November 2024
By Manpreet Sethi

It is a little more than a quarter of a century since India and Pakistan conducted their nuclear tests and declared themselves states with nuclear weapons.¹ In that time, both countries have built modest arsenals and established robust command-and-control systems in pursuit of their versions of credible deterrence, but this is not purely a two-state game. Their dyad exists under the shadow of nuclear-armed China, and their perceptions of this geopolitical powerhouse could not be more different.

Pakistan perceives China with benign eyes, having been a beneficiary of China’s nuclear and missile largesse. India views China with suspicion and concern in the face of its aggressive behavior along the disputed borders and its growing conventional, asymmetric, and nuclear capabilities.

Viewed comprehensively, the southern Asian region comprises a complex deterrence equation with three nuclear-armed states that are geographically contiguous but politically wide apart and riven with territorial disputes. The induction of nuclear weapons into the region, by China in 1964 and India and Pakistan in 1998, has added a new and complicating dimension to their security relations.

1998 and Now

Much has changed in southern Asia as the three countries have transitioned over the last 26 years from an age of nuclear innocence or simplicity to one of greater technological and intellectual sophistication. Although China predates India and Pakistan as a nuclear-armed state by almost 34 years and built the essentials for nuclear deterrence, including testing thermonuclear capability and missiles within the first decade of going nuclear, major technological advancements in delivery systems have happened only in the last couple of decades. A rapid accretion of nuclear warhead numbers in China is currently underway. To understand the nature of changes in the region since 1998, four developments are central to the analysis: capabilities, concepts of deterrence, crises behavior, and communication patterns.

The most obvious change is in the material capabilities, the nuclear forces, of the three countries. Although none of them discloses warhead numbers, estimates by sources who monitor relevant parameters to make such a determination indicate that the region collectively has reached around 850 warheads. Most of these weapons are held by China, which is reported to have nearly 500 warheads, making it today’s fastest-growing arsenal.² China’s delivery systems also have increased and are now deployed with improved range, mobility, penetrability, accuracy, speed, and reliability.

The accelerated pace of China’s nuclear expansion is attributed to several factors. Some experts view it as an effort by Beijing to ensure survivability of an erstwhile small arsenal in the face of improved U.S. ballistic missile defenses and conventional counterforce capability.³ Other experts see political drivers behind the expansion as China seeks acknowledgement of its emergence “as a leading global power whose interests and status demand recognition and earn respect.”⁴ It is most likely that strategic insecurity and political ambition are part of the rationale. It is also clear that China is not holding back on building all the quantitative and qualitative strength that it considers necessary to meet these two objectives.

Meanwhile, India and Pakistan also have steadily increased their nuclear arsenals to about 170 warheads each in 2024⁵ and have shifted their delivery systems to newer technologies. Besides deploying medium-range ballistic missiles that are solid fueled and road-and-rail mobile, India has tested a hypersonic technology demonstrator vehicle; commissioned its second ballistic missile submarine, the INS Arighat; and tested multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) technology, as well as the new-generation ballistic missile, the Agni-Prime.⁶ It has been slow, however, in deploying the 5,000-kilometer-range Agni-5 missile, which would be the longest-range ballistic missile in the Indian nuclear arsenal when inducted.

Pakistan has been less active with missile testing this year owing to its economic and political woes, but overall since 1998, it also has been purposeful in adding new capabilities to its arsenal. These advances range from the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons on very short-range ballistic missiles to the development and deployment of the longer-range, solid-fueled Shaheen class of mobile missiles. In addition, keen to have a sea-based deterrence even if ballistic missile submarines currently are beyond its reach, Pakistan has plans to place a nuclear-tipped cruise missile, the Babur-3, on diesel electric submarines.⁷ On October 18, 2023, Pakistan conducted another test of its MIRV missile, the Ababeel, which has been under development since 2017.⁸

Looking ahead, the three countries are well aware of and exploring emerging technologies such as hypersonic and autonomous weapons systems, as well as the greater utilization of space-based assets for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, precision, and communications. China is ahead of the other two in these developments 
and deployments.

