India’s Inadvertent Missile Launch Underscores the Risk of Accidental Nuclear Warfare
Last month, while most of the world focused on the war in Ukraine and worried that a beleaguered Russian leadership might resort to nuclear weapons, thus escalating the conflict into a direct war with the U.S.-led NATO nuclear-armed alliance, a nearly tragic accident involving India and Pakistan pointed to another path to nuclear war.
All these weapons systems are inherently accident-prone because of two characteristics identified by organizational sociologist Charles Perrow decades ago—interactive complexity and tight coupling—that combine to make accidents a “normal” feature of the operation of some hazardous technologies. The first characteristic refers to the possibility that different parts of the system can affect each other in unexpected ways, thus producing unanticipated outcomes.
Compounding the risk is the mobility of India’s expanding fleet of nuclear capable missiles. These can be launched quickly from specially developed vehicles that move around on roads or rails—meaning that military planners in Pakistan and China, the nuclear-armed neighbors against whom India has war plans, have to be prepared for sudden missile launches from almost anywhere in India’s vast landmass.
The mistake that is of greatest concern is a false alarm of an incoming nuclear attack, possibly directed against nuclear forces. Indian or Pakistani—or Russian or NATO—policy makers may find themselves under immense pressure to launch a preemptive attack, thereby compounding the crisis. The terrible dilemma confronting them would be whether to use their nuclear weapons first or wait for the bombs from the other side to land.
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