Nuclear Deterrence in the Post-Cold War Era

Abstract

The enormous destructive power of nuclear weapons gave rise to a strategy for their judicious use. It gained importance because of the rising US-Soviet rivalry and the subsequent adoption of the policy of containment by the US which was a middle path between rollback and proliferation. After the formation of NATO, nuclear strategy primarily developed in the framework of US-Soviet conflict. The East-West rivalry as it was later phrased was continuously fed by an enduring sense of suspicion and insecurity resulting from a massive buildup and constant improvement of nuclear weapons with a two pronged purpose, first for sustaining a first strike capability and second for strengthening the second strike capability. That resulted in spells of strategic instability and insecurity alternating between the US and the Soviet Union. By the late 1960’s, steps were undertaken for ensuring non-proliferation, détente, arms control and disarmament. With only a short surge in rivalry after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and President Reagan’s 1983 announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative, cold war between the rivals ended without an outbreak of a direct confrontation. The present topic of research focuses on Nuclear Deterrence in the Post-Cold War Era, marked by the advent of a New World Order. In this research it is argued that in the New World Order, there was talk of ideology becoming irrelevant. There was no Soviet Union, no Warsaw Pact and Russian Federation and China were both extending unprecedented cooperation to the US in particular and the world at large. There were significant advances towards non-proliferation and disarmament. Nuclear weapons had lost their relevance resulting in a greater pressure on states to abandon their nuclear weapons programmes. However, the lone superpower undertook selective and coercive regime changes, WMD and conventional disarmament by using innovative pretexts and calculated escalation for prompting and initiating aggressive wars. Weapons based on Revolution in Military Affairs Technologies were used with impunity as an evidence of its military superiority in conflict situations. The destruction of the security apparatus of the state created a security vacuum which was promptly filled by terrorist groups, carving out a new cross-border state entity and creating a novel security threat. Regional insecurity points to the relevance of nuclear weapons, as in the case of South Asia. Pakistan has not been able to achieve conventional balance with India. Nuclear weapons have restored the critical balance of power with India. These weapons have also ensured absence of a Pakistan - India war for the last forty four years inspite of eruption of serious crises between the two countries. It is therefore argued that nuclear zero is highly unlikely. Even if hybrid techniques like asymmetric threats, proxy wars are used to escalate any form of internal disturbance into an all-out war against a nuclear weapons state these weapons can provide an umbrella to conventional and special forces of the state on the one hand to effectively neutralize such threats, while on the other hand, deterring their foreign states supporters from escalation into an all-out war against states involved in internal defensive security operations