India’s Missile Defense: Is the Game Worth the Candle? Part - 3

Would India’s BDM Actually Create Security?
The ultimate shape of the missile defense is also a venue of debate. It is not clear to what extent the DRDO can expand the missile defense shield with its growing technical capability. However, expanding the missile defense to shield large parts of the country may be counter-productive. Logically, only a limited missile defense complements India’s nuclear doctrine, which relies on “assured retaliation” for the purposes of nuclear deterrence. A nationwide missile defense could create concern among India’s adversaries that it is preparing for a first strike; a perception which may ultimately prove disastrous for nuclear stability in the region.

Second, development of a pan-national missile interception capability is beyond India’s economic means. Still, it is important to acknowledge that a midcourse interception capability, which is India’s primary intention, can also be employed at a broader level. With increasing capabilities in the booster strength of its ballistic interceptors and of its ground radars, it is hard not to foresee mission creep in India’s ballistic missile interception program.

These issues intersect with potential negative strategic ramifications of India fielding a BMD program. Pakistan is acutely sensitive to any perceived military edge, current or future, that India may be developing. For example, Pakistan’s nuclear force expansion is believed to have been accelerated as a direct response to India’s conclusion of a civil nuclear agreement with the United States in 2008. Although the civil nuclear agreement could only potentially affect Indian nuclear force development by broadening its access to the international nuclear fuel market, and freeing up its domestic uranium for nuclear force expansion – a possible but hypothetical scenario – this was apparently enough cause for Pakistan to ramp up its nuclear force production. A limited fielding of a partly unproven Indian ballistic missile defense capability, as DRDO is planning, could similarly be enough to compel Pakistan to grow its nuclear arsenal – with all the potential dangers that this entails.
For instance, this would elevate threat perceptions in both New Delhi and Islamabad. The disparity in Pakistan’s growing nuclear arsenal size, compared to India’s more halting efforts, was enough for Jaswant Singh, a former Minister for External Affairs and nuclear negotiator, to call in 2011 for an end to the central tenet of no-first-use in India’s nuclear doctrine. Ending no-first-use would also dispel the atmosphere of restraint pervading the doctrine, and signal to Islamabad that New Delhi was increasingly comfortable with the use of force in the next crisis, protected by a lower nuclear threshold and a BMD shield. Given that Pakistan would develop its own sub-conventional, conventional and nuclear means to counteract these shifts, the price of fielding BMD capabilities would be a tenser strategic environment.

An Indian BMD system could also provoke a Chinese reaction. The BMD capabilities fielded by the United States are the subject of certain neuralgia among Chinese strategists, who continually worry that these will provide Washington with a first-strike capability against China’s deliberately small nuclear forces.

More broadly, Washington’s interest in India’s BMD projects could validate suspicions in Beijing – especially prevalent in the wake of the 2008 civil nuclear agreement – that the United States and India are attempting to contain Chinese great power aspirations. As shown in the Sino-Indian border stand-off in April, in which Chinese troops occupied and then refused to abandon positions they had taken within Indian territory for a prolonged period, China has not been shy in reacting to Indian activities that are of far less concern to China than the BMD issue. At a time when India and China are making a renewed effort to secure a long-term agreement on the status of their borders, BMD developments could therefore worsen the trajectory of their relationship, all while offering India uncertain returns.
Thus, the BMD program provides India with the prospect, albeit still distant, of blocking or reducing an offensive missile strike, and also serves as an area where American and Indian defense scientists can collaborate – building important bridges between the two states that could later transfer over into other areas. However, these benefits need to be weighed against the likely negative regional reactions. At the same time, it also is likely to raise tension and perhaps have unintended second and third order consequences in India’s relations with China and Pakistan. Thus, instead of being wholly consumed by the technical aspects of BMD, Indian policymakers need to also ask themselves whether the game is still worth the candle.

Frank O’ Donnell is a doctoral candidate in War Studies, King's College London and research associate with the Centre for Science and Security Studies. Yogesh Joshi is a research scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

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