BHARAT RAKSHAK MONITOR: Volume 4(1)

BHARAT RAKSHAK MONITOR - Volume 4(1) July -August 2001

India and US National Missile Defense

Kaushal Vepa

The recent congruence of views between the US and India on the deployment of a National Missile Defense (NMD) system has caught even experienced defense analysts worldwide by surprise. This astonishing congruence is transparent in a recent interview given by Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State to the Hindu, one of the national English language dailies of India. This paper will address the strategic issues relating to the NMD especially as it concerns the 4 main players on the world stage as far as this issue is concerned, namely – India, China, Russia and the US. Special attention will be paid to the issues in relation to India, since this is the stance that has surprised many. In order to understand India’s position, one has to examine India’s weltanschuung and her vision of where she stands in the world of today and the coming decades.

What is NMD?

There are many excellent summaries of the scope and extent of NMD as envisaged by the Bush administration. We mention a couple of sources (1,2). The FAQ in the Washington Post link answers most of the preliminary questions and the white paper by LAWS is more comprehensive. A complete description of the system is therefore beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say that it comprises air; sea, land-based systems and space based early warning satellite components.

Why does the US want a NMD system?

President Bush has offered several reasons for deploying a NMD (1,4). His prime motivation appears to be to change the composition of the Nuclear deterrent to reflect new realities. The new realities include the renewed assessment that the threat to the US (and its allies) is no longer emanating solely or in appreciable measure from Russia or China but now comprises the so called rogue states (North Korea, Iran and Iraq). There is also the premise that the technology will now allow intercept during the boost phase, which will permit the missile to be destroyed earlier in its flight. In his May 1^st speech at the National Defense University, President Bush laid out the following reasons for his decision to deploy NMD (http://www.usinfo.state.gov ):

* Today’s Russia is not our enemy. ---The Iron Curtain no longer exists. ---Yet, this is still a dangerous world, a less certain, a less predictable one.

* Unlike the Cold War, today's most urgent threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands, but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states, states for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life. They seek weapons of mass destruction to intimidate their neighbors. In such a world, Cold War deterrence is no longer enough.

* We need new concepts of deterrence that rely on both offensive and defensive forces. Deterrence can no longer be based solely on the threat of nuclear retaliation. Defenses can strengthen deterrence by reducing the incentive for proliferation.

* We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world. To do so, we must move beyond the constraints of the 30 year old ABM Treaty.

* This new framework must encourage still further cuts in nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons still have a vital role to play in our security and that of our allies. We can, and will, change the size, the composition, and the character of our nuclear forces in a way that reflects the reality that the Cold War is over.

* I am committed to achieving a credible deterrent with the lowest-possible number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national security needs, including our obligations to our allies.

* Several months ago, I asked Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to examine all available technologies and basing modes for effective missile defenses---- The Secretary has explored a number of complementary and innovative approaches. The Secretary has identified near-term options that could allow us to deploy an initial capability against limited threats.

* When ready, and working with Congress, we will deploy missile defenses to strengthen global security and stability.

* We are not presenting our friends and allies with unilateral decisions already made. We look forward to hearing their views, the views of our friends, and to take them into account.

* We'll also need to reach out to other interested states, including China and Russia.

* This (ABM) Treaty ignores the fundamental breakthroughs in technology during the last 30 years. It prohibits us from exploring all options for defending against the threats that face our allies other countries and us. That's why we should work together to replace this Treaty with a new framework that reflects a clear and clean break from the past, and especially from the adversarial legacy of the Cold War. ---And perhaps one day, we can even cooperate in a joint defense.

* I want to complete the work of changing our relationship from one based on a nuclear balance of terror, to one based on common responsibilities and common interests.

The arguments in favor of NMD are given by the Heritage Foundation at their site (5). Fundamentally, the President and his National Security Team have decided that the benefits of deploying a NMD outweigh the risks of alienating friends in Europe as well as traditional adversaries such as Russia or China.

