Diana Wueger, Ph.D. Candidate
dwueger@uchicago.edu
Graduate Student
University of Chicago
About Me:
Diana Wueger is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Chicago and a Faculty Associate for Research in the National Security Affairs department at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, CA. Her research interests include global weapons proliferation and the political economy of security; the politics of naval and nuclear force structures; and strategic competition between nuclear powers. At NPS, she has organized government-sponsored Track 1.5 strategic dialogues and tabletop exercises with China, Russia, India, and Pakistan. She assisted in developing a series of operational/strategic South Asian war games in collaboration with the Center for Naval Warfare Studies, and has conducted extensive research on naval strategy for the U.S. Navy. Ms. Wueger’s research has appeared in numerous outlets, including The Nonproliferation Review, Washington Quarterly, Democracy Journal, The Atlantic, and War on the Rocks, among others. Prior to joining NPS, she worked in institutional advancement and business development for the Brookings Institution and the Center for the Study of Services. She holds a B.A. in Politics from Oberlin College, an M.A. in National Security Affairs with a focus in Strategic Studies from NPS, and an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.
Research Interests
Nuclear Weapons
Foreign Policy
Conflict Processes & War
Asian Politics
Arms Transfers
Submarines
Navy
Sea-based Deterrence
Deterrence
Nuclear Proliferation
India
Pakistan
South Asia
Indo-Pacific
Countries of Interest
India
Pakistan
China
Germany
United Kingdom
United States
Publications:
Journal Articles:
In 2019, the geostrategic landscape of South Asia significantly changed. A crisis between India and Pakistan involved air strikes across international boundaries for the first time since the 1971 war. Pakistan came close to economic collapse, while India re-elected hawkish Narendra Modi as prime minister in a landslide. These developments, alongside the United States’ efforts to strike a deal to leave Afghanistan and rapidly improving US-India relations, portend new challenges for Pakistan’s security managers—challenges that nuclear weapons are ill-suited to address. Despite the shifting security and political situation in the region, however, Pakistan’s nuclear posture and doctrine seem unlikely to change. This article explores the roots of Pakistan’s reliance on the traditional predictions of the nuclear revolution, most notably the notion that nuclear-armed states will not go to war with one another, and argues that this reliance on nuclear deterrence is a response both to Pakistan’s security environment and to serious constraints on moving away from nuclear weapons toward an improved conventional force posture. Pakistan’s central problems remain the same as when it first contemplated nuclear weapons: the threat from India, the absence of true allies, a weak state and a weaker economy, and few friends in the international system. While 2019 may have been a turning point for other states in the region, Pakistan is likely to stay the course.
In April 2016, India’s first indigenously-built, nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) launched its long-range nuclear-capable missile, codenamed the K-4, for the first time while submerged. By the end of the Cold War, the idea that ballistic missile submarines provided a critical deterrent function had remained intact since its initial conception in the 1950s. Indeed, this idea that submarine-based nuclear weapons are stabilizing now forms one of the central assumptions of nuclear strategy. By making nuclear assets harder to find, SSBNs ensure that even if an incoming counterforce first strike destroys a state’s land-based weapons, its sea-based arsenal remains available for countervalue retaliation. But do SSBNs truly provide an unassailable second strike that deters absolutely, thus generating strategic stability? And does the logic that underpinned sea-based deterrence during the Cold War apply in South Asia, with political, geographic, and bureaucratic realities that differ dramatically from those of the U.S.–Soviet relationship? In this article, I argue that, contrary to prevailing wisdom, sea-based deterrence is unlikely to contribute significantly to strategic stability in South Asia, nor will it provide much benefit to India’s overall strategic security. The geostrategic and operational realities of the South Asian theater differ significantly from those of the Cold War, and these differences, combined with bureaucratic inertia, resource constraints, and sharp asymmetries between actors, suggest that the addition of nuclear-armed submarines to the Indian Ocean will likely result in increased crisis instability and fuel the conventional and nuclear arms races currently underway in the region.
Book Chapters:
“Nuclear Weapons and Sino-Indian Security Relations,” with S. Paul Kapur, Defence Primer 2018: An Indian Military in Transformation?, Pushan Das and Harsh Pant, eds. (Observer Research Foundation: New Delhi, April 2018). The editors asked us to respond to the following question: Do nuclear weapons have a role in the Sino-Indian dyad? The answer, we believe, is a resounding yes. As we explain below, China is India’s primary long-term strategic challenge. Nuclear weapons provide India an important measure of insulation against growing Sino-Indian power asymmetries and coercive Chinese behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region. Thus, despite India’s doctrinal commitment to minimalism, and considerable costs and risks, India is increasing its nuclear capabilities and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Such efforts to enhance the efficacy of its nuclear deterrent vis-a-vis China could even lead India to reconsider its commitment to no first use.
Other:
Strategic competition among China, India, and Pakistan has traditionally been land-oriented, with a focus on territorial disputes. On the conventional military front, the Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani navies have received the least attention and resources from their respective governments. Similarly, the development of air- and land-based nuclear weapons has historically taken precedence both in defense budgets and as a means of projecting power. However, as China continues its economic and military expansion across the Indian Ocean, the maritime domain is receiving increased attention, with all three states making a concurrent drive toward acquiring sea-based nuclear weapons. While the emergence of sea-based legs in Southern Asia could be stabilizing in theory, in practice it could erode deterrence stability if China, India, and Pakistan neglect three clusters of challenges: first, developing and exercising operational concepts, second, ensuring survivability, and finally, building robust, redundant command-and-control processes.