scholarly journals India's Counterforce Temptations: Strategic Dilemmas, Doctrine, and Capabilities

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Clary ◽  
Vipin Narang
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Delivery Systems ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Regional Powers ◽  
Nuclear Strategy

Is India shifting to a nuclear counterforce strategy? Continued aggression by Pakistan against India, enabled by Islamabad's nuclear strategy and India's inability to counter it, has prompted the leadership in Delhi to explore more flexible preemptive counterforce options in an attempt to reestablish deterrence. Increasingly, Indian officials are advancing the logic of counterforce targeting, and they have begun to lay out exceptions to India's long-standing no-first-use policy to potentially allow for the preemptive use of nuclear weapons. Simultaneously, India has been acquiring the components that its military would need to launch counterforce strikes. These include a growing number of accurate and responsive nuclear delivery systems, an array of surveillance platforms, and sophisticated missile defenses. Executing a counterforce strike against Pakistan, however, would be exceptionally difficult. Moreover, Pakistan's response to the mere fear that India might be pursuing a counterforce option could generate a dangerous regional arms race and crisis instability. A cycle of escalation would have significant implications not only for South Asia, but also for the broader nuclear landscape if other regional powers were similarly seduced by the temptations of nuclear counterforce.

China and the Bomb—Chinese Nuclear Strategy

1965 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 74-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morton H. Halperin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Delivery Systems ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Nuclear Device ◽  
Very High

The detonation of a nuclear device by the People's Republic of China on October 16, 1964, made it unmistakably clear that China attached a very high priority to becoming a militarily effective nuclear power as soon as possible. Although the effect on Chinese economic development has probably been relatively limited thus far, the Chinese are devoting substantial resources to their nuclear programme and may be expected to have militarily effective systems within this decade. The Chinese appear to be considerably further along in the development of nuclear weapons and delivery systems than had been previously anticipated.

scholarly journals Assuring Assured Retaliation: China's Nuclear Posture and U.S.-China Strategic Stability

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona S. Cunningham ◽  
M. Taylor Fravel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Critical Factor ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strategic Stability ◽  
Small Force

Whether China will abandon its long-standing nuclear strategy of assured retaliation for a first-use posture will be a critical factor in future U.S.-China strategic stability. In the past decade, advances in U.S. strategic capabilities, especially missile defenses and enhanced long-range conventional strike capacity, could undermine China's nuclear retaliatory capability, which is based on a relatively small force and second-strike posture. An exhaustive review of Chinese writings on military affairs indicates, however, that China is unlikely to abandon its current nuclear strategy of assured retaliation. Instead, China will modestly expand its arsenal, increase the sophistication of its forces, and allow limited ambiguity regarding its pledge not to use nuclear weapons first. This limited ambiguity allows China to use the threat of nuclear retaliation to deter a conventional attack on its nuclear arsenal, without significantly increasing the size of its nuclear forces and triggering a costly arms race. Nevertheless, China's effort to maintain its strategy of assured retaliation while avoiding an arms race could backfire. Those efforts increase the risk that nuclear weapons could be used in a crisis between the United States and China, even though China views this possibility as much less likely than the United States does.

Strategic Dynamics of Crisis Stability in South Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110543
Author(s):  
Iftikhar Ali ◽  
Jatswan S. Sidhu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Strategic Stability ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Analytical Approaches

In contrast to the pervasive confidence that the development of nuclear weapons ensures peace and stability by making wars too expensive to fight for, South Asian strategic stability has drifted into nasty security competition through arms race with an episodical crisis that continues at the sub-conventional level. Deterrence studies that were relegated to the bins of history soon after the end of the Cold War received a renewed interest of scholars on the subject since the demonstration of deterrent capabilities by South Asian rivals in 1998. A new wave of deterrence studies has developed in the current multipolar world with some scholars adopting Cold War models of analysis in the contemporary realms of South Asia, whereas other are attempting new analytical approaches. This article aims to offer a fresh look at how to provide a clear concept of strategic stability, how strategic stability is applicable in contemporary South Asia and what the recent crisis between India and Pakistan being interwoven with terrorism tells us about crisis stability between the two countries under the shadows of nuclear weapons.

Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vipin Narang
Keyword(s):  
Deterrent Effect ◽  
Regional Power ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Regional Powers ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Weak Institutions ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
International Stability ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Era

The world is in a second nuclear age in which regional powers play an increasingly prominent role. These states have small nuclear arsenals, often face multiple active conflicts, and sometimes have weak institutions. How do these nuclear states—and potential future ones—manage their nuclear forces and influence international conflict? Examining the reasoning and deterrence consequences of regional power nuclear strategies, this book demonstrates that these strategies matter greatly to international stability and it provides new insights into conflict dynamics across important areas of the world such as the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia. The book identifies the diversity of regional power nuclear strategies and describes in detail the posture each regional power has adopted over time. Developing a theory for the sources of regional power nuclear strategies, the book offers the first systematic explanation of why states choose the postures they do and under what conditions they might shift strategies. It then analyzes the effects of these choices on a state's ability to deter conflict. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, the book shows that, contrary to a bedrock article of faith in the canon of nuclear deterrence, the acquisition of nuclear weapons does not produce a uniform deterrent effect against opponents. Rather, some postures deter conflict more successfully than others. This book considers the range of nuclear choices made by regional powers and the critical challenges they pose to modern international security.

New ''Cold War''

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Vladimir Batiuk
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Arms Race ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Nuclear Arms

In this article, the ''Cold War'' is understood as a situation where the relationship between the leading States is determined by ideological confrontation and, at the same time, the presence of nuclear weapons precludes the development of this confrontation into a large-scale armed conflict. Such a situation has developed in the years 1945–1989, during the first Cold War. We see that something similar is repeated in our time-with all the new nuances in the ideological struggle and in the nuclear arms race.

The Four Paradoxes of Nuclear Strategy

1964 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Morgenthau
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Middle Ages

The nuclear age has ushered in a novel period of history, as distinct from the age that preceded it as the modern age has been from the Middle Ages or the Middle Ages have been from antiquity. Yet while our conditions of life have drastically changed under the impact of the nuclear age, we still live in our thoughts and act through our institutions in an age that has passed. There exists, then, a gap between what we think about our social, political, and philosophic problems and the objective conditions which the nuclear age has created.This contradiction between our modes of thought and action, belonging to an age that has passed, and the objective conditions of our existence has engendered four paradoxes in our nuclear strategy: the commitment to the use of force, nuclear or otherwise, paralyzed by the fear of having to use it; the search for a nuclear strategy which would avoid the predictable consequences of nuclear war; the pursuit of a nuclear armaments race joined with attempts to stop it; the pursuit of an alliance policy which the availability of nuclear weapons has rendered obsolete. All these paradoxes result from the contrast between traditional attitudes and the possibility of nuclear war and from the fruitless attempts to reconcile the two.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document