Strategic Concerns of Russia and China

Surprisingly, the response of Russia has been noticeably more muted than that of China to the unilateral abrogation of the 1972 ABM treaty. One reason for this could be the accompanying promised reduction in the US arsenal. It may also be the assessment of the Russians that a genuine missile shield capable of thwarting the thousands of missiles that the Russians deploy even today, is still decades away. China is concerned in equal measure with both the NMD and its first cousin the TMD (theatre missile defense) intended to protect the US allies in the Far East (16). China’s fears about the NMD are well articulated in this piece by Peter Zhang (17):

"Make no mistake, these shrill cries contain a genuine note of panic. Motivating them is the fear that a successful NMD (and our militarists don’t doubt America’s ability to build an effective anti-missile shield) would turn China’s expensive missile arsenal into a heap of scrap. Unlike half-witted leftwing journalists, they know the "arms race" argument is hollow because attempting to breach such a system would require a horrendously expensive program of trying to develop technologies to penetrate the shield, knowing that the shield itself was being continuously refined. "

India’s view of its place in the 21^st century

India regards herself as a civilizational power. Such a viewpoint is not new. Both Arnold Toynbee and Samuel Huntington have remarked on the civilizational power of India. It is a common thread running through the early writings of Nehru continuing on to the viewpoint of the eminence grise of the BJP, Jaswant Singh himself (8). What does it mean to be a civilizational power? Simply, it means that for a large part of her history, India has exerted considerable influence on the cultures and civilizations of most of Asia. To those who infer this to be mostly in the past, I would draw attention to the equally widespread acceptance of Indian movies (this industry is commonly referred to as Bollywood) throughout the world. In addition, a new phenomenon which has arisen in the world is the ubiquitous presence of Indian technologists, engineers, doctors, software engineers and the increasing dependency of the West, in particular the US, on Indian technological manpower.

But civilizational considerations by themselves are not enough to project the power of a nation state. It must be accompanied by a requisite measure of military power. Richard Falk remarks (7) in ‘Indian Nuclearism and the new shape of world order’, that it is no longer possible to think about Asian security without India as an indispensable player is. He regrets, as do many Indians, that it took a nuclear blast at Pokhran (POK II, 1998) to drive home the point.

To view herself as a civilizational power does not therefore mean that India abjures the use of geopolitics as a framework for defining her place in the world. It could be argued that Nehru eschewed geopolitical realities in favor of an idealist view of the world. India has recognized since then that there have been tectonic changes in the structure of the world geopolitical landscape. The bipolar nature of world superpowerdom, has been replaced by one in which the US is the sole remaining superpower and there are a number of other 2^nd tier or regional powers including the European Union, Latin America, Africa, Russia, China and India.

There are equally compelling economic considerations that place India among the top ranks of nation states in the world. India has almost twice the arable land as the People’s Republic of China. India is not only the largest democracy in terms of population but is fast becoming one of the oldest democracies in the world. In Purchasing Power Parity terms, India is the 5^th largest economy in the world (18) and destined to move up in the rankings by one notch within the next decade. India has invested handsomely in education and has one of the largest trained manpower with 200 universities and 1500 research institutions. Most significantly it is no longer a technology seeker but a technology provider to the world.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to go into the details of the evolution of India’s nuclear strategy leading to the Nuclear tests in Pokhran in May of 1998 (POK II). These have been recounted in great detail by both George Perkovich (9) and Raj Chengappa (10). India is one of the few countries to have articulated a draft nuclear doctrine (DND), in the early stages of graduating to ‘a State with Nuclear Weapons’ (SNW). See for instance (11) for details on the DND. India has reinforced the assertion that she will have a ‘minimum credible nuclear deterrent’. In order to ensure survivability of its nuclear arsenal in the event of first strike by its adversary and noting that India has also enunciated a No First Use (NFU) policy, India will ensure that "India's nuclear forces will be effective, enduring, diverse, flexible, and responsive to the requirements in accordance with the concept of credible minimum deterrence. These forces will be based on a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and sea-based assets in keeping with the objectives outlined above. Survivability of the forces will be enhanced by a combination of multiple redundant systems, mobility, dispersion and deception."

