The Evolution of Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia (CISS Insight, Vol II, No. 2&3, June-September 2014) (original) (raw)

Nuclear Weapons and Strategic Security in South Asia

2011

In the new issue of the Carnegie Moscow Center's Working Papers series, Peter Topychkanov analyzes South Asian regional strategic security issues, the role of nuclear weapons in Indo-Pakistani relations, the external and internal factors shaping these countries’ nuclear postures, and security-enhancing efforts emanating from inside and outside the region. Topychkanov describes the strategic security situation in South Asia as rather unstable. Among the issues are: a high risk of conflict between India and Pakistan caused by cross-border terrorism, accidents with nuclear weapons in both states, the Kashmir dispute, and the problem of sharing water from the Indus river. Major efforts to enhance regional security must be made by India and Pakistan. The author also argues that third countries, international organizations, and nonproliferation regimes can play a positive role as well. According to Topychkanov, both nuclear optimists and pessimists agree that nuclear weapons proliferation in South Asia will not lead to a deliberate outbreak of large-scale war. Neither Indian nor Pakistani leaders wish to initiate a conflict that could end in a nuclear exchange with disastrous consequences. Still, a catastrophic conflict could occur even though neither the Indians nor the Pakistanis intend to start a nuclear war, and all measures must be taken to prevent it. The author concludes that India and Pakistan should be engaged in nonproliferation regimes on a nondiscriminatory basis (IAEA, NSG, MTCR, etc.). Engagement would be in the interest of India and Pakistan and would set a good example for the nuclear threshold states. The incentives of nuclear cooperation must be made conditional on acceptance of NPT commitments and IAEA safeguards by recipient states.

Changing Nuclear Norms in South Asia a Threat to Regional Peace

Changing Nuclear Norms in South Asia a Threat to Regional Peace

This article is about changing the normative behavior about the usages of nuclear weapons and the emerging threat of nuclear war in South Asia. It is a general belief that deterrence has provided strategic stability against the usage of a nuclear weapon. Little attention has been paid over the years to normative behavior that gradually emerged and refrained states from preemptive nuclear strikes. Leaders of both India and Pakistan repeatedly claimed that these weapons are only for defensive purposes. But with changing geopolitical situation this normative behavior has changed. India adopted Cold Start Doctrine (Though it is a conventional military strategy) but due to a huge disparity in the conventional military weapon, Pakistan developed tactical nuclear weapons and adopted the idea of full-spectrum deterrence. When India did not manage to punish Pakistan with conventional means it started looking for other options. The idea of a preemptive counterforce strike and changing of Indian nuclear doctrine got attention. With these debates about nuclear strikes underway, Intrusion by Indian jets inside Pakistan in February 2019, put both countries on brink of war which could escalate into nuclear. Although war averted that time, recently India had repealed the special constitutional status of Occupied Kashmir, which again aggravated the situation. With this changing normative behavior and deepening crisis between both states chances of war that can turn nuclear is now maximum than ever.

Limited war and nuclear escalation in South Asia

The Nonproliferation Review, 2001

T he status of India and Pakistan as declared nuclear powers with growing nuclear arsenals has raised the risks of a nuclear exchange between them, if the two countries engage in a large military conflict. The political leadership in both countries does not seem to have fully grasped the implications of nuclear weapons in relation to the ongoing conflict in Jammu and Kashmir. This conflict could lead to a limited war, as it has triggered three wars in the past. The risks involved in fighting a limited war over the Kashmir issue and the potential for such a war to escalate into a nuclear exchange are at best inadequately understood, and at worst brushed aside as an unlikely possibility. Despite this official stance, however, a close examination of Indian and Pakistani military and nuclear doctrine reveals elements that could contribute to the rapid escalation of a limited war to include nuclear weapons.

India Pakistan Relations Through the Lens of Nuclear Deterrence

This paper begins by tracing back the development of nuclear deterrence as a strategical theory of mutual assured destruction(MAD) during the cold war era. It then closely analyses the India- Pakistan relation through the lens of nuclear deterrence and all the crisis situation and conflicts in the post nuclear era of India Pakistan relation is studied to understand how the possession of nuclear power by both the neighbours prevented a major conventional war. Then the paper analyses how far nuclear deterrence has been successful in restoring stability among the neighbouring states through the stability/instability paradox which to some extend was failed to achieve . The pattern suggest that the acquisition of nuclear power and employment of nuclear deterrence gave a chance for Pakistan to engage in lower level conflicts with India which are short of high intensity conventional war that might include nuclear escalation. The paper also suggests various limitations to the practical application of nuclear deterrence theory and suggest that the question of irrationality and deterrence as the spread of nuclear weapons might not result in a nuclear war or a conventional war, but that does not mean that it will not cause suffering and bloodshed.

