Southern Asia in a decaying nuclear order

Abstract

How can Washington best partner with New Delhi to arrest global trends toward nuclear instability? This chapter makes arguments for three principal policies that the U.S. should pursue with India in meeting these objectives. The first line of effort is to liaise with New Delhi in expanding its bilateral missile flight-test pre-notification protocol with Islamabad to incorporate other nuclear-weapon states. In the process, this measure could salvage the important transparency measures from the U.S.–Russia New START treaty, through their incorporation in this new regime. The second initiative is to propose a joint threat assessment with New Delhi on the Chinese conventional missile threat to India, as a pathway toward potential U.S. assistance toward improving Indian resilience in this regard. The third policy is to assist India in developing its cyberdefenses against potential Chinese efforts to interfere with military command-and-control systems relevant to its nuclear forces. Together, these three policies build the promotion of global nuclear stability into the U.S.–India alliance; do so in a way that does not entail U.S. proliferation of nuclear weapons or related technologies; and helps India maintain sufficient military capabilities to better resist Chinese conventional or cyber attacks, and thus maintain a high nuclear threshold.