scholarly journals Pakistan Strives to be Nuclear Power: Changed Security Environment in South Asia

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 143
Author(s):  
Razia Musarrat
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
Analytical Technique ◽  
Security Environment

Pakistan and India have remained arch rivals since their inception in 1947 fought three major wars with issue of Kashmir as their main bone of contention. Due to its size and population India always had an edge on Pakistan. Pakistan only measure for its territorial integrity was to have a strong deterrence which it achieved in the form of its nuclear weapons. India left Pakistan with no choice. Analytical technique is used while conducting this research for proving that nuclear deterrence was the only way for putting a leash on Indian aggression and constant threat.   * Updated and revised

Ten Years of Instability in a Nuclear South Asia

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 71-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Paul Kapur
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Regional Security ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Limited War ◽  
Asian Security ◽  
Nuclear Tests ◽  
To Come

The tenth anniversary of India's and Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests enables scholars to revisit the issue of South Asian proliferation with a decade of hindsight. What lessons do the intervening years hold regarding nuclear weapons' impact on South Asian security? Some scholars claim that nuclear weapons had a beneficial effect during this period, helping to stabilize historically volatile Indo-Pakistani relations. Such optimistic analyses of proliferation's regional security impact are mistaken, however. Nuclear weapons have had two destabilizing effects on the South Asian security environment. First, nuclear weapons' ability to shield Pakistan against all-out Indian retaliation, and to attract international attention to Pakistan's dispute with India, encouraged aggressive Pakistani behavior. This, in turn, provoked forceful Indian responses, ranging from large-scale mobilization to limited war. Although the resulting Indo-Pakistani crises did not lead to nuclear or full-scale conventional conflict, such fortunate outcomes were not guaranteed and did not result primarily from nuclear deterrence. Second, these Indo-Pakistani crises led India to adopt a more aggressive conventional military posture toward Pakistan. This development could exacerbate regional security-dilemma dynamics and increase the likelihood of Indo-Pakistani conflict in years to come. Thus nuclear weapons not only destabilized South Asia in the first decade after the nuclear tests; they may damage the regional security environment well into the future.

Nuclear Weapons & Nuclear Use

Daedalus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 145 (4) ◽  
pp. 50-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Robert Kehler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Complete Elimination ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Nuclear Arsenal ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

While nuclear weapons were conceived to end a war, in the aftermath of their operational use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they became the central (and controversial) means to prevent a war. Nuclear deterrence formed the foundation of U.S. Cold War doctrine and the basis of an extended security guarantee to our allies. But the Cold War ended one-quarter century ago, and questions about the efficacy of deterrence, the need for nuclear weapons, and the ethics surrounding them have resurfaced as some call for further major reductions in inventory or the complete elimination of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Discussed from the perspective of a military practitioner, this essay highlights the continuing need for U.S. nuclear weapons in a global security environment that is highly complex and uncertain, and describes the means by which the credibility of the nuclear portion of the strategic deterrent is being preserved even as the role and prominence of these weapons have been reduced.

scholarly journals Nuclear Stability in South Asia

2008 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sumit Ganguly
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Jammu And Kashmir ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
International Image ◽  
Nuclear Stability ◽  
Nuclear Tests ◽  
International Border

An examination of the onset, evolution, and termination of the 1999 and 2001–02 crises between India and Pakistan suggests that nuclear deterrence is robust in South Asia. Even though the 1999 crisis erupted into a war, its scope and dimensions were carefully circumscribed. Despite its conventional capabilities, India chose not to cross the Line of Control (the de facto international border in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir), and it avoided horizontal escalation of the conflict. India's restraint cannot be attributed either to timely U.S