No first use: The way to contain nuclear war in South Asia

Foreign interests and the Indian subcontinent

On the surface, preventing foreign intervention in a nuclear conflict appears to be a simple task. Asking how to keep countries from jumping into a nuclear war seems like asking how people can be kept from running into burning buildings. It’s not hard; they have plenty of reasons to steer clear.

But the web of alliances, rivalries, and power politics on the Indian subcontinent means that foreign intervention in any major conflict between India and Pakistan—even a nuclear one—cannot be discounted. China, in particular, has close ties to Islamabad and views Pakistan as integral to its strategy of containing Indian influence on the subcontinent. Beijing—which has provided military and, allegedly, nuclear aid to Islamabad—would almost certainly provide some sort of support to Pakistan, be it covert or open, in the event of a conflict with India. Such assistance could enflame the smoldering rivalry between Beijing and New Delhi. ¹

China is not the only nation with strong strategic interests in the region. As the United States attempts to extricate itself from Afghanistan without further destabilizing Central Asia, it will need the support of both India and Pakistan, who have dramatically different visions for the future of Afghanistan. The United States has long had an on-and-off relationship with Pakistan and now needs Islamabad’s support in cracking down on the region’s terrorist organizations. Pakistan, on the other hand, worries that when the NATO mission in Afghanistan ends, the Indians and Afghanis will join forces to encircle it.

The United States is also seeking to establish a strategic partnership with India, cemented in part with a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement signed by the Bush administration. Finally, Russia has had a long-term relationship with India and is concerned about increasing Chinese influence on the subcontinent.

The outbreak of hostilities between India and Pakistan is more than a remote possibility. The contentious issue of Kashmir presents one road to conflict. This territorial dispute has already prompted the two South Asian powers to go to war twice, and India and Pakistan remain far from resolving their differences on the disputed region.

An attack by a terrorist organization with ties to Islamabad presents a second and far more frightening path to conflict. In 2008, the terrorist group Lakshar-e-Taiba carried out a brutal attack on Mumbai, India’s largest city, killing more than 160 people and bringing the city to a standstill for two days. A gunman captured in the attack said he trained in Pakistan for more than a year (Perlez and Sengupta, 2008). Lakshar-e-Taiba is widely believed to have ties to elements of the Pakistani government’s intelligence agency, and it operates and recruits openly in Pakistan (Goldberg and Ambinder, 2011). Further, Lakshar-e-Taiba is hardly the only militant organization with a hatred of India and connections to the Pakistani military or its intelligence service. While India showed tremendous restraint in responding to the Mumbai attacks, there are no guarantees that it would choose to restrain itself after another such incident.

No-first-use and the global nonproliferation regime

Given the volatile situation in South Asia, think tanks and major international media outlets have written and broadcast repeatedly and at length on efforts to prevent a war in South Asia. ² But there’s been a stunning lack of attention to containment, should diplomacy fail and a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan break out. This attention deficit reveals and reflects a gap in current US nonproliferation policy and the international nonproliferation regime. Since the 1960s, US nonproliferation efforts have largely come in two forms: The United States has worked to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to new nations through the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and it has worked to reduce its own massive nuclear stockpile through bilateral arms negotiations with Russia.

The United States has, however, historically resisted international agreements that regulate the use of nuclear weapons in combat. ³ If the United States wants to truly minimize the chances of a nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent—and to contain such a war, were it to break out—it is time for this opposition to end.

The United States should adopt a no-first-use policy and aim to make it universal through negotiations to ban the first use of nuclear weapons with the five nuclear weapons states that are signatories of the NPT—the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom. If these negotiations are successful, the United States and international community can work to bring the three de facto nuclear weapons states—India, Pakistan, and Israel—into the agreement.

Bilateral or multilateral agreements governing the use of nuclear weapons in combat—specifically, pledges not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict—would decrease the likelihood that a conflict originating between India and Pakistan could spin out of control. For example, should China side with Pakistan in a conflict with India, a Chinese no-first-use pledge would be an incentive for it to resolve the conflict through conventional means, if at all possible. And India, the nuclear arsenal of which is far less advanced than that of China, would have a strong incentive to keep the conflict conventional, knowing China will not resort to nuclear weapons unless India does first.

A no-first-use policy would also help the United States implement its nonproliferation agenda, promote stability between nuclear weapons states, and deemphasize the role of nuclear weapons in US defense policy, all while actually increasing Americans’ security. A pledge not to be the first to use nuclear weapons would allow the United States to reclaim the moral high ground it lost when it failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, thereby giving Washington the leverage to lead international efforts to prevent nations from developing nuclear weapons.

