What Was Done to Achieve Strategic Stability during the Cold War? Lessons for South Asia?

2011 ◽  
pp. 99-125
Author(s):  
Michael O. Wheeler
2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110543
Author(s):  
Iftikhar Ali ◽  
Jatswan S. Sidhu

In contrast to the pervasive confidence that the development of nuclear weapons ensures peace and stability by making wars too expensive to fight for, South Asian strategic stability has drifted into nasty security competition through arms race with an episodical crisis that continues at the sub-conventional level. Deterrence studies that were relegated to the bins of history soon after the end of the Cold War received a renewed interest of scholars on the subject since the demonstration of deterrent capabilities by South Asian rivals in 1998. A new wave of deterrence studies has developed in the current multipolar world with some scholars adopting Cold War models of analysis in the contemporary realms of South Asia, whereas other are attempting new analytical approaches. This article aims to offer a fresh look at how to provide a clear concept of strategic stability, how strategic stability is applicable in contemporary South Asia and what the recent crisis between India and Pakistan being interwoven with terrorism tells us about crisis stability between the two countries under the shadows of nuclear weapons.


Author(s):  
Tauqeer Hussain Sargana ◽  
Mujahid Hussain

The advent of nuclear weapons has brought into discussion the strands of strategic stability that initially occupied the Cold War rivals and later the neighboring states of South Asia. Both the Soviet Union and the United States due to distanced geography with that of settled strategic language have almost brought a positive tendency in crisis management and strategic stability. Contrary to Cold War rivals, the South Asian nuclear opponents have gone through a vulnerability of strategic miscalculation and crisis instability. That is why at most of their direct military stalemates, the US and Soviets had to jump in to defuse the crises. Moreover, Indian military modernization, deliberate maintenance of conventional asymmetry, application of sub-conventional warfare, state-sponsored terrorism, regional dominance and global aspirations interlinked with the containment of China under Indo-US strategic partnership has altogether shaped the contemporary discourse of strategic stability in South Asia. This study makes the point that the strands of strategic stability between the two regional powers of South Asia are tied to the complex web of the bilateral, regional and global framework. It is in this larger construct that strategic stability in South Asia can be best described. This study is deductive in nature and theoretically evaluates the notion of strategic stability paradigm to deconstruct the prevailing fault lines.


2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Paul Kapur

Scholars attribute conventional violence in a nuclear South Asia to a phenomenon known as the “stability/instability paradox.” According to this paradox, the risk of nuclear war makes it unlikely that conventional confict will escalate to the nuclear level, thereby making conventional confict more likely. Although this phenomenon encouraged U.S.-Soviet violence during the Cold War, it does not explain the dynamics of the ongoing confict between India and Pakistan. Recent violence has seen Pakistan or its proxies launching limited attacks on Indian territory, and India refusing to retaliate in kind. The stability/instability paradox would not predict such behavior. A low probability of conventional war escalating to the nuclear level would reduce the ability of Pakistan's nuclear weapons to deter an Indian conventional attack. Because Pakistan is conventionally weaker than India, this would discourage Pakistani aggression and encourage robust Indian conventional retaliation against Pakistani provocations. Pakistani boldness and Indian restraint have actually resulted from instability in the strategic environment. A full-scale Indo-Pakistani conventional confict would create a significant risk of nuclear escalation. This danger enables Pakistan to launch limited attacks on India while deterring allout Indian conventional retaliation and attracting international attention to the two countries' dispute over Kashmir. Unlike in Cold War Europe, in contemporary South Asia nuclear danger facilitates, rather than impedes, conventional confict.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-22

Living in an area that has long been a battlefield where various world powers have often been at loggerheads, Pashtuns have frequently drawn the attention of several works of fiction. Yet literary scholars have largely ignored the importance of these works of fiction looking into the lives of Pashtuns. This paper proposes that from the times of the Cold War to those of the War on Terror, Pashtun identities have been clouded by the hegemonic discourses of the contesting global powers, leading to gaps and silences in their depiction in literature.This paper argues that the Pashtun images in contemporary Pakistani fiction in English exhibit strong influences of the dominating narratives; simultaneously, however, they seem to offer various patterns of subversion of the prevailing power narratives. Despite the fact that Pashtuns are generally regarded as the most subversive people of South Asia and that their lands have been regarded significant strategically as well as geographically, yet they are portrayed as the Others of the mainstream cultural discourses. This paper aims to highlight the contours of the socio-cultural and political valuation of Pashtuns in contemporary Pakistani fiction in English.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kanti P Bajpai ◽  
Stephen P Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  

1996 ◽  
Vol 44 (5) ◽  
pp. 888-905
Author(s):  
Stuart Croft

Arms control has been strongly attacked from two quarters since the end of the Cold War. Some argue that it is flawed in essence, elaborating a conservative critique developed over 25 years. Others argue that arms control was a Cold War institution, and therefore its time has passed. Both are wrong, fundamentally because arms control is defined too narrowly. A typology of arms control is proposed with five distinct forms: the traditional interpretation, focusing on strategic stability; arms control at the end of major conflicts; arms control to develop the laws of war; controls on proliferation; and arms control by international organization. Arms control has a long history, and when seen in this broader perspective, it is clear that it has a future.


1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 45-79
Author(s):  
Dilnawaz A. Siddiqui

Technology is defined as a device to compensate for human physical,psychological, and mental limitations. It is usually neutral, but can havefunctional and dysfunctional aspects based on its users’ intentions.Historically, the technological haves have justified the existence and possessionof new technologies, have publicized their own innocence andsense of responsibility in using them, and have asserted the innocuousnessof their devices without necessarily sharing all of their secrets. Concernedand helpless, the technological have-nots have resisted them and, havingsuffered their deadly devastation, have tried to obtain them at great risk tothemselves. However, the situation of information technology/-ies (IT) isdifferent and more interesting. The haves have attempted to popularizetheir use globally for commercial and other reasons. Many have-nots areembracing them wholeheartedly, while some are more cautious.One motivation behind the use of these technologies is globalization.The increasingly popularized term globalization is rather vague and complex,allowing a variety of interpretations and hidden intentions. Thehave-nots seem to see it as the West’s redoubled efforts at Westernizingthe world with all its pains, pleasures, and perversions; as achieving politicalhegemony as the sole superpower after the end of the Cold War; andas the “opening up of the globe” for commercial control on its own terms.Initially the world, especially the nations of South Asia, saw for themselvesa rare opportunity in the globalization of trade and IT. But since thecontagion has now spread, rather too fast, across the globe, the world cansee more clearly both the prospects and the problems of these two majorglobal trends. The purpose of this paper is to identify various issuesinvolved in these trends, and to discuss, in greater depth, some of them,namely, global business, the promise of technology, and the globalizationof media and culture ...


Asian Survey ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 35 (10) ◽  
pp. 879-895 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandy Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  

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