Concept & Nature of Conventional & Nuclear Deterrence

Contributing Editor Dr SHIREEN M MAZARI examines in depth a very current topic.

The advent of nuclear weapons has altered — qualitatively — the nature of warfare and, therefore, of nuclear strategy in general and of nuclear deterrence in particular. Within the context of war, nuclear weapons’ sheer destructiveness has made their military usage almost impossible — thereby defeating the very purpose of the political end of war. So, the focus has been on how to use them politically. Thus, in many ways politics is now the continuation of war by other means. So nuclear strategy now has to do more with the projection of the military capability at the political level, rather than simply to translate it into an effective operational capability.

Deterrence is the main component of nuclear strategy because since the development of nuclear capability by more than one state, the object of nuclear strategy has been to prevent the use of this capability. But nuclear deterrence differs contextually from conventional deterrence.

That is, whereas conventional deterrence is inextricably linked to defence, nuclear deterrence seeks to distinguish between the two. Conventional deterrence is premised on denial and/or punishment. In the second instance, you seek to deter by making the cost of the undesired action far outweigh any contemplated gain. In the first instance, you deny the other side the achievement of its military/political goals — which is operationally the same as defence — where you build up your war-fighting capability to a level where the enemy knows it cannot use military force to achieve its ends. But, even in the case of deterrence by denial, if conventional deterrence fails, states have the usable military capability to punish the opponent in a viable fashion.

However, in the case of nuclear deterrence, the focus is on punishment which may well be so devastating that it makes the political ends irrelevant — if operationalised. You are seeking to deter the act by threatening severe reprisal, rather than preparing to deny military success to the enemy once hostilities have begun; but these are reprisals that you hope will never need to be operationalised. Yet, at the same time, nuclear deterrence strategy has a dialectical dimension in that it has had to deal with this notion of deterrence - by threat of punishment — alongside the issue of defence as well. And, with the advent of BMD (Ballistic Missile Defence), this dialectical nature of nuclear strategy has once again been highlighted.

This is because the whole presumption against nuclear weapons’ usage was premised on mutual vulnerability also. Nuclear deterrence strategies were based on Mad and there was a deliberate effort to maintain the mutual vulnerability — as in the limitations placed on ABM systems through the ABM/SALT I agreement.

BMD threatens all this with its two components: National Missile Defence (NMD) and Theatre Missile Defence (TMD). While the NMD is a fixed, land-based, non-nuclear missile defence system with a space-based detection system — the envisaged TMD focuses on rapid deployment and with an element of high manoeuvrability. And, unlike the NMD, the TMD comprises a number of subsystems. So if the US operationalises its BMD programme, it will add to the dialectical pulls within notions of nuclear deterrence.

Because BMD challenges deterrence based upon mutual vulnerability, it undermines the established stability of the NATO deterrence not just against Russia but also against China. Both the NMD and the TMD threaten to call into question China’s limited deterrent force and Russia’s deteriorating one. The issue of “rogue” states does not really wash because only the US imagination could think of a missile attack on the US mainland from a state like North Korea! In fact, in many ways, NMD can be seen as part of a strategy of unilateral hegemony, which will allow the US to intervene anywhere with impunity.

Yet BMD also impacts the NATO deterrent shield over allies like Canada, Japan and Europe. This may be weakened now since they can become more accessible targets than the US - once NMD is deployed.

BMD also challenges the whole nuclear regime comprising of bilateral and multilateral arrangements, in addition to the ABM Treaty. Russia, which has reaffirmed its ABM Treaty commitment, is unwilling to renegotiate this treaty. Nevertheless, the ABM Treaty has an “extraordinary” cancellation clause, which allows either side to give 6 months’ notice of withdrawal for reasons vital to national security.

Interestingly, because it is the Chinese missiles that the BMD directly undermines — as one commentator put it, from a US perspective, it is “an effort to seek a modus vivendi with the emerging superpower — globally in the long term, regionally in Asia in the short term.” At the multilateral level, the BMD plan directly contravenes the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 as well as undermining Article VI of the NPT. Indirectly, it threatens the stability achieved through notions of deterrence through mutual vulnerability and nuclear arms control regimes — the latter an ongoing process. It is clear, that China would be even less amenable to signing an FMCT. Also, many of the NWFZ treaties may now be contravened given the manner in which the US intends to deploy TMD.

