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The State of Nuclear Instability in South Asia: India, Pakistan, and China

LAWFARE Debak Das, Sunday, September 3, 2023,

The uneasy nuclear balance between India and Pakistan is being unsettled by India’s competition with China and China’s competition with the United States.

Editor’s Note: The India-Pakistan nuclear dynamic has long been a concern, indeed a nightmare, for security analysts. The Korbel School’s Debak Das argues that the growing India-China rivalry, and China’s growing nuclear competition with the United States, add new dimensions to this long-standing problem and create additional risks for nuclear escalation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington, D.C., in June has prompted a debate on the United States’ bet on India as a military partner to check China in the Indo-Pacific. A key part of this debate is the nuclear relationship among India, China, and Pakistan. Twenty-five years ago—in May 1998—India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons, initiating a trilateral nuclear rivalry in Southern Asia.

Since then, these three states have steadily increased their numbers of nuclear warheads and their fissile material production. The uneasy strategic stability in the region is also marked by technological advances in missile technology, counterforce capabilities, and an expanding spectrum of nuclear delivery vehicles available to every side. India and China’s repeated border clashes along the Himalayas and broader competition in the Indo-Pacific add a layer of complexity to the problem.  This rivalry has led to developments in military technology and organization—especially India’s new Integrated Rocket Force—that increase the risk of escalation in the region. Added with Pakistan’s devolving domestic political environment characterized by renewed civilian-military clashes and India’s statements about abandoning its no-first-use policy, there are a number of different pathways to nuclear instability in the region that should generate broad concern in the international community.

Increasing Vulnerability From Nuclear Modernization

Both India and Pakistan have consistently modernized their nuclear forces over the past two decades. Each is aiming to ensure that they can match each other at lower levels of escalation. These technological advancements have led to increased vulnerability for both sides at different levels of the escalation ladder. This ranges from the ability to use low-yield nuclear weapons in specific battlefields as well as being able to conduct large strategic countervalue strikes on each other’s cities.

Pakistan has adopted a strategy of “full spectrum deterrence” that allows for the use of nuclear weapons in response to low-scale conventional war, even considerably below the nuclear threshold. As a part of this strategy, Islamabad has introduced tactical/battlefield nuclear weapons with short ranges—like the Hatf IX Nasr missile, which has a 60-kilometer range. It has also built a number of ground- and air-launched nuclear-capable cruise missiles, with ranges between 350 and 700 kilometers. Pakistan also introduced its Babur-3 nuclear-capable sea-based cruise missile in 2017 after India commissioned a nuclear submarine.

India, meanwhile, has been reported to be building flexible preemptive counterforce nuclear systems. These include more precise nuclear delivery systems with short ranges, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle systems on ballistic missiles, and a growing arsenal of cruise missiles. India is also building a new series of surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, Pralay (with a range of 150 to 500 kilometers), alongside its existing land- and sea-based cruise missiles, which have a range of 1,000 kilometers. To increase the survivability of its nuclear forces, New Delhi has built a “triad” of delivery systems with the ability to launch nuclear weapons from air-, land-, and sea-based platforms. It is reinforcing this triad with plans to build three more nuclear submarines—in addition to the one already in service, INS Arihant—presumably with the goal of eventually having a “continuous-at-sea-deterrence” patrol capability, like the navies of the United Kingdom, Russia, the United States, and France.

In their attempts to increase the vulnerability of their adversary, both India and Pakistan have increased the range of their nuclear weapons. …………………………………………………….

Emulating China: India’s New Integrated Rocket Force

Alongside the modernization of its nuclear weapons, India is currently restructuring its ballistic missile forces. New Delhi is creating an Integrated Rocket Force (IRF) that will contain both nuclear-capable and conventional ballistic and cruise missiles. ……………………………..

India’s creation of the IRF is a mistake. The IRF will likely place nuclear-capable and conventional ballistic missiles within the same force; this will change India’s present policy of ballistic missiles being dedicated to only carrying nuclear weapons. Using the same missiles in both conventional and nuclear roles increases the chance of inadvertent escalation…………………………………………………………………………………

China in Nuclear South Asia

In the past two decades, China’s role in South Asia has grown exponentially, especially along India’s border, which has further complicated the nuclear relationship between India and Pakistan.

Sino-Indian altercations along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Himalayas, along with growing naval competition in the Indo-Pacific, have shifted India’s priorities with nuclear weapons modernization toward addressing threats from China. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Indeed, what is at work in the subcontinent is not just a “trilateral nuclear competition”—it is a quadrilateral competition. China is responding to the United States’ nuclear modernization and ballistic missile defense. India is responding to China’s modernization and force expansion. And Pakistan is attempting to ensure that it does not lag behind India by maintaining some form of nuclear parity at all levels of escalation.

Devolving Domestic Politics and No First Use

In addition to expanding nuclear arsenals, both India and Pakistan face different challenges to nuclear stability from their respective domestic politics. The devolving political situation in Pakistan has created new possibilities for ways in which the government could lose command and control of its nuclear weapons. The current state of domestic political turmoil between former Prime Minister Imran Khan (and his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) and the military establishment under army chief General Asim Munir has sparked considerable chaos. …………………………………………

On the Indian side, the government’s increasing ambivalence toward its no-first-use policy is a clear threat to nuclear stability in the region. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

What Washington Must Not Do

Recent calls by scholars such as Ashley Tellis to arm India with thermonuclear weapons and naval nuclear reactor designs present a dangerous policy option. ……………………………………………………………..

Twenty-five years after the overt nuclearization of South Asia, there are enough drivers of strategic instability in the India-Pakistan-China nuclear relationship. The United States needs to be cognizant of this as it crafts an Indo-Pacific policy aimed at countering China. Indeed, it should aim to deemphasize the nuclear dimension of this competition and avoid entangling India in a four-way nuclear competition among the United States, China, India, and Pakistan.  https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-state-of-nuclear-instability-in-south-asia-india-pakistan-and-china

September 5, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | ASIA, politics