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India’s submarine rivalry with China in the second nuclear age 

The Strategist , 15 Feb 2019|Ramesh Thakur There are substantially fewer nuclear weapons today than at the height of the Cold War. Yet the overall risks of nuclear war—by design, accident, rogue launch or system error—have grown in the second nuclear age. That’s because more countries with fragile command-and-control systems possess these deadly weapons. Terrorists want them, and they are vulnerable to human error, system malfunction and cyberattack.

The site of great-power rivalry has shifted from Europe to Asia with crisscrossing threat perceptions between three or more nuclear-armed states simultaneously. With North Korea now possessing a weaponised ICBM capability, the US must posture for and contend with three potential nuclear adversaries—China, Russia and North Korea.

The only continent to have experienced the wartime use of atomic weapons, Asia is also the only continent on which nuclear stockpiles are growing. The total stockpiles in Asia make up only 3% of global nuclear arsenals, but warhead numbers are increasing in all four Asian nuclear-armed states (China, India, North Korea and Pakistan). None of them has yet ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, although China is a signatory. Asia stands alone in nuclear testing in this century.

The Cold War nuclear dyads have morphed into interlinked nuclear chains, with a resulting greater complexity of deterrence relations between the nuclear-armed states. Thus, as I’ve previously argued, the tit-for-tat suspensions of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty by the US and Russia has a significant China dimension. The nuclear relationship between India and Pakistan is historically, conceptually, politically, strategically and operationally deeply intertwined with China. While Pakistan’s nuclear policy is India-specific, the primary external driver of India’s policy has always been China.

……….the race to attain a continuous at-sea deterrence capability through nuclear-armed submarines is potentially destabilising in Asia because the regional powers lack well-developed operational concepts, robust and redundant command-and-control systems, and secure communications over submarines at sea……… https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/indias-submarine-rivalry-with-china-in-the-second-nuclear-age/

February 16, 2019 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, India, weapons and war