NONPROLIFERATION POLICY CROSSROADS:

On October 1, 2008, Congress enacted a proposal that originated with President George W. Bush in 2005 to approve an unprecedented nuclear trade pact with India by removing a central pillar of US nonproliferation policy. Despite the numerous political challenges confronting the Bush administration, the initiative won strong bipartisan support, including votes from Democratic Senators Joseph Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. The four-year struggle to pass the controversial US-India nuclear trade agreement offers an exceptionally valuable case study. It demonstrates a classic tradeoff between the pursuit of broad multilateral goals such as nuclear nonproliferation and advancement of a specific bilateral relationship. It reveals enduring fault lines in executive branch relations with Congress. It vividly portrays challenges confronting proponents of a strong nonproliferation regime. This article is based on an analysis of the negotiating record and congressional deliberations, including interviews with key participants. It assesses the lessons learned and focuses on three principal questions: how did the agreement seek to advance US national security interests?; what were the essential elements of the prolonged state-of-the-art lobbying campaign to win approval from skeptics in Congress?; and what are the agreement's actual benefits—and costs—to future US nonproliferation efforts?     

DIVERGING NUCLEAR PATHWAYS IN SOUTH ASIA

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb, by Feroz Hassan Khan. Stanford University Press, 2012. 544 pages, $29.95.

Managing India's Nuclear Forces, by Verghese Koithara. Brookings Institution Press, 2012. 304 pages, $59.95.     

India's Aspirations and Strategy for the Indian Ocean – Securing the Waves?

India has increasingly high aspirations in the Indian Ocean, as enunciated by politicians, naval figures and the wider elite. These aspirations, its strategic discourse, are of pre-eminence and leadership. India's maritime strategy for such a self-confessed diplomatic, constabulary and benign role is primarily naval-focused; a sixfold strategy of increasing its naval spending, strengthening its infrastructure, increasing its naval capabilities, active maritime diplomacy, exercising in the Indian Ocean and keeping open the choke points. Through such strategy, and soft balancing with the United States, India hopes to secure its own position against a perceived growing Chinese challenge in the Indian Ocean.     

Colonial violence and its ‘Small Wars’: fighting the Kuki ‘guerillas’ during the Great War in Northeast India, 1917–1919

ABSTRACT

This paper concerns the lesser known British counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in Northeast frontier of India during the First World War. Officially known as the ‘Kuki Operations’, it was considered as part of the Great War. Carried out in isolation from press and public, and shelved in colonial archives, the event remained invisible until today. Yet, it registers a critical case of colonial COIN doctrine where the ‘moral effect’ doctrine was employed without being questioned. It unleashed enormous amount of organized violence, ranging from shoot at sight to indiscriminate burning of villages, wholesale destruction of property and livestock, prevention of cultivation and rebuilding of villages, forced mass displacement in jungles or in ‘concentration camps’, and collective punishment (communal penal labour and payment of compensation) after the war. This paper argues that the theory of ‘minimum force’ and the practicability of the ‘moral effect’ doctrine as applied by the Empire, sit oddly with each other at the frontier, where violence was seen both as a natural and moral orders. Violence as an ‘imperatively necessary’ method to bring order in a disorderly frontier, in the opinion of colonial state, informs and registers Northeast India as geography of violence.     

Command and Control of India's Nuclear Forces

The Indian government has not made a public comment about the status of its nuclear weapon program since approving a nuclear doctrine in 2003. However, there is now enough information in the public domain to determine that the command-and-control system for the nuclear program has steadily matured in accordance with the intent of the approved nuclear doctrine. The Indian government has successfully mitigated many of the issues that plague the conventional military. The result is a basic command-and-control system that is focused only on the delivery, if ordered by the prime minister, of nuclear weapons. The system is not as robust as those of the United States and Russia, but is in place and ready as new Indian nuclear weapons enter into operation. The command-and-control system is developing to meet India's needs and political compulsions, but not necessarily as part of a more assertive nuclear policy.     

