Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent was never born out of ambition. It was born out of necessity. When India, under the pretext of a “peaceful” nuclear programme, carried out its first nuclear test at Pokhran in 1974, Islamabad was left with little choice but to secure its survival in a volatile neighborhood. Ever since, Pakistan has pursued a deterrence strategy that is modest in scope, limited in range, and firmly tethered to the singular threat perception emerging from across its eastern border. Its nuclear doctrine is one of restraint: a last-resort shield, not a sword for force projection.
Yet, much of the international discourse frames Pakistan as the problem and India as the responsible actor. It is not merely misleading, but dangerous. The facts tell another story – that Pakistan has voluntarily placed all its civilian nuclear reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) control, routinely disclosed the results of safety audits to partners, and has command-and-control systems that are modeled along the best international practices. Its warheads are only deterrent sized and its missile ranges are limited to the Indian mainlands and islands. That is, Pakistan has oriented its armaments to regional security needs, and not international policy-making.
Conversely, with the special waivers, sweetheart nuclear deals, New Delhi still has a large part of its nuclear plants that do not come under extensive international safeguards. This loophole allows the so-called civilian fissile material to be diverted to the development of weapons, a prospect that has been repeatedly pointed at by independent observers but swept under the carpet by the key power broker nations who wish to make India their new ally against China. Meanwhile, India is busy following suit, expanding its range and ambition of its arsenal: the Agni-V with a range of around 8,000 kilometers, the planned Agni-VI with a range of 12,000 kilometers, and a fledgling K-series of submarine-launched missiles with around the same range.
The dangers are not on paper. History of laxity on security involves several cases of radiation theft in India raising concerns on the integrity of its command control mechanism. In 2022, the accidental launch of a BrahMos missile into Pakistani airspace would have escalated into disastrous warfare with minimal effort. That the world shrugged off this episode as a mere “technical glitch” reflects a troubling double standard: had Pakistan made such an error, the outrage would have been deafening.
Overlaying these technical risks is a worrying political context in which the nuclear development in India is taking place. The politics of Hindutva have already altered the domestic and foreign posture of India, in favour of aggression and symbolism instead of pragmatism. Any development of nuclear capabilities in these ideological circumstances will turn a once stable balance of deterrence in the region into a nuclear arms race.
A sober, fact-based narrative must therefore do two things. First, it must recognise that Pakistan’s doctrine of restraint has been a stabilising factor in the region, however inconvenient that may be for those who wish to caricature it as a reckless actor. Second, it should exercise more vigilance on India on its safeguard exemptions, command integrity and ambitious long-range concerns. Otherwise, the world will be promoting a nuclear power that proved both willingness to disobey the rules and susceptibility to disasters.
Pakistan’s strategic capabilities are not about keeping pace with India’s ambition. These are survival, deterrence and restraint in the presence of an enemy that has continued to erase the boundary between civilian cover and military build-up. To confuse the latter with the former is to misinterpret the meaning of South Asian nuclear stability. And to indulge India’s unchecked ambitions while chastising Pakistan’s cautious deterrence is to invite the very instability the international community claims to fear.
