The dawn of the Cold War, and the spread of its subsequent nuclear logic of deterrence, dramatically reconceptualised a series of classic principal notions in the field of international relations theory. The theoretical framework of concepts such as the balance of power, national security, deterrence and power status were fundamentally modified by the structural significance of nuclear weapons in the international system. The dynamics of Cold War rivalry provided a global infrastructure for nuclear weapons research, production, testing and deployment.[1] While the two superpowers were heavily engaged in vertical nuclear proliferation, strategically-significant regional security complexes (i.e. the Middle East, the South Asia) witnessed the centrality of the quest for horizontal nuclear proliferation in their major states’ perception of national security, independence and prestige. In spite of the apparent similarities in general objectives, factors directing the orientation of nuclear policies of states in conflictual geopolitical settings for horizontal proliferation varied greatly.

In the South Asian context, a conflictual bipolar security complex, India and Pakistan’s transformational process of emerging as opaque nuclear powers was an example of different motivations, aspirations and ambitions for obtaining nuclear status. While the dominance of realpolitik trends over states’ nuclear decision-making process is not an entirely surprising phenomena, the evolution of India’s approach to the nuclear option is interesting from philosophical and strategic viewpoints.  The genesis of the Indian nuclear policy from a categorical opposition to nuclear weapons in the Nehru era to Pokhran I, India’s first so-called Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE) in 1974, signified a discontinuity in New Delhi’s post-1947 strategic thinking. What caused this discontinuity? What factor(s) led the country of Mohandas Gandhi, who once labelled nuclear weapons as ‘diabolic’, to obtaining potential nuclear power status under Indira Gandhi? Do the same factors suffice in explaining Pakistan’s motives for developing its own nuclear capabilities in the mid-1980s? While some political scientists emphasised national security considerations in locating the roots of India and Pakistan proliferation policy,[2] others have used an alternative theoretical approach with a greater level of structural balance between domestic, military security and symbolic motives.[3] The latter multi-causal approach, summarised by Scott D. Sagan, is particularly useful in providing an inclusive analysis of nuclear proliferation causes. In this context and through the application of Sagan’s explanatory models, the essay attempts to analyse the layers in India and Pakistan’s ‘nuclear thinking’ leading to the development of military nuclear technology.

The alternative multi-causal explanation constitutes a practically efficient theoretical framework for the comprehensive understanding of states’ hybrid logic for nuclear proliferation. Opposing the neorealist mono-causal security-oriented analysis (i.e. “the security model”), Sagan’s approach considers the domestic and norms aspects as effective factors in triggering military nuclear proliferation, thus offering two additional explanations: “the domestic politics model” and “the norms model.” According to Sagan, security model states (either weak or strong) perceive nuclear weapons as an enormously powerful means of deterrence to secure their national security in an anarchic international system, if their regional or trans-regional rival(s) acquire nuclear capability. Strong resourceful states develop their own bomb, while weak states, incapable of proliferation, are obliged to join a balancing alliance with a nuclear power to maintain their security and sovereignty with the promise of nuclear retaliation.[4]  In contrast, the domestic politics model reflects the influence of three main domestic actors on governments’ nuclear proliferation policies:  first, states’ nuclear energy establishments (consisting of scientific institutions and civil companies); second, the military elites (especially in the Air Force branch) as domestic bureaucratic actors; and third, politicians who tend to profit from the nuclear weapons discourse for political parties or individual standing regarding pro-proliferation public opinion. Therefore, these pro-proliferation actors gain additional influence if nuclear weapons are a positive symbol in states’ domestic debates – thus the states proliferate in accordance with the influence of one or more of the aforementioned actors.[5] Finally, in the norms model, states’ nuclear policies are pro-proliferation due to ‘nuclear symbolism’ and the ‘nuclear myth’: states observe military organisation and advanced weaponry as essential elements in their image as modern and sovereign states.[6] The ‘nuclear myth’, or symbolic implications of nuclear proliferation (e.g. technological advancement, military might, projection of grandeur, etc), are perceived as a means of forming states’ modern identity and enhancing their international prestige.[7] While there seems to be an analytical overlap and theoretical interference between the domestic and symbolic models, Sagan’s three models offer an efficient toolbox for examining the deciding factors in India and Pakistan’s nuclear policies.

