Nuclear Deterrence and Stability in South Asia: Perceptions and Realities Antoine Levesques, IISS Research Fellow for South Asia with Desmond Bowen, IISS Associate Fellow for South Asia John H. Gill, IISS Associate Fellow for South Asia May 2021 The International Institute for Strategic Studies Contents Glossary 3 Executive summary 4 Introduction 5 Notes 7 1. Understanding doctrine and deterrence 9 1.1 The utility of nuclear doctrine 9 1.2 The nuclear taboo 10 1.3 Strategic stability and nuclear weapons 11 1.4 Concluding observations 13 Notes 15 2. India‘s and Pakistan’s nuclear doctrines 17 2.1 India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear doctrines 17 2.2 Challenges: proportionality assumption 18 2.3 Challenges: automaticity and escalation-management assumptions 19 2.4 Concluding observations 21 Notes 22 3. Risks from military capabilities 23 3.1 Comparing conventional forces 24 3.2 Nuclear forces: overview 27 3.3 Nuclear forces: Pakistan 30 3.4 Nuclear forces: India 32 3.5 Concluding observations 32 Notes 34 4. Risks from emerging developments 37 4.1 Sea basing nuclear weapons: intent and efforts 37 4.2 Risks to deterrence, crisis and arms-race stability 39 4.3 Other technological efforts and possible risks 41 4.4 Concluding observations 43 Notes 45 5. Nuclear stability, risk reduction and confidence 49 5.1 Confidence-building measures: promise and stagnation 49 5.2 Possible avenues forwards 50 5.3 Overcoming challenges 52 5.4 Concluding observations 53 Notes 54 Summary conclusions and recommendations 57 Notes 60 Annex 1: Pakistan’s nuclear forces 61 Annex 2: India’s nuclear forces 63 Annex 3: Status of India’s and Pakistan’s select missiles (conventional and nuclear) 67 Annex 4: India–Pakistan confidence-building measures 71 Index of figures and tables Figure 1. Indicative components of strategic stability 11 Figure 2. Select high-level public official statements indicating the fragility of peace between 13 India and Pakistan and the intensity of rhetoric common during tensions Figure 3. Select evidence from the body of public statements making up India’s nuclear doctrine 17 Figure 4. Select evidence from the body of public statements making up Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine 18 Figure 5. Evidence of the notion of inflicting unacceptable damage in India’s and Pakistan’s 19 bodies of doctrine Figure 6. Evidence of persistent perceptions of incredibility in Pakistan’s and India’s respective 20 bodies of doctrine Figure 7. The India–Pakistan–China border trijunction 24 Figure 8. IISS Military Balance summary assessment of India’s and Pakistan’s overall military 25 capabilities (excerpts) Figure 9. Statement by India’s army chief officially disclosing the Cold Start doctrine 26 Figure 10. India’s notional missile ranges (excludes submarine-launched) 28 Figure 11. Pakistan’s notional missile ranges (excludes underwater-launched) 29 Figure 12. Select evidence of Pakistan’s threat perception from public military statements 30 Figure 13. Excerpts from the Pakistan military’s statements on the inaugural test-launches of the 31 Nasr and Shaheen-3 missiles Figure 14. Select statements from India relating to sea-based nuclear deterrence 38 Figure 15. Select statements from Pakistan relating to sea-based nuclear deterrence 38 Figure 16. India’s and Pakistan’s defence budgets, 2010–20 41 Figure 17. The potentially most useful CBMs and other steps pertaining to nuclear deterrence 58 Table 1. Evidence of the national power gap between India and Pakistan 23 Table 2. Comparison of India’s and Pakistan’s military forces 25 Cover Left: Pakistan conducts the training launch of a short-range Hatf-9 Nasr missile, 24 January 2019 (Inter-Services Public Relations, Pakistan); Right: India conducts the flight test of a B-05/K-15 underwater-launched ballistic missile, undated (Getty). 2 The International Institute for Strategic Studies Glossary ASAT Anti-satellite BMD Ballistic-missile defence CBMs Confidence-building measures FSD Full-spectrum deterrence IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency ISPR Inter-Services Public Relations (Government of Pakistan) LoC Line of Control NCA National Command Authority (Government of Pakistan) NFU No first use NSAB National Security Advisory Board (Government of India) SPD Strategic Plans Division (Government of Pakistan) SSBN Nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarine Nuclear Deterrence and Stability in South Asia: Perceptions and Realities 3 Executive summary This IISS primer examines nuclear deterrence stable mutual nuclear deterrence. Nuclear and stability in South Asia by separating per- expansion casts doubt on stated policies of ceptions from facts in order to assess the extent minimalism, risks a high-cost arms race in the to which India and Pakistan may be at risk from post-pandemic era and may put overall deter- imprudent or mistaken use of nuclear weapons. rence stability at risk. The authors start from an uncomfortable China’s evolving profile as a nuclear-weapons truth: chance played an important ameliora- state is compounding India’s security chal- tive role in the February 2019 India–Pakistan