How Nuclear South Asia is Like Cold War Europe

Abstract

Conventional wisdom states that the stability-instability paradox does not explain the effect of nuclear proliferation on the conflict propensity of South Asia, and that nuclear weapons have had a different and more dangerous impact in South Asia than Cold War Europe. I argue that the paradox explains nuclear South Asia; that the similarities between nuclear South Asia and Cold War Europe are strong; and that conventional instability does not cause revisionist challenges in the long run. I develop and probe a psychological causal mechanism that explains the impact of nuclear weapons on Cold War Europe and South Asia. Following the ten-month mobilized crisis in 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may have adopted a more moderate foreign policy toward India after experiencing fear of imminent nuclear war, as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev did forty years earlier. I argue that the stability-instability paradox explains Cold War Europe and nuclear South Asia and will, conditional on Iranian and North Korean revisionism, predict the impact of nuclear weapon development on these states' conflict propensities.

KEYWORDS:

• South Asia
• Pakistan
• India
• Iran
• Cold War
• nuclear deterrence
• nuclear weapons
• nuclear proliferation

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author would like to thank S. Paul Kapur, Patrick Morgan, Alan Jacobs, Patrick James, Mark Paradis, and the anonymous referees for their comments. Any remaining errors are his own.

Notes

1. S. Paul Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability: Why Nuclear South Asia is Not Like Cold War Europe,’” in Scott D. Sagan, ed., Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009) pp. 184-218. This is a revised version of “India and Pakistan's Unstable Peace: 'Why Nuclear South Asia is Not Like Cold War Europe,’” International Security 30 (Fall 2005), pp. 127–52. All references here are to the 2009 version. See also S. Paul Kapur, “Ten Years of Instability in Nuclear South Asia,” International Security 33 (Fall 2008), pp. 71–94, and S. Paul Kapur Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).

2. For the original statement of the paradox, see Glenn H. Snyder, “The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror,” in Paul Seabury, ed., The Balance of Power (San Francisco, CA: Chandler, 1965), pp. 184–201, pp. 198–99.

3. According to a simple Google search, October 10, 2013.

4. Robert Rauchhaus, “Evaluating the Nuclear Peace Hypothesis: A Quantitative Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (April 2009), pp. 258–77, and Frank C. Zagare, “NATO, Regional Escalation and Flexible Response,” Journal of Peace Research 29 (November 1992), pp. 435–54 . For other analyses of the paradox, see Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 19–23; Sumit Ganguly, “Indo-Pakistani Nuclear Issues and the Stability/Instability Paradox,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 18 (October-December 1995), pp. 325–34; Michael Krepon and Chris Gagne, eds., The Stability-Instability Paradox: Nuclear Weapons and Brinksmanship in South Asia, Report No. 38, Henry L. Stimson Center, June 2001; and Michael Krepon, “The Stability-Instability Paradox, Misperception, and Escalation Control in South Asia,” in Michael Krepon, Rodney W. Jones, and Ziad Haider, eds., Escalation Control and the Nuclear Option in South Asia (Washington, DC: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2004), <www.stimson.org/images/uploads/research-pdfs/ESCCONTROLCHAPTER1.pdf>.

5. For another argument that the end of the Cold War has not changed the strategic consequences of nuclear proliferation as much as commonly assumed, see Francis J. Gavin, “Same As it Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism, Proliferation and the Cold War,” International Security 34 (Winter 2010), pp. 7–37.

6. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,” p. 187.

7. Of course, without a specification of what these probabilities are, these claims might speak past each other.

8. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,” p. 187.

9. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 187; Lowell Dittmer, “South Asia's Security Dilemma,” Asian Survey 41 (November–December 2001), p. 903.

10. Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,” p. 187. The reference is to Sumit Ganguly, Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions Since 1947 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 122–23.

11. Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,” p. 187.

12. See Ganguly, “Indo-Pakistani Nuclear Issues and the Stability/Instability Paradox,” Sumit Ganguly, “Nuclear Stability in South Asia,” International Security 33 (Fall 2008), pp. 45–70, and Sumit Ganguly and R. Harrison Wagner, “India and Pakistan: Bargaining in the Shadow of Nuclear War,” Journal of Strategic Studies 27 (September 2004), pp. 479–507.

13. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,” p. 187.

14. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 185. See also pp. 189, 193.

15. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 193.

16. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 193.

17. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 196.

18. Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India-Pakistan Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2005), p. 153.

19. Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent, p. 123, footnote 44.

20. Ashley Tellis, C. Christine Fair, and Jamison Jo Medby, Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002), p. 21. Christine Fair conducted the interviews in Pakistan and reported that most of her interviewees believed that India's isolation after its nuclear test loomed large in Pakistani strategy at Kargil. C. Christine Fair, Assistant Professor, Center for Peace and Security Studies, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, interview with author, Seattle, Washington, September 2, 2011

21. Bruce Riedel, “American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House,” Center for the Advanced Study of India Policy Paper Series, University of Pennsylvania, 2002.

22. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,” p. 192.

23. Brajesh Mishra, former Indian National Security Adviser to Prime Minister Vajpayee, interview with author, New Delhi, April 2010.

24. Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,” p. 196.

25. Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 196.

26. Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 189.

27. Kapur, “Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 188, footnote 19.

28. Matthew Evangelista, “Stalin's Postwar Army Reappraised,” International Security 7 (Winter 1982–83), pp. 110–38, quotation is on p. 111. He elaborated (p. 119) that when one considers that “Soviet divisional manpower has historically numbered 50 to 60 percent of Western divisional manpower, and that Soviet divisions have far fewer support troops, the picture looks different. … an image of rough parity emerges.”

29. Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961–1969 (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 142.

30. Barry R. Posen, “Is NATO Decisively Outnumbered?,” International Security 12 (Spring 1988), pp. 186–202, quotations are on pp. 189 and 200. See also Barry R. Posen, “Measuring the European Conventional Balance: Coping with Complexity in Threat Assessment,” International Security 9 (Winter 1984–1985), pp. 47–88.

31. John J. Mearsheimer, “Numbers, Strategy and the European Balance,” International Security 12 (Spring 1988), pp. 174–185, quotations are on pp. 184 and 180–81.

32. Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 2002), p. 422.

33. James G. Blight, Bruce J. Allyn, and David A. Welch, Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse, (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1993), p. 254. See Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Nafatli, Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006), p. 6; William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003).

34. For another argument that notes the similarities between Soviet strategy at Cuba and Pakistani strategy at Kargil, see Robert Jervis, “Kargil, Deterrence and International Relations Theory,” in Peter R. Lavoy, ed., Asymmetric Warfare in South Asia: The Causes and Consequences of the Kargil Conflict (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 377–97.

35. Michael Horowitz, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons and International Conflict: Does Experience Matter?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53 (April 2009), pp. 234–57 (see especially pp. 244, 247–50); Erik Gartzke, “Nuclear Proliferation Dynamics and Conventional Conflict,” May 1, 2010, <http://dss.ucsd.edu/∼egartzke/papers/nuketime_05032010.pdf>

36. The nature of Pakistani sponsorship of terrorist groups in Kashmir and India since at least 2002 is unclear, and could range from actively coordinating missions and providing weapons and training, to the provision of territorial sanctuary.

37. See Walter C. Ladwig III, “A Cold Start for Hot Wars? The Indian Army's New Limited War Doctrine,” International Security 32 (Winter 2007/2008) pp. 158–90.

38. Jervis, Kargil, deterrence and international relations theory, p. 383.

39. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,” p.185.

40. Kapur, ”Revisionist Ambitions, Conventional Capabilities, and Nuclear Instability,”, p. 201; Kapur, Ten Years of Instability in Nuclear South Asia, pp. 88–92.

41. Robert J. Art, “Coercive Diplomacy: What Do We Know?” in Robert J. Art and Patrick M. Cronin, eds., The United States and Coercive Diplomacy, (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003), pp. 359–420; Alexander George and William E. Simons, “Findings and Conclusions,” in Alexander George and William E. Simons, eds., The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy, Second Edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press: 1994), pp. 267–94.

42. For more detailed studies of Pakistani sponsorship of terrorism, see Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia (New York, NY: Penguin, 2008); Zahid Hussain, Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2008), and Farzana Shaikh, Making Sense of Pakistan (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009).

43. Horowitz, Does Experience Matter?

44. Kapur, ”Why Nuclear South Asia is Not Like Cold War Europe,” p. 201.

45. Kapur, ”Why Nuclear South Asia is Not Like Cold War Europe,”, p. 202.

46. Kapur, ”Why Nuclear South Asia is Not Like Cold War Europe,”, p. 202, footnote 95.

47. Michael D. Cohen, When Proliferation Causes Peace: Leaders and the Psychology of Nuclear Learning, unpublished book manuscript.

