Pakistan's Nuclear Posture

I n 1998, as Pakistan and India entered their second half-century as independent republics, arms developments set back their long-troubled relationship and threatened to derail their post-cold war policies of economic reform and growth. Much the bigger power, India set the pace, and Pakistan strove within its limited means to stay abreast.' Both moved closer after 1995 to declaring nuclear weapons and deploying missiles that could deliver them, fanning the embers of a smoldering arms race and elevating anxieties about nuclear confrontation. Nuclear proliferation in the subcontinent dates back at least to the 1960s, but it was only recently that India and Pakistan acquired deployable, nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.2 Western policymakers and analysts wonder how close the subcontinent has edged toward the first real nuclear war and ponder whether that risk can be eliminated.3 Those developments also throw a spotlight on Pakistan's nuclear posture and raise questions about the viability of that posture. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the most hawkish and rhetorically anti-Pakistan of India's political parties, finally rose to power in New Delhi in March 1998. It was restrained, however, by the need to form a coalition to ensure an absolute majority of supporting seats in the lower house of Parliament.4 The BJP's campaign platform since 1995 had promised to exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons into India's defense.5 Upon forming the new government, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced that India would conduct a full-fledged defense review and, for the first time, set up a national security council. A known moderate himself, Vajpayee probably would not pull out all the stops on nuclear arms and missile deployment, but the BJP's rise to power inevitably deepens Pakistani anxiety, and India's defense review will add urgency to Pakistan's defense planning.6 If BJP-led India goes nuclear, Pakistan

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