Since the 2005 Indian–U.S. Civil Nuclear Agreement, a number of notable nuclear arms control anal... more Since the 2005 Indian–U.S. Civil Nuclear Agreement, a number of notable nuclear arms control analysts and scholars [1] have called for mainstreaming Pakistan into the nuclear nonproliferation regime, meaning the de facto acceptance of Pakistan as a nuclear weapons power. Indeed, for a while the Barack Obama administration began negotiations [2] with Pakistan to explore nuclear mainstreaming during its second term. Most of these scholars argue that the process of normalizing Pakistan's nuclear status should proceed differently than U.S. negotiations with India, which led to only partial normalization. In India's case, because of geopolitical and commercial considerations, Washington demanded and got few nonproliferation concessions from New Delhi. There were no nuclear arms caps, posture changes, or accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty (FMCT), all of which were longstanding U.S. demands until the George W. Bush administration decided to do away with them. The failure of the United States to drive a hard nonproliferation bargain with India, these arms control advocates argue, has undermined the nuclear nonproliferation regime, a mistake that should not be repeated with Pakistan. But pushing the nonproliferation track for normalizing Pakistan's nuclear status would be a mistake. Indeed, Pakistan has rejected these proposals, demanding a nuclear agreement similar to the one negotiated with India. It is thus no surprise that the negotiations with the United States during Obama's second term quickly ended in failure. Moreover, even if successful, such bargains would have done little to reduce the mounting dangers of a nuclear catastrophe that stem from the risks of state failure in Pakistan and its grand strategy of asymmetric warfare in South Asia. In thinking through the case for mainstreaming a nuclear Pakistan, one must not lose sight of the two key principles that underlie U.S. nonproliferation policy. Those principles are to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons in the international system and to preserve the so-called nuclear taboo. Although the United States can no longer roll back the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, it has succeeded in walling it off from other nuclear aspirant states in the international system so far. However, Washington has not paid sufficient attention to address the scenarios that pose the greatest danger to the continued prevalence of the nuclear taboo. The threat that Pakistan poses to the international community does not stem from the mere existence of its arsenal, but from the potential for its inadvertent and instrumental use. There are mounting threats from violent non-state actors who seem determined to steal from and sabotage Pakistani nuclear weapons. Likewise, the
Sixteen years after stepping out of the nuclear closet, India’s nuclear posture, some of its oper... more Sixteen years after stepping out of the nuclear closet, India’s nuclear posture, some of its operational practices, and hardware developments are beginning to mimic those of the original five nuclear weapon states. Several proliferation scholars in the United States contend that India’s national security managers are poised to repeat the worst mistakes of the superpowers’ Cold War nuclear competition, with negative consequences for deterrence, crisis, and stability in South Asia and the Asia-Pacific. This article takes a contrarian view. It dissects the best available data to show why the alarmist view is overstated. It argues that not only are the alarmists’ claims unsupported by evidence, their interpretation of the skeletal and often contradictory data threatens to construct the very threat they prophesize.
Anit Mukherjee and George Perkovich respond to Gaurav Kampani's spring 2014 International Securit... more Anit Mukherjee and George Perkovich respond to Gaurav Kampani's spring 2014 International Security article, "New Delhi's Long Nuclear Journey: How Secrecy and International Roadblocks Delayed India's Weaponization."
Since China tested a Kinetic-Energy Anti-Satellite (KE-ASAT) weapon in 2007, evidence has surface... more Since China tested a Kinetic-Energy Anti-Satellite (KE-ASAT) weapon in 2007, evidence has surfaced that India may have initiated a similar program. This article makes an anticipatory policy intervention against the development of KE-ASAT weapons. It presents data to show that space debris and not KE-ASAT weapons pose the highest risk for the safe operation of Indian satellites. It models a KE-ASAT weapons exchange between India and China in three different scenarios to demonstrate that use of such weapons even on a limited scale would produce an exponential increase in space debris. The latter would threaten the safe operation of satellites for all countries concerned. These data suggest that the concept of deterrence as understood in conventional and nuclear spheres is not easily transportable to the domain of space weapons, which threaten the physical destruction of satellites. If weaponization of space becomes inevitable, policy makers would be better off investing in weapons that disable but do not physically destroy satellites.
In the last quarter century, the Asia has become home to four modernizing nuclear weapon powers (... more In the last quarter century, the Asia has become home to four modernizing nuclear weapon powers (China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) and is now the epicenter of the “second nuclear age.” There is a growing belief that China and India’s growing geopolitical rivalry in the Indo-Pacific region alongside their efforts to build diverse and sophisticated deterrent forces could potentially produce security dilemmas and arms race spirals similar to the one that enveloped the superpower rivalry during the Cold War. Although the China-India rivalry has received serious attention from scholars, the nuclear competition in their relationship has not. As a result, large gaps exist in our understanding of the China-India nuclear equation.