Even a no-first-use agreement limited to the so-called permanent five (P-5) countries would do much to improve stability among the nuclear powers. And such an agreement would undoubtedly put pressure on India, Pakistan, and Israel to at least denounce the use of nuclear weapons against all but an existential threat.

A shift to no first use: Why it won’t undermine US security

During the Cold War, America’s nuclear arsenal played a central role in US and NATO defense policy by providing the alliance with a counter to the Soviet Union’s tremendous advantage in conventional forces. In the twenty-first century, however, nuclear weapons have become far less integral to US national security.

As the world’s only military superpower, the United States possesses an enormous conventional advantage over all of its rivals. Moreover, technological advances have rendered conventional weapons significantly smarter and more lethal than they were four decades ago. As a result, the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States has become completely unnecessary and, as a result, virtually unthinkable. With its tremendous conventional superiority, the United States possesses the ability to respond to any foreign threat—whether conventional, chemical, or biological—with conventional force.

In the era of the 24-hour news cycle, American policy makers would find it politically and morally impossible to use nuclear weapons when the American people and the world community know conventional options are available—especially considering that the United States does not face an existential threat. Moreover, nuclear weapons possess little strategic utility in confronting the threats facing the United States today. America’s nuclear stockpile proved useless in all of its three recent conflicts: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. And nuclear weapons are useless in countering sub-state actors like terrorist groups, arguably the greatest threat to US security in the modern international system.

Recognizing that it did not make sense for the United States to confront twenty-first-century threats with Cold War-era strategy, in its 2010 Nuclear Posture Review the Obama administration embraced a partial no-first-use policy, announcing that “the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations” (US Defense Department, 2010).

If he is elected to a second term, President Obama should build upon the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review by articulating an unconditional, unilateral no-first-use policy. The administration should then work to commit all P-5 nations to a similar pledge.

In his article “The case for no first use” (Sagan, 2009: 164), political scientist Scott Sagan outlines the potential language for such a pledge:

The United States should, after appropriate consultation with allies, move toward adopting a nuclear-weapons no-first-use declaratory policy by stating that “the role of US nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear weapons use by other nuclear-weapons states against the United States, our allies, and our armed forces, and to be able to respond, with an appropriate range of nuclear retaliation options, if necessary, in the event that deterrence fails.”

Because nuclear weapons essentially have no strategic utility for the United States, formally pledging not to be the first country to introduce nuclear arms into a conflict will not reduce the options available to policy makers in responding to a threat, or negatively affect US security.

Instead, a policy of no-first-use would send a clear message to the rest of the world that the United States considers the use of nuclear weapons immoral against anything but an existential threat and that America’s nuclear arsenal is a defensive asset. The policy would also allow the United States to reclaim its moral authority on nuclear disarmament, increase stability in the US relationship with other nuclear powers—particularly rival countries like China and Russia—and deemphasize the importance of nuclear weapons in US security policy.

Why no-first-use reduces the likelihood of worldwide nuclear war

If the United States entered a series of bilateral or multilateral no-first-use agreements, the likelihood of the spread of nuclear conflict would inevitably decrease.

In the event of a conflict on the Indian subcontinent, a no-first-use accord between the United States and China, for example, would greatly increase the chances that a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan would remain confined to those two countries. Even if Pakistan or India resort to using nuclear weapons against each other, there is little likelihood that either would attack the United States or China, given the much larger arsenals of both of those countries and their second-strike capabilities. Both China and the United States would have agreed not to use nuclear weapons unless first attacked with nuclear arms by another country. Therefore, China and the United States would be bound by their pledges not to use nuclear arms, and India and Pakistan would be bound by common sense not to use them beyond the subcontinent. (Such a calculus would also apply to Russia, if it agreed to a no-first-use policy.)

No-first-use negotiations should include a discussion of which circumstances might prompt each country to violate its no-first-use policy. Such a conversation should specifically broach the topic of an Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange, as the subcontinent is the most likely region for a nuclear conflict. In addition, China and the United States might agree to establish a hotline, similar to the one the United States and Soviet Union maintained during the Cold War, to discuss how they would deal with the use of a nuclear weapon by another country, including India or Pakistan.

