Abstract
The 2001 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) made an impact on both India and Pakistan, the South Asian subcontinent’s two nuclear weapons states. As the following analysis shows, the changes in U.S. policy that the NPR expresses have brought about changes in the relationship of the United States with India and Pakistan and in the behavior of each of South Asia’s major powers toward one another. On the one hand, the U.S. stance, as described in the NPR, almost automatically ends discussions that urge India and Pakistan to give up their nuclear weapons programs. On the other hand, the new U.S. policy establishes a framework that can encourage greater responsibility and accountability with the recognition of India and Pakistan as nuclear weapon states. In some connections, this changed global nuclear policy situation has already improved the prospects for a peaceable South Asia.
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Jim Hoagland, “Rethinking Asia in India’s Favor,” The Washington Post July 1, 2001.
C. Raja Mohan, Crossing the Rubicon: The Shaping of India’s New Foreign Policy (New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2003), 19.
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Bharat Karnad, Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy (Delhi, India: Macmillan, 2002). Karnad articulates a realpolitik strategy for India, which the BJP moved toward in the 1990s, and which would include the development of a nuclear force to rival and target China and other competitors.
Narendra Gupta, “India’s Days of Nuclear Ambivalence are Over,” The Times of India July 16, 1997.
John F. Burns, “India Carries Out Nuclear Tests in Defiance of International Treaty,” New Tork Times May 12, 1998.
John W. Garver, Protracted Contest: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Twentieth Century (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001), 275–342. Since India’s defeat by China in 1962, India’s strategic thinkers had focused on competition with China, and, in May 1998, many of them concurred with Fernandes and rationalized the nuclear test decision by referring to the need for a nuclear balance. China tested from 1964 to 1995, and India wanted to demonstrate its nuclear capabilities to its strategic competitor.
Joseph Cirincione, Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002), 191. Rodney Jones, Minimum Nuclear Deterrence Postures in South Asia (Washington, D.C.: Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 2002), 3, estimated more than 100 Indian nuclear weapons equivalents (NWEs) and 50 Pakistani NWEs by the latter half of 2001. However, India has the potential to produce more than 400 NWEs and catch up with China’s 450 NWEs. Pakistan has the potential to produce more than 100 NWEs.
Strobe Talbott, “Dealing with the Bomb in South Asia” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 2 (March/April 1999), 110–122.
Ashley J. Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal (Santa Monica, Calif: Rand, 2001), 392–398. Tellis lays out a number of scenarios involving India’s nuclear weapons program and concludes that a “minimum recessed deterrent” and a “force in being” will be the most likely outcome for the foreseeable future.
Subhash Kapila, United States War-Gaming on South Asia Nuclear Conflict: An Analysis, South Asia Analysis Group, Paper no. 476, June 14, 2002.
Rajesh Basrur, “Missile Defense and South Asia: An Indian Perspective,” in Michael Krepon and Chris Gagne, eds., The Impact of US Ballistic Missile Defenses on Southern Asia (Washington, D.C.: Henry L. Stimson Center, Report 46, July 2002). Basrur writes that Russian TMD systems cost between $55 million and $150 million depending on type.
William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, and Raymond Bonner, “How Pakistani Built His Network, A Tale Of Nuclear Proliferation,” New York Times, February 12, 2004.
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© 2005 James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen
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Burgess, S. (2005). South Asian Nuclear Dynamics and the Nuclear Posture Review. In: Wirtz, J.J., Larsen, J.A. (eds) Nuclear Transformation. Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07838-4_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07838-4_15
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