Regional dynamics and deterrence: South Asia (1)

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Notes

See Dilip Lahiri, ‘Formalizing Restraint: The Case of South Asia’, in James Brown (ed.), Entering the New Millennium: Dilemmas in Arms Control (Albuquerque: Sandia National Laboratories, 1999), p.105. Lahiri, an Indian Foreign Service Officer, reflected the Indian position following the May 1998 nuclear tests. See also the remarks made by Director General (South Asia) Zamir Akram, a senior Pakistani diplomat at a conference on Trust- and Confidence-Building Measures in South Asia, organized by the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research at Palais des Nations, Geneva, 23–24 Nov. 1998.

Inaugural address by Raksha Mantri (Defence Minister) George Fernandes, 5 January, at National Seminar on The Challenges of Limited War: Parameters and Options, organized by the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi, 5–6 Jan. 2000. This has also been emphasized in the draft Indian nuclear doctrine, which insists ‘effective conventional military capabilities shall be maintained to raise the threshold of outbreak both of conventional military conflict as well as that of threat or use of nuclear weapons’. See ‘Draft Report of the National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine’, para.3.2, at ⟨http://www.meadev.gov.in/govt/indnucld.htm⟩.

T. Jayaraman, ‘Nuclear Crisis in South Asia’, Frontline, 21 June 2002. The Pakistani perspective has also been affirmed in a separate report put out by the Italian Union of Scientists for Disarmament. See Nuclear Safety, Nuclear Stability and Nuclear Strategy in Pakistan, a concise report of a visit by Landau Network – Centro Volta.

The problem of defining ‘South Asia’ was initially raised in Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, ‘South Asia’, International Perspectives on Missile Proliferation and Defenses, Special Joint Series on Missile Issues, Occasional Paper 5, Center for Non-proliferation Studies and the Mountbatten Centre for International Studies (March 2001), p.61, n.1.

Ministry of Defence (MOD), Annual Report 2000–2001 (New Delhi: Government of India, 2001), p.7.

For instance, a recent Chinese book on Sino-South Asian studies defines the region as mostly containing the SAARC countries. See Lin Liangguang, Ye Zhengjia, and Han Hua, Contemporary China's Relations with South Asian Countries (Beijing: Social Sciences Documentation Publishing House, 2001).

Sujit Dutta, ‘China's Emerging Power and Military Role: Implications for South Asia’, in Jonathan D. Pollack and Richard H. Yang (eds), In China's Shadow: Regional Perspectives on Chinese Foreign Policy and Military Development (Santa Monica: RAND, 1998), p.99.

Defense Intelligence Agency, China and Afghanistan: PRC Concerns and Ability to Influence Events (U), DDE-2200-179-83 (Washington, DC: DIA, March 1983); Yitzhak Shichor, East Wind over Arabia: Origins and Implications of the Sino-Saudi Missile Deal, China Research Monograph No.35 (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1989); Swaran Singh, ‘Sino-Pak Defence Co-operation Joint Ventures & Weapons Procurement’, Peace Initiatives, Vol.5, No.3–6 (May–Dec. 1999), pp.1–15; Karan R. Sawhny, ‘The Sino-Pakistani Nuclear Alliance: Prospect & Retrospect’, Peace Initiatives, Vol.5, No.3–6 (May–Dec. 1999), p.27; Bates Gill, ‘China's Arms Exports to Iran’, Middle East Review of International Affairs, Vol.2, No.2 (May 1998), pp.55–70; Bertil Lintner, ‘Chinese Arms Bolster Burmese Forces’, Jane's Defence Weekly, 27 Nov. 1993, p.11, and idem., ‘Allies in Isolation: Burma and China Move Closer’, Jane's Defence Weekly, 15 Sept. 1990, p.475.

See Rahul Bedi, ‘Infiltration worries’, Frontline, 5 July 2002.

See Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, ‘Enhancing Indo-US Strategic Cooperation’, Adelphi Paper 313 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for IISS, 1997).

