Articles

The article examines the strategic circumstances leading to non-aligned India's safeguard of its nuclear option during a crucial period in its proliferation trajectory, when it was one of the states closest to nuclear-weapons development, and faced US pressures to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that was being negotiated at the time.

Pakistan has developed tactical nuclear weapons to deter India from executing its Cold Start war doctrine. India, however, has disavowed that doctrine. Further, the use of such weapons against Indian troops inside Pakistan would kill and injure countless civilians, while risking massive nuclear retaliation by India. In this International Security article, Jaganath Sankaran argues Pakistan should reconsider the role of tactical nuclear weapons in its military strategy.

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."

When do states acquire nuclear weapons? History shows that only two types of states decide that the bomb is essential to their security: 1) very powerful states; and 2) weak states that lack ironclad security guarantees.

"Gaurav Kampani investigates a crucial research puzzle in nuclear proliferation literature, namely, the possible underpinnings of India's slow weaponization process. Addressing the period 1989-1999, he argues that despite acquiring nuclear weapons in 1989–1990, New Delhi lacked the capability to 'deliver them reliably or safely until 1994–95 or possibly 1996.'"...

Policymakers have long focused on preventing nuclear weapons proliferation by controlling technology. Even developing countries, however, may now possess the technical ability to create nuclear weapons. The history of gas centrifuge development in twenty countries supports this perspective. To reduce the demand for nuclear weapons, policymakers will have look toward the cultural, normative, and political organization of the world.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many international observers came to perceive India as a de facto nuclear power. New evidence shows, however, that India lacked the technical means to deliver nuclear weapons reliably until 1994–95. Further, political leaders did not render the weapons militarily operational until 1999. These deficiencies can be traced to a regime of secrecy stemming from Indian decisionmakers’ fear of international pressures for nuclear rollback.

In 1985, researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School published a book called “Hawks, Doves, and Owls,” and gave it an ambitious subtitle: “An Agenda for Avoiding Nuclear War.” Those scholars gathered again at the School on Monday (May 16) for a seminar on the current challenges in avoiding nuclear war — and to marvel at just how drastically the nuclear threat has morphed in the two decades since the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed.

States use wedge strategies to prevent hostile alliances from forming or to dis­perse those that have formed. These strategies can cause power alignments that are otherwise unlikely to occur, and thus have significant consequences for international politics. How do such strategies work and what conditions promote their success? The wedge strategies that are likely to have significant effects use selective accommodation—concessions, compensations, and other inducements—to detach and neutralize potential adversaries. These kinds of strategies play important roles in the statecraft of both defensive and offensive powers. Defenders use selective accommodation to balance against a primary threat by neutralizing lesser ones that might ally with it. Expansionists use se­lective accommodation to prevent or break up blocking coalitions, isolating opposing states by inducing potential balancers to buck-pass, bandwagon, or hide. Two cases—Great Britain’s defensive attempts to accommodate Italy in the late 1930s and Germany’s offensive efforts to accommodate the Soviet Union in 1939—help to demonstrate these arguments. By paying attention to these dynamics, international relations scholars can better understand how balancing works in specific cases, how it manifests more broadly in interna­tional politics, and why it sometimes fails in situations where it ought to work well.

India and Pakistan are both nuclear-armed states, but their divergent nuclear postures have led to a stark difference in their deterrence capabilities. India has maintained an assured retaliation posture, but Pakistan has shifted from a catalytic to an asymmetric escalation posture, allowing it to pursue aggressive policies without significant fear of retaliation. Furthermore, to make its posture credible, Pakistan has had to relinquish some central control over the security of its nuclear arsenal. The implications for South Asian and international stability, therefore, are grim unless India and Pakistan can minimize the dangers of their current postures, and the United States can help Pakistan to better secure its nuclear arsenal.