Arms Race in South Asia

One of the effects in seems of North Korea's nuclear test is supposedly an arms race beginning to take shape in South Asia between India and Pakistan. It's been reported that there are two simultaneous developments that the US should be worried about. The first is that Pakistan is developing more plutonium for its existing nuclear arsenal. The second is that India is developing cruise missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads, as well as working on a new SLBM based on the Agni ballistic missile.

Do these developments raise the plausibility of nuclear war in South Asia? Will a security dilemma ensue, where both states build up their "defenses" to the point where it results in an engagement, and perhaps a war? Again, the actors in the game might have changed, but the rules have not. There is no evidence to suggest that deterrence in South Asia will be any different than deterrence between the Soviet Union and the United States or deterrence between the Soviet Union and China. We even have historical precedences to look towards, namely the 1998 Kargil War, which occurred while both India and Pakistan were nuclear. That war did not elevate because both countries knew the risk of doing so.

What about nuclear terrorism? The worry over Pakistan's nuclear arsenal for many years has been whether the weapons would fall into the wrong hands. After all, Pakistan is not exactly the most stable place on the planet, with several coup d' etats and military dictatorships throughout its history. But this is one issue I think is of mutual importance to both India and Pakistan. A nuclear Taliban is hardly in India's best interests, so I think bi-national cooperation is possible in the future to ensure that does not happen. Also, Pakistan's arsenal is equipped with PALS, the nuclear safeguard system that was supplied by the United States after 9/11. This system would make it extremely difficult for terrorists to get ahold of and potentially use the nuclear weapons. It's safeguarded by a series of codes, and if the wrong code is entered, the weapon immediately shuts down and becomes inoperable. In addition, maintenance and operation of nuclear weapons takes many specialized people performing a multitude of tasks over a long period of time. Who are we to think that the Taliban potentially has these sorts of resources?

Nuclear accidents are also an issue of concern in South Asia, but the Soviet Union and the United States were able to go 40+ years each armed with 20,000 nuclear weapons without an accident, those chances diminish greately when talking about the few dozen weapons that India and Pakistan have.

We should not going into meltdown over an arms race in South Asia. A new Indian cruise missile and more Pakistani plutonium does not really alter the equation in a dramatic fashion. It's almost unthinkable that these new developments constitute an act of war.