China-India Nuclear Rivalry in the "Second Nuclear Age"

Irish Studies in International Affairs

Nuclear rivalry in south Asia is discussed almost exclusively in terms of the India-Pakistan binary relationship. However, the detail of the nuclear weapons proliferation in the region cannot be reviewed without taking account of the triangular relationship between China, India and Pakistan, and examining the wider global context. This article explores the understudied Indian and Chinese nuclear strategies, analyses their motivations in strengthening their nuclear weapons capabilities and the role of international norms and regimes on nonproliferation in their national decision making. It concludes that for China the perceived threat is primarily the USA; for India it is primarily China. Both have the economic capacity for nuclear investments and the desire of powerful states to access the large Chinese and Indian markets meant there was no real threat of sanctions. The Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) have been largely irrelevant to their nuclear calculations, indicating a weak norm and a weak regime against strong and emerging powers. Ultimately, it was the power relations between states and not the international regime which framed their decision-making. The article also explores the compatibility of these states' respective nuclear strategies with the renewed call for global nuclear disarmament in the wake of President Obama's 2009 Prague speech, arguing ultimately that measures and counter-measures taken will result in nuclear weapons continuing to play a central role in Chinese and Indian national security efforts.

Cohen/South Asia Nuclear Futures -2-Nicola Machiavelli, Kautilya's Western counterpart, noted that luck or fortune played a greater role in the course of politics than any other factor. The great military theorists, Clausewitz, wrote about the "fog of war," the uncertainties that envelope the participants in armed combat. We should draw our inspiration from these maxims, not an excessive faith in the power of reason and calculation to advance a nation's interests while avoiding catastrophe.

National Security Journal, 2021

South Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions in the world today. Since India and Pakistan embarked on their path of open nuclear weapons development with their nuclear tests in 1998, nuclear deterrence between the two countries has become an important pillar within the South Asian security architecture. As strategic stability in the region is increasingly fragile, a number of these factors also impact China’s security, through economic and political fallout, as well as nuclear impacts on deterrence, arms races and crisis stability. The ongoing Kashmir dispute, challenges to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, as well as shifting nuclear postures and Indo-Pacific strategies all merit greater attention. This essay will address these trends, in addition to how China’s South Asia policy may best prioritise the enhancement of nuclear stability in the region.

ORF Occasional Paper, 2021

China’s evolving security dynamics with the United States have compelled it to rethink its nuclear strategy to achieve effective deterrence. It is aiming to modernise its nuclear arsenal and increase its nuclear ambiguity through conventional-nuclear entanglement. Ambiguity will increase the risks of mischaracterisation and can have a destabilising impact on the Indo-Pacific region. This paper highlights two areas where India ought to be most concerned: the size of China’s increasing nuclear warhead stockpile, and its evolving nuclear posture that involves a growing number of dual-capable missiles. In response, India will not only have to consider a shift in its posture, but also supplement its current arsenal with non-nuclear strategic capabilities such as cyber, electronic and space weapons for establishing credible deterrence.

World Affairs, 2019

South Asia is locked in several disputes. The nuclear curtain, which was lifted from the subcontinent at the end of the twentieth century, has made it more fragile and one of the “most dangerous places on Earth”. The aspiration for nuclear weapons has resulted in competition between India and Pakistan along with China, characterised by the action–reaction spiral. Security experts argue that the nuclear arms competition in South Asia is a classic case of the security dilemma. Arms acquisitions are rising along competitive lines, as countries purchase defence systems in reaction to the policies and procurements of neighbours. This paper studies the expanding nuclear capabilities and arsenals. It illustrates the arms race in South Asia and gives theoretical explanations for it. In conclusion the author revisits various implications of missile development between the two neighbours in the security context of South Asia.

This project aimed to review the India's nuclear doctrine (as officialised on 4 January 2003), and through a constructive critique, attempt an alternative blueprint to suit the new developments in the security and political environment within and outside India over the last decade. Towards achieving this, the Nuclear Security Programme (NSP) at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) constituted a task force of experts from the Indian strategic community -academia, bureaucracy, military and scientific.

