Dinshaw Mistry

A Theoretical and Empirical Assessment of India as an Emerging World Power

Is India emerging as a great power in the world system? Writing before India’s independence, Jawaharlal Nehru assumed that India— along with the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and the British Commonwealth—would be among the world’s major powers. Yet although India was a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, a group of over 100 countries, it was not a great power in the international system during the Cold War. India’s economic liberalization and the end of the Cold War brought renewed attention to India’s power prospects; Indian analysts assumed that the superpowers would retreat from Asia, that the world would be multipolar, and that an economically

Beyond the MTCR: Building a Comprehensive Regime to Contain Ballistic Missile Proliferation

ballistic missiles has been a major international security concern for many years.1 Efforts to address this concern, centered on the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), have had a mixed record.2 The MTCR seeks to curb missile proliferation by denying regional powers the technology to build missiles. In the MTCR’s arst decade, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, South Africa, South Korea, Syria, and Taiwan were thwarted from advancing their missile ambitions. In light of these positive developments, MTCR members expressed satisfaction with the regime at its tenth anniversary in 1997. Yet in subsequent years, India, Iran, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan launched medium-range missiles, and several other states have expanded their missile programs, demonstrating the MTCR’s limitations. To augment the regime, MTCR members drafted the International Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation.3 In November 2002 ninety-three countries signed the code, which calls on states to make their missile policies more transparent. In this article I seek to answer two central questions: First, can the MTCR’s technology barriers, along with the Code of Conduct’s transparency initiatives, curb the spread of ballistic missiles? Second, if the MTCR and the code are inadequate, what additional measures are necessary to contain missile proliferBeyond the MTCR

The Unrealized Promise of International Institutions: The Test Ban Treaty and India's Nuclear Breakout

IN MAY 1998, India conducted five nuclear tests and declared itself to be a nuclear weapons power. Yet for the prior twenty-four years, since its only previous nuclear test in 1974, India had refrained from nuclear testing. India had also been among the staunchest supporters of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and it maintained a pro-CTBT position when negotiations on this treaty commenced in 1994. In short, India had long been willing to accept international institutional constraints against nuclear testing. In a complete reversal of its prior position, however, New Delhi rejected the CTBT when the treaty was opened for signature in September 1996, and then crossed the nuclear threshold through its nuclear tests in 1998. It is worth noting that the test ban treaty had been recognized as a particularly promising way to curb proliferation in South Asia, because while India had opposed almost all other nonproliferation measures, it still supported a test ban. In this context, commentators noted that “the single

Ballistic Missiles and Space Launch Vehicles in Regional Powers

International security concerns about ballistic missile proliferation have frequently highlighted the links between ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles. This article examines the extent of these links through a comprehensive survey of ballistic missile and space rocket programs in regional powers. It notes that missiles were derived from existing space launchers in just a small fraction of these cases. In a slightly greater fraction, space launchers were drawn from existing missile programs. This analysis suggests that though security concerns about space launchers being used as ballistic missiles are valid, the reverse trend, that of ballistic missiles being used as space launch vehicles, cannot be ignored. At the same time, as long as regional powers are limited to short-range and medium-range systems, their missile and space projects would only raise limited missile proliferation and space security concerns.

Going Nowhere Fast: Assessing Concerns about Long-Range Conventional Ballistic Missiles

In his article, Bruce Sugden provides a cogent, technically sophisticated assessment of the use of conventional ballistic missiles (CBMs) for the Prompt Global Strike (PGS) mission.1 To a large degree, however, the article elides one of the central issues in targeting, the “actionable intelligence” problem. Without actionable intelligence, CBMs will be of little use, so understanding the problems and prospects for acquiring such intelligence is central to evaluating their utility. In this letter, I critique the depiction of intelligence in Sugden’s article and provide additional information on the collection of actionable intelligence against the near-term target set, which Sugden describes as “emerging, time-sensitive, soft targets, such as exposed WMD [weapons of mass destruction] launchers, terrorist leaders, and sites of state transfers of WMD to terrorists or other states” (p. 117). I conclude by arguing that developing actionable intelligence on these targets is time consuming and requires the presence of U.S. assets, making both the prompt and global aspect of CBMs irrelevant.

Tempering Optimism about Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia

This article tempers the argument of deterrence optimists, who make the case that nuclear deterrence has maintained the peace between regional nuclear rivals. In particular, it challenges the assertion by Kenneth Waltz that “nuclear deterrence has passed all of the many tests it has faced” among regional rivals in South Asia. Examining two major regional military crises, this article notes that, first, nuclear deterrence was not the key factor ending these crises. Instead, nonnuclear factors involving American diplomacy, which provided the participants with timely exit strategies, ended the crises. Second, if these crisis-ending factors had not been present, there was a strong possibility of significant military escalation, and nuclear deterrence would not have averted such an escalation. The article concludes by noting that, in regions where deterrence optimism is not well supported, Washington may continue intervening in crises between nuclear rivals, and, anticipating such a U.S. approach, regional rivals could become involved in repeated military crises over the long term.

Diplomacy, Sanctions, and the U.S. Nonproliferation Dialogue with India and Pakistan

In May 1998, India, followed by Pakistan, conducted a series of nuclear tests. These tests were a major setback to the nuclear nonproliferation regime, which had been strengthened in prior years through nuclear rollbacks by several states and a halt to testing and nuclear arms reductions by the declared nuclear powers. In this context, the United States led an international effort to prevent a regional arms race and stabilize the nonproliferation regime by bringing India and Pakistan into the ambit of various arms control initiatives. Drawing upon objectives outlined in a communique by the U.N. Security Councils five permanent members (P-5) on June 4, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1172 of June 6, and a G-8 foreign ministers communique of June 12, Washington noted that New Delhi and Islamabad

Negotiating Multilateral Instruments Against Missile Proliferation

The absence of a major multilateral treaty banning missiles is explained by the limited scope of the two main instruments against missile proliferation – the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and the Hague Code of Conduct against Ballistic Missile Proliferation (HCOC). In the MTCRs case, limiting the scope to supply-side technology controls facilitated progress during its negotiations. In the Hague Code, limiting the scope to transparency, and keeping out additional items such as incentives to renounce ballistic missiles and the topic of cruise missiles, made negotiations easier. The trade-off from a limited scope in both instruments is that there is still no significant worldwide treaty banning missiles.