Strategic Concerns of India

Given this backdrop of India’s view of her place in the world and her security strategy, the question then is what are the considerations driving India’s response to the NMD. The broad answer to this question is that India wants to convert a ‘reality of interests to an alliance of interests’ (Jaswant Singh). It is not clear yet as to the nature and extent of this shift in Indian foreign policy of more closely aligning India’s interests with those of the US. But the outlines of such an identity of interests are clear. Both sides are moving away from a checkered history of an estranged relationship. For a summary of this history see for instance (12) and for a detailed account, the book by Dennis Kux is fairly comprehensive (13). Clearly India has abandoned Non-alignment as an end in itself or even as a means to an end, namely survival in a world dominated by powerful blocks. The rationale for this has disappeared with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. Furthermore, economic compulsions have compelled India to open up its economy to foreign investments and even foreign competition.

The Bush administration, and the Clinton administration in its later stages, have been equally eager to embrace the new India. The primary reason for this being the opportunity to tap into India’s vast resource of technological manpower. While neither India nor the US will admit to it publicly, and both countries are going to great lengths to downplay this aspect, the fact remains that India provides a strategic counterweight to China, with its growing Naval power and ability to project this power in the Indian Ocean region.

It is the author’s view that India also sees the NMD as a path towards de jure acceptance as a Nuclear Power bypassing the obstacles set up by the NPT and the CTBT. The position that India found herself in during the mid 90’s prior to POK II has been likened by some in the non-proliferation community to being caught in a labyrinth (see for instance Walker, 15). On the one hand, India had always stood for total disarmament and abolition of Nuclear Weapons, and on the other she has always had a vast and ambitious program of developing an infrastructure for designing and producing nuclear weapons. Many in the west viewed this as a hypocritical stance, while India has always maintained that she would not unilaterally give up the nuclear option while the world was bristling with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This position while eminently logical to Indians, was dismissed derisively by the policy elite in the west, since they were not willing to face up to the reality that it was the US (and the rest of the N5) which did not want to give up the nuclear option themselves. Jaswant Singh, India’s Minister of External Affairs termed this stance as being equivalent to ‘nuclear apartheid’.

It must be remembered that India has not completely endorsed the NMD and is opposed to the unilateral abrogation of the 1972 ABM treaty. A careful reading of the Ministry of External Affairs press statement(22) which followed Bush's speech at the NDU will show that India has not been explicit in her position on missile defense. Indeed, the words missile defense were not mentioned at all. What the statement does endorse, however, are those aspects of the strategic debate which have been part of India's articulation on the subject from the beginning - i.e. consultation, disarmament and movement away from the doctrine of mutually assured destruction". An Indian perspective on Ballistic Missile Defenses although slightly dated is offered in (23) by IDSA.

But in agreeing to a new architecture of global security India has in essence agreed in principle to discussing the deployment of the NMD. Implicit in this new architecture is the assertion by the US President that the US has the technology to shield itself from missile attacks from 2^nd tier states and by implication from rogue states. It is to the credit of Jaswant Singh and the Indian national security team that they recognized the implications of this technology shift with great alacrity as a means out of the non-proliferation regime.

India will in all likelihood never sign the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) and it is not even clear whether she will sign the CTBT, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But it is clear that as long as the Republicans control the White House or the Senate neither is the US likely to agree to sign the CTBT. Stemming from this commonality of views arose the opportunity to agree with the Bush administration on the framework of a new security strategy for the world

Why and how does India’s acquiescence to the NMD gain her de jure (in addition to de facto) admittance to the Nuclear club, despite defiance of the non-proliferation regime. It is the author’s view that deployment of the NMD will give the US a qualitative edge over the rest of the N5, with the possible exception of Russia, relegating them to 2^nd tier status. It would take a massive deployment and a modernization above and beyond what is currently in progress, on the part of China to be able to penetrate the missile defense shield. Other nations (or rogue states) would have even a lesser chance of penetrating the shield and the importance of the NPT and the CTBT would effectively recede in so far as they are a component of US strategy for defense against proliferation of weapons. In addition, India is rapidly repairing bridges with the US and there remains the distinct possibility that the US will come to accept the de jure NWS status of India regardless of any changes in the non-proliferation regime.