The security-model analysis of Indian nuclear policy prior to Pokhran I can be conducted by analysing India’s threat perception at the regional and trans-regional levels. The trans-regional level analysis confirms the gravity of Sino-centrism in India’s trans-regional threat perception sphere, and the validity of Sagan’s security-model explanation. The dynamics of post-1962 Sino-Indian bilateral relations is the fundamental factor in India’s horizontal proliferation policy in the security model. While the Sino-Indian protracted conflict began in 1953 over territorial claims, the 1962 Sino-Indian war and its disastrous consequences for the non-aligned India moved the Chinese threat factor from the periphery of New Delhi’s threat perception circle to its centre, triggering incremental yet significant changes in Indian defence policy and military strategy. The subsequent Indian military reorientation towards re-equipment and operational reinforcement (e.g. the creation of ten mountain divisions designed for warfare in the Himalayas and increasing the Army’s manpower ceiling to 825,000) confirms the demise of Nehru’s moralpolitik-type policies regarding China. However, the fundamental shift in India’s nuclear weapons position occurred when Beijing shocked New Delhi with the detonation of its first nuclear device in October 1964. New Delhi’s subsequent reaction to China’s nuclear capability demonstrated a paradigm shift in India’s previously Nehruvian anti-proliferation policy towards what then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri reluctantly phrased as India considering “nuclear explosion for peaceful purposes”.[8] Compatible with the security-model’s two policy scenarios, India’s inability to develop its own nuclear weapons forced New Delhi to secure nuclear deterrence by joining a balancing alliance with a nuclear power. Accordingly, when India’s request to the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom for nuclear guarantee was refused, India’s only option for deterring a nuclear China and maintaining its national security was to obtain horizontal proliferation on its own, leading to the 1974 PNE.

Similarly, the regional-level analysis indicates the significance of nuclear weapons in India’s quest for regional hegemony and security in the South Asian region, although against the much less significant threat of Pakistan. A quick glance at pro-Indian political scientists’ analysis of the motivation of India’s quest for regional security through nuclear weapons reveals New Delhi’s mindset regarding Pakistani conventional threat as well as India’s strategic policy manoeuvre to achieve several objectives at once.[9] In the bipolar South Asian security complex, Pakistan was (and is) India’s major regional security and strategic concern. In spite of its conventional inferiority to India, Pakistan attacked its greater and more militarily powerful neighbour in 1948, 1965 and 1971. While India’s decisive military victory in the 1971 war, and the subsequent disintegration of Pakistan through the independence of Bangladesh, considerably weakened Pakistan, it managed to retain most of its military infrastructures. The series of Indo-Pakistani military conflicts convinced Indian strategists that Pakistan could use the period of Indian domestic political instability to launch other military attacks on India. In the light of alarming Sino-Pakistani cordial relations, and the presumption of Pakistani will to attack India, India’s nuclear proliferation became instrumental in maintaining Indian regional security as well as establishing Indian regional hegemony through deterring Pakistan from future attacks. As Saira Khan formulates, the most efficient war-avoidance strategy for India in such conflictual regional settings was ‘deterrence by possession of nuclear weapons.’

Similar to the Indian behavioural pattern for proliferation, but in contrast to India’s multi-layered threat perception, the application of the security-model framework on Pakistan’s nuclear policy produces a mono-causal explanation: Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation was a linear reactionary policy to India’s 1974 nuclear detonation. In addition to Indo-Pakistani territorial, ideological and ethnic elements of conflict that have formed the essentials of the South Asian security complex since 1947, the 1971 war and dismemberment of Pakistan reinforced Indo-centrism in Pakistan’s threat perception. The war crippled Pakistan’s economy and displayed the perceived unreliability of Pakistan’s allies (i.e. the United States and China) in the time of crisis. Realising its conventional military inferiority to India, in 1972 President Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto initiated a nuclear policy in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Islamabad’s nuclear program, however, gained a critical boost by India’s 1974 PNE.[10] Closely resembling the pattern of India’s reaction to the 1964 Chinese nuclear test, Pakistan’s nuclear policy was decisively directed towards inevitable nuclear proliferation after India’s 1974 PNE. Against India’s combined conventional military superiority and nuclear weapons capability, Pakistan had to obtain its own nuclear weapons as soon as possible to provide deterrence against the gravest threat to its national security.[11] In this context, with Islamabad’s failure to obtain security guarantees from the nuclear powers against a nuclear India, Pakistan had no other option other than to embark on its own nuclear proliferation program.

