AT Nukes Only For Deterrence

Exts – Deterrence Fails (Non-State Actors)

Terrorists and rogue states are not deterred by nuclear arsenals

Actually, President George W. Bush used a similar argument. In the National Security Strategy of 2002, it was argued that deterrence does not work against rogue states and terrorists. Suicide bombers and mad leaders do not fear retaliation; indeed, they might welcome retaliation since they do not care about human life and it would prove that they are involved in a war against the West. This explains Bush’s emphasis on counter-force to deal with proliferation – hence the threats against Iran. But if leaders like Ahmadinejad are not rational, even a threat could be dangerous. And if deterrence only works against states that are rational, why do we need nuclear weapons at all? Surely no rational state would threaten to use them. We need another approach.

The last few years have been particularly difficult for the global non-proliferation and arms control regime. From Iran to North Korea, from the nuclear black market of A.Q. Khan to Brazil, new challenges are emerging virtually every other day that threaten to undermine the global arms control architecture. Forced by India’s open challenge to the global arms control and disarmament framework in May 1998, major powers in the international system have been re-evaluating their orientation towards global arms control and non-proliferation. The Indian nuclear tests in 1998 were the first open challenge to the system, especially by a “responsible,” opposed to a “rogue,” member of the international community. Some might argue that surreptitious Chinese weapons proliferation and clandestine nuclear programs undercut the arms control regime long before the Indian nuclear tests. Nonetheless, India’s nuclear tests significantly altered the contours of the existing security architecture already under stress in the post Cold War era. India’s open defiance marked the real beginning of the end of the non-proliferation regime as the world had known it until then, forcing the international community to look at nuclear proliferation through a different lens. For a long time, the West has viewed nuclear weapons in South Asia with dread because of the possibility that conventional warfare between India and Pakistan might escalate into a nuclear war. Indian and Pakistani officials, on the other hand, have continued to argue that, just as the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction resulted in “hot peace” between the US and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War, nuclear weapons in South Asia will also have a stabilizing impact. Since September 11, 2001, however, the nature of the problem for the region and the world at large has changed, insofar as the threat now appears to be Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal being used by radical Islamists if they can manage to wrest control of it. There is little hope that the rational actor model on which classical nuclear deterrence theory is based would apply as much to Islamist terrorist groups as it would to the Pakistani government. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, there were suggestions that the US had explicitly sought guarantees from the Musharraf government that its nuclear arsenal was safe. The present turmoil in Pakistan continues to raise concerns about the safety, security, and command of its nuclear stockpile. Though Pakistan’s government is always quick to dismiss reports that its nuclear weapons are in danger of falling into the wrong hands as “inspired” and stresses that Pakistan provides the highest level of institutionalized protection to its strategic assets, the credibility of such claims remains open to question.

The underlying reality in South Asia is that despite a number of crises post-1998, nuclear deterrence remains robust insofar as state-tostate ties are concerned. The real problem now is that of the non-state actors who may try to sabotage this stability. The jihadi groups that have been nurtured by the Pakistani State to further its agenda in Kashmir and elsewhere have now turned against their sponsors. This new problem complicates the old nuclear deterrence model in the South Asian context. And, it is this issue that should be the focus of future studies of the consequences of nuclearization in South Asia