China has loomed over India through all this period. With China pushing to extend their power into the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, the India-China rivalry will overshadow the threat of Pakistan. So India's nuclear arsenal will extend its reach to all of China:
India announced Wednesday it was working on a new ballistic missile capable of hitting targets 6,000 kilometres (3,800 miles) away, which would more than double its current nuclear strike range.
This is natural for India to do under the circumstances, since India's heartland is already within range of Chinese nuclear weapons and India cannot yet return the favor.
But it could also trigger a chain reaction of Pakistan, India, China, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea building up nuclear weapons out of fear that their potentially hostile neighbors are adding nuclear weapons.
And without sophisticated warning systems and short flight times, will countries be willing to hold fire on the assumption that a missile launch is heading for a very nearby neighbor and not themselves? Will countries with more than one enemy assume that a nuclear strike is being carried out by only one of those enemies? Will a country with more than one enemy lash out with nukes at all their enemies even if attacked by only one enemy out of fear that non-attacking enemies will have an advantage in the post-war world? Will launch on warnings trigger a chain reaction across the region?
It might be helpful to remember the hair-trigger environment that pre-1914 Europe lived under with conventionally armed rival powers in close proximity to one another.
UPDATE: Strategypage writes about India's missiles. The basic missiles cover Pakistan, the third in the series that could reach India is not ready, and the fourth reaches beyond ranges necessary for China:
The Agni IV would allow targets in Russia, Europe (Italy and points east), Japan and Africa to be hit. It's unsure what point the Indians are trying to make here.
The Agni I and II are sufficient to cover India's main enemy, Pakistan. The Agni II and IV are both two stage, solid fuel missiles.
The point might be to obscure that India is really only aiming at China. With a range that encompasses places India would obviously not want to target, India might have plausible deniability that they are really just making sure they can nuke China if they have to.