Applying the domestic-model of analysis on the Indian case clearly exhibits the decisive influence of two of the three domestic actors outlined by the model on India’s nuclear decision for horizontal proliferation: nuclear energy establishments (consisting of pro-proliferation scientists and defence laboratories) and politicians eager to enhance their respective parties or/and individual standing in public opinion. Due to the pattern of the civil-military relationship in India where the former utterly dominates the latter, military elites as bureaucratic domestic actors had practically no influence over New Delhi’s process of nuclear decision-making. After the Chinese 1964 nuclear test, Homi Bhabba, the head of India’s Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), tenaciously lobbied for the allocation of required resources for developing nuclear weapons. Eventually, the AEC leadership’s lobbying for proliferation along with pro-nuclear Congress party pressure on the government forced the reluctant Shastri to order the initiation of a classified project to develop technical ability to design and detonate a PNE within a certain timeframe.[12] In spite of Bhabba’s successor, Vikram Sarabhai’s fierce opposition to any form of nuclear proliferation, the AEC developed an alliance with defence laboratories for lobbying the new Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In a meaningful coincidence, the dynamics of Indian domestic politics in the early 1970s were defined in terms of economic recession, large-scale riots in various regions and the internal conflict in the ruling Congress party, thus an all-time low domestic support for Gandhi’s government. In such dire circumstances, with the Prime Minister acknowledging that a theatrical nuclear explosion could have been a decisive ‘political ace’ for increasing her standing in public opinion, Gandhi’s approval of 1974 PNE is hardly surprising. In a later interview, in spite of her initial denial, Gandhi admitted that the PNE “would have been useful for election”. As the result, immediately after the detonation, public support for Gandhi’s government and the ruling Congress party increased by one-third, both being “restored to the nation’s confidence.” [13] Considering the pre-PNE Indian domestic politics dynamics, the influence of AEC, the Prime Minister and the ruling party on nuclear proliferation is evident.

In contrast, the application of the domestic-model framework on the Pakistani case constitutes the presence of non-political domestic dynamics and a higher level of military influence on the process of Pakistan’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. As mentioned earlier, a year after the 1971 war and two years before Pokhran I, Pakistan’s former leader Bhutto instructed the country’s top scientists to concentrate on the development of nuclear weapons. Yet, such policies could not be pursued without the involvement of the military institution in the process. Decades of military rule has promoted the Pakistani military as the strongest bureaucratic institution in the country, setting the pattern of the country’s civil-military relationship in favour of military control. However, in spite of the military’s vast influence in Pakistan’s polity, nuclear decisions were made within a coordinated policy framework consisting of Prime Minister Bhutto, the chiefs of the armed forces, the Foreign Minister and the chief of joint services headquarters. The pro-bomb direction of Pakistani organic nuclear decision-making machinery was maintained even after the fall of Bhutto in 1977. The policy momentum and continuity in the country’s pursuit for nuclear weapons in the post-Bhutto era confirms the absence of a domestic politics perspective in favour of the strong presence of a national security perspective: all Pakistani political leaders with different attitudes and policy perspectives maintained the essentials of Bhutto’s nuclear policy. As for the nuclear establishment agency’s influence, however, a division in the scholarly literature is detectable: while Kapur introduces I. H. Usmani, chairman of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) as the most important figure in Pakistan’s nuclear decision-making during 1970s,[14] Khan maintains that the scientific institutions’ influence was largely barred by the institutionalised military, limiting their range of influence to the lobbying of politicians and military elites in favour of proliferation.[15] Yet, in spite of Kapur’s exaggerated emphasis on Usmani’s influence, the dominance of the security discourse over Pakistan’s nuclear policy process is to such a degree that the domestic model’s dynamics echoes the trends of the security model.

Finally, analysis of India’s Cold War period nuclear proliferation policy signifies the link between India’s quest for obtaining international prestige as a mean of gaining ‘great power’ status and its pursuit of the absolute weapon. From India’s perspective, a direct link between nuclear proliferation and international prestige existed: countries in possession of nuclear weapons enhanced their standing in the international system’s power pyramid. Nuclear states, developed or underdeveloped, were (and continue to do so) taken seriously by other members of the international community because of the practical implications of possessing the ultimate weapon.[16] India’s perspective regarding nuclear symbolism was formed by observing the impact of China’s 1964 nuclear explosion on Beijing’s power status and international recognition of Chinese power which followed. In addition, China obtained its seat in the United Nations which had previously been denied.  The United States’ recognition of China’s power demonstrated to India the symbolic importance of nuclear weapons in establishing a state’s prestige. Remembering the existence of rivalry between the two states, the Chinese model of enhancing prestige propelled India to embark on a quest for horizontal nuclear proliferation to enhance its prestige, not only in the international context, but in regard to its territorial quarrel with China.