China already asserts a no-first-use policy (although American officials regard this pledge with skepticism) and has sought a similar pledge from the United States (Kulacki, 2011; Spies, 2011). Negotiations on a no-first-use pact would strengthen relations and promote trust and nuclear transparency between these twenty-first-century powers and increase stability in their relations with the other nuclear nations.

Additional benefits of no-first-use

A US decision to declare a no-first-use policy would have benefits that extend far beyond South Asia. Such a policy would dramatically strengthen America’s arms control credentials, giving the US government the moral authority to push for stronger controls on weapons-usable nuclear technology and material. Also, efforts to negotiate a multilateral agreement banning the first use of nuclear weapons would inject life into the global nonproliferation regime.

The NPT is based on a compact between the nuclear and non-nuclear states. The non-nuclear states pledged to refrain from developing a nuclear weapons capacity, and in return, the states that already possessed nuclear weapons in 1968—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia—agreed to work toward “general and complete disarmament.” ⁴

But the United States still owns the largest and most advanced arsenal in the world. To effectively pressure the non-nuclear states to live up to their NPT commitments, it is important that the United States clearly demonstrate its efforts to fulfill its own. Declaring a policy of no-first-use would go far in that direction. Moreover, reassuring other countries that they are safe from a US nuclear attack would reduce pressure for them to acquire a nuclear deterrent.

Perhaps more significant, a no-first-use agreement that included the world’s major nuclear powers would create an opportunity to bring other nuclear weapons states (India, Pakistan, and Israel) into the global nonproliferation regime. There is no guarantee that any of these three states—each of which refused to sign the NPT and developed nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community—will adopt a no-first-use policy. But there are reasons to believe India, at least, would be interested.

Shortly after testing its first nuclear weapon in the late 1990s, India declared it “will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail” (National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine, 1999). By the early 2000s, however, India had begun moving away from this unconditional policy, stating that it would consider a nuclear response to chemical or biological attacks (Kapur, 2011). US-led efforts to create an international no-first-use norm might help to persuade India to return to its original policy and thereby improve stability between the South Asian nuclear weapons states.

Finally, at a time when the Pentagon faces as much as a trillion dollars in cuts in projected defense spending over the next decade, deemphasizing the role of nuclear weapons in US defense policy would lead to significant budgetary savings. Formally acknowledging that the US nuclear stockpile need only be large enough to deter a nuclear attack would provide justification for the Pentagon to reduce its arsenal to strategically reasonable levels. According to strategists at the Air War College and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, the United States requires only 311 nuclear weapons to maintain a credible deterrent (Schaub and Forsyth, 2010).

By some estimates, operating, maintaining, and modernizing the nuclear triad of bombers, ballistic missiles, and submarine-launched missiles costs the United States about $60 billion a year (Global Zero, 2011). Plans to modernize the submarine-launched ballistic missile portion of the triad will cost $110 billion, the bomber leg another $55 billion, and upkeep of the nuclear complex $88 billion more.

A no-first-use policy would formally acknowledge the lack of strategic utility for many of these weapons, allowing the Pentagon to divert funds to programs that will prepare the US military to handle the threats of the twenty-first century.

A masterstroke of nuclear safety

A nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan would be horrible for the people of the region and the international community. As the United States works with other nations to prevent such a conflict, it must also develop a policy to contain war if it does break out, so it does not escalate, involve China, Russia, or other nuclear powers, and engulf the world.

No-first-use is the most appropriate doctrine to advance US security and interests generally, given the threats facing the country today. It is also a doctrine that will keep war in South Asia from spreading.

Implementing a no-first-use policy implies some degree of change in the security guarantees the United States has given to its allies in Europe and Asia. Because of the strength of US conventional forces, however, close negotiations with our allies should be sufficient to mitigate any discomfort with this policy shift.

In 1991, President George H. W. Bush unilaterally made sweeping changes to US nuclear policy when he ordered the destruction of all US ground-based tactical nuclear weapons, withdrew sea-based tactical nuclear weapons from deployment, and took all strategic bombers and Minuteman II missiles off alert status. It is time for President Obama to follow his example by adopting a no-first-use policy and using it to pressure other nuclear powers to follow suit. Such a bold step will, in a single stroke, further the US nonproliferation agenda, increase global stability, open a new front in global disarmament, and greatly reduce defense expenditures in a time of budget austerity.

This one policy shift will also allow the United States to manage the likelihood of nuclear war in the area of the world where it is most likely to break out, and if war between India and Pakistan does erupt, to forestall a worldwide nuclear holocaust. There are no other security policy changes that offer such a breathtaking upside.