There is near unanimity among students of India's nuclear programme that the option to make weapons was built into the programme from its inception in the early 1950s. This built-in ability to weaponize came to be known as the ‘weapon option’, a phrase most probably coined by India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. See George Perkovich, India's Ambiguous Bomb (Berkeley: University of California, 1999); Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (London: Zed Books, 1999); Peter R. Lavoy, ‘Learning to Live with the Bomb: India and Nuclear Weapons 1947–1974’, unpublished PhD dissertation (University of California, Berkeley, 1997); Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, ‘The Development of an Indian Nuclear Doctrine Since 1980’, PhD dissertation (Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 1997); and Zafar Iqbal Cheema, ‘Indian Nuclear Strategy 1947–1991’, unpublished PhD dissertation (London: University of London, 1991).

For the political pressure to exercise the nuclear option see Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, ‘India's Nuclear Use Doctrine’, in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott Sagan and James J. Wirtz (eds), Planning the Unthinkable: New Proliferators and the use of Weapons of Mass Destruction (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp.145–8.

Jaswant Singh, ‘Against Nuclear Apartheid’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.77, No.5 (Sept./Oct. 1998), pp.41–52.

Ashley Tellis, India's Emerging Nuclear Posture, RAND Research Brief, No.63, available at ⟨http://www.rand.org/publications/RB/RB63⟩. See also Jaswant Singh, ‘Against Nuclear Apartheid’.

During the late July 1999 Singapore meeting of foreign ministers of ASEAN, China announced that it had decided to sign the protocol to the SEANWFZ Treaty (Treaty of Bangkok). India too announced that it would ‘endorse’ the treaty and was ready to sign the protocol but it was noted that according to Article 3 of that instrument this is open to signature only by the five recognized nuclear-weapon states. See ‘Non-Proliferation Developments’, PPNN Newsbrief, No.47 (3rd quarter 1999), p.1.

Strobe Talbott, ‘Dealing with the Bomb in South Asia’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.78, No.2 (March/April 1999), pp.120–21 and Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004).

See Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, ‘Indo-US Relations in the Bush White House’, Strategic Analysis, Vol.25, No.4 (July 2001) pp.545–56.

George W. Bush, ‘A Distinctly American Internationalism’, foreign policy speech at the Ronald Reagan Library, 19 Nov. 1999.

Chintamani Mahapatra, ‘The New Bush Administration and India’, IPCS Article No.536, 10 Aug. 2001, available at ⟨http://www.ipcs.org/issues/articles/536-usr-chintamani.html⟩.

Aarti R. Jerath, ‘Hoping for Leg-up, India gives US a Hand’, Indian Express, 13 Sept. 2001.

Praful Bidwai, ‘Terrorism: India's New Strategic Chance?’, InterPress Service, 13 Sept. 2001 available at ⟨http://www.tni.org/archives/bidwai/chance.htm⟩.

See, for instance, T.V.R. Shenoy, ‘Tomorrow it Could Be Us’, Indian Express, 13 Sept. 2001 and Dr Subhash Kapila, India's Foreign Policy Challenges Post-Sept. 11, 2001: An Analysis, South Asia Analysis Group, Paper No.361, 13 Nov. 2001.

Atul Aneja, ‘Its Time to Restrain Pak., PM tells Bush’, The Hindu, 3 Oct. 2001.

Jim Hoagland, ‘India Looks With New Favor on a “Natural Ally”’, International Herald Tribune, 22 Jan. 2002.

Only recently have scholars studied these crises in some detail. For the 1984 crisis see Ravi Rikhye, The Fourth Round (New Delhi: ABC Publishing House, 1984) and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, ‘The Development of an Indian Nuclear Doctrine Since 1980’, pp.119–43. For discussion of the Brasstacks crisis, see Kanti Bajpai et al., Brasstacks and Beyond: Perception and Management of Crisis in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995); Inderjit Badhwar and Dilip Bobb, ‘Game of Brinkmanship’, India Today, 15 Feb. 1987; and ‘The War that was not – Happily’, Sainik Samachar, 19 April 1987. On the 1990 crisis, see B.G. Deshmukh, ‘Spring 1990 Crisis’, World Affairs Vol.3, No.2 (Dec. 1994), pp.36–7; General V.N. Sharma's interview, ‘It's All Bluff and Bluster’, Economic Times, 18 May 1990; Dilip Bobb and Raj Chengappa, ‘War Games’, India Today, 28 Feb. 1990; C. Uday Bhaskar, ‘The May 1990 Nuclear Crisis: An Indian Perspective’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol.20 (1997), pp.317–32; Devin Hagerty, ‘Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: The 1990 Indo–Pakistani Crisis’, International Security, Vol.20, No.3 (Winter 1995/96), pp.79–114; William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, Critical Mass (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), pp.349–77; Seymour Hersh, ‘On the Nuclear Edge’, The New Yorker, 29 March 1993, pp.56–73 and Michael Krepon and Mishi Faruqee (eds), Conflict Prevention and Confidence Building Measures in South Asia: The 1990 Crisis, Occasional Paper No. 17 (Washington, DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, April 1994).