Concepts of Deterrence

A second change can be seen in the manner in which the three countries have chosen to practice deterrence. Notably, all three started out with the expressed principle of credible minimum deterrence. Only India, however, can be seen to have stayed with this philosophy. Convinced that the only use of nuclear weapons can be to uphold deterrence by punishment, India has focused on building capabilities that can promise assured nuclear retaliation to cause unacceptable damage to the adversary. Such an approach has liberated India from a sense of panic to add to the warhead stockpile or to be baited toward producing tactical nuclear weapons or rushing into development of MIRV or hypersonic missiles. Rather, New Delhi’s focus has been on developing missiles of adequate ranges, reliability, and mobility; operationalizing the sea-based leg of the triad; and building point and area defenses to ensure survivability of nuclear forces.

Under President Xi Jinping, China is engaged in a transformation of its deterrent. It has moved away from being satisfied with a small nuclear arsenal. Although China officially holds on to the main characteristics of its nuclear strategy as repeatedly expounded in its policy white papers, two differences stand out. First, China is expanding its numbers as seen in the increased construction of silos and deployment of MIRV missiles. Second, China has abandoned its penchant for opacity in favor of relative ambiguity. For instance, China is deploying dual-use delivery systems and commingling its conventional and nuclear forces at the same missile base to raise the risk of “nuclear entanglement.”⁹

China seeks to deter the United States by heightening the risk that Washington might inadvertently hit sites where both kinds of assets are located and where a strike could be perceived by China as a nuclear attack, leading to nuclear escalation. The uncertainty so generated is meant to enhance deterrence. Also, as China’s capabilities improve, the United States estimates that this can “provide [China] with new options before and during a crisis or conflict to leverage nuclear weapons for coercive purposes, including military provocations against U.S. allies and partners in the region.”¹⁰ In this way, China’s concept of credible deterrence has graduated from the minimum it once was supposed to be.

For Pakistan, nuclear weapons always have been critical for deterring the superior conventional force of India, which is an imperative if it wishes to continue what India views as cross-border terrorism. Over time, however, these weapons also have become Pakistan’s protector from becoming a failed state; Islamabad surmises that the major powers would not want a nuclear-armed country to deteriorate in that way.

It is no secret that Pakistan harbors and supports a large number of terrorist organizations with the goal of keeping India unsettled. If these groups are to be exploited without fear of Indian retaliation, then Pakistan must project a willingness to use nuclear weapons first, including tactical nuclear weapons.¹¹ The possibility of a nuclear exchange is meant to evoke fear, not only to deter India, and to scare the international community into getting involved in conflict resolution.

To do this credibly, Pakistan has veered toward the idea of full-spectrum deterrence. This approach is supposed to deter India at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels, with a range of missiles up to 2,750 kilometers in order to cover all of India and its outlying territories. It requires weapons of varied yields to include countervalue, counterforce, and battlefield targets.¹² Although some Pakistani scholars maintain that even full-spectrum capability would remain at the minimum level, the concept is certainly more expansive.

Crisis Behavior

Given the unresolved territorial disputes among the three countries, there is ample room for crises. Between India and China, the absence of clearly defined boundaries has led to mutual accusations of illegal presence of each other’s troops in territory claimed by the other. The Line of Control between India and Pakistan is relatively more settled, but the conduct of Pakistani-sponsored cross-border attacks is the most frequent trigger for crisis. Contingencies are therefore not an infrequent occurrence in the region and the behavior of the political actors during such episodes has changed with time.

The crisis over Kargil, in the disputed Kashmir region, was the first one to hit India and Pakistan after they became states overtly possessing nuclear weapons. The Pakistani action to occupy Indian territory covertly by its regular soldiers dressed as mujahedeen in May 1999 and the restrained response of the Indian military to evict the intruders were undertaken with a consciousness of the nuclear shadow hanging over the region. Nuclear weapons, in fact, played a part in creating the conflict because Pakistan believed that these weapons had brought it immunity from an Indian military riposte for fear of escalation. Simultaneously, nuclear weapons also shaped the scope and conduct of Indian military operations. The Pakistani military’s sense of confidence after acquiring nuclear weapons led its leaders to execute the risky plan. Meanwhile, the Indian polity recognized the altered circumstances, and this helped contain the conflict.

