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of the force-in-being is that it allows for such change to take place in a relatively
evolutionary fashion. This is because the posture currently favored by India's
security managers does not prevent the country from continually improving its
delivery capabilities, supporting infrastructure, and procedural systems to levels
that could support a variety of nuclear strategies other than delayed retaliation
focused on simple punishment.
Nor does it prevent India from continuing to accumulate weapons-grade
plutonium and any other special nuclear materials that its evolving arsenal might
need in the near term; in fact, depending on the final text of the FMCT, it is even
possible, although not likely, that India and all other states might be permitted to
continue producing fissile materials, albeit with the stipulation that all post-
FMCT stocks of such material be maintained under safeguards.
The currently favored strategic posture also does not prevent the continued
improvement of India's nuclear weapon designs through computer simulations
and subcritical tests. Ultimately it would not prevent New Delhi from breaking
out of any treaty commitments—assuming it signed on to the FMCT and CTBT
in the first place—that prohibit either the production of fissile materials or the
resumption of field testing for purposes of developing many more potent nuclear
weapons. 105
The solution embodied by the force-in-being thus carries within it the
potential for transformation into some other, more lethal, kind of nuclear posture
—like a more robust force-in-being or different variants of a ready arsenal—if
changes in India's strategic circumstances were to mandate such a transition. In
that sense, the force-in-being represents a continuation of the classic Indian
preference for 'keeping the option open'.
What is never explicitly stated by Indian security managers but is always on
their minds is that the currently favored solution represented by the force-in-
being serves the specific purpose of ensuring Indian security in conditions that
are best described as being 'between the times'—that is, between the first
nuclear era defined by the Cold War and the still-unclear but emerging
reorganization of the international system.
If the global order were really to change in a direction manifestly unfavorable
to India, exemplified most simply by China's rise as a threatening superpower,
Indian policymakers expect that the currently strong wave of American
nonproliferation pressures on New Delhi—one of the factors that contributes to
maintaining their nuclear capabilities in the form of a force-in-being—would
steadily abate and that India would then be free for the first time to return to the
business of developing a more robust nuclear posture of the kind the altered
strategic environment required.
Under these conditions, they expect that the current US attitude toward
nuclear weapons may itself change and that Washington may return to
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