India and Pakistan’s bilateral relations generate a classic military security dilemma involving proliferation of military technologies, arms race and the interplay of national policies for defense and deterrence. Since 1947, generally, New Delhi introduces a new kind or generation of weapons in its arsenal and Islamabad follows suit. Today, each side is amassing large quantity of conventional, missile and nuclear weapons, which highlight that both sides cling to their policies of strategic competition and the enduring primacy of military security.
The military security is primarily about the interplay between the actual armed offensive and defensive capabilities of states on the one hand and their perceptions of each other’s capabilities and intentions on the other. The Indian and Pakistani ruling elites and populations treat the armed forces of each other threateningly. It’s because, there is a lack of trust and no constraints at all or only weak/limited constraints over the development and procurement of conventional, missile and nuclear weapons.
Presently, missiles systems remain an integral component of India and Pakistan nuclear doctrines. New Delhi and Islamabad successfully tested nuclear capable ballistic and cruise missiles. Since, November 2007, the former has also carried out series of anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system tests and announced confidently to deploy these missiles within three years. This development would be a destabilising variable in Indo-Pak strategic environment. Agreed, Islamabad has also been purchasing and manufacturing the art of weaponry, but missile defense systems is not part of its technical level of strategy, till the writing of these lines.
New Delhi effort to accomplish ABM systems in the near future is a move to assert its military superiority in South Asia. According to the strategic calculations, the ABM system is a part of an overall integrated defensive and offensive capability that functions to enhance India’s offensive capability by weakening that of its adversaries. Theoretically, the ABM will provide India a decisive first strike capability, that is, in a confrontation New Delhi will launch a preemptive strike on its opponents’ strategic assets and then use the ABM system to minimise the damage from a retaliatory strike.
The Indian scientific backwardness, however, frustrates their indigenous military buildup, especially in the development of missiles. After realising that it could not achieve mastery in the missile technology indigenously in the near future, New Delhi approached the foreign missile suppliers. In this context, the Indians have established congenial relations with the Americans, during the last decade. Importantly, in an effort to speed up development of ABM system, India has been receiving technical information from the United States and had also sought its nod for purchasing the Israeli-US upgraded Arrow missile system. Moreover, the Indo-Israeli defense cooperation has also boosted India’s Agni project.
New Delhi ABM systems endeavours would let loose an offensive-defensive arms race between India and Pakistan, which undermine the strategic stability in South Asia. The history of strategic competition between New Delhi and Islamabad; and deterrence theoretical discourse reveals that if the former acquires missile defense systems, the latter would feel that its counter strike capability may be insufficient and therefore its deterrence credibility is threatened. As a result it would engage in acquiring additional missiles or develop missile defense systems to restore the balance of terror, which is imperative for deterrence stability or strategic stability guaranteeing peace between India and Pakistan.
Islamabad is conscious of the destabilising effects of the arms race, and especially the deployment, of ABM systems in South Asia. It has, therefore, presented number of proposals over the years, to prevent the onset of a debilitating missiles race in South Asia. For instance, in 1993 Islamabad offered a Zero Missiles Zone for the South Asian Region. New Delhi did not respond to this proposal and dismiss it as a mere propaganda gimmick. In the aftermath of the May 1998 nuclear tests, Islamabad made a comprehensive Strategic Restraint Regime proposal to New Delhi.
In Pakistan, the Indian ABM systems would be perceived as threatening, thereby, the balance between moderates and hawks would tilt in favour of the latter in the country, which set off the missile buildup entailing overkill capacity on both sides of the border in the subcontinent. In addition, it would create a hair trigger security environment in South Asia and would compel Pakistan to adopt the highly destabilising and accident prone ‘launch on warning’ or ‘launch under attack’ strategies. These deterring strategies would increase the probability of inadvertent, unauthorised and accidental use of nuclear weapons between India and Pakistan.
To conclude, the mastery and deployment of ABM systems would shift the strategic balance between India and Pakistan to the former’s advantage and it would assume a more aggressive posture in its dealing with the latter. Such an environment compels Islamabad to develop more robust deterrence. A strong Pakistani nuclear response to changes in its relationship with India would inevitably raise the strategic temperature between belligerent neighbours. Accordingly, more aggressive and unstable nuclear relationship would emerge in South Asia as a result of the offensive-defensive missile proliferation in South Asia.