In contrast to India, and in spite of the ‘Islamic bomb’ rhetoric, Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation program did not focus on enhancing the country’s international prestige nor did it perceive nuclear weapons as a means of promoting a sense of Islamic nationalism. Reviewing the views of Pakistani scholars, strategists and officials regarding the country’s motivations for nuclear proliferation clarifies the symbolic-model inefficiency for explaining the rubric of Pakistani proliferation policy. In an interview with Khan, former Pakistani Foreign Minister Agha Shahi rejected the existence of any considerations of symbolic type in Pakistan’s military nuclear program. Similarly, the strategist Ross Masud, the Chairman and Director General of the Islamabad’s Institute of Strategic Studies confirmed Shahi’s view that the projection of Pakistani grandeur by nuclear weapons “has never been a factor in Pakistan’s decision-makers’ minds”, contributing any enhancement in Pakistani prestige to an unintended “spillover effect”. In this context, Pakistan’s nuclear policy was fundamentally less concerned about the notion of prestige enhancement than national security. However, as mentioned by Masud, while the Pakistani horizontal nuclear proliferation could produce the prestige dimension, such an outcome could not be regarded as the cause of proliferation but as its secondary consequence. In addition, the much referred notion of the ‘Islamic bomb’ was in fact more of a rhetorical strategy to attract financial support from wealthy Arab states than a symbol of the Muslim states’ international prestige.[17] Therefore, the application of a symbolic-model framework on Pakistan’s proliferation policy does not demonstrate the symbolic motive as a primary factor in the country’s nuclear weapons development.

In conclusion, this essay has attempted to examine the factors in the evolution of nuclear proliferation policies of India and Pakistan through applying Sagan’s three models of proliferation on the two case studies. After outlining the general theoretical frameworks and their policy implication, the essay discussed India and Pakistan’s motivations for horizontal nuclear proliferation according to the security model, the domestic politics model and the symbolic model, respectively. Analysing India’s motivations through the security-model framework introduces nuclear China as primary incentive for India’s nuclear proliferation and India’s thrive for regional hegemony in the South Asia through deterring Pakistan as the secondary motivation. In contrast, the same model shows that Pakistan’s sole concern for deterring India as its primary motivation for nuclear proliferation. In the domestic level, while India’s nuclear policy was heavily influenced by leaders’ political motivations and nuclear energy establishments lobbying – Pakistan’s proliferation policy, witnessing a high level of military influence, lacked a domestic politics perspective and was mostly concerned with security perspective. Finally, while the application of symbolic model on India’s nuclear policy confirms the significance of nuclear symbolism in India’s quest for international prestige through nuclear proliferation, it demonstrates prestige angle as secondary to security-centric Pakistani proliferation policy.

Bibliography

Bhatia, Shyam, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Ghaziabad: Vikas Publishing House, 1979)

Buzan, Barry & Eric Herring, The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998)

Dunn, Lewis A., ‘India, Pakistan, Iran: A Nuclear Proliferation Chain’, in Asia’s Nuclear Future, edited by W. H. Overholt (Colorado: Westview Press, 1977)

Frey, Karsten, “Of Nuclear Myths and Nuclear Taboos”,  Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice, 18.3 (2006), 341-347

Ganguly, Sumit, ‘The Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Programmes: A Race to Oblivion?’ in The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime: Prospects for the 21^st Century, edited by R. G. C. Thomas (London: McMillan Press Ltd, 1998)

Kapur, Ashok, Pakistan’s Nuclear Development (New York: Croom Helm, 1987)

Kapur, Ashok, Pokhran and Beyond: India’s Nuclear Behaviour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

Khan, Saira, Nuclear Proliferation Dynamics in Protracted Conflict Regions: A Comparative Study of South Asia and the Middle East (Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2002)

Sagan, Scott, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? Three Models in Search of a Bomb”, International Security, 21.6 (1995-96), 54-86

Further Reading on E-International Relations

• At The Brink of Nuclear War: (Mis)Perceptions & The Kargil Crisis
• A See-Saw Relationship: An Overview of Afghanistan’s Ties with India and Pakistan
• A Biopolitical and Necropolitical Analysis of Nuclear Weapon Proliferation
• A Look into the Conflict Between India and Pakistan over Kashmir
• Confronting Great Powers: New Zealand’s Nuclear Stance During the Cold War
• Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Imperialist Dynamics in International Law