See Devin Hagerty, ‘Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: The 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis’, International Security Vol.20. No.3 (Winter 1995/96), p.87; George Perkovich, ‘A Nuclear Third Way in South Asia’, Foreign Policy, No.91 (Summer 1993), p.86; and Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, ‘Prospects for Nuclear Proliferation’, in Serge Sur (ed.), Nuclear Deterrence: Problems and Perspectives in the 1990s (New York: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 1993), p.66.

For details of the Kargil conflict see Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, ‘In the Shadow of Kargil: Keeping Peace in Nuclear South Asia’, International Peacekeeping, Vol.7, No.4 (Winter 2000), pp.189–206.

Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2000), p.437. This, however, has been denied by Indian officials.

Bruce Riedel, American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House, Policy Paper Series (Philadelphia: Center for the Advanced Study of India, 2002).

T. Jayaraman, ‘Nuclear Crisis in South Asia’.

T. Jayaraman, ‘Nuclear Crisis in South Asia’ and idem, ‘N-Deterrent gave India Second Thoughts: Musharraf’, Times of India, 18 June 2002.

This argument was presented at a seminar on Strategic Stability in South Asia organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies at Mauritius, 21–24 June 2000.

See inaugural address by Raksha Mantri [George Fernandes] at National Seminar on The Challenges of Limited War: Parameters and Options, 5 Jan. 2000.

See Rodney W. Jones, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Postures in South Asia: An Overview, Report prepared for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 1 Oct. 2001, p.38.

According to Nuclear Safety, Nuclear Stability and Nuclear Strategy in Pakistan, a concise report of a visit by Landau Network – Centro Volta, there are at least four scenarios under which Pakistan could exercise its nuclear option: space threshold; military threshold; economic strangling; and domestic destabilization. The last two in particular are more difficult to pinpoint precisely and therefore could dramatically lower the threshold for retaliation, based on the perception of either an economic stranglehold or domestic destabilization.

See T. Jayaraman, ‘Nuclear Crisis in South Asia’.

Sanjoy Majumdar, ‘Indian president-to-be bares his soul’, BBC News, 19 June 2002.

‘VP Malik politely tells Kalam: You're Wrong on N-deterrence’, Indian Express, 20 June 2002.

See, for example, K. Santhanam, Sreedhar, Sudhir Saxena and Manish, Jihadis in Jammu and Kashmir: A Portrait Gallery (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2003), pp.25–37; Satish Kumar, ‘Reassessing Pakistan as a Long Term Security Threat’, Centre for Policy Research Lecture Series: Public Lecture No.7, 3 March 2003, p.8; J.K. Baral and J.N. Mahanty, ‘The US War Against Terrorism: Implications for South Asia’, Strategic Analysis, Vol.26, No.4. (October–December 2002), pp.508–18; and Jessica Stern, ‘Pakistan's Jihad Culture’, Foreign Affairs, Vol.79, No.6 (November/December 2000).

Santhanam et al., Jihadis in Jammu and Kashmir, p.32.

Sreedhar, ‘Challenges After 11 September 2001’, Aakrosh, Vol.5, No.14 (January 2002), pp.61–75. According to one estimate the ISI spends about Rs 2 billion per year to ‘fuel J&K militancy’. See Santhanam et al., Jihadis in Jammu and Kashmir, p.35. Yet another estimate puts the total cost of financing terrorism in J&K at Rs 4–5 billion per year. See N.S. Jamwal, ‘Terrorist Financing and Support Structures in Jammu and Kashmir’, Strategic Analyses, Vol.26, No. 1 (January–March 2002), pp.140–52.

Rashed Uz Zaman, ‘WMD Terrorism in South Asia: Trends and Implications’, Journal of International Affairs, Vol.7, No.3 (September–November 2002), and Matin Zuberi, ‘Nuclear Terrorism: High Risks, Low Probability?’ Aakrosh, Vol.6, No.18 (January 2003), pp.15–36.