2014

Publisher: The Army Press, Islamabad 2014 Pages: 272 ISBN: 978-969-9982-00-2. outh Asian nuclear patterns always force the proponents of nuclear nonproliferation regime to discuss the nuclear issues of the region by adopting critical examining standards. A number of scholars have tried to discussion nature of South Asian nuclear muscles from difference perspective. The global critical standards, exclusively for Pakistan's nuclear capabilities, are constantly evaluating the nuclear ambitions of India and Pakistan in belligerent style. The varying arguments of scholarly debate attempt to present a logical and rational analysis of Indian and Pakistani nuclear capabilities by adopting a combination of supporting and opposing approaches. The writer Tughral Yamin's in his book titled The Evolution of Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia strives to provide a survey of regional nuclear efforts of Islamabad and New Delhi. The eight chapters of Yamin's investigation is a comprehensive...

Behind every doctrinal decision that states have to make—especially in relation to nuclear weapons—are two basic questions: one, at the substantive level, what kind of role it envisages for (in this case) nuclear weapons in meeting the country's most important security challenges; and two, with how much clarity and specific-ity, or conversely ambiguity, should the doctrine be expressed. Well-thought-out nuclear doctrines are ideally founded on a strong conception about the role, purposes and limitations of nuclear weapons, how those weapons fit into the pursuit of a country's grand strategy, and a set of core beliefs and ideas about the operationalization of the weapons to reflect a sound balance of all these different facets. The potential for nuclear instability is greatest where a doctrine reflects either a lack of strategic thought or some kind of strategic drift in conceptualizing how nuclear weapons feature within a country's grand strategy, or where there is a clear mismatch between the security challenges faced by a state and the kind of role it assigns to nuclear weapons. The choice between ambiguity and clarity often feeds into this dynamic. Ambiguous doctrines, when they reflect either kind of strategic uncertainty noted above, can be a source of dangerous miscalculation and inadvertent escalation of tensions. This is especially true in new nuclear states that lack experience with respect to the limitations of nuclear weapons. Yet new nuclear states also tend not to state their doctrines unequivocally, relying on ambiguity to maximize the deterrent effects and political utility of their nascent nuclear forces. Ambiguity, then, may be a short-term necessity, but in the longer term can end up being counterproductive. Against the background of the dilemmas presented by the doctrinal and posture choices of nuclear states, this article offers a discussion of nuclear doctrines, and their significance for war, peace and stability in what is possibly the most active nuclear region in present times—south Asia. The cases of India and Pakistan are offered to show the challenges new nuclear states face in articulating and implementing a proper nuclear doctrine. It is argued here that the nuclear doctrines and postures of both India and Pakistan are problematic from a regional security perspective, but for somewhat different reasons. In India's case, newer challenges and a lack of strategic focus have led to increasing ambiguity in a doctrine that at its inception suggested both a certain level of clarity and

SIPRI, 2021

This report provides an overview of views on nuclear postures and escalation affecting South Asia, based on 119 research interviews conducted in 2020 with military, nuclear, political and regional experts from India, Pakistan, China, Russia and the United States. The publication also builds on the findings from a virtual workshop that SIPRI hosted on 8 and 9 December 2020 on ‘Nuclear challenges in South Asia: Views from India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Australia, New Zealand and the USA’. These discussions revealed a variety of interlocking insights on such issues as no first use, lowered nuclear thresholds, conventional and nuclear entanglement and emerging technologies that are shaping strategic stability. The publication consists of five country-focused sections that explore nuclear postures, strategic technologies and escalatory risks, as well as conclusions that offer building blocks for the next steps on engagement. This report was prepared in the framework of the SIPRI project Assessing Nuclear Deterrence Risks and Challenges in South Asia, generously supported by the German Federal Foreign Office.