So the international nuclear regimes premised on curtailing and cutting back nuclear forces as well as preventing nuclear proliferation might now all be undermined — either directly or indirectly. A new kind of arms race will commence - but given Russia’s lag in technology, there is bound to be undermining of the old strategic stability. One can see a proliferation of deployment of sub-strategic nuclear weapons on surface and attack submarines because the philosophy of deployment would shift to low grade, low cost Soviet and Chinese tactic of employment of mass - as one commentator put it: “low cost saturation of phenomenally high cost systems.”

At the political level, BMD implies that the US is unwilling to see reunification of Korea — having propelled Korean detente they would now wish to contain it — something that may not now be in their control.

Of course, conventional deterrence is not based on mutual vulnerabilities that are deliberately sustained. Whether conventional or nuclear, one of the basic prerequisites of effective deterrence is clear communication — to convey the threat. Therefore, a basic level of a common strategic language is needed. Also, where communication is not direct, then tacit communication through unambiguous actions has to be in place.

Because deterrence seeks to prevent certain types of contingencies from arising, communication becomes central to the notion - and a policy of deterrence also needs specific forecast inputs especially in relation to costs and risks that will be run by the party to be deterred, if certain actions are taken; and about advantages that would be gained if these actions are avoided.

Of course, capability — that is, military capability — becomes very critical to deterrence. Without the appropriate capability, the threat cannot be credible and deterrence is premised upon the credibility of the threat — which means that costs and risks must be considered very clearly before a certain strategy is formulated.

There is no space for “may act”; it has to be a case of “will act” which must be conveyed in no uncertain terms. Often, in such a case, it helps to illustrate that the final decision to act is not totally in the threatener’s control. For instance, the stationing of American troops in Europe sent the signal that whether the US wanted to or not, once war in Europe broke out America would be involved.

So, nuclear weapons have altered the notion of deterrence as well as warfare. Also, in the case of nuclear deterrence there is almost no empirical evidence to back so many critical propositions. This means that doctrines and beliefs become central in creating a reality. Deterrence cannot escape from preparedness for the eventuality of nuclear war. So deterrence will have to focus on your threat should it fail: Will it be counter-force oriented or counter value, for instance? In fact such accompanying doctrines also “deter” — so in many ways, a certain level of brinkmanship is an integral part of deterrence — for too much timidity will make the deterrence lose its credibility. Especially where asymmetry of forces prevails, brinkmanship becomes crucial. Another paradox is that since deterrence is most effective when both sides are mutually vulnerable — so, this means that, within a nuclear context, antagonists cannot be locked in a zero sum game environment. Their survival is linked together now. So nuclear deterrence requires the prevalence of conflict and common interest between the two sides.

But this also can imply that only one side makes concessions. This can also lead the other side to take greater risks — hence the increased possibility of limited wars, where military action is deliberately kept limited. In fact, the notion of Limited War is an integral part of nuclear deterrence — where you keep out of action the most effective weaponry, or you keep the theatre limited or the targets limited — and all deliberately — while making it clear to the other side your ability to expand the conflict. So one can see, within a nuclear context of deterrence, conflict leading to crisis leading back to conflict again and possibly dialogue.

What then are the implications for Pakistan within the nuclear deterrence prevailing here? In order to answer this question, one must first identify Pakistan’s sources of external threat, and then examine the lessons to be learnt from the experience of Kargil - the first post-nuclear Limited War between Pakistan and India.

External threats to Pakistan:

These emanate from two sources, the primary one being India. The threat from India has two dimensions: i: All-out war — conventional/nuclear; ii: Low intensity conflict and/or Limited War. Afghanistan is the secondary source of potential threat, but more relevant in its linkage to internal destabilisation within Pakistan — and hence not within a nuclear deterrence context.