Lessons learned in Kargil on the use of force in the presence of nuclear weapons have been honed or reinforced during the many bilateral crises that have followed. It is notable that in another crisis that occurred in 2019 after a fatal attack on Indian paramilitary forces, India chose to use air strikes against terrorist infrastructure at Balakot in Pakistan. It was the first instance since the 1971 Indian-Pakistani war that Indian fighter aircraft entered Pakistani territory. Even so, the operations were conducted in a restrained manner as India used advanced technology to carry out precision attacks on terrorist infrastructure. Political leaders in New Delhi mandated the use of force with strict instructions to restrict collateral damage and minimize chances of escalation.

Matching India in its air action while apparently seeking to control the possibility of escalation, Pakistan dropped ordnance on Indian targets. Explaining its move, Pakistan said that “one of the targets initially picked was a military administrative complex, but [the Pakistani air force] command decided against hitting it.”¹³ Instead, the strikes were carried out “in open area” to show Pakistan’s “right, will and capability for self-defence” but to avoid escalation “since Pakistan did not want to threaten regional peace or escalate the situation.”¹⁴

One uncharacteristic feature of this crisis was that India did not shy away from manipulating the risk of war. For instance, the Indian navy issued a public statement mentioning the deployment of major vessels. India also signaled that it would not bear the sole burden of a reduction in tensions nor blink at the threat of further escalation. India thereby did not allow Pakistan to exploit the risk of escalation after having created a crisis, but ensured that Islamabad take accountability for having done so in the first place and share responsibility for deescalation. Ultimately, both countries not only demonstrated military action to express their anger and resolve, but did so with a conscious effort at strategic restraint.

Meanwhile, crises between India and China have grown more frequent in the last decade. A set of agreements that had helped maintain peace and tranquility along their disputed borders have been jeopardized by China’s aggressive behavior in many sectors across the line of control. Fortunately, the latest standoff, which took place in 2020, has not become a hot conflict, and neither country has engaged in nuclear rhetoric. The congruence in their nuclear doctrines, which underlines the political value rather than the military value of nuclear weapons, has helped maintain a level of nuclear stability despite fraught political relations.

Nevertheless, there is no escaping the fact that the region remains risk prone. In fact, crisis behavior seems to have become more risk tolerant for various reasons. These reasons range from the personality type of domestic leaders to the rise of hypernationalism in domestic politics to the proliferation of social media that can enable charged and emotional outpourings to sway official decisions to growing military capabilities that offer more options for use of force to an international environment that appears more permissive to military actions.

In each new crisis, the affected parties seemingly have pushed the envelope a bit, although it has been done tentatively with conscious attempts at escalation management. Overall, the two regional dyads have shown strategic restraint and political maturity, but the factors that could weigh adversely on crisis behavior in the future also are on the rise.

Communication Patterns

Nuclear-armed states should have mechanisms for dialogue so they can understand each other’s threat perceptions, doctrines, and logic for force structures. An exchange of views can foster a shared comprehension of nuclear risks too. Yet, the three regional nuclear players in southern Asia suffer from an absence of a strategic dialogue. In the case of India and Pakistan, repeated terrorist attacks, allegations, and counter-allegations have led to hardened positions and a clear erosion of diplomatic channels of communication. The possibility of any diplomatic engagement on nuclear issues is bleak at this moment.

Despite the lows in their political relations, China and India do have mechanisms for handling tactical issues related to border transgressions. At the same time, there is a complete absence of a strategic dialogue due to China’s inflexibility in recognizing India as a state with nuclear weapons. China continues to maintain a rigid position on India because it is not a member of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and has not accepted the de facto reality of India’s nuclear weapons arsenal. As a result, Beijing refuses to engage on nuclear issues with New Delhi. Moreover, China’s material power and international stature have further changed its behavior, making the possibility of a nuclear dialogue even more difficult. If a reset of the political relationship becomes possible, the opportunity should be used to enhance nuclear and security confidence building through clear communication channels and processes.