This paper expands our understanding of the China-India nuclear relationship by incorporating standard bean counting practices with Chinese and Indian thinking on nuclear weapons. It reviews the open source literature on the evolving view of national security managers in both countries on operational planning concerning the deployment and use of nuclear weapons. More specifically, this paper examines the convergences and divergences between civilian and military policy planners, the contending logics behind their approaches, the contradictions that remain unresolved, and the areas of ambiguity that spell uncertainty in operational policy. It concludes on the basis of the available data that although there is reason for concern, the case for nuclear pessimism in the China-India nuclear dyad is overstated.
This paper provides an overview of the operational advances in India's nuclear capabilities in th... more This paper provides an overview of the operational advances in India's nuclear capabilities in the last decade and analyzes their regional and global implications.
Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s a general belief gained ground that India was a de fa... more Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s a general belief gained ground that India was a de facto nuclear weapons power. The consensual understanding in Washington was that hurdles that prevented India from transforming its latent capability into an operational one were normative and not technical or organizational. New evidence shows that India lacked technical means to deliver nuclear weapons reliably and safely until 1994-95. Further, until the outbreak of the Kargil War in the summer of 1999, India lacked coordinating protocols to organizationally deploy nuclear weapons militarily. The causes of India’s lack of technical operational capabilities well into the 1990s are traceable to organizational dysfunction that grew out of a regime of secrecy that prevented information sharing and coordination among the relevant actors. The absence of an operational capability to launch a nuclear strike, on the other hand, was the consequence of risk-aversion among Indian decision-makers who feared the negative fallout of this potential discovery by the United States.
Since the 2005 Indian–U.S. Civil Nuclear Agreement, a number of notable nuclear arms control anal... more Since the 2005 Indian–U.S. Civil Nuclear Agreement, a number of notable nuclear arms control analysts and scholars [1] have called for mainstreaming Pakistan into the nuclear nonproliferation regime, meaning the de facto acceptance of Pakistan as a nuclear weapons power. Indeed, for a while the Barack Obama administration began negotiations [2] with Pakistan to explore nuclear mainstreaming during its second term. Most of these scholars argue that the process of normalizing Pakistan's nuclear status should proceed differently than U.S. negotiations with India, which led to only partial normalization. In India's case, because of geopolitical and commercial considerations, Washington demanded and got few nonproliferation concessions from New Delhi. There were no nuclear arms caps, posture changes, or accession to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) or Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty (FMCT), all of which were longstanding U.S. demands until the George W. Bush administration decided to do away with them. The failure of the United States to drive a hard nonproliferation bargain with India, these arms control advocates argue, has undermined the nuclear nonproliferation regime, a mistake that should not be repeated with Pakistan. But pushing the nonproliferation track for normalizing Pakistan's nuclear status would be a mistake. Indeed, Pakistan has rejected these proposals, demanding a nuclear agreement similar to the one negotiated with India. It is thus no surprise that the negotiations with the United States during Obama's second term quickly ended in failure. Moreover, even if successful, such bargains would have done little to reduce the mounting dangers of a nuclear catastrophe that stem from the risks of state failure in Pakistan and its grand strategy of asymmetric warfare in South Asia. In thinking through the case for mainstreaming a nuclear Pakistan, one must not lose sight of the two key principles that underlie U.S. nonproliferation policy. Those principles are to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons in the international system and to preserve the so-called nuclear taboo. Although the United States can no longer roll back the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, it has succeeded in walling it off from other nuclear aspirant states in the international system so far. However, Washington has not paid sufficient attention to address the scenarios that pose the greatest danger to the continued prevalence of the nuclear taboo. The threat that Pakistan poses to the international community does not stem from the mere existence of its arsenal, but from the potential for its inadvertent and instrumental use. There are mounting threats from violent non-state actors who seem determined to steal from and sabotage Pakistani nuclear weapons. Likewise, the
Sixteen years after stepping out of the nuclear closet, India’s nuclear posture, some of its oper... more Sixteen years after stepping out of the nuclear closet, India’s nuclear posture, some of its operational practices, and hardware developments are beginning to mimic those of the original five nuclear weapon states. Several proliferation scholars in the United States contend that India’s national security managers are poised to repeat the worst mistakes of the superpowers’ Cold War nuclear competition, with negative consequences for deterrence, crisis, and stability in South Asia and the Asia-Pacific. This article takes a contrarian view. It dissects the best available data to show why the alarmist view is overstated. It argues that not only are the alarmists’ claims unsupported by evidence, their interpretation of the skeletal and often contradictory data threatens to construct the very threat they prophesize.