The global security architecture based on the NPT and its attendant treaties the CTBT and the FMCO has been to limit the spread of nuclear technology with out addressing the particular security concerns of some of the nations, which chose to be non-signatories. The NMD moves beyond the NPT prism of global security by adding defensive technologies to enhance the deterrence doctrine. The US by announcing unilateral cuts to its arsenal seeks to assure the global arms balance will not be destabilized. In other words existing powers will not be adversely effected. The NPT architecture was successful during the Cold War era and now needs to move beyond that to address rogue behavior and the NMD is a step in that direction.

Not surprisingly, the non-proliferation lobby in the US has painted a less rosy scenario for India. Their main contention is that China will increase the pace of modernization of its arsenal, which is already underway, which in turn will impact India’s future plans for nuclear deterrence. In our view, this is based on a faulty premise and we have briefly alluded to this in section 3.0. China is unlikely to increase the pace of her modernization regardless of what the US does and even if she does, India’s doctrine is based on ‘asymmetric deterrence’. In other words you do not need to match an adversary weapon for weapon (seek parity), as long as you have enough to destroy key urban centers and inflict unacceptable damage. Incidentally asymmetric deterrence is at the core of the Chinese strategy of deterrence, but the Chinese are beginning to suspect that this deterrence may not work against an increasingly sophisticated NMD. But there is no reason why it should not work in the context of India and China. This assumes that China will not lead India appreciably in the technology of developing a limited ABM system.

The concomitant threat to India along these lines is that China might be forced to increase its ‘co-operation’ with Pakistan. The threat that India faces from such proliferation will only be quantitative and not qualitative since such ‘co-operation’ has been ongoing for the last two decades. Besides the resulting proliferation of WMD would violate all the treaties that China is a party to.

Another argument of the non-proliferation lobby in relation to India is that India would be distracted from its primary focus of economic development by the added burden of maintaining its strategic deterrence and that such a distraction would detract from its ‘greatness’. We have already addressed the fact that matching China weapon for weapon, would not be part of the strategic scenario for India. As for trading security for economic development, that argument will be a continuing one and needs to be countered by the necessity of a minimum deterrent. Japan is a case in point. Despite being an economic power and being protected by a US Nuclear umbrella to boot, Japan continues to be the 2^nd largest spender in the world on defense. In other words, merely achieving economic strength is not enough, at least in the view of the power elite of Japan.

Reactions of the Indian National Security Analyst community

Reactions to India’s qualified acquiescence to the US NMD have been varied but along predictable lines, especially from the left of the political spectrum. We examine a few of the comments from among the more perceptive commentators.

Maj.Gen. Ashoa Mehta (retd) (19) cautions "Clearly, India jumped the gun and had to eat its words in endorsing BMD even before its minutiae is known or consultations are held. It has put to risk its tenuously refurbished relations with China. After half a century of either sitting on the fence or being in the opposite camp, it looks as if India my be contemplating a paradigm shift: moving towards a strategic partnership with Uncle Sam. This would bring a windfall. Lifting of sanctions, supply of military hardware, trade and investment and, who knows, maybe even a missile umbrella." We feel he is missing the point. India and the US are unlikely to have major disagreements on bilateral issues, with the possible exception of trade, which would place India then in the same category as the EU. The fact of the matter is that the NMD is of no threat to India because India has neither the capability nor the desire to threaten the US North American landmass. As for India’s ‘tenuously refurbished’ ties with China, India has achieved precious little by doing so, even if one were to accept the premise that such was the case.

