THE transformation in international geopolitics and increasing tension among the great powers have systematically increased investment in weaponry modernization and squeezed the space for arms control. With the demise of bilateral arms control treaties between Russia and the United States, the fate of twentieth-century multilateral nuclear arms control is in jeopardy. The dismissal approach towards arms control boosts the modernization of nuclear weapons and intensifies investment in offensive and defensive missile systems. This trend has a decisive impact on the South Asian strategic environment.
The United States’ withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in June 2002, the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2018, and the Russian Federation’s suspension of the New START Treaty in 2022 concluded the era of five decades of bilateral arms control between Moscow and Washington. On July 10, 2024, at the sidelines of the NATO Summit in Washington, the United States and Germany inked an agreement to deploy the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles (with a range of 1500 km) and the SM-6 missile and new long-range hypersonic weapons having a speed of up to Mach 17 and a range of 1,700 miles, on German soil by2026. Moreover, NATO announced the creation of separate logistic hubs in Black Sea cities and the establishment of additional European missile facilities to solidify European defense.
The demise of missile treaties and reinvestment in the modernization and deployment of missiles entails Russian countermeasures. On July 28, 2024, President Vladimir Putin announced that the Kremlin “will take mirror measures to deploy, taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe, and other regions of the world.”The European missile race directly influences missile development in the Asia-Pacific region because of NATO’s Asian foray. Australian, Japanese, New Zealand, and South Korean leadership presence in last month’s NATO’s Washington summit and India being an active member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, commonly called Quad—a forum composed of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States and Western Quadrilateral Security Group comprising India, Israel, United Arab Emirates and United States (I2U2).
India’s cementing threshold alliance with the United States to balance rising China coupled with its twin objectives, i.e., a Net Security Provider in the India Ocean Region and a local leviathan in South Asia, in the emerging global strategic framework completely rebuff Pakistan’s over two and half decade’s strategic restraint regime proposal. The proposal encompassed the prevention of a nuclear and ballistic missile race, establishing a risk reduction mechanism, and a proposition that nuclear deterrence should be pursued in the region at the lowest possible level by preventing destabilizing modernization, such as missile defense submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Currently, India is endeavouring to develop Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Systems.
Since the 1980s, India has been striving to muster the support in the offensive and defensive missile systems. It has succeeded in the development of reliable offensive missile batteries with the support of the United States, Israel, and Russia. However, its BMD program is encountering severe technological challenges. Indian scientists occasionally publicize that they conducted successful tests of the BMD systems. For example, in 2012, the Chief of the Indian Defense Research and Development Organization, V.K. Saraswat, claimed that the Indian ballistic missile defense shield was ready to protect two cities.
Strategic analysts questioned the Indian scientific bureaucracy’s loud claims about missile defense systems’ accomplishments. Despite the technological challenges, India has continued investing in the research and development of the BMD system. On June 24, 2024, Indian scientists once again claimed that they had successfully tested the second phase of its BMD system, which has a range of 5,000 km. India’s BMD project aims to produce a two-tiered defensive system. The two-layer ballistic missile defense shield comprised the Prithvi Air Defense (PAD) system and Advanced Air Defense (AAD)/Ashvin Advanced Defense. The former provided long-range, high-altitude ballistic missile interception during an incoming missile’s midcourse phase. The latter offered short-range, low-altitude defense against missiles in the terminal phase of their trajectory.
Notably, despite the malfunctioning of the Indian missile defence systems, the rhetoric surrounding successful BMD system tests and exaggerated claims about the missile have politico-strategic repercussions. Whether the Indian BMD systems are reliable weapons during the fog of war, they act as deterrence destabilizers during peacetime. They undoubtedly intensify a devastating arms race between India and Pakistan, as the missile defense shield undermines the credibility of a retaliatory strike by the deterring state. For deterrence stability, the deterring states would contemplate multiple striking options, including attaching decoy technology to ballistic missiles, developing multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRV), and advancing cruise missiles to enhance the credibility of counter-strike capability. To conclude, India’s steady investment in BMD systems and purchase of Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile squadrons compel Pakistani policy-makers to advance the country’s missile inventories to deter India’s aggressive designs.
—The writer is Prof at the School of Politics and International Relations, Quaid-i-Azam University.
