Why India’s Post-1998 Evolution as a Conventional Nuclear Weapons Power Evokes Surprise

Abstract

ABSTRACT Twenty years after India formally staked claims to nuclear weapons power status its nuclear trajectory evokes surprise. The first element of surprise concerns the nature of India’s arsenal, which is operational in the field and not recessed or hidden in the basement. The surprise’s second element concerns the arsenal’s ambitious scope, which is shaping into a triad with an extraregional strike capability. This article tackles the underlying assumptions that are baked into the dominant scholarly discourses on India’s nuclear history, particularly discourses on nuclear symbolism, norms, strategic culture, and institutions. It critically analyzes these discourses to show that the prestige and symbolism discourse infers motives from evidence that is ambiguous. The claim that Indian leaders in the two decades prior to 1998 were normatively disinclined to favor nuclear weaponization is empirically incorrect. Likewise, the thesis that India’s strategic culture disfavors operational nuclear forces is based on a selective and biased reading of the available evidence. Finally, scholars have overstated India’s historic civil-military institutional dysfunction. Because the above discourses have dominated our understanding of India’s nuclear politics, the subsequent developments appear unexpected and surprising.