The Case of China:
China’s strategic culture provides a depth in security and foreign policy framing. China fought many wars against imperialistic powers on its eastern front. These wars create an offences stance in the Chinese minds. After becoming the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Mao and the others within the Chinese leadership viewed the strength of nuclear weapons as a psychologically strong weapon as deterrence more than as a full-fledged weapon used in a war (Lewis 2007) . Due to this reason, they build warheads in the minimum numbers for deterrence and policy of No- First Use declared. According to the posture optimization theory, China declared Assured retaliation posture with a triad capability to secure its nuclear arsenals during the first strike and after that retaliation is very hard to the enemy. This retaliation provides the capability of nuclear deterrence in the enemy’s mind.
China maintained full secrecy in its nuclear program since the 1950s. China tested its first nuclear warhead in 1964 at Lopnor, for showing its nuclear capabilities to its rival nations. During the cold war period especially in the 1970s and 1980s China facing a conventional threat from both the superpowers the US and the USSR. Instead of having conventional inferior as compare to enemies China not adopted asymmetric escalation posture (AEP) because of its civil-military arrangements which are in this case related to the Communist Party of China. In the party structure and state structure China ruled by a single party, which have full legitimacy to use coercive means for the security of their citizens and for their welfare. These reasons provided a base why China adopted the assertive command and control system, here political party have control over the nuclear arsenals C&C system. China adopted assured retaliation posture (ARP) in the 1980s to till because it invested its resources more on economic infrastructural development. This posture needs fewer resources as compare to other ones. The posture choices by a state also depend on the pattern of conflicts among states. Here in the case of China, demands a nuclear posture to deter conflict better than others. A state with nuclear arsenals is less effective than its posture, ARP provides a deterrence strategy over the enemy by assured retaliation in case of First Strike.
After the disintegration of the USSR, China faces security challenges from the US only. In competition with the US, China started its posture and proliferation of arsenals according to changes in the US arsenals (Sagan 1996-1997) . The US perfects its missile systems and highly precise long-range conventional strike systems that would render the Chinese second strike capabilities less credible, China either revise its posture or go to the arms race with the US. Chinese strategists are worried about the potential effect of Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) on the survivability of Chinese second strike capabilities, this step of the US is escalators and highly inimical to their conceptions of strategic stability (Saalman 2011) .
The Case of Pakistan: -
Pakistan follows a nuclear policy has been India centric, revolving around perceptions of threat from and hostility towards India. The fundamental aim of its nuclear weapons program is to avoid a repetition of the defeat of 1971. Which is not only a conventional defeat for Pakistan but also reduction of its territory and threat to its survival as a state. Pakistan’s Information and Technology Minister later Wazir-e-Azam Zulfikar Ali Bhutto remarked in 1965 that, “If India builds the bomb, we will eat grass or leaves- even go hungry but we will get one of our own” (Khan 2012) . Before this Pakistan started its nuclear research program in 1957, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) was established to train nuclear scientists and to set up a nuclear research reactor. But 1965 and 1971 defeats accelerate the military use of nuclear power. Pakistan further increased its activities after India detonated a nuclear device in May 1974, as a turning point (Ahmed 1999) .
Pakistan adopted the catalytic posture during the first phase of its nuclear weaponization from the 1980s to 1991. Optimization theory laid that due to the presence of a reliable third party as a patron i.e. the US, Pakistan would adopt a catalytic posture. Since 1979, the US policy towards Pakistan as a helping hand to counter the USSR’s presence in Afghanistan. In this period, the US stated many times to assure the security of Pakistan from external threats. However, after the loss of the moment, the US umbrella started lifting. Due to this reason, Pakistan tested its first Atomic bomb on 30 May at Chagai Hills just after Indian tests on 11 and 13 May at Pokhran.
After the 1998 test, Pakistan changed its nuclear posture overtly as asymmetric escalation posture. In 1999 Kargil war failure shows again the superiority of Indian conventional forces. This again creates a precarious security environment for Pakistan, which lead to a change in the posture (Ditmer 2001) . In this posture, States go with the First Use of the nuclear weapons and posture requires the delegative command and control system i.e. in this more power in the hand of the military officers or commanding officers than civilian political authorities. The delegative C&C system creates possibilities of inadvertent use of these weapons. The state’s domestic structure of civil-military relations best suited to this posture in Pakistan. The rationalist thing is the use of resources available in the country either they use in the development of civilian authority or in this posture. (Ahmed 1999) This posture needs more resources as compared to other posture i.e. eating grass and making atomic bombs. The security threats in the strategist’s mind in Pakistan with AEP posture leading a vertical proliferation of the nuclear weapons within Pakistan more than enough to deter India.
The Case of India: -
India’s Nuclear doctrine, not a Pakistan centric doctrine. After independence, Indian leadership not in the favours of strategic use of nuclear technology but their focus on civil-nuclear energy purpose. Indian perception changed with changing regional security dynamics in South Asia. In the 1962 Sino-Indian war, 1964 Chinese atomic bomb test, and the 1965 Indo-Pak war with a threat of double front war changed the Indian strategists' mindset (Kennedy 2011) .
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s decision to go Peaceful Nuclear Explosion in 1974 changed the policies to see nuclear technology not only as civil nuclear energy purposes but also as a strategic nuclear weapon. After 1998, Pokhran II test, India officially declared its doctrine of No First Use but the nuclear posture of Assured retaliation (ARP). India opted this posture because of the nature of regional security architecture of the region i.e. conventional superiority over Pakistan, conventional forces balance but natural geographic barriers buffering it against China’s land forces don’t demand a first use posture to deter any threatening conventional power (Ganguly 1999) . The relatively fast modernization of India’s arsenals to achieve a nuclear triad which is necessary for the assured retaliation posture. For improving nuclear triad, India successfully tested nuclear-capable K-4 Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile and a supersonic interceptor missile to have a full-fledged and multi-layered Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system in the April-May 2016 respectively (The Hindu 2016) . These steps of India, not for a arms race but for the assurance of its posture. Pakistan was also alarmed with this type of nuclear and missile system advancement of India, which led to instability and arms race in the region.
This paper is an abstract from my paper on Vertical Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: Under Posture Optimisation Theory.