48. I use the definition of learning provided by Jack Levy. I define learning as a change of beliefs, degree of confidence in one's beliefs, or the development of new beliefs, skills, or procedures as a result of the observation and interpretation of experience. Jack S. Levy, “Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield,” International Organization 48 (Spring 1994), pp. 279–312.

49. Beliefs about imminent nuclear war refer to genuine beliefs that nuclear war is imminent. They are distinct from beliefs that recognize nuclear danger but not imminent nuclear escalation.

50. Snyder, The Balance of Power and the Balance of Terror, p. 199, italics added. Fear is defined here as dread of impending disaster that tends to cause intense urges to defend oneself by escaping a situation. It is differentiated from anxiety, which is an ineffable and unpleasant feeling of foreboding. See Arne Ohman, “Fear and Anxiety: Overlaps and Dissociations,” in Michael Lewis, Jeannette M. Haviland-Jones, and Lisa Feldman Barrett, eds., Handbook of Emotions, 3rd. ed. (New York, NY: Guilford Press, 2008), pp. 709–29, p. 710.

51. For an exception, see Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution.

52. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Waltz Responds to Sagan,” in Kenneth N. Waltz and Scott D. Sagan, eds., The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York, NY: Norton, 2003), p. 154.

53. Jennifer S. Lerner and Dacher Keltner, “Beyond valence: Toward a model of emotion-specific influences on judgment and choice,” Cognition and Emotion 14 (2000), pp. 473–93; Jennifer Lerner and Dacher Keltner, “Fear, Anger and Risk,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (July 2001), pp. 146–59.

54. Certainty is the degree to which future events seem predictable and comprehensible. Control is the tendency to which events seem to be brought about by individual agency or situational variables. See Craig A. Smith and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, “Patterns of cognitive appraisal in emotion,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48 (1985) pp. 813–38.

55. Lerner and Keltner, “Fear, Anger and Risk;” Jennifer Lerner, Roxana M. Gonzalez, Deborah A. Small, and Baruch Fischhoff, “Effects of fear and anger on perceived risks of terrorism: A national field experiment,” Psychological Science 14 (2003), 144–50; Baruch Fischhoff, Roxana M. Gonzalez, Jennifer S. Lerner, and Deborah A. Small, “Evolving judgments of terror risks: Foresight, hindsight, and emotion,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied 11 (2005), 124–39.

56. Lerner and Keltner, “Fear, Anger and Risk,” p. 150.

57. Lerner et al, “Effects of Fear and Anger,” p. 147.

58. See, for example, David DeSteno, Richard E. Petty, Duane T. Wegener, and Derek D. Rucker, “Beyond valence in the perception of likelihood: The role of emotion specificity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78 (March 2000), pp. 397–416; Larissa Z. Tiedens and Susan Linton, “Judgment under emotional certainty and uncertainty: The effects of specific emotions on information processing,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (December 2001), pp. 973–88.

59. Lerner and Keltner claim that events that are ambiguous in terms of control and predictability “should serve as inkblots that are open to interpretation,” hence magnifying the emotions’ effect on cognitions. Lerner and Keltner, “Fear, Anger and Risk,” pp. 151, 156.

60. Jervis, “Kargil, deterrence and international relations theory,” p. 379.

61. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976).

62. Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 241–42; Robert Jervis, Richard Ned Lebow, and Janice Gross Stein, Psychology and Deterrence, (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985); Jervis, “The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution.” For exceptions, see Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Jacques E.C. Hymans, The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions and Foreign Policy, (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Rose McDermott, “Emotions and War: An Evolutionary Model of Motivation,” in Manus I. Midlarsky, ed., Handbook of War Studies III: The Intrastate Dimension, (Ann Arbor, MI: University Of Michigan Press, 2009) pp. 30–62; Stephen P. Rosen, War and Human Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005); and Jonathan Mercer, “Emotional Beliefs,” International Organization 64 (Winter 2010), pp. 1–31.

63. University of Virginia, The Miller Center, Kremlin Decision Making Project, “Minutes #61 of 25 October 1962,” <http://web1.millercenter.org/kremlin/62_10_25.pdf>. These documents are stenographic accounts of Soviet State Meetings.

64. Norman Cousins, The Improbable Triumvirate: John F. Kennedy, Pope John, Nikita Khrushchev (New York, NY: Norton, 1972), p. 46.