Southern Asian Stability

There can be no definitive answer to the question of whether southern Asia today is more stable. From one perspective, there is a greater degree of deterrence stability because all three countries have developed credible, robust, and secure second-strike capabilities. This fact has negated the possibility of any of them being able to undertake a disarming or decapitating strike against the other. The chances of deliberate, premeditated use of nuclear weapons therefore are reduced due to the reality of mutual vulnerability.

As Thomas Schelling wrote long ago, “the situation is stable when either side can destroy the other whether it strikes first or second—that is, when neither in striking first can destroy the other’s ability to strike back.”¹⁵ Indeed, given their geographical size and demographics, the three countries are highly vulnerable to each other’s nuclear weapons. None has built any damage limitation capability of the kind that can offer effective defense from an adversary’s nuclear attack.

On the other hand, the region now is more prone to crisis and arms race instability owing to at least three new developments that increase the chances of inadvertent or accidental escalation to the nuclear level. The first one arises from the adoption of risky strategies, ostensibly for enhancing deterrence. The deployment of tactical nuclear weapons by Pakistan, commingling of conventional and nuclear delivery systems by China, and a greater appetite for taking military action by India make for crisis-escalating nuclear postures. All three countries are leaning toward strategies that could heighten the possibility of sliding down a slippery slope.

Second, the actors in both regional dyads are not talking to each other. Given their stressed political relations, there is a tendency to assume the worst of the other’s capabilities and intentions. Yet, there is no platform to seek or offer clarifications, increasing the chances of arms race instability.

Third, technological advances are introducing the region to new nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities, including the availability of modern reconnaissance, surveillance, and intelligence capabilities that can enable precise target acquisition and attack. As military capabilities improve, the possibilities for using force, while believing that any escalation can be controlled, will also grow. So will the risks of escalation.

Will these risks translate into a shared sense of vulnerability? Will they lead the three nuclear-armed nations to move toward some kind of nuclear confidence building through negotiated agreements? Such prospects look dim at the moment, but trends could change if political relationships shift at the global level among the major nuclear powers or at the regional level among the three southern Asian countries.

Future Trends

The region stands at a fork in the road and could go either way. To date, the nuclear capability buildup in all three countries has been at a relaxed pace, but the recent acceleration of warhead production by China and its increasingly assertive behavior on the geopolitical stage could suck others into a vortex. Hardened nationalist positions at the domestic level coupled with a global atmosphere of nuclear permissiveness and a growing popularity of ideas about limited nuclear war with use of tactical nuclear weapons could stir up a heady cocktail of instability.

Fortunately, the experience of nuclear growth in the three southern Asian countries has been quite different from how the Cold War superpowers operated in the first quarter century of their going nuclear. By 1975, the Soviet Union and the United States had accumulated tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, including for tactical use. They also had been through the hair-raising Cuban missile crisis, which fostered a shared sense of peril. It prompted the search for ways to minimize risks and maximize cohabitation through a latticework of confidence-building measures and arms control agreements to foster strategic stability.

All of those mechanisms have crumbled today. The global nuclear order is under stress, setting off alarms as the political value of nuclear weapons seems to be at an all-time high. Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is an important reason for this but not the only one. Other factors adding value to nuclear weapons include the ongoing nuclear modernization and expansion in all nuclear-armed states and the flaunting of these weapons as part of national security strategies by raising the possible use of low-yield weapons for limited regional contingencies.

Such behavior is stoking understandable fears among non-nuclear-weapon states that have hostile relations with nuclear-armed states. Meanwhile, the NPT that was meant to promote nonproliferation alongside nuclear disarmament has turned out to be highly skewed in favor of the former. Without nuclear disarmament or at least a credible promise of working toward that goal, nuclear nonproliferation can never be sustainable.