lenges. Yet control over the drivers of the security crisis. India–Pakistan nuclear-deterrence and stabil- ity equation remains almost entirely in the India and Pakistan risk stumbling into using hands of leaders in New Delhi and Islamabad. their nuclear weapons through miscalculation or misinterpretation in a future crisis. Only India and Pakistan can choose to creatively overcome the challenges to adopting new risk- This primer presents evidence suggesting reduction measures, as an imperfect but realistic grave deficiencies and asymmetries in India’s stopgap until trust-building and eventual politi- and Pakistan’s nuclear doctrines, which are cal dialogue make arms control possible. compounded by mutual disbelief, exist- ing and emerging military capabilities, and This primer identifies a list of potentially use- the prolonged absence of related dialogue ful confidence-building measures (CBMs) and mechanisms. other practical steps both countries could take early on. India and Pakistan are seeking new technolo- gies and capabilities that dangerously under- It concludes that a robust, trusted, reliable, mine each other’s defence under the nuclear deniable backchannel between their leader- threshold. Whatever they learn from past ships is the most promising means by which crises, the uncharted territory they are now India and Pakistan could achieve greater stra- exploring requires enlightened judgement tegic and nuclear-deterrence stability. This about their doctrines, their nuclear and con- is in their interests and operationalising it is ventional capabilities, and their unpredictable their decision. Such a mechanism should help implications in future crises. avoid or mitigate the costs of any future crisis as well as eventually help India and Pakistan India and Pakistan already possess sufficient to adopt new CBMs on the way to building nuclear weapons to ensure a robust, largely greater trust. 4 The International Institute for Strategic Studies Introduction This study seeks to separate realities from misperceptions and restraint, and which was evidently clouded by mis- about India’s and Pakistan’s respective nuclear-weapons perceptions that could have led to miscalculation and capabilities, policies and doctrines. It is intended as a unintended escalation. This episode, in which chance primer on each country’s nuclear profile and offers rec- played an ameliorative role,4 challenged both countries’ ommendations for reducing the risks associated with the long-standing claims of being able to contain a crisis well presence of nuclear weapons in South Asia. ahead of any resort to nuclear weapons. Such claims Any failure of deterrence leading to a confronta- have been, at best, soliloquies, rather than resulting from tion between India and Pakistan could result in the dialogue between the two. first offensive use of a nuclear weapon since 1945 and The odds of deterrence failure in South Asia are potentially escalate into a broader nuclear exchange. higher than might be assumed based on the modest Neither side would truly win such a war, the conse- amount of public debate the issue receives both within quences of which, including the breakdown of the and outside South Asia. Relevant developments often nuclear taboo that has held for more than 70 years, move slowly and only briefly catch media attention, would extend far beyond the region. Unless national but in the long run produce significant cumulative survival were truly at stake, it is hard to see what effects. The publication of this primer has been timed security gains would warrant nuclear use.1 India and to coincide with the somewhat lower state of tensions Pakistan became nuclear-armed states when they both since 2019, which was marked by both the Pulwama– tested weapons in 1998. Balakot crisis and New Delhi’s decision to change the In February 2019, the worst security crisis between status of Indian-administered Kashmir.5 Depending India and Pakistan in a generation was a sobering on its longer-term economic implications for India and reminder of what is at stake.2 On 14 February, a suicide- Pakistan, the COVID-19 crisis can be expected at best bomb attack – for which the Pakistan-based Jaysh-e- to freeze or merely slow down the trends described in Mohammad (JeM) terrorist group claimed responsibility this report. Its contents can contribute to informed deci- – killed 40 Indian paramilitary personnel in Pulwama in sion-making, planning and debate by each country’s the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. In retaliation, government well before they enter their next electoral India carried out an airstrike targeting what the Indian cycle in 2023–24. Following the worst of the pandemic government described as a major JeM training camp in and the resumption of in-person top-level diplomacy, Balakot, a town in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province prime ministers Imran Khan and Narendra Modi will of mainland Pakistan. Pakistan’s counter-retaliation have opportunities to hold substantive conversations resulted in the loss of an Indian aircraft and the capture on the sidelines of multilateral conferences.