Across its two and a half years, the Russia-Ukraine war has catalyzed an already ongoing unraveling of nuclear arms control and nonproliferation norms. The current downturn has been characterized by Russia rescinding its commitments to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), suspending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), engaging in increased nuclear saber-rattling, and conducting more aggressive nuclear drills. While this is the first time since 1972 that the world’s largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, do not have a strategic arms limitation treaty in place, the total spending by the first five nuclear weapons states has dramatically increased in the last three years. Most importantly, global rhetoric on renewing nuclear testing has become more abundant.
Historically, such global developments trigger searches by scholars to analyze any cascading effects on South Asia. While it is difficult to single out any causal link between the global and the regional with regard to general shifts in strategic thought, it is possible to do so for one particular aspect: the potential resumption of nuclear testing. While the global downturn in nuclear norms alone is insufficient to trigger renewed interest in nuclear testing in South Asia, a nuclear test by China or the United States would likely motivate India to follow suit, followed by Pakistan shortly thereafter. Before those in great power capitals consider breaking the global moratorium on nuclear testing, they should seriously consider the dire implications for South Asia and global stability.
26 Years of Non-testing in South Asia
Despite the rise in nuclear saber-rattling globally, India and Pakistan have largely refrained from any public indication of substantially changing their nuclear postures over the last 26 years. Moreover, hostile rhetoric (especially during general elections) has rarely been followed up by changes in official policy or shifts in force posture. With regard to New Delhi’ stance, both the former and current Indian defense minister, Manohar Parrikar and Rajnath Singh, have made comments indicating a desire to rethink India’s no first use (NFU) doctrine, while Indian service chiefs have asserted their potential ability to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Across the border, a statement by the first Director General of Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division, General Khalid Kidwai, last year on the country’s deterrence spectrum covering a range “from 0 meters to 2750 kilometers” led to questions on whether Pakistan was considering developing further short range capabilities, only for a clarification to be issued later that there were no plans to develop such capabilities. While such statements may have affected perceptions of relative capabilities on either side and increased apprehensions in New Delhi and Islamabad, they do not seem to have yet triggered radical changes in either state’s force posture or doctrine.
A nuclear test by China or the United States would likely motivate India to follow suit, followed by Pakistan shortly thereafter. Before those in great power capitals consider breaking the global moratorium on nuclear testing, they should seriously consider the dire implications for South Asia and global stability.
Moreover, the India-Pakistan dyad has been stable due to each state’s continued adherence to their original doctrinal objectives. Indian strategists have generally maintained that a small deterrent is sufficient and credible enough, while Pakistan’s incremental investment to improve conventional capabilities reflects its preference to avoid overreliance on nuclear deterrence in a possible military confrontation against India. Both also remain focused on advancing their delivery vectors and ensuring the survivability of their deterrent. For its part, New Delhi also continues to support negotiations towards a potential Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT), with its ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament reiterating this as recently as August 2024. While Islamabad too has called for negotiating the FMCT, it has asked for the inclusion of not only future but also past fissile material in the treaty’s scope to overcome imbalances in the stocks of such material at the regional and global levels.
Why India Might Test: Internal and External Drivers
In terms of adherence to global nuclear norms, neither India nor Pakistan have any inherent need for nuclear proactiveness or adventurism. Still, India faces two sets of factors driving it to consider new tests. The first is the key domestic grievance in India’s nuclear discourse that its nuclear tests in May 1998 failed to gather the relevant data. For over two decades, successive generations of analysts as well as scientists involved in the original tests have categorically classified India’s thermonuclear tests as a failure. According to these accounts, the yield of the second fusion stage of the device that India tested was far lower than the prediction of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre prior to the test. This presents technical challenges for India’s ability to improve the reliability and capability of its thermonuclear devices. Nuclear “hawks” in India such as Bharat Karnad have long argued that “India cannot reliably correct tested designs, modify or refine it, or change its power-to-yield characteristics.” This has been countered by other strategists with technical evidence, including R. Chidambaram, a prominent nuclear scientist who was involved in the tests, and Manpreet Sethi, who has argued that it is near-impossible to draw a definitive conclusion on the issue. Nevertheless, the prospect of resumed nuclear testing has loomed large over India’s strategic landscape since 1998. It is useful to recall that India exited the CTBT negotiations in the late 1990s precisely over the question of nuclear testing.
