-4 nuclear-capable submarine-launched ballistic missile was successfully test-fired from aboard the INS Arihant, India’s indigenously built nuclear submarine, which was inducted into service in August that year; thereby, completing India’s nuclear triad. This was in keeping with India’s nuclear doctrine which enumerates a no-first-use policy but also makes clear that a nuclear attack on India will result in massive retaliation with nuclear weapons. For India, to secure such second strike capability, survivability of its nuclear weapons arsenal is key and hence the need for a sea-based force.
In other words, India’s naval nuclearisation--aimed at China, not Pakistan--buttresses New Delhi’s NFU policy and brings strategic stability. Pakistan’s naval nuclearisation, on the other hand, stems from its lack of trust in Indian NFU and is an effort to play catch-up. This is understandable but still destabilizing--both from a strategic as well as tactical point of view.
This may seem counterintuitive: if having nuclear weapons at sea enhances the survivability of Pakistan’s strategic forces, then that should add to strategic stability because Pakistan would have less of a use-it-or-lose-it dilemma. However, unlike India, Pakistan maintains an ambiguous nuclear policy for the use of nuclear weapons. This is meant to deter India, but it also implies that India would have to consider and prepare for a Pakistani first attack.
Almost every scenario involving a Pakistani first use begins with a Pakistan-sponsored spectacular terror attack on Indian soil like the 2001 Parliament attack or the 2008 Mumbai attacks. India sought to respond to the former with a show of force along the international border but Pakistan wasn’t perturbed. This led Indian strategists to propose a more pro-active response--a shallow-thrust offensive into Pakistan to seize a small piece of land to be used as a post-conflict bargaining chip. This strategy, known as Cold Start, isn’t official but it was acknowledged by the Army chief last year and the 2017 Indian military doctrine allows ample space for a similar proactive policy.
Pakistan responded to Cold Start by fielding tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) or low-yield short-range nukes which could be used on the battlefield. These seek to lower the nuclear threshold and allow Islamabad greater control of the escalatory ladder (which, otherwise, is in favour of the conventionally bigger power). Moreover, Pakistan justified its TNWs within the framework of full spectrum deterrence, moving away from credible minimum deterrence. Add to this the nukes at sea, and the intended effect, as Abhijnan Rej describes it, is to tie India’s hands in a nuclear bind: If India activates Cold Start, Pakistan can use its TNWs to repel the attack, while its nuclear-tipped missiles at sea would deter an Indian retaliatory attack.
On paper, this seems like a water-tight strategy but it isn’t. For one, TNWs only make the situation even more precarious, as Sylvia Mishra explains. And even with TNWs in the field, there is still strategic space for India to explore pro-active conventional military options against Pakistan as the 2016 ‘surgical strikes’ showed. Second, with regard to nuclear submarines, there is ample reason to doubt their survivability, as Ankit Panda and Vipin Narang point out.
Third, putting nuclear weapons on conventional vessels is extremely dangerous for any country and could lead to accidents at sea--for example, if its adversaries are unable to distinguish between conventional and non-conventional submarines or if there is a break in the command-and-control system. At some point, Pakistan will have to choose between submarine-based weapons that are ‘totally secure’ or ‘readily usable’ in a real crisis, and Christopher Clary and Ankit Panda suggest that it will in all probability go with the latter--making both the country and its nuclear weapons less safe.
But Pakistan isn’t the only state moving in the direction of ‘easy nukes’. In recent years, Russia has been toying with the idea of using TNWs in a conventional war in a “escalate-to-deescalate” strategy . And the US has responded, in the 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review, by advocating for “useable” nuclear weapons and full spectrum deterrence. These pose a challenge to policymakers across the world as they seek to manage old hostilities while responding to new developments in technology and geo-politics.
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