E. Sridharan - The India-Pakistan Nuclear Relationship: Theories of Deterrence and International Relations

Theories of Deterrence and International Relations

First published 2007
by Routledge
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Copyright 2007 E. Sridharan

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ISBN 0-415-42408-9

This volume is the result of a larger project on International Relations Theory and South Asia, initiated and carried out under my direction by the University of Pennsylvania Institute for the Advanced Study of India (UPIASI), in New Delhi. A multi-year project from 2000-2006, it was generously supported by the Ford Foundation. It attempted to engage scholars from the South Asian region working in the discipline of international relations, including but not limited to security studies, with each other, drawing upon their varied perspectives to query their own understanding of theory and its relationship to the region. It invited papers on the problems of conflict and cooperation in the region in the light of international relations theory and other related social science theorizing, but based on cross-border fieldwork in countries other than their own. The project was thus both consciously theoretical as well as a first in empirical work. The initial conference was held in July 2002, followed by four others, in August 2003, July 2004, March 2005 and March 2006. This volume contains a selection of revised and updated papers presented at two of these conferences.

I would like to thank the Ford Foundation, particularly the then Representative in New Delhi, Gowher Rizvi, and later, Program Officer for Local and Global Governance, Bishnu Mohapatra, for financial support. I would also like to thank the former SecretaryGeneral of UPIASI and former Foreign Secretary of India, S. K. Singh, now Governor of Arunachal Pradesh, for helping facilitate the project in innumerable ways. Professor Francine Frankel, Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI), University of Pennsylvania, hosted me at CASI as a Visiting Scholar at a time coinciding with the project during which I got invaluable work done. The Editor of India Review, Sumit Ganguly, generously offered to publish a special issue (Vol. 4, No. 2, April 2005) of earlier versions of five papers in this volume (Sridharan, Basrur, Rais, Karnad and Rajagopalan), and its Managing Editor, Alyssa Ayres, tirelessly and enthusiastically walked us through the process. I thank the publishers, Taylor & Francis Group, for permission to reprint the revised versions of these papers and my own revised and much-expanded introductory essay in this volume. On behalf of all the contributors I would like to thank the three anonymous referees of India Review and the anonymous referee for Routledge in India, for their comments which greatly helped in improving the original drafts, and Omita Goyal of Routledge India for taking us through the process. Finally, I would like to thank my research assistant, Adnan Farooqui, and the staff of UPIASI, S. D. Gosain, Ruchika Ahuja and Desh Raj for their hard work on the project.

E. Sridharan

Conflict resolution and the promotion of regional cooperation in South Asia assumed a new urgency in the aftermath of the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in May 1998. This urgency was further underlined by the outbreak of fighting in Kargil in May-July 1999, full mobilization on the border from December 2001 to October 2002, and a continuing separatist insurgency and terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. The stability of nuclear deterrence between India and Pakistan in a dynamic context is a matter of life and death and forces itself onto the scholarly agenda of security studies in South Asia. While short-term measures to prevent the outbreak of war by accident or miscalculation, and military and non-military confidence-building measures (CBMs) to control conflict are necessary, there is a need to go beyond CBMs and begin thinking through, conceptually, the more long-term difficulties of stabilizing the deterrence relationship as a necessary first step towards comprehensive conflict resolution and lasting peace. This volume attempts to explore the relationship between theories of nuclear deterrence, international relations (IR) theory, and the unique nuclear situation in South Asia.

This is in important ways a new departure. While a number of detailed accounts of the Indian nuclear programme have been published since 1998, all, except most recently, Ganguly and Hagerty (2005), Rajain (2005) and Rajagopalan (2005), are essentially analytical histories and engage at best tangentially with theories of deterrence. And none except perhaps Ganguly and Hagerty (2005) and Rajagopalan (2005) engage substantially with IR theory.Cold War. India and Pakistan, unlike the US and the USSR, were once the same country, they have a common border, and very short missile flight times limiting reaction time to almost nothing.

See, for example, Bharat Karnad (2002); Ashley Tellis (2001); Ashok Kapur (2001); George Perkovich (2000); Raja Menon (2000); Itty Abraham (1999); Sumit Ganguly (1999); Rajesh Rajagopalan (2005); Sumit Ganguly and Devin T. Hagerty (2005); Arpit Rajain (2005); and a more journalistic account in Raj Chengappa (2000). For an account by K. Subrahmanyam, at times an insider, see Jasjit Singh (1998). For the Pakistani nuclear programme see Samina Ahmed (1999). For a strongly anti-nuclear perspective which also engages with and critiques realist IR theory, see Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik (2000), another anti-nuclear collection being M.V. Ramana and C. Rammanohar Reddy (2003). For an anti-1998 test as also an anti-NPT and anti-CTBT perspective see N. Ram (1999). Our special interest is in the period since the de facto, if opaque, development of nuclear weapon capabilities by both countries, that is, from 1986-87. The works which attempt to engage with deterrence theory and IR theory include, notably, P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Stephen P. Cohen (2003); Devin T. Hagerty (1998); Rajesh Rajagopalan (2005); Rajesh M. Basrur (2005). For views supporting the viability/ stability of a crude form of deterrence see the articles in Jasjit Singh (1998), and Amitabh Mattoo (1999).

Add to this a history of wars and a territorial dispute in Jammu and Kashmir marked by a separatist rebellion and low-intensity war against the Indian state supported by Pakistan. This entire situation, in turn, is nested in a US-dominated global order, with a post-9/11 US military presence in Afghanistan, and with nuclear power China neighbouring both India and Pakistan, but which has historically been a clandestine supporter of the development of Pakistani nuclear and missile capabilities. China also fought a war with India in 1962 and the two have a continuing border and territorial dispute. Nuclear deterrence theory and IR theory have not engaged with a situation like this, one which calls out for an exploration of what theory can contribute to the understanding of nuclear deterrence in South Asia, as well as what the South Asian situation can contribute to theory. This volume is also a new departure in the sense that it is the first time that a group of scholars from the subcontinent have collectively tried to apply deterrence theory and IR theory to South Asia.