India’s avoidance of nuclear testing for over 25 years shows that this internal debate on capabilities has not reached a critical threshold for the government to take action. What may potentially push the debate closer to that threshold are the cracks that are appearing in the global norm against nuclear testing. Reports of Washington considering fresh nuclear tests for the first time since 1992 were in the air during the 2020 U.S. presidential campaign; a second Trump presidency may make these rumors a reality. Reports of increased activity near China’s former nuclear testing site at Lop Nur in late 2023 served as a warning for India that Beijing may perhaps be ready to break its own moratorium on testing. If China were to resume testing while New Delhi held back, the already-wide gap between the Indian and Chinese arsenals might grow larger. Beijing has more than double India’s estimated stockpile, a larger and more diverse arsenal of delivery platforms, and a significantly higher estimated yield of devices relative to India.
International Fallout and Response in Pakistan
The global moratorium on nuclear testing has acted as a dam against the latent pressure within India to retest. If this norm starts to crumble, India’s incentives to not test nuclear weapons again significantly decrease, notwithstanding internal debates. Indeed, India’s temptation to retest has usually been nipped in the bud by arguments pertaining to the geopolitical cost that India would incur with fresh testing, especially given its reputation of being a responsible nuclear power. These arguments hinge on the bank of international goodwill that India’s self-declared moratorium on testing has garnered the country. However, it is this very goodwill that arguably makes India potentially more comfortable with conducting fresh tests. Indeed, policy analysts such as Ashley Tellis have advocated for American support in case India decides to go down the fresh testing route, given Washington’s China calculus and Indo-Pacific strategy.
However, unless Washington and New Delhi’s closer strategic partnership can yield India an exemption from criticism and potential sanctions, there is little to suggest that the United States’ reaction will not be adverse. If anything, U.S. support (along with those of other Five Eyes allies) to Canada over alleged involvement of Indian officials in targeted assassination plots abroad shows the continued contradictions in the U.S.-India relationship despite increasing alignment and bilateral cooperation. Moreover, for all effects and purposes, the persistence of the negotiated agreement between India and the United States to cooperate on civil nuclear energy is incumbent upon a moratorium on Indian nuclear testing. India’s embrace by the nuclear mainstream remains rooted to this agreement, despite some perceptions of the deal not having been fully operationalized, and thus it is critical to uphold.
The global moratorium on nuclear testing has acted as a dam against the latent pressure within India to retest. If this norm starts to crumble, India’s incentives to not test nuclear weapons again significantly decrease, notwithstanding internal debates.
India’s actions will also have a bearing on South Asia’s strategic equilibrium vis-a-vis Pakistan. While Pakistan remains officially committed to not being the first to test nuclear weapons afresh in South Asia, its decision to resume testing will be contingent on Indian actions. While Pakistan’s abject economic struggles bear heavily on such decisions (especially its need to be a responsible recipient of crucial IMF bailouts), the knock-on effects of a potential Indian test (such as Pakistani perceptions of Indian nuclear blackmail) might overpower economic concerns. Note that even in 1998, when Pakistan followed India’s nuclear tests with its own, the country was imperiled by a financial crisis. However, the consideration of being hit with crippling sanctions and the need to secure its economic imperatives failed to inhibit Pakistan from securing its strategic interest after India demonstrated its nuclear capability by testing. Ultimately, for Islamabad, the need to establish deterrence in the nuclear domain against New Delhi triumphed over economic compulsion.
However, currently, it is not in India’s interest to break the global no-testing norm unless China or the United States does. Should either of these occur, India’s motivations to test will lie in qualitatively improving its arsenal rather than any shift in views of credible minimum deterrence. In response to New Delhi’s tests, Islamabad may mirror a similar policy behavior focused on testing to enhance quality without making radical changes in its deterrence outlook, unless New Delhi does. Russia’s nuclear signaling in the context of its invasion of Ukraine have had little effect on New Delhi and Islamabad thus far. However, fresh nuclear tests might lend new credence to arguments that India-specific restrictions on nuclear weapons development are discriminatory if they are not enforced against other powers. The potential domino effect of a broken moratorium on nuclear testing among great powers heightens the stakes of such norm-breaking behavior in South Asia and elsewhere. For great powers, containing adverse nuclear rhetoric and resisting the temptation for resumed testing amidst increasing great power competition is a crucial first step.
Also Read: Mapping the Prospect of Arms Control in South Asia
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Image 1: Visual News via Getty Images
Image 2: Government of Pakistan via Wikimedia Commons