"We have not lost strategic autonomy by supporting NMD, said Air Cmde Jasjit Singh (retd), erstwhile director of the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses at a seminar "India and the National Missile Defense" observing that "it does provide a system of accommodation as we were not being accommodated anywhere in Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which had been extended indefinitely." "Echoing him, C. Raja Mohan, the strategic affairs editor of The Hindu, noted that: "NMD is based on the premise that NPT is ineffective" arguing that even two years of post Pokhran II negotiations had not yielded much. The outgoing US administration had linked the full potential of the Indo-US relations to the existing nuclear weapons pacts. (PTI)" (20) Notwithstanding the change in the US administrations we feel that Raja Mohan is being a trifle dismissive of the extended dialog between Jaswant Singh and his team at the MEA and Strobe Talbott in setting the stage for this turnaround in philosophy at the US State Department. In other words, the consistent and paradigmatic opposition by India to the Non-proliferation regime imposed by US and the N5 and the articulation of the same by Minister Jaswant Singh did play a role in addition to the technology, in convincing Washington that the present non-proliferation regime was at a dead end.

There have been contrary views. We mention the one by Rear Admiral Raja Menon (21). He does not cavil with the decision itself but objects to the fact that it was apparently taken without the process of due diligence and deliberation within the "the recently instituted multi-disciplinary institutions that the country had painstakingly set up". We are not able to judge the legitimacy of this comment, but it is our opinion that Jaswant Singh was in serious search of a way out of the NPT conundrum ever since the advent of POK II. Raja Menon has another interesting observation. He feels that "It should have been obvious that China's nuclear arsenal modernization would comfortably swamp the NMD at least in 2015. The fact that China has also not come up with its analysis of the exchange ratio in 2015 shows similarly poor analytical processes as New Delhi's. ". It is difficult to evaluate this assessment within the scope of this paper, but again we have serious reservations on his remark that the Chinese themselves are underestimating their capability to thwart the NMD by 2015.

Summary

In evaluating whether deployment of the NMD by the US is of benefit to India, the predominant consideration for Indian security strategists should be, to what degree does it enhance India’s national interest. Despite lack of recognition from both sides, a state of affairs that is rapidly changing as we speak, the commonality of interests between US and India is so compelling, that it is difficult to see how such a deployment would be against the national interest of India. Initial fears that there would be widespread disagreement between Russia and India have been substantially allayed. While China’s discomfiture is a factor, it should not sway the final decision one way or the other. Even if there are no other collateral benefits for India such as a permanent seat in the Security Council, a qualified acquiescence of the NMD by India would signal to the security establishment in the US that India is serious about developing increasing areas of commonality with the US. It is clear also as we have asserted in the introduction that the debate on this issue is between the 4 major players – Russia, China, India and the US. In a sense this is the sequel to the end of an era – an era in which the dominant role was played by the colonial powers such as Britain and France until World War II.

We have not referred to the lifting of sanctions with good reason, since we believe that the economic sanctions were a non-event and their lifting sooner rather than later, was a certainty regardless of whether the Bush administration had come to power. In short we believe that the acquiescence of the US NMD policy at least in principle, by India, is a significant event in Indian foreign policy comparable in scope to the events that transpired after 1971.

References

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/specials/nationalsecurity/nationalmissiledefense/

[2] http://www.gsinstitute.org/laws.pdf

[3] http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nmd/index.html

[4] http://www.saag.org/papers3/paper243.html, http://www.saag.org/papers2/paper140.html

[5] http://www.heritage.org/library/backgrounder/bg1385.html

[6] http://www.dailypioneer.com/secon3.asp?cat=\wld1&d=WORLD

[7] http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~rfalk/papers/India2.pdf

[8] Singh, Jaswant, National Security, Lancer Publishers, New Delhi,1996

[9] Perkovich, George, India’s Nuclear Bomb, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1999.

[10] Chengappa, Raj, "Weapons of Peace", Harper Collins Publishers India Ltd., New Delhi, 2000

[11] http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/ubb/Archives/Archive-000003/HTML/19990819-1-007026.html