Declassified U.S. intelligence reports from the 1980s and 90s show that, even while the possibility of war between India and Pakistan remained low, the U.S. believed there was a strong possibility that such a conflict could lead to the use of nuclear weapons. A 1989 State Department intelligence report published today for the first time, for example, found that, although a war between the two countries was unlikely, the risk was “high” that, through a “miscalculation or irrational response,” a “conventional war … might turn into a nuclear exchange.”
By 1993, the U.S. intelligence community had grown more concerned about the possibility of a conflict in South Asia, assessing it at “about 1 in 5,” according to a 1993 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) titled “India-Pakistan: Prospects for War in the 1990s” also published today for the first time by the National Security Archive. The CIA released much of the NIE’s contents in response to the Archive’s mandatory declassification review appeal.
The 1993 NIE found that elements of the tense India-Pakistan relationship that increased risks of conflict were their nuclear rivalries, competing claims for Kashmir, and mutual suspicions of internal interference. Moreover, the coming to power of “extremist” parties in either India or Pakistan could raise the risk of conflict. By the early 1990s, right-wing Hindu political movements were on the rise in India and were associated with increasing communal violence.
The possibility of an India-Pakistan conflict was also central to a declassified 1981 Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) that is also published here today: “India’s Reaction to Nuclear Developments in Pakistan.” With Pakistan moving forward in its efforts to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence evaluated the possibility of an Indian attack on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities should developments in that country threaten India’s security. According to the SNIE, India would probably take a “wait and see” approach before striking in Pakistan and make a decision “based on whether Pakistan produced nuclear weapons or stockpiled them.”
Accompanying the SNIE is a chilling State Department memo, also published for the first time, on the expected radiological consequences of an Indian attack on the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant (KANUPP). The briefing by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory scientists emphasized the threat of dispersed iodine 131, which was one of the primary radiation dangers associated with the Chernobyl disaster five years later. Under the “extreme conditions” assumed by the scientists who developed the study, “Karachi residents would probably receive a 10 to 20 REM inhalation dose [of iodine 131] as far as 25 km down wind,” an amount “20 times as great as the serious escape of iodine during an accident at a UK reactor at Windscale in the 1960s.” Populous Karachi “could suffer heavy casualties” under such a scenario, according to the Livermore briefing.
The 1989 report by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) titled “India-Pakistan Relations: A Delicate Balance” provides perspective on the India-Pakistan rivalry. INR analysts found war to be “the most improbable of contingencies” because leaders on both sides wanted to avoid open conflict. Yet, “hostilities might break out by accident, or an even more unlikely possibility—be triggered by New Delhi’s efforts to take out all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities in coordinated surgical strikes.” Creating potential for conflict were “suspicions and prejudices” on both sides and “points of friction,” such as rival claims for Kashmir and the “mutual charges of interference”—namely, that each was providing arms and assistance to “separatist extremists” in the other country. There was “risk” that conventional conflict could escalate into a “nuclear exchange,” the INR report found.
By the time U.S. intelligence officials had begun to prepare the 1993 NIE, U.S. intelligence officials saw the possibility of India-Pakistan war as greater than “improbable.” Like INR, the intelligence analysts found that the leaders of both countries wanted to avoid war, but that “flashpoints” such as Kashmir, “internal meddling,” terrorist incidents, and “communal incidents” could ignite crises and confrontations, possibly leading to the use of nuclear weapons. Also increasing the risk of conflict was the possibility that extremist parties could come to power, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) (Indian People’s Party) in India and radical Islamists in Pakistan. Yet even if war “was not on the horizon,” the chance of war could increase through “miscalculations,” including intelligence failures that could trigger a “premature attack.” The analysts envisioned circumstances that could cause an “escalating confrontation,” including “protracted surges of violence in Kashmir,” a “large scale military exercise in border areas,” or a “spectacular terrorist outrage” that one side could attribute to the other. The greatest miscalculation of all could involve “the breakdown of nuclear deterrence during a crisis,” especially if military leaders on either side developed “hair-trigger responses that ensure crisis escalation.”
Since the 1990s, India-Pakistan relations have remained tense. Alert to the risks of conflict between two nuclear armed states, social and natural scientists have studied the possible consequences of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan. According to one scenario described in a 2019 study prepared by climate scientists and nuclear experts, 50 million people could be killed, and the consequences for the global climate could be devastating: the detonations could have effects that would lower temperatures and damage food production. One of the major conclusions of the study was that “any of the India-Pakistan nuclear cases we posit clearly would cause large reductions in agriculture and food shortages” that could lead to “famine for millions or billions of people.”
Perspectives
The rivalry and tensions discussed in the intelligence estimates and analyses has been a theme in India-Pakistan relations since the 1970s. When Pakistan lost the 1971 war with India, it redoubled President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s interest in a nuclear weapons program even if it meant that his country would have to “eat grass” to pay for it. In May 1974, India’s longstanding investment in dual-use nuclear capabilities yielded a “Peaceful Nuclear Explosion,” which in turn motivated Bhutto further to develop nuclear capabilities that he insisted were for “peaceful” purposes. By the late 1970s, Pakistan was acquiring a gas centrifuge complex for producing highly enriched uranium. India had not taken steps to weaponize its nuclear capabilities but it was developing advanced delivery systems.