Anit Mukherjee and George Perkovich respond to Gaurav Kampani's spring 2014 International Securit... more Anit Mukherjee and George Perkovich respond to Gaurav Kampani's spring 2014 International Security article, "New Delhi's Long Nuclear Journey: How Secrecy and International Roadblocks Delayed India's Weaponization."
Since China tested a Kinetic-Energy Anti-Satellite (KE-ASAT) weapon in 2007, evidence has surface... more Since China tested a Kinetic-Energy Anti-Satellite (KE-ASAT) weapon in 2007, evidence has surfaced that India may have initiated a similar program. This article makes an anticipatory policy intervention against the development of KE-ASAT weapons. It presents data to show that space debris and not KE-ASAT weapons pose the highest risk for the safe operation of Indian satellites. It models a KE-ASAT weapons exchange between India and China in three different scenarios to demonstrate that use of such weapons even on a limited scale would produce an exponential increase in space debris. The latter would threaten the safe operation of satellites for all countries concerned. These data suggest that the concept of deterrence as understood in conventional and nuclear spheres is not easily transportable to the domain of space weapons, which threaten the physical destruction of satellites. If weaponization of space becomes inevitable, policy makers would be better off investing in weapons that disable but do not physically destroy satellites.
In the last quarter century, the Asia has become home to four modernizing nuclear weapon powers (... more In the last quarter century, the Asia has become home to four modernizing nuclear weapon powers (China, India, Pakistan, and North Korea) and is now the epicenter of the “second nuclear age.” There is a growing belief that China and India’s growing geopolitical rivalry in the Indo-Pacific region alongside their efforts to build diverse and sophisticated deterrent forces could potentially produce security dilemmas and arms race spirals similar to the one that enveloped the superpower rivalry during the Cold War. Although the China-India rivalry has received serious attention from scholars, the nuclear competition in their relationship has not. As a result, large gaps exist in our understanding of the China-India nuclear equation.
This paper expands our understanding of the China-India nuclear relationship by incorporating standard bean counting practices with Chinese and Indian thinking on nuclear weapons. It reviews the open source literature on the evolving view of national security managers in both countries on operational planning concerning the deployment and use of nuclear weapons. More specifically, this paper examines the convergences and divergences between civilian and military policy planners, the contending logics behind their approaches, the contradictions that remain unresolved, and the areas of ambiguity that spell uncertainty in operational policy. It concludes on the basis of the available data that although there is reason for concern, the case for nuclear pessimism in the China-India nuclear dyad is overstated.
This paper provides an overview of the operational advances in India's nuclear capabilities in th... more This paper provides an overview of the operational advances in India's nuclear capabilities in the last decade and analyzes their regional and global implications.
Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s a general belief gained ground that India was a de fa... more Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s a general belief gained ground that India was a de facto nuclear weapons power. The consensual understanding in Washington was that hurdles that prevented India from transforming its latent capability into an operational one were normative and not technical or organizational. New evidence shows that India lacked technical means to deliver nuclear weapons reliably and safely until 1994-95. Further, until the outbreak of the Kargil War in the summer of 1999, India lacked coordinating protocols to organizationally deploy nuclear weapons militarily. The causes of India’s lack of technical operational capabilities well into the 1990s are traceable to organizational dysfunction that grew out of a regime of secrecy that prevented information sharing and coordination among the relevant actors. The absence of an operational capability to launch a nuclear strike, on the other hand, was the consequence of risk-aversion among Indian decision-makers who feared the negative fallout of this potential discovery by the United States.
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Papers by Gaurav Kampani
This paper expands our understanding of the China-India nuclear relationship by incorporating standard bean counting practices with Chinese and Indian thinking on nuclear weapons. It reviews the open source literature on the evolving view of national security managers in both countries on operational planning concerning the deployment and use of nuclear weapons. More specifically, this paper examines the convergences and divergences between civilian and military policy planners, the contending logics behind their approaches, the contradictions that remain unresolved, and the areas of ambiguity that spell uncertainty in operational policy. It concludes on the basis of the available data that although there is reason for concern, the case for nuclear pessimism in the China-India nuclear dyad is overstated.
This paper expands our understanding of the China-India nuclear relationship by incorporating standard bean counting practices with Chinese and Indian thinking on nuclear weapons. It reviews the open source literature on the evolving view of national security managers in both countries on operational planning concerning the deployment and use of nuclear weapons. More specifically, this paper examines the convergences and divergences between civilian and military policy planners, the contending logics behind their approaches, the contradictions that remain unresolved, and the areas of ambiguity that spell uncertainty in operational policy. It concludes on the basis of the available data that although there is reason for concern, the case for nuclear pessimism in the China-India nuclear dyad is overstated.