This year, the keynote address was delivered by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This was a much-awaited one, particularly because of the general low-key and irregular participation from the Indian establishment.
This time around, the IISS organised an inaugural female leaders panel to talk about the strategic implications of new technology on the security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific. It was a terrific panel featuring Australian Minister of Defence Ms. Marise Payne, Canadian Deputy Minister of Defence Ms. Jody Thomas and CEO of Boeing Defence, Space and Security Ms. Leanne Caret and ably chaired by the IISS’ Deputy Director General Dr. Kori Schake. My brief was to look at the nuclear and space advancements and competition in the Asia Pacific, and also the strategic competition between India and China in the Asia Pacific as it relates to these two domains.
Here is the synopsis of my remarks.
Asia is already rife with mistrust, rivalry, competition and both nuclear and space domains are beginning to see a fresh phase of competition. This is a reflection of the larger geopolitical competition in the Asia Pacific and beyond. While there are several factors that have driven this competition, China’s rise has been most consequential. The rise of China and the strategic uncertainties it has created has necessitated countries like India, US, Japan, Australia and other like-minded countries to come together, though this is still at a nascent stage. The augmentation of nuclear and space capabilities will only accentuate the already existing tensions.
I outlined two sets of concerns each with regard to nuclear and space technologies. On the nuclear front, the key concern is potentially the inability of the nuclear non-proliferation regime to deal with the many challenges which present with serious problems for strategic stability. One is the development of hypersonic weapons. A key problem here is that such weapons can increase the potential for surprise attacks, because of the difficulty of detecting and countering them. This could lead to a destabilizing arms race spiral between key great powers in the region, all of whom are working on developing these weapons. An additional problem is that hypersonic weapons potentially erode the line between conventional and nuclear weapons, which will also increase instability. Another evolving technology is BMD, which also has similar problems.
Coming to outer space issues, two issues stand out. There is a growing intensity of competition which is partially due to the increasing number of commercial players and partially due to underlying geopolitical tensions. Outer space has become one more area of the strategic competition on Earth, as seen during the Cold War. This means that the race to return to the moon, as well as to explore the moon and asteroids for mining and resource extraction, are likely to intensify in the coming years. Two, the number of countries using space assets to step up their military capabilities and national security functions has gone up. Also, the fact that states are looking at space utilization for conventional military operations as against the use for strategic operations in the earlier decades, has added a new dimension.
Over and above, automation, machine learning and AI bring in new dynamics to security in the Asia-Pacific.
Finally, I took a couple of minutes to speak about the strategic competition primarily between India and China in the nuclear and space arenas. India’s nuclear weapons programme has been evolving at a slow but steady pace, and it can be expected to continue expanding in both quantity and quality. Like in space and other areas, much of this expansion is driven by the need to build adequate deterrent capacity against China. It is estimated that India currently has around 100 nuclear warheads, of which only half are strategic missiles. But most of India’s long-range missiles are not sufficiently long enough to cover all of China unless they are deployed in northern India. This is true of both the land-based and submarine-based missiles. This means that India will continue developing its capabilities for the near- to long-term but this could trigger negative reactions from China on the one side, and from Pakistan from the other.
However, it must be noted that India is at least a couple of generations behind China and India is not in competition with China in numerical terms but the need to develop certain capabilities and capacities as a deterrent against China will continue. In the space sector, demonstration of China’s military space capabilities, including ASATs, is driving the militarization of India’s space program. This will propel further competition between these two powers.
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