Well, after the nuclear tests of 1998, there has been a minimal level of stability of the nuclear deterrence in South Asia. Kargil reflected that and Pakistan has consistently called for a nuclear restraint/stability regime.

Lessons from Kargil

Details of the military exchanges vary depending on which version one hears — but some points emerge clearly — the most basic being that nuclear deterrence held. The basic lessons to be drawn are; One, that India was deadlocked militarily and, therefore, chose to go international — very successfully — in order to seek international pressure to get Pakistan to withdraw from the heights along the LoC. So, Pakistan’s military calculation was correct — that the Indian army was stretched and unable to open an all-out front.

Two, that India was able to turn a military defeat into a diplomatic victory.

Three, that Pakistan was unable to translate a tremendous military success into a politico-diplomatic victory.

Four, that Kargil has forced India’s hand on Kashmir and combined with the nuclearisation of the region, the Kashmir issue has attracted international attention.

Five, that Kargil signalled the advent of limited war into the Pakistan-India conflictual equation.

From a Pakistani perspective, the most critical question that needs examination is what went wrong in that the military success failed to be reflected at the politico-diplomatic level?

Shortcomings: The political will to sustain the limited war was missing — there was panic among the decision-makers despite military success. Also, there was an inability on the part of the political elite to sustain the nuclear deterrence unequivocally — partly because the deterrence had not yet been enunciated clearly. There was also a fatal lack of diplomatic preparedness and the whole exercise was mis-timed politically, given the impending Indian elections, which made the Indian government more intransigent.

But from the deterrence perspective, it was the manner of the withdrawal, which has done the most damage. It undermined a crucial pillar of deterrence for Pakistan — the ability to sustain a hostile action politically — this will undermine credibility of Pakistan’s deterrence for the future.

One needs to take note of Jasjit Singh’s latest comment on Kargil where he states that it was a brilliant military manoeuvre executed brilliantly by Pakistan at a place and time of its choosing. By denying Pakistan success, India now has the ability to deny Pakistan success at any level of threat. So there is a need for Pakistan to evolve a more encompassing strategy for the future.

Coming on to an appropriate deterrent strategy for Pakistan: Since strategy refers not just to application of force but to the exploitation of potential force, it requires politico-military inputs keeping in mind the geopolitical realities of the region and the antagonist’s aims and capabilities. For Pakistan the deterrence will be primarily of the bilateral kind — although Pakistan needs to and can have an underlying political multilateral co-operative framework, which would indirectly bolster its deterrence vis-a-vis India. A factor to be considered is that for India the context of her nuclear deterrence is multilateral given her perceived Chinese threat and her global ambitions — as witnessed by her creation of a Far Eastern Command based on Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

So, one underlying feature in the Pak-India equation will always be the prevalence of a certain asymmetry of nuclear capabilities. In order for Pakistan to formulate a credible nuclear deterrence it must first be clear about India’s nuclear doctrine — and this is reflected in its so-called draft nuclear doctrine. If present Indian military acquisitions are analysed, it is evident that India has already begun operationalising this doctrine even though the government has not overtly owned it.

What the document did was to define, for India and the world, India’s post-nuclear security parameters. India had begun doing that after its nuclear tests in May 1998 and this doctrine merely coalesces the various strands of the Indian perception of its new operational security milieu. After all, the doctrine as such does not touch upon the quantitative issues of numbers of missiles/warheads or finances. So it is more of a general enunciation of Indian nuclear policy within India’s new, expanded geopolitical framework.

It is within this reference that the doctrine’s notion of a triad of forces and ostensible “no-first-use” must be studied. And within that reference point, Pakistan is one —albeit a critical one — amongst many factors. If Pakistan were the sole framework then the triad of forces envisaged would be an expensive overkill and the “no-first-use” would make no practical sense given the difficulty of establishing who fired first within the short time spans and distances that would be involved in any Pakistan-India nuclear confrontation.

When India went overtly nuclear, it did so within the parameters of a well-defined long-term security policy and gradually the parameters of this policy are being carefully enunciated by Indian analysts. Primarily, India is seeking to reassert its regional and global ambitions within the overall context of a nuclear capability. The reach of this capability has been translated into an expansion of India’s regional parameters as India once again seeks to be acknowledged as a major regional and global power. The new draft nuclear doctrine gives practical expression to India’s theoretical rationalisation of its ambitions that had been enunciated last year.