65. Musharraf stated on June 17, 2002, that “in May 2002 we were compelled to show that we do not bluff.” Celia W. Dugger, “The Kashmir Brink,” New York Times, June 20, 2002, <www.nytimes.com/2002/06/20/world/the-kashmir-brink.html>.

66. Pervez Musharraf, former president of Pakistan, interview with author, Seattle, WA, March 14, 2010.

67. Cohen, When Proliferation Causes Peace.

68. Musharraf, interview with author. For South Asian perspectives on the Kargil war, see Ashok Krishna and P.R. Chari, eds., Kargil: The Tables Turned, (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001); Kargil Review Committee, From Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Review Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage, 2000); V.P. Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (New Delhi: Sage, 2000); and Y.M. Bammi, Kargil, 1999: The Impregnable Conquered (Noida: Gorkha, 2002).

69. For similar conclusions about Pakistani strategy in 2000, see Tellis et al, Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella, pp. 7, 30. Sponsoring the insurgency in Kashmir is also nuclear compellence because Musharraf believed that Pakistani nuclear weapons would have shielded Pakistan from Indian retaliation.

70. Karin Brulliard, “Pakistan's top military officials are worried about militant collaborators in their ranks,” Washington Post, May 27, 2011, <http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-05-27/world/35232078_1_osama-bin-laden-raid-senior-pakistani-intelligence-ashfaq-kayani>; Jane Perlez and Salman Masood, “Terror Ties Run Deep in Pakistan, Case Shows,” New York Times, July 27 2009 <www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/world/asia/27pstan.html>; Manoj Joshi, “No closure as yet on Mumbai,” Mail Today, November 24, 2010; “26/11 attacks: Lakhvi, Shah ‘believed to have confessed,’” Indian Express, July 29, 2009 <www.indianexpress.com/news/2611-attacks-lakhvi-shah-believed-to-have-confessed/495653/>; “Headley an ISI spy, groomed for 26/11 operation: US report,” Pioneer, January 3, 2011, <http://newindianexpress.com/world/article402442.ece?service=print>.

71. Angel Rabasa, Robert D. Blackwill, Peter Chalk, Kim Cragin, C. Christine Fair, Brian A. Jackson, Brian Michael Jenkins, Seth G. Jones, Nathaniel Shestak, and Ashley J. Tellis, “The Lessons of Mumbai,” RAND Corporation Occasional Paper, 2009, p. 26; Jason Burke, “Mumbai spy says he worked for terrorists—then briefed Pakistan,” Guardian, October 18, 2010, <www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/18/david-headley-mumbai-attacks-pakistan?>; “A monster we can't control: Pakistan's secret agents tell of links with militants,” The Times (London), December 22, 2008, <www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new---cle5380189.ece>.

72. “Hoax caller who brought India, Pak on verge of war post 26/11 was Pearl's alleged assassin,” Asian News International, November 26, 2009, <http://m.mumbaimirror.com/index.aspx?Page = article&sectname = News%20-%20World&sectid = 4&contentid = 200911272009112702142968755992417>; “Army, PAF put on high alert after Indian threats,” The Nation (AsiaNet), November 29, 2008 <www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/politics/30-Nov-2008/Army-PAF-put-on-high-alert-after-Indian-threats>.

73. Steve Coll, “The Back Channel: India and Pakistan's secret Kashmir talks,” New Yorker, March 2, 2009, <www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/02/090302fa_fact_coll>.

74. Rodney W. Jones, “Pakistan's answer to Cold Start?” Friday Times, May 13–19, 2011, <www.thefridaytimes.com/13052011/page7.shtml>.

75. James M. Lindsay and Ray Takeyh, “After Iran Gets the Bomb: Containment and its Complications,” Foreign Affairs 89 (March–April 2010), pp. 33–50, quotation appears on pp. 37–38.

76. Strictly speaking, President Obama has incentives to take such options off the table exclusively in regard to “rogue” nuclear powers. But such a policy might create incentives for other non-nuclear state leaders to develop nuclear weapons to obtain the same concession. A unilateral commitment to refrain from such attacks might overcome this problem. For an argument on why the United States should not use nuclear threats to deter weapons of mass destruction use by rogue leaders, see Scott D. Sagan, “The Commitment Trap: Why the United States Should Not Use Nuclear Threats to Deter Biological and Chemical Weapons Attacks,” International Security 24 (Spring 2000) pp. 85–115.