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The Rediff Special/Gaurav Kampani

How a US national missile defence will affect South Asia

As the Clinton administration prepares to make a decision on whether the United States should field a limited national missile defence, it has focused attention on the strategic response from the Russian Federation and China. Yet any US decision that affects global nuclear arms control and provokes strong negative reactions from the Russian Federation and China will echo strongly in South Asia.

The Link Between Global Nuclear Disarmament and Regional Unproliferation

Should the United States decide to deploy a limited NMD, it would come as a serious blow to the post-Cold War nuclear arms control regime. Possible Russian responses might include halting further reductions of its nuclear forces. Similarly China, whose small long-range nuclear force is likely to be rendered impotent by NMD, would likely accelerate the modernisation and quantitative expansion of its arsenal. The cumulative impact of these decisions would be to halt any further decreases in the nuclear arsenals of the nuclear weapon states.

In India, the nuclear lobbyists establish a linkage between global nuclear disarmament and regional proliferation. They have long argued that the nuclear weapon states have no intention of undertaking comprehensive nuclear disarmament. Should the global nuclear arms control agenda stall, this argument will gain strength. The belief that nuclear weapons will remain in perpetuity will bolster the case of those who argue that India needs nuclear weapons to keep up with the nuclear "Joneses" in the international system.

Chinese Strategic Reaction and South Asia

China has warned that it will respond to an NMD by accelerating its nuclear modernisation programme; it has also threatened to expand its strategic deterrent quantitatively. A possible Chinese response could also be to maintain its strategic deterrent on a higher state of alert.

A modernised Chinese nuclear force and a more robust posture will have a negative cascading effect in South Asia. Notwithstanding China's declared intentions, changes in its force capabilities and deployment posture will influence the nuclear debate in India. Likewise, New Delhi's nuclear decisions will affect Pakistan's strategic response.

At present, there is a divide between the nuclear moderates and the hardliners in India. The moderates support the concept of a minimal and de-alerted nuclear force in the low hundreds. The hardliners, on the other hand, favor a maximalist posture with a triad nuclear force comprising 400 to 1,000 nuclear warheads.

Thus far, the moderates, led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, have prevailed in this debate. If current trends persist through this decade, India will probably field a modest nuclear force in the low hundreds. There is also the possibility that India might participate in the global non-proliferation regime with the exception of the NPT. Pakistan, which also favours "strategic restraint," is likely to adopt a similar policy.

However, quantitative and qualitative improvements in China's nuclear capability would undermine the moderates in India and Pakistan. A higher Chinese alert status would invariably increase threat perceptions in New Delhi and Islamabad successively; it would intensify pressure in both Capitals to accelerate the integration of nuclear weapons into their respective armed forces and improve operational readiness -- actions that will have adverse consequences for nuclear crisis stability in South Asia.

An NMD could also create pressures on the governments in India and Pakistan to modernise their nuclear arsenals through the resumption of nuclear tests and thereby prevent efforts to bring the CTBT into force. Moreover, it could also stymie efforts to negotiate a global FMCT. Although India and Pakistan have ruled out an immediate moratorium on fissile material production, neither country is averse to accepting a fissile material cap as part of a globally negotiated treaty. Both countries hope to use the interregnum until such a treaty is negotiated, to augment their stocks of fissile material. However, the expansion of China's nuclear arsenal could change India and Pakistan's strategic calculus, causing both countries to seek delays in negotiating an FMCT.

China could also react by ending its informal commitment to abide by the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and resume missile sales to South Asia and the Middle East. Resumption of Chinese missile sales to Pakistan above the MTCR limit would invariably exacerbate the missile race between India and Pakistan.

Strategic Mimicry: The Effect on India's National Security Perceptions and Strategic Culture

A US decision to deploy NMD, because of the military and strategic contents of the decision, its ideological undercurrents of absolute security, negative consequences for global nuclear disarmament and the aggressive unilateralism inherent in the US policy, will influence strategic beliefs in South Asia perceptibly. Above all, NMD would provide the strategic elites in the region a paradigm to remodel their own national security behaviour.

Arguably, the effects of the US decision will be felt more strongly in India than in Pakistan. Unlike Pakistan, which is more concerned with maintaining regional parity with India, India's ambitions are extra-regional. India regards itself as an emerging great power. India's global ambitions and history of colonial subjugation have made its power elites acutely sensitive to notions of equality, especially in matters relating to sovereignty and national security. Negative images of India being a "soft" or weak state top these elite's self-perceptions. They share visions of transforming India into an "effective" state by partially reproducing and adapting the development and security paradigms of their more successful counterparts.

Although Indian analysts find incredible the US's identification of ballistic missile threats from "rogue" states as justification for a continental missile defence, for them it is symbolic of the US's aggressive national security culture that pro-actively seeks to identify the remotest conceivable threat and then institutes measures to defeat it. Although disdainful of the US's alarmist attitude, Indian strategic analysts also admiringly seek to imitate such aggressive cultural behavioural norms.

Following the US example, several leading Indian defense scientists such as the Scientific Advisor to the Indian government, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, have begun lobbying for a limited anti-missile defence that would provide protection against a small Pakistani nuclear force. An Indian national missile defence would force Pakistan to seek countermeasures or to expand and diversify its nuclear arsenal.

Finally, for both India and Pakistan, NMD would also signify a shift from multilateral efforts at preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems to unilateral defensive measures, the most powerful indicator yet from the United States that it doubts the efficacy of the non-proliferation regime in stemming such threats. It would communicate the presumption that states must rely on their own resources and technical means to deter and ward off threats to national security, as against investing comparable resources in building a common global community of security interests. This would complement the argument of nuclear protagonists in India and Pakistan that nuclear weapons are essential to safeguard national security and retain strategic autonomy.

Conclusion

A US decision to deploy a limited NMD will have negative and destabilising effects in South Asia. It will come at the expense of furthering global nuclear disarmament. Worse, changes in China's nuclear modernisation and deployment plans in response to a US NMD will have a cascading impact in India and then in Pakistan. Finally, NMD will provide a cultural model for the power elite in the region to mimic, not only in the hopes of advancing their own states' security interests, but also to keep pace with emerging paradigms of modernity and security in the international system.

This is a condensed version of an "Issue Brief" that was published recently by the Center for Non-proliferation Studies, Monterey, CA, USA. The full brief is available at:

Gaurav Kampani is a Research Associate at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the CNS or the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

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