India is now seeking to move beyond the South Asian geopolitical framework to what it is trying to define as a “Southern Asian” framework. And, the nuclear doctrine with its focus on Agni-II and submarine-based nuclear missiles as well as the eventual development of ICBMs and space-based systems, is aimed at this Southern Asian geopolitical milieu. Within the framework of Southern Asia, India includes China, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran, Oman, South Asia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the northern Indian Ocean! So, effectively, India is moving into ASEAN and ECO regions also.

The draft nuclear doctrine reflects not only the military dimension of India’s new geopolitical security theatre; it also enunciates India’s position on nuclear arms control and disarmament. Indian experts contend that in reality there has been no arms race in the subcontinent for many years and that the nuclear factor is not necessarily a reason for such a race to begin now. One the nuclear issue, India continues to declare that its interests would be better served if there were no nuclear weapons but that such a situation demands global nuclear disarmament — not simply horizontal nuclear non-proliferation.

As for ballistic missiles, the Indian rationale is that they have already been deployed in India’s operational security region for many years now — not only in China and India but also in Iran and Pakistan. While Indian analysts concede to the need for establishing some form of strategic stability within the context of ballistic missiles in the region, India does not accept the notion of a “ballistic missile free zone in South Asia”.

So what should Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine include?

Pakistan does not have to either get into a numbers game with India or specify its own minimal numbers it may choose to develop.

Instead, it should go for a one-rung escalation ladder knitted in tightly with a highly cohesive, state-of-the-art tactical conventional military.

This means that it must acquire sophisticated conventional technology at the tactical, theatre level while maintaining a posture of one-rung escalation in case of all-out strategic war. This becomes necessary because Pakistan lacks spatial depth and should not needlessly waste its resources in a static conventional war. Nor is there any need for Pakistan to get embroiled in an expensive race for the hydrogen bomb. The fission bombs are sufficient for its needs — at least well into the foreseeable future.

So what should be the basic components of Pakistan’s nuclear force? Given the lack of sufficient state-of-the-art air planes — and the constant dependency for spares abroad, land-based missiles would be the mainstay of any nuclear force, with additional nuclear-equipped air and submarine launched missiles — especially since the new Agosta submarines can become nuclear capable. However, in the case of the Pakistan navy, the preponderance of India’s blue water navy makes it difficult to make the Pakistan navy the mainstay of the nuclear force. Yet, at the tactical and strategic levels, the Pakistan navy along with the air force need desperate modernisation.

The land-based system should be premised on mobile launchers until the beginnings of a second strike capability and solid fuelled missiles could be ensured. There should in fact be a new missile force created to centralise nuclear decision making at the operational level and it should be under one central command — in all probability the army command. For the future also, Pakistan does not need to get into expensive space weapon programmes and ICBMs are definitely not Pakistan’s need.

Targeting should be primarily counter-value focusing on Indian urban and industrial centres — the critical ones already being within present reach of Pakistani delivery capabilities. Counter force targeting can be resorted to as the nuclear weapons become more precise, with reduced CEPs and second strike forces are developed. As for theatre nuclear weapons, this makes little sense in terms of limitation of resources and lack of spatial depth. For Pakistan there cannot be a distinction between strategic and tactical in terms of nuclear weapons.

Of course, neither Pakistan nor India have indicated specifically how their nuclear forces will be deployed — and at what levels of readiness/alert. What would be the time lag to convert from peacetime deployments and level of alert to war time scenarios.

An additional problem for Pakistan is the Indian efforts to beef up their aerial surveillance systems — They have now acquired 2 Russian A-50s after their own ASP (Airborne Surveillance Platform) crashed in trials in January 1999. This acquisition is a great force multiplier for India. The A-50 can trace up to 50 targets simultaneously and can stay in the air without refuelling for four hours at a station 1000 kms from its base. AWACs can scan airspace and position interceptors in the air well in advance before hostile strike aircraft become a factor. How they will be able to impact on the mobility of strategic forces on the ground has yet to be assessed — but a lot will depend upon the radar capability of the A-50s.