India's Pursuit Of Ballistic Missile Defense

This article analyzes India's efforts to deploy a Ballistic Missile Program (BMD). The article has three objectives. First, it argues that scientific-bureaucratic factors and India's incapacity to deter Pakistan's use of terrorist proxies have driven its quest for BMD. Second, the article also evaluates the current state of India's two-tiered missile defense shield. In spite of various claims on the part of India's defense science establishment, the paper estimates that India still lacks a deployable BMD system and is still far from developing an effective strategy of deterrence-through-denial. Third, the article analyzes the implications of the development of India's BMD system for nuclear stability in South Asia. The article shows how India's BMD capacities, however limited, have indirectly exacerbated the security concerns of India's regional rival, Pakistan.     

Explaining Cohesion in an Insurgent Organization: The Case of the Mizo National Front

Despite the prevalence of violent uprisings against the states, existing literature has produced a generalized explanation of the causes and onset of such uprisings ignoring crucial aspects of (non-state) armed group cohesion, such as their capabilities to manage intra-group tensions and rivalries. In this paper, I examine recent research in the field of civil conflict to understand the importance of investigating underlying constraints which can cause serious impediments to the capabilities of a state during the course of a war. The paper then focuses on the importance of internal strategic resources, such as pre-war and wartime sociopolitical networks in which insurgents mobilize, recruit new cadres and maintain intra-group cooperation, to suggest how it can contain the consequences of counterinsurgency operations and other state strategies on the internal cohesion of an insurgent group. A detailed case study of the Mizo National Front (MNF) in India demonstrates the argument’s plausibility.     

Reconsidering minimum deterrence in South Asia: Indian responses to Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons

India’s nuclear doctrine and posture has traditionally been shaped by minimum deterrence logic. This logic includes assumptions that possession of only a small retaliatory nuclear force generates sufficient deterrent effect against adversaries, and accordingly that development of limited nuclear warfighting concepts and platforms are unnecessary for national security. The recent emergence of Pakistan’s Nasr tactical nuclear missile platform has generated pressures on Indian minimum deterrence. This article analyzes Indian official and strategic elite responses to the Nasr challenge, including policy recommendations and attendant implications. It argues that India should continue to adhere to minimum deterrence, which serves as the most appropriate concept for Indian nuclear policy and best supports broader foreign and security policy objectives. However, the form through which Indian minimum deterrence is delivered must be rethought in light of this new stage of regional nuclear competition.     

“多极”外交政策下的俄罗斯对印度军售现状分析与前景

俄印是传统友好国家,俄罗斯也是印度最大的武器和军事装备供应国。在俄奉行"多极"外交政策的背景下,同时印度作为世界最大的武器和军事装备进口国,其军火市场受到多方觊觎,俄对印军售也面临着严峻的挑战。俄专家认为,"俄中印"战略大三角的构想应做出调整,且"多极"外交政策无助于加强俄罗斯与印度关系。文章分析和预测了俄对印的军售现状和前景。俄印这两个传统与新兴大国间的军事技术乃至政治-军事合作,已经和继续对亚太地区乃至全球政治格局施加重大影响。     

The Kashmir conflict in South Asia: voices from Srinagar

This article looks at the Kashmir conflict in South Asia, which has been going on since 1947, when India and Pakistan became independent from British colonial rule. After looking at some historical background, the article looks at both the external dimension as well as the internal dimension of the conflict. The external dimension tends to focus on Indo-Pak relations over Kashmir and the internal dimension looks at India's repressive state policies within the state of Kashmir. This article uses Mary Kaldor's “New War” thesis as a theoretical framework to understand the situation and pays special attention to the conflict's very complex and multifaceted nature. The article argues that although the levels of violence have differed from time to time in the region since 1947, today the conflict seems to have less to do with Indo-Pak relations or the external side of things and has more to do with the internal dimension and India's undemocratic ways within Kashmir. Today, Kashmir is one of the most militarised conflict zones in the world. The stationing of the Indian military and paramilitary forces in the region has only exacerbated the situation since it is the security personnel who cause much of the problem. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act gives these security forces extraordinary powers in the region, which they often abuse. The armed forces have no real understanding of the local culture or sympathy for local religious sentiments. Poverty, corruption, administrative failure, police brutality, identity politics and human rights abuses are some of the key features associated with this conflict. Methodologically, a number of interviews were carried out with the local people in the region recently. From the data gathered through the interviews, it is very obvious that the people still feel very oppressed and that the situation is still very volatile, fraught with uncertainty. Finally, after making an assessment of the situation, the article tries to suggest methods of peaceful building and conflict management as the way forward.