During 1979 and 1980, U.S. intelligence was learning more about Pakistan’s secret program to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons, in part by using purloined gas centrifuge technology. That development amplified concern in Washington about nuclear proliferation and the implications for stability in South Asia. India was monitoring the Pakistan nuclear situation even more closely because of the potential threat it posed during the years ahead. By 1981, with Pakistani nuclear capabilities moving ahead, U.S. government officials wondered whether those developments would motivate preventive action by India and a new crisis. With Indian leaders opposed to producing nuclear weapons, they may have seen the prospect of a nuclear-armed Pakistan as an intolerable threat, making preventive action worth thinking about. Such concerns led to the commissioning of a national intelligence estimate assessing possible Indian moves, resulting in Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 31/31-81, “India’s Reaction to Nuclear Developments in Pakistan.”
In the fall of 1981, Lawrence Livermore’s Special Projects Division analyzed the radiological damage and casualties that could result from an Indian strike against Pakistan’s nuclear reactor near Karachi. (Document 2) Their analysis foreshadowed the radiation dangers caused by the dispersal of iodine 131 that occurred from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the likely damage that would occur today if Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant experienced severe damage.
The scenario of radiation casualties made some Indian strategists see a preventive attack as highly dangerous because a Pakistani counterattack on India’s nuclear installations could cause similar harm. (Document 3) During the years that followed, the possibility of Indian preventive action remained a concern to the Reagan administration because Pakistan was continuing its nuclear weapons program. Washington wanted to avoid a crisis with Islamabad over nuclear issues because of Pakistan’s covert assistance in Afghanistan, yet, by 1986, the administration had lodged 25 demarches to General Zia. To encourage India-Pakistan détente, the U.S. wanted to encourage both countries to adopt “military confidence building measures” [CBMs] that could help them avoid or at least mitigate future crises. In part to encourage movement on that end and India-Pakistan détente more broadly, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger traveled to the region in the fall of 1986.
A few years later, a lengthy State Department intelligence report from the summer of 1989 provided perspective on the India-Pakistan rivalry. INR analysts found war to be “the most improbable of contingencies,” with leaders on both sides wanting to avoid open conflict. But leaders could do little to improve the hostile relationship between their countries because “suspicions and prejudices … form the bedrock of each country’s world view and security policy.” Adding to potential for conflict were “points of friction,” such as rival claims for Kashmir and the “mutual charges of interference” that each country is providing arms and assistance to “separatist extremists” in the other, for example, alleged Pakistani support for Sikhs. Yet “hostilities might break out by accident, or, an even more unlikely possibility, be triggered by New Delhi’s efforts to take out all of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons facilities in coordinated surgical strikes.”
Four years later, the intelligence community prepared a national intelligence estimate on “India-Pakistan: Prospects for War in the 1990s.” Far from seeing war as unlikely, the analysts reckoned a one in five chance of conflict. Like INR analysts in 1989, the authors of the NIE saw “flashpoints” that could precipitate open conflict, such as the Kashmir problem, “communal violence,” and support for separatist extremists. Moreover, the rise of a rightwing Hindu party in India, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) (Indian People’s Party) had changed calculations about the risk of war. If the BJP came to power, or if radical Islamists formed a government in Pakistan, the prospects for conflict could increase.
What exactly triggered the preparation of the 1993 NIE remains unknown, but the context for it is clear enough: both countries had made strides in their nuclear programs, with Pakistan probably further than India; both sides were supporting militants and separatists in border areas such as Kashmir; anti-Muslim violence in India had led to thousands of deaths; and crises in 1987 and 1990 had generated fear of nuclear conflict. In the United States, a new president, William J. Clinton, was strongly interested in India, in part because he saw it as an emerging world power and a multi-ethnic democracy like the United States. That interest may have prompted him to request the views of the intelligence community on what contingencies, including the possibility of South Asian conflict, might lay on the horizon.
The NIE’s estimate of low odds for war during the 1990s proved correct. Yet Clinton’s second secretary of defense, William Perry, saw war as a “real possibility” and tried to promote moderation by encouraging Indian and Pakistani military leaders to hold talks. By the end of the decade, India and Pakistan came close to war. In early 1998, the BJP came to power and on 11 May 1998 tested three nuclear weapons. Pakistan followed suit, which settled any doubts about the nuclear status of both countries, making any potential conflict even more dangerous.
In May 1999, Pakistani military forces moved past the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir and seized positions in the Kargil area that Indian forces had vacated during the winter. Expecting a weak response from India or even negotiations over the seized territories, Pakistani military leaders did not predict the Indian counteroffensive that occurred in June. While worried about the possibility of escalation, the Clinton administration sided with India and demanded that Pakistan pull back its forces completely and without any conditions. On 4 July 1999, at the height of the crisis, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met with Clinton at the White House, who demanded that he announce a withdrawal of Pakistani forces to behind the LoC; otherwise, the United States would blame Pakistan not only for starting a war but also for assisting Osama bin Laden. Having received intelligence that Pakistan might be readying nuclear forces, Clinton emphasized the grave risks of the situation. According to Bruce Riedel, who took notes on the conversation, “Sharif very reluctantly agreed to withdraw.”
In the months that followed, during 1999-2000, the intelligence establishment prepared a new NIE on the risks of conflict in South Asia. In his account of the period, Riedel wrote that the NIE found that the chances of India-Pakistan war in the next few years had risen to 50-50.
