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emphasizing the acquisition of even more robust nuclear capabilities than are
currently deployed by the United States.
Should such circumstances come to pass, whatever commitments India may
have made in the interim to global regimes like the CTBT and the FMCT would
slowly become irrelevant and New Delhi could find itself obligated to change
course simply to ensure its national security in the new strategic environment. If
and until such a point is reached, however, the force-in-being is seen to serve India
well, and this solution will in all likelihood subsist as the new 'punctuated
equilibrium' for some time to come: a stable way point, but not a permanent
terminus in India's slow maturation as a nuclear weapon power.
As
Figure 11
graphically illustrates, the history of the Indian nuclear weapon
program has in fact been little more than a series of sequentially punctuated
equilibria. And if the past is any guide, the defining changes in the character of
India's currently preferred nuclear posture—which would materialize only after
an extended period of time—will likely be triggered by some sharp, specific
external or internal stimulus that cannot yet be discerned with any clarity.
What US policymakers and the intelligence community can do in the interim,
however, is continuously monitor the nature of the ongoing Indian strategic
FIGURE 11 HISTORY OF INDIA'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM
debate, especially with respect to the following questions, because the dominant
answers accepted to these queries in the 'official mind' of policymakers and
strategic managers in New Delhi will—even more than technical intelligence
about India's strategic programs—illuminate the prospect for future changes in
India's nuclear posture:
