Last month, while most of the world focused on the war in Ukraine andworried that a beleaguered Russian leadership might resort to nuclearweapons, thus escalating the conflict into a direct war with the U.S.-ledNATO nuclear-armed alliance, a nearly tragic accident involving India andPakistan pointed to another path to nuclear war. The accident highlightedhow complex technological systems, including those involving nuclearweapons, can generate unexpected routes to potential disaster—especiallywhen managed by overconfident organizations.
India and Pakistan possess more than 300 nuclear weaponslink betweenthem, and have fought multiple wars and faced many military crises. OnMarch 9, two years after their dispute over Kashmir escalated into attacksby jet fighterslink,the Pakistan Air Force detectedlink high speed flyingobject” inside Indian territory change course and veer suddenly towardPakistan. It flew deep into Pakistan and crashed. The object was a BrahMoscruise missilelink,a weapon system developed jointly by India and Russia. India soon statedthe launch was an accidentlink.
The firing of the BrahMos missile falls within a long history of accidentsinvolving military systems in India. Military aircraftlinkhavestrayed across the borders during peacetime. India’s first nuclearsubmarine was reportedly “crippledlink”by an accident in 2018, but the government refused to divulgelinkanydetails. Secrecy has prevented the investigation of an apparent failure ofIndia’s ballistic missile defence systemlink2016. Engagements between India and Pakistan can arise from such accidents,as in 1999 when a Pakistani military plane was shot downlinkalongthe border by India, killing 16 people. Pakistan has had its share ofaccidents, including a Pakistani fighter jet crashinglinkthe capital city in 2020.Advertisement
All these weapons systems are inherently accident-prone because of twocharacteristics identified by organizational sociologist Charles Perrowdecades ago—interactive complexity and tight coupling—that combine to makeaccidents a “normal” feature of the operation of some hazardoustechnologies. The first characteristic refers to the possibility thatdifferent parts of the system can affect each other in unexpected ways,thus producing unanticipated outcomes. The second makes it hard to stop theresulting sequence of events. For Perrow, “the dangerous accidents lie inthe system, not in the componentslink,”and are inevitable.
Perhaps the best and most troubling proof of this proposition is in therealm of nuclear weaponslinkembody all the properties of high-risk technological systems. Despitedecades of efforts to ensure safety, these systems have suffered manyfailures, accidentslink and close callslink.During 1979–1980, for example, there were several false warnings of Sovietmissile attackslink,some of which resulted in U.S. nuclear forces being put on alert.
Illustrating political theorist Benoît Pelopidas’s observation that luckhas long played a “crucial role … in preserving the world from nucleardevastationlink,”the BrahMos accident was not more consequential because of three luckycircumstances. First, the missile was not armed with a warhead. Second, theaccident occurred during peacetime, not during a bout of armed conflict ora period of military tension between the two countries; had that been thecase, the Pakistani military might have interpreted it as a deliberateattack and responded militarily. Third, BrahMos apparently is not designedto carry nuclear weapons. But Indialinkhascruise missiles that can carry nuclear warheads, as does Pakistanlink.
Compounding the risk is the mobility of India’s expanding fleet of nuclearcapable missileslink.These can be launched quickly from specially developed vehicleslink that movearound on roads or rails—meaning that military planners in Pakistan andChina, the nuclear-armed neighbors against whom India has war planslink,have to be prepared for sudden missile launches from almost anywhere inIndia’s vast landmass.
Given the secretive nature of Indian nuclear policymaking, little is knownabout India’s nuclear command and control systemlink.However, the 1999 Draft Nuclear Doctrinelink calledfor “assured capability to shift from peacetime deployment to fullyemployable forces *in the shortest possible time*.” (Emphasis added.) Thecombination of technology and plans for being able to rapidly launchnuclear weapons raises the risk of accidental and inadvertent escalation tonuclear war.Advertisement
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South Asia’s geography is pitiless. It would only take five to 10 minuteslink for a missilelaunched from India to attack Pakistan’s national capital, nuclear weaponcommand posts or bases. For comparison, the flight times between missilelaunch sites and targets in the United States and Russia are about 30minutes. Even this extra time may be insufficient. In the event of amilitary crisis, no leader can make a judicious decision during thisperiod, when faced with impossible choiceslink.But shorter flight timeslinkincrease the likelihoodof mistakeslink.
The mistake that is of greatest concern is a false alarm of an incomingnuclear attack, possibly directed against nuclear forces. Indian orPakistani—or Russian or NATO—policy makers may find themselves underimmense pressure to launch a preemptive attack, thereby compounding thecrisis. The terrible dilemma confronting them would be whether to use theirnuclear weapons first or wait for the bombs from the other side to land.Nuclear war, even of a limited nature, between India and Pakistan could leadto millions of deathslink in theshort term and even graver consequences in the longer term for the regionand beyond.
Compounding these dangers is the overconfidence of India’s officials, whodisplayed no recognition of the gravity of the Brahmos accident. A“technical malfunction” had “led to the accidental firing of a missile,”the official statement declared, noting glibly “it is learnt that themissile landed in an area of Pakistanlink.” India’s defenseminister assured parliament members that the system is “very reliable andsafelink.”[image: newsletter promo]
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As the legendary analyst of nuclear command and control Bruce Blairlink,among nuclear weapon system managers and operators there is an “illusion ofsafetylink”that masks “the systematic potential for tragedy on a monumental scale.”Whether it is India and Pakistan preparing for a fifth war, or the forcesof a nuclear-armed Russia struggling ever more violently to subdue Ukraineand stem the flow of lethal NATO weapons, such illusions threaten thedestruction of cities and may lead to the killing of nations.
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