This summer, I’ve been thinking and writing about the delusional, aspirational notion of deterrence stability between antagonistic nuclear-armed states. For the short form of my argument, see my essay in Dawn. The long form will be part of a second collection of essays on deterrence stability and escalation control to be published by the Stimson Center.
Deterrence stability between nuclear-armed states works just fine when they have nothing to fight about. When, on the other hand, states acquire nuclear weapons because of serious friction, the quest for deterrence stability is chimerical. Conceptualizers of deterrence stability predicated that the mutual acquisition of secure, second-strike capabilities would be the precondition of success. The United States and Soviet Union met this requirement early on – and kept going. The more they competed, the less secure they felt, regardless of overkill capabilities.
I think there’s still a reasonable chance that India and China will avoid repeating on a smaller scale the mistakes made by the United States and the Soviet Union. If, however, these two rising powers embrace MIRVs and counterforce targeting, negative ramifications will spread well beyond southern Asia. More on this in another post.
At present, the clearest manifestation of the chimerical pursuit of deterrence stability is between Pakistan and India. Both are in the process of achieving secure, second strike capabilities – if they haven’t already gotten there – but their competition isn’t winding down.
Writing projects are an occasion to let my fingers to do the walking through old 4X6 cards in shoeboxes to find quotes stashed away and long forgotten. Younger wonks: The reference here is to the “Yellow Pages” — a fat book of alphabetical business listings on flimsy yellow paper. Mad Men encouraged us to use this relic of the Analog Age with a long-running advertising campaign to let our fingers do the walking until we found the right page. We also let our fingers do the walking looking for books in card catalogues at the library.
Here’s a sampling of dusty quotes on 4×6 cards on the nuclear competition on the subcontinent:
“You can proclaim to the whole world without hesitation that I am beyond repair. I regard the employment of the atomic bomb for the wholesale destruction of men, women and children as the most diabolical use of science.” — Mahatma Gandhi in Harijan, July 7, 1946.
“We must protect our integrity, but our missiles must not be targeted against the people of India, with whom Pakistan has no enmity. Our culture and our traditions demand that we refrain from making cities and civil population as targets. We must only aim at nuclear installations and military installations, if at all that eventually is thrust on Pakistan.” – editorial in The Muslim (Pakistan), June 1, 1998.
“For India to initiate a nuclear attack in the subcontinent would be a betrayal of the human spirit.” — Raja Ramanna, a key figure in India’s nuclear weapons program, cited by K. Subrahmanyam in the Economic Times, May 26, 1993
“More is unnecessary if less is enough.” – General K. Sundarji, one of the founding fathers of India’s nuclear posture
“India will not engage in any arms race. We shall not, therefore, pursue an open-ended program.” – Jaswant Singh, then India’s Minister of External Affairs, December, 1999.
“If the safety and security of the nation require deployment of conventional and non-conventional weapons on the border, the Government will not hesitate to do so.” – Salman Khursheed, then India’s Minister of State for External Affairs, September, 1994.
“India may be a billion-plus nation with six times Pakistan’s GNP, but in the prevalent nuclear environment, such superiority is meaningless. Therefore, the Indian leadership should face reality and accept Pakistan as an equal.” — Lt. Gen. Javed Nasir, former Director General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, in The News, September 7, 2000.
“Our deterrence strategy is defensive. We have no design to go and attack the enemy. But if we are attacked we are going to be offensive in defending ourselves.” – Pervez Musharraf, then President and Chief of Army Staff, at the commissioning of an Agosta-class submarine, December, 2003.