Indian MIRV-ed missiles augur stability, not escalation
INDIAN MIRV-ED MISSILES AUGUR STABILITY, NOT ESCALATION
WRITTEN BY KUNAL SINGH
20 May 2024
In March 2024, India tested a missile with multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle (MIRV) capability. This enables a single missile to carry multiple warheads, each of which can be independently aimed at a different target. MIRV capability can induce both instabilities as well as stability in a rivalrous nuclear dyad. MIRV-ed missiles can be used to target warheads of a rival state, thus posing a threat to the latter’s second-strike capability. This can create instability as the target state may fear a nuclear strike and, hence, face the pressure to go first.
On the other hand, MIRV-ed missiles, especially those on submarines, can enhance the possibility of assured retaliation if the possessing state itself faces the threat of a counterforce strike. Even a single MIRV-ed missile that survives a first strike can retaliate to several different targets and cause unacceptable damage to the aggressor state. India’s MIRV-ed missiles are more likely to create conditions for stability than conflict with its regional rivals.
Strengthening India’s second-strike capability
Given India’s modest nuclear arsenal, estimated to comprise approximately 160 warheads and meant to deter both Pakistan and China, it is unlikely that New Delhi has an ambitious first-strike strategy. It would simply not have enough missiles to carry out a first strike against one rival while preserving a sufficient arsenal to deter the other. Moreover, the size of the arsenal has not been growing at a strong pace — India was estimated to have approximately 120 warheads in 2015. If that were the case, it could indicate a growing interest in counterforce strategies.
In the absence of sound theoretical logic and empirical support for contrary possibilities, Indian MIRV-ed missiles should be seen as instruments of stability.
In essence, as political scientist Debak Das concluded, India’s acquisition of MIRV-ed missiles is more likely to strengthen its second-strike capability against China. This would be especially useful because China is currently investing in an indigenous ballistic missile defence capability. Since India has already acquired a sea-based nuclear delivery capability, MIRV-ing will further enhance its assured retaliation capability against China. However, Das went on to conclude that the resultant “strategic stability [between India and China] at the nuclear level will likely create space for India to use its Integrated Rocket Force at the conventional level”.
The link that connects strategic stability at the nuclear level to greater emboldening at the conventional level is the concept of the stability-instability paradox. When two nuclear weapons states achieve firm stability at the highest level of violence, that is at the nuclear level, then according to this paradox, greater room emerges for lower levels of violence. One of the two states can initiate a conventional attack in the firm belief that the other state will not retaliate with nuclear weapons because that would invite a suicidal nuclear war. This would mean that even a full conventional war is possible between two nuclear weapons states without either resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. If this paradox determines the behaviour of nuclear weapons states, and of India’s in particular, then surely we should heed Das’s warning seriously.
Problems with the conventional instability hypothesis
There are four serious problems in concluding that India would be conventionally emboldened against China after attaining strategic stability. First, granted that states behaving according to the stability-instability paradox is a theoretical possibility, however, it is not the only possibility out there. States can behave in a more pacified manner as suggested by the theory of nuclear revolution, which holds that upon reaching mutual second-strike capability, states should be less prone to creating crises and pressing bargaining advantages. Robert Jervis argued against the idea of a conventional war under strategic stability because there is no guarantee that violence would not escalate to uncontrollable, nuclear levels. “For fear of escalation”, argued Kenneth Waltz, another proponent of this theory, “nuclear states do not want to fight long and hard over important interests — indeed, they do not want to fight at all”. By and large, despite the existence of proxy wars and secret wars, major nuclear weapons states have conformed to the empirical regularity prescribed by the theory of nuclear revolution.
Second, there have been instances of conflict between nuclear weapons states but a quick look dispels the relevance of attaining strategic stability in producing conventional instabilities. The two most consequential conflicts between nuclear weapons states have been the 1969 border clashes between the Soviet Union and China, and the 1999 India-Pakistan Kargil War. In both cases, the attacking state had come nowhere near attaining a sophisticated second-strike capability. China had only a small nuclear arsenal, and a fleet of obsolete medium-range bombers that could potentially deliver nuclear weapons to Soviet territory in 1969. Pakistan’s ability to deliver nuclear weapons was similarly doubtful in 1999.
However, it is possible that the target of the conventional attack, uncertain of the exact state of readiness of the attacker’s nuclear arsenal, may still be constrained in retaliation. The common factor in both cases is that the attacking state does not have to wait to attain firm strategic stability before going ahead with a conventional attack. Going by the most favourable empirical evidence for the stability-instability paradox, India need not have to wait to acquire MIRV-ed missiles before attacking China conventionally.
Third, India’s past behaviour militates against the possibility of it becoming so conventionally reckless after strengthening strategic stability with China. Since 1996, India and China have agreed to not employ firearms in the areas near the contested Line of Actual Control. Even the latest deadly clashes in the Galwan Valley (2020) involved only the use of primitive weapons like sticks and clubs embedded with nails. India’s counter-response to Chinese moves has been carefully calibrated and has only involved moving to tactically advantageous terrain on its territory.
The problem with employing violence in a nuclear dyad is the difficulty in communicating limits and thresholds — points after which escalation is more difficult to control than before. ‘No firearms’ provides a clean limit. Of course, multiple such limits, or ladder steps, can exist between peace and a nuclear war. However, it is difficult to argue that India could attack with its rocket forces and still communicate restraint that would stop China from significantly escalating.
Finally, the idea of an attack would make sense if India could assuredly dominate China at conventional levels and the latter would be deterred from using nuclear weapons because that would bring mutual suicide. India enjoys no such advantage at the conventional level. Even those optimistic about India’s chances against China in a conventional war attribute it to a posture of defence that relies on higher troop numbers. Further, the Indian defence posture seeks to exploit, one, mountainous terrain to the advantage of the defender, and, two, its strategic partnership with the United States that would especially be useful in obtaining advance alerts in case of an impending Chinese advance.
India’s benign MIRV-ed missiles
The upshot is that an Indian rocket force attack on China is a theoretical possibility after strengthening its second-strike capability. However, there are other more benign possibilities as far as India is concerned, and they are more broadly consistent with the global empirical realities of the nuclear age, India’s past behaviour, and its current military posture.
Traditionally, MIRV-ed missiles have been associated with escalatory military doctrines, however, that need not always be the case. There are “organizational and prestige incentives” to build MIRV-ed missiles and those are possibly more relevant for Indian scientific and defence organisations than others. Moreover, states cannot afford to be complacent and fall behind in the technology race given the possibilities, remote but real, of breakthroughs that can threaten the strategic stability to one’s disadvantage. In the absence of sound theoretical logic and empirical support for contrary possibilities, Indian MIRV-ed missiles should be seen as instruments of stability.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author Biography
Kunal Singh is a PhD candidate in the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kunal is interested in nuclear security issues and is currently writing a dissertation on the strategies of counterproliferation. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/Ministry of Defence, Government of India.