The endless race
The End Race
Since the advent of the nuclear age in South Asia, the region faces the terrifying prospect of a future nuclear holocaust resulting from a full-scale war between Pakistan and India.
The international community, led by the United States, remains on edge over the possibility of an accidental or deliberate nuclear war between the two de facto nuclear-armed neighbours. The current approach of the Indian nuclear establishment aimed at asserting its regional leadership role is likely to trigger a mad nuclear arms race in the region.
India’s gradual departure from its stated policy of ‘credible minimum deterrence’ has upped the nuclear ante, posing significant challenges to Pakistan’s security. According to a recent report published by a US-based military intelligence think tank, India’s all-powerful nuclear establishment is rapidly expanding its ability to produce fissile material to support an unnecessarily larger nuclear arsenal.
The report echoes Pakistan’s justified fears that India is pursuing ‘runaway’ expansion of its nuclear arsenal. The Modi government has plans to develop a covert uranium enrichment plant, which would substantially expand India’s nuclear submarine fleet in addition to the proposed development of thermonuclear weapons.
India, the first country to bring nuclear proliferation and the terrible threat of nuclear war in South Asia, already holds around 90 to 110 nuclear weapons. Now, because of the continuous expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal, Pakistan’s nuclear establishment also feels compelled to produce more bombs in order to offset India’s overwhelming superiority in both conventional and nuclear warfare. Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the non-proliferation programme at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, is of the view that, “Whether or not India uses the plant mainly for fuel for reactors and naval vessels as is sometimes surmised, it adds to India’s already far greater advantage over Pakistan in terms of nuclear weapons production potential.”
Given that India’s nuclear weapons programme was originally motivated more by the prestige factor than as a necessary means to meet real security threats, this new development has been viewed as worrisome. Although Indian officials have denied reports regarding the extension of any such covert nuclear facility, many western experts are still apprehensive about India’s development of more uranium enrichment plants being aimed to bring it closer to matching China’s nuclear capabilities, raising risks of nuclear war in the region.
Because of its geopolitical weight, New Delhi’s choices will have disastrous implications both for deterrence stability in the region and the future of the evolving global nuclear order. Some experts believe India is planning to build about 400 nuclear warheads, at least four times what Pakistan currently possesses. Emboldened by US support for its nuclear ambitions, India has embarked on a ‘ready nuclear arsenal policy’.
The claim that India is enhancing its nuclear capabilities as a deterrent against China is preposterous because the probability of China and India going to war against each other is very low. India’s nuclear posture can only be framed keeping in view its primary deterrent adversary – Pakistan – against whom they initially wanted to build a credible minimum deterrent. But prevailing attitudes towards nuclear weaponry among Indian nuclear security managers betray an over-obsession with China. Such attitudes will achieve nothing and start an unending nuclear arms race in South Asia.
India’s conventional superiority could easily deter Pakistan from initiating any attack, so India’s nuclear capability never had a ‘strategic’ justification but was a desire for ‘prestige’.
There is no gainsaying the fact that India’s nuclear establishment is going down this potentially dangerous path due to the overriding influence of nuclear scientists and technical bureaucracies. Like Pakistan, the civilian political leadership, due to complications of domestic politics, is not in a position to exercise authority over India’s vast nuclear establishment.
The Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), the main organ responsible for determining India’s emerging nuclear posture, continues to waste money on risky adventures, touting them as ‘world class capabilities’. DRDO officials publicly concede that most of these projects do not have clearance from the top political authorities in the country. For instance, the development of Agni VI, capable of carrying four to six warheads, in February 2013 had no sanction from the Union government of India.
The security of Pakistan’s nuclear programme has always received attention in the international media due to domestic political instability and growing internal militant threats. In contrast the security of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) has been breached many times but there is little public discussion about threats to the security of India’s huge civilian and military nuclear infrastructure. Instead, an overriding assumption exists that relevant agencies in India provide enough security to nuclear infrastructure.
The fact is that no nuclear state in the world is totally immune to security threats to its nuclear assets, or to the simple risk of safety-related accidents. Given the rapid growth of India’s nuclear arsenal over the past few years, different home-grown insurgents and militants have the potential to compromise India’s nuclear security.
The current changes in India’s strategic posture and deployment patterns and the rapid development of its nuclear capabilities, whether politically sanctioned or not, could force China and Pakistan to respond in ways that could prove detrimental to Indian and global security. Despite global attention focused on Pakistan, irresponsible expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal may convert the country into a potential source of nuclear terrorism.
Email: rizwanasghar7@hotmail.com
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