The Credibility of Nuclear Deterrence: Peace and Strategic Stability in South Asia

Open Regional Studies, 2023

When there is anarchy in the international political system, uncertainty and fear can seep into the relations between states, leading to a spiral of power, competition, and even war. This anxiety forces some states to modernize their military forces and increases security risks for other states. In addition to international competition, regional power dynamics force states to modernize their militaries to maintain regional balances of power and state security. One of the most precarious regions in the world in this respect is South Asia, where three nuclear powers, China, India, and Pakistan, reside border to border. Chinese economic and military power is a source of strategic convergence for India, the USA’s most significant deliberate partner. Strategic competition between excessive regional powers creates a strategic dilemma for small states in South Asia, such as Pakistan. The geographical contiguity between India and Pakistan makes the region a nuclear flashpoint. To ensure the state’s survival, above and beyond nuclear weapons, Pakistan cannot contest India’s conventional military superiority. The hypothesis of this study is that Pakistan can assure its security by maintaining credible nuclear deterrence instead of trusting in diplomacy or traditional military power alone. This study explores how minimal credible deterrence has historically played a role in ensuring security and strategic stability in bilateral relations between South Asia’s nuclear powers. Keen and close observation of further Indian military modernization and doctrinal transformation is essential if Pakistan is to establish a comprehensive strategy for national security.

Nuclear doctrines and stable strategic relationships: the case of south Asia

Behind every doctrinal decision that states have to make—especially in relation to nuclear weapons—are two basic questions: one, at the substantive level, what kind of role it envisages for (in this case) nuclear weapons in meeting the country's most important security challenges; and two, with how much clarity and specific-ity, or conversely ambiguity, should the doctrine be expressed. Well-thought-out nuclear doctrines are ideally founded on a strong conception about the role, purposes and limitations of nuclear weapons, how those weapons fit into the pursuit of a country's grand strategy, and a set of core beliefs and ideas about the operationalization of the weapons to reflect a sound balance of all these different facets. The potential for nuclear instability is greatest where a doctrine reflects either a lack of strategic thought or some kind of strategic drift in conceptualizing how nuclear weapons feature within a country's grand strategy, or where there is a clear mismatch between the security challenges faced by a state and the kind of role it assigns to nuclear weapons. The choice between ambiguity and clarity often feeds into this dynamic. Ambiguous doctrines, when they reflect either kind of strategic uncertainty noted above, can be a source of dangerous miscalculation and inadvertent escalation of tensions. This is especially true in new nuclear states that lack experience with respect to the limitations of nuclear weapons. Yet new nuclear states also tend not to state their doctrines unequivocally, relying on ambiguity to maximize the deterrent effects and political utility of their nascent nuclear forces. Ambiguity, then, may be a short-term necessity, but in the longer term can end up being counterproductive. Against the background of the dilemmas presented by the doctrinal and posture choices of nuclear states, this article offers a discussion of nuclear doctrines, and their significance for war, peace and stability in what is possibly the most active nuclear region in present times—south Asia. The cases of India and Pakistan are offered to show the challenges new nuclear states face in articulating and implementing a proper nuclear doctrine. It is argued here that the nuclear doctrines and postures of both India and Pakistan are problematic from a regional security perspective, but for somewhat different reasons. In India's case, newer challenges and a lack of strategic focus have led to increasing ambiguity in a doctrine that at its inception suggested both a certain level of clarity and

Strategic Stability in South Asia : Pakistan and the Challenges of Nuclear Deterrence

2019

The protracted conflict between the US and the former USSR demonstrated that deterrence stability is improved by détente. South Asia‟s environment is characterized by mutual hostility; conventional military balance tilting in favor of India; and lack of a transparent and nonaggressive nuclear doctrine. The aforementioned factors are the missing components of détente. Both the provocative Indian expansion in its nuclear weapons programme, and Pakistani retaliatory notion of the short-range weapons option, is problematic not only in the South Asian context, but also contradictory to the decades-long experience acquired during the Cold War. Pakistan and India must move towards nuclear CBMs, doctrinal clarity, and risk-reduction measures in the light of new technological advancements, and changing US role in the region.

Book Reviews THE EVOLUTION OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE IN SOUTH ASIA

2014

Publisher: The Army Press, Islamabad 2014 Pages: 272 ISBN: 978-969-9982-00-2. outh Asian nuclear patterns always force the proponents of nuclear nonproliferation regime to discuss the nuclear issues of the region by adopting critical examining standards. A number of scholars have tried to discussion nature of South Asian nuclear muscles from difference perspective. The global critical standards, exclusively for Pakistan's nuclear capabilities, are constantly evaluating the nuclear ambitions of India and Pakistan in belligerent style. The varying arguments of scholarly debate attempt to present a logical and rational analysis of Indian and Pakistani nuclear capabilities by adopting a combination of supporting and opposing approaches. The writer Tughral Yamin's in his book titled The Evolution of Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia strives to provide a survey of regional nuclear efforts of Islamabad and New Delhi. The eight chapters of Yamin's investigation is a comprehensive...

Nuclear deterrence and the prevention of war: the case study of India and Pakistan

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2020): J. Peace Dipl. , 2020

There are a number of existing theories of deterrence, mainly nuclear deterrence, that explain how states avoid the probability of war when they acquire nuclear power. While most theories generally explain how states deter each other, there is also a deterrence debate between the IR scholars Kenneth Waltz and Scott Sagan over nuclear proliferation assuring security and nuclear proliferation increasing the threat of destruction. Similarly, the stabilityinstability paradox provides how deterrence lowers the likelihood of war, but the minor skirmishes continue. Under these different theories of deterrence, this paper studies the case of deterrence between India and Pakistan, the two nuclear neighbors and adversaries.