Suchergebnisse

This article appeared in Strategic Insights February 2009 ; This paper examines Pakistan's strategy for ensuring the security and survivability of its nuclear deterrent during periods of peace, crisis, and war. Toward this end, five main features of Pakistan's strategic deterrence policy are described in some detail. With an understanding of how Pakistani military planners perceive the basic requirements of their strategic deterrent, the ways in which the rapidly evolving United States-India strategic partnership threatens Pakistan's core defense precepts become apparent. A set of new long-term Pakistani strategic concerns stimulated by the expanding U.S.-India partnership is identified and analyzed. The basic point is that projected developments in India's nuclear and conventional military capabilities eventually could threaten the survivability of Pakistan's strategic deterrent, which has always been a major concern for the country's defense planners. The concluding section of the paper examines how the Pakistan government officials might view three emerging strategic threats posed by India and its expanding international partnerships.

India took important steps in 2006 to develop its economy and improve its standing abroad. Strengthening its strategic partnership with the United States, while at the same time maintaining positive relations with China, was a particularly important achievement. Increased attention to energy security has driven India to reach out to countries well beyond its borders. For the first time in India's history, New Delhi appears comfortable using the military and diplomatic tools that great powers have used throughout history.

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.AS.2007.47.1.113. ; India took important steps in 2006 to develop its economy and improve its standing abroad. Strengthening its strategic partnership with the United States, while at the same time maintaining positive relations with China, was a particularly important achievement. Increased attention to energy security has driven India to reach out to countries well beyond its borders. For the first time in India's history, New Delhi appears comfortable using the military and diplomatic tools that great powers have used throughout history.

The evolving strategic competition in South Asia poses an unprecedented challenge for U.S. policymakers who believe that "open-ended nuclear weapon and missile programs in India and Pakistan threaten regional and international security and increase the risk of onward proliferation from the region". Today, India and Pakistan are racing to modernize, expand, and operationalize their nuclear deterrent capabilities. Several decades of international nonproliferation measures helped to delay, but not prevent, their testing and overt production of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. In the past, the United States learned how to deal with both allies (the United Kingdom and France) and adversaries (the Soviet Union and China) that went through a similar stage of nuclear force modernization. But coping with the nuclear maturation of nations with which Washington has neither a formal alliance nor any real adversity is a novel undertaking for which the U.S. government does not yet have a coherent, long-term policy. Should the United States try to help, hinder, or not involve itself with the modernization and expansion of nuclear deterrent arsenals in South Asia? This article examines the current policy challenges for the United States in dealing with the India-Pakistan nuclear rivalry.

Five decades ago, President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented a bold and imaginative nuclear iniative to the United Nations. Although the "Atoms for Peace" plan was immensely popular and fundamentally altered the way the world treated nuclear energy, some contemporary observers contend that the policies and capabilities it produced inadvertently fueled the global spread of nuclear arms. As Leonard Weiss recently wrote, "it is legitimate to ask whether Atoms for Peace accelerated proliferation by helping some nations achieve more advanced arsenals than would have otherwise been the case. The jury has been in for some time on this question, and the answer is yes." This contention is correct but somewhat incomplete. On the one hand, Eisenhower's policies did hasten the international diffusion of scientific and industrial nuclear technology, and some recipient nations--Israel, India and Pakistan--did divert U.S. nuclear assistance to military uses. On the other hand, Atoms for Peace produced many of the most important elements of today's nuclear nonproliferation regime: the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the concept of nuclear safeguards, and most importantly, the norm of nuclear nonproliferation. In the final analysis Eisenhower was no more or less successful than his succesors in trying to balance the possession and possible use of nuclear forces for America's defense with efforts to discourage other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons.

After languishing for five decades as a region of only marginal importance to the United States, South Asia became a major area of interest for U.S. defense planners after 9/11. The cause of this turnabout was a need for cooperation with India and Pakistan during Operation Enduring Freedom. But several subsequent developments, some quite distrubing, ensure that South Asia will remain critical for years to come. They include the presence of the Taliban and al Qaeda militants in Pakistan and possibly Kashmir, anti-American and anti-national terrorism in both nations, turmoil in the disputed state of Kashmir, and a potential for nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan. On a more positive note, Washington has improved its political and military relationships with New Delhi and Islamabad, which has raised expectations.