Ballistic Missiles: Complicating the Nuclear Quagmire

Abstract

Since the early 1990s India and Pakistan have been steadily moving their nuclear deterrence from aircraft based to ballistic missile based with potentially devastating results for the Indo-subcontinent’s stability. The introduction of nuclear capable ballistic missiles on a significant scale adds to the negative variables that collectively raises the risk of an inadvertent nuclear war breaking out in a region that is unstable principally due to the Kashmir territorial dispute. The ongoing ballistic missile development signifies that the region is adopting a new and more precarious strategic dimension. India and Pakistan’s missile developments are arguably a greater threat to South Asia’s stability than the nuclear tests of 1998 that merely underlined they were nuclear powers. Despite signs of cooling relations between India and Pakistan highlighted by the Lahore Accord of February 1999, in practice very little has been achieved to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Only two months after the much heralded Lahore Accord and bus diplomacy, the region witnessed the largest round of missile tests with India launching the 2,500 km Agni-II followed by Pakistan’s flight test of the 2,000-2,300 km-range Ghauri-II/Hatf-VI and the Shaheen-I/Hatf-IV (750 km) within days of each other.