Thus, although the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan were blamed for causing harm to international nonproliferation aspirations in 1998, 26 years later the nonproliferation regime centered on the NPT actually is being weighed down by its own contradictions. If the nonproliferation norm is perceived to be under threat today, it is because of the unwillingness of the nuclear-armed states to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons. The risky state of current nuclear affairs has nothing to do with what happened in 1998. It has more to do with the behavior of major nuclear powers in the last few years.

At this juncture, all nuclear-armed states could do with relearning of the basics of nuclear deterrence.¹⁶ To set themselves on the right course, it would be worthwhile for each of these states to find ways unilaterally, bilaterally, or multilaterally to minimize chances of inadvertent nuclear escalation, prioritize crisis communication to prevent escalation from misperception, and find avenues for sociopolitical engagement.

ENDNOTES

1. India first tested a nuclear explosive device in 1974, but said that test was a “peaceful nuclear explosion.”

2. Hans M. Kristensen et al., “China’s Nuclear Weapons, 2024,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 15, 2024, https://thebulletin.org/premium/2024-01/chinese-nuclear-weapons-2024/.

3. Ashley J. Tellis, “Striking Asymmetries,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), 2022, https://carnegie-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/files/202207-Tellis_Striking_Asymmetries-final.pdf.

4. Tong Zhao, “Political Drivers of China’s Changing Nuclear Policy: Implications for U.S.-China Nuclear Relations and International Security,” CEIP, 2024, https://carnegie-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/files/Zhao_Political%20Drivers_final-2024.pdf.

5. “World Nuclear Forces, 2024,” in SIPRI Yearbook 2024: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security, 2024, p. 325.

6. Hans M. Kristensen et al., “Indian Nuclear Weapons, 2024,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 80, No. 5 (2024): 326-342.

7. Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, and Eliana Jones, “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons, 2023,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 11, 2023, https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-09/pakistan-nuclear-weapons-2023/.

8. Inter Services Public Relations Directorate (Pakistan), Press release no. PR34/2017-ISPR, January 24, 2017, https://www.ispr.gov.pk/press-release-detail.php?id=3705.

9. James Acton, “Escalation Through Entanglement: How the Vulnerability of Command and Control Systems Raises the Risks of Inadvertent Nuclear War,” International Security, Vol. 43, No. 1 (2018): 56-99.

10. U.S. Department of Defense, “2022 Nuclear Posture Review,” October 27, 2022, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY
-NPR-MDR.PDF.

11. See M. Sethi, “Decoding Pakistan’s Nukes,” Defense News, August 11, 2013; T. Hundley, “Race to the End,” Foreign Policy, September 5, 2012, https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/09/05/race-to-the-end/; S. Gregory, “Pak Toxic Chaos Plan Changes Nuke Debate,” Times of India, March 6, 2011, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/all-that-matters/Pak-toxic-chaos-plan-changes-nuke-debate/articleshow/7637964.cms.

12. For details on the new doctrine, see Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad, “Speech by Lt. Gen. (Retd) Khalid Kidwai, Advisor, National Command Authority and Former DG SPD, on 25th Youme-e-Takbeer,” May 26, 2023, https://issi.org.pk/speech-by-lt-gen-retd-khalid-kidwai-advisor-national-command-authority-and-former-dg-spd-on-25th-youme-e-takbeer/.

13. “Two Indian Fighter Jets Downed, Pilots Captured,” The Dawn, February 28, 2019, https://www.dawn.com/news/1466565.

14. “Pakistan Says It Shot Down Indian Jets, Carried Out Air Strikes in Kashmir,” CNBC, February 27, 2019, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/27/indian-air-force-plane-crashes-in-kashmir-says-indian-police-official.html.

15. T.C. Schelling, “Surprise Attack and Disarmament,” Rand Corp., December 10, 1958, p. 4.

16. For more information, see Manpreet Sethi, “Back to Basics: Pledging Nuclear Restraint,” in Off Ramps From Confrontation in Southern Asia, Stimson Center, May 2019, https://www.stimson.org/wp-content/files/file-attachments/OffRamps_Book_R5_WEB.pdf. 

Manpreet Sethi is a distinguished fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies in New Delhi and a senior research adviser at the Asia Pacific Leadership Network.