The Non-proliferation Regime and the Spread of Nuclear Delivery Vehicles

• In Event: Nuclear Weapons Modernization and Proliferation

Abstract

After India’s 1974 Peaceful Nuclear Explosion, NATO’s secret intelligence estimates expected that India would build aircraft- and missile-based nuclear delivery systems alongside its nuclear weapons within six months to a year. Despite these assessments and their stated commitments to non-proliferation, two NATO states – the United Kingdom and France – proceeded to help India acquire the means of nuclear delivery in the years that followed. How do nuclear delivery systems proliferate in the international system? And why did states committed to non-proliferation help India acquire nuclear delivery systems? In this paper, I address this puzzle by analyzing India’s acquisition of the nuclear-capable Jaguar aircraft from the United Kingdom and space technology from France that eventually led to its first Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). I find that a set of legal and normative ambiguities in the nuclear non-proliferation regime help facilitate the transfer of the means of nuclear delivery. Critically, I also find that the norm of non-proliferation was secondary to the supplier states’ economic concerns about capturing market share and building industry. I use newly declassified historical sources from multiple archives in India, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States to establish the argument. This paper adds to the existing literature on nuclear proliferation by examining a hitherto unexplored topic: the proliferation of the means of nuclear delivery.

Author

• Debak Das, University of Denver