Today, Pakistan celebrates the Yaum-e-Takbeer (Day of Greatness) to reassure citizens that the country preserves impenetrable defence. It also reminds the international community that Islamabad’s decision to conduct nuclear tests on May 28, 1998, in response to its archrival India’s nuclear tests on May 11, 1998, was imperative for sovereign deterrence and maintaining strategic stability in South Asia.
Given India’s hegemonic ambitions and muscular diplomacy in South Asia, the Pakistani leadership found it imperative to sustain the strategic equilibrium with India by modernizing its nuclear capability to deter Indian aggression. Islamabad constantly monitors New Delhi’s missile developments and adopts balancing measures without entangling itself in the ruinous arms race with India. Therefore, Yaum-e-Takbeer’s celebration is not a sign of admiring weapons of mass destruction but underscoring that it would not compromise its hard-earned nuclear-deterring capability.
The significance of nuclear weapons in the states’ defensive calculations has systematically multiplied in recent years. The nuclear weapon states are expanding qualitatively and quantitatively their nuclear arsenals. For instance, bipartisan support for modernizing the US nuclear arsenal exists in Congress. The Republicans and Democrats approved a $2 trillion modernization program, and the Biden Administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture review promised to modernize the nukes, including developing a new generation of tactical weapons.
Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Russians have signaled the use of nuclear weapons and also built facilities in Belarus to host nuclear warheads in response to threats by NATO. Recently, Russia practiced the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons as part of a military exercise to deter Western adversaries. On May 6, 2024, the Russian Defence Ministry announced, “During the exercise, a set of measures will be carried out to practice the issues of preparation and use of non-strategic nuclear weapons.” Many analysts have a consensus that if Ukraine had not joined the 1994 Budapest Memorandum of Understanding, due to which it relinquished its nuclear arsenal inherited from the collapse of the (former) Soviet Union, it would have been able to deter the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion in 2022.
Even the countries that maintain a solid commitment to global nuclear disarmament, such as South Korea, Japan, and Germany, have hinted interest in nuclear weapons. However, the United States has extended military capabilities in defence of these countries, which include U.S. nuclear weapons systems. Defence Minister of Japan, Minoru Kihara, said, as the allies respond to the growing nuclear capabilities of China and North Korea, “I want to improve our mutual understanding of the Japan-U.S. alliance’s strategy and capabilities and have an in-depth exchange of opinions on ways to strengthen deterrence”(nuclear umbrella).
Poland and Sweden, the non-nuclear weapon states, expressed their willingness to join the European countries that host U.S. nuclear weapons, i.e., Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey. The United States and the United Kingdom agreed to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. AUKUS deal undermines the NPT. On July 27, the United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the AUKUS door opened for New Zealand. The QUAD and AUKUS alliances are to check the increasing presence of China in the Asia-Pacific. India, being a member of the QUAD, could join the AUKUS-plus.
Nuclear-armed states are investing in the new generation of nuclear warheads and their delivery vehicles, notably missiles. They fabricate and integrate emerging technologies in delivery vehicles to augment speed, precision, and flexibility. These developments are not conducive to the nuclear taboo, which keeps alive the perception that nuclear weapons are political weapons instead of war-fighting armaments. Nevertheless, the trends in the international strategic environment are in favor of vertical and horizontal proliferation of nuclear weapons. Therefore, advocacy of a world free from nuclear weapons and capping and rolling back of Pakistan’s nuclear program is wishful thinking.
The non-escalation entailing the de-escalation of various conflicts between India and Pakistan during the last 26 years proves that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons capability prevented India’s military aggression despite its transformation in military doctrine (cold start doctrine/proactive military strategy/ surgical strike strategy), gigantic increase in the defence budget, developments and purchases of military hardware from international armaments contractors. In March 2024, the Swedish think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported India was the world’s top arms importer for 2019-23, with imports having gone up by 4.7% compared to 2014-18. The colossal arms imports and frequent war-mongering of Modi and his cohorts have not shattered Islamabad’s confidence in its defensive arrangements due to its nuclear deterrent capability.
India’s missile development alarms about the nuclear arms race, increasing the risks of kinetic confrontation between the nuclear-armed rivals escalating into nuclear-armed missile strikes. The strategic stability in the South demands the rational conduct of the Indian and Pakistani ruling elites in the domain of missile developments. They have to revive the confidence-building measures to avoid the repercussions of the accidental or inadvertent fire of a missile, ideally intended for missile arms control in South Asia.
To conclude, whether someone likes Pakistan’s nuclear weapons or not, the international community will hear more about nuclear weapons and their critical role in nations’ national security in the coming months. Thus, Islamabad needs to be vigilant about the developments in the Nukes, especially in South Asia, and invest intelligently in sustaining the credibility of its full-spectrum deterrence posture without engaging in a nuclear arms race.
–The writer is Professor at the School of Politics & International Relations, Quaid-i-Azam University ([email protected])