The A-50s will also impact on Pakistan’s conventional force deployments — both in peacetime and in war.

The Indians have also got access to Israeli UAVs — and Pakistan needs to consider their impact as well on deployment of  its missiles.

From an operational point of view, it would be desirable — till we can perfect hardened silos and second strike capability — to have a wide and flexible dispersal on mobile launchers. But with the range of the A-50s, we may need to push deployments into Balochistan, which means increasing the effective range of our missiles. Dispersal and flexibility also raise questions of costs, political control and high physical security and communications links.

There is not too much information on systems safety — for instance whether the present warheads are designed to a “single-point safety” — that is, ensuring a nuclear explosion will not result if any point on the conventional explosive that surrounds the fissile material were accidentally detonated; or whether weapons are physically incapable of being made live without simultaneous action of two or more persons. Nor do we know whether safeguards such as PALs (permissive action links) couple the incapacity to authorisation at higher levels.

Command and control stabilisation becomes critical within a nuclear milieu and there is also the need to seek a strategic stability — rather than restraint — regime.

A strategic stability regime would require Pakistan and India to establish a stable mutual nuclear deterrence. This, by definition, would require both countries to come to some agreement over missile deployments and numbers. Obviously, no one expects Pakistan to demand a missile-for-missile balance from India given India’s claimed security concerns in relation to China and its power projection ambitions beyond South Asia. However, in the case of missiles that are Pakistan-specific, such as the Prithvi, India will have to have an equitable equation with Pakistan. Also, if India seeks to opt for an even-spread amongst its nuclear triad of forces, then Pakistan needs to have an edge on land-based deployments in terms of numbers.

Both Pakistan and India need to work towards establishing credible command and control mechanisms. For Pakistan the problem is simpler not only because the Pakistan military has been involved in Pakistan’s nuclear development, but also because the lines of communication for Pakistan are short. Given India’s expansive nuclear milieu — as can be judged by its ambitious nuclear doctrine — and the tussle for nuclear control between its military and its scientists, command and control is a major problem for India.

What is needed is an extremely sensitive and well-co-ordinated command and control system. It is here that the West, who seems to be so fearful of an inadvertent nuclear war in South Asia, can help to undermine that fear by providing the proper technical know-how for ensuring effective command and control.

The West has to separate proliferation issues from stability issues. Nuclear risk reduction requires institution of technical and political structures that establish transparency as well as stability of the nuclear deterrence.

Given the development of strategic nuclear deterrence, Pakistan needs to review its conventional doctrine. The severe limitations of economic resources means that defence expenditures will be curtailed in the coming years — and, politically also demands for defence cuts will intensify in the future — so where should cuts be made?

To begin with, Pakistan’s conventional forces need to be geared towards a compact, highly technical fighting force geared primarily for theatre operations within an overall strategic nuclear framework. Also, we need to develop notions of Limited War and LIC —the latter is especially critical because that is going to be the main mode of violent conflict in this region in the future. So, conventional forces need to be re-geared to these operational modes.

In addition, we need to seek mutual conventional force reductions with India — on the Paris Treaty model for CFRE — especially of offensive systems on the ground, which in the Indian case are Pakistan-specific because of the terrain in relation to Indian neighbours like China and Bangladesh.

For the future, while Pakistan does not have to feel threatened by every Indian missile development, it would need to develop and update its own weapon systems so that it can develop solid-fuelled missiles, and a credible second strike capability. Also, outmoded warheads would need to be replaced periodically. In order to maintain a stability in the nuclear weapons’ development of both countries, a greater degree of transparency would be needed as well as the setting up of a permanent framework for a strategic stability dialogue. For this, a common strategic language is essential — which is why notions such as “minimal credible deterrence” make little sense since the ‘minimal’ differs in each state’s perception. Hence, the critical need for a mutual nuclear dialogue in South Asia if deterrence is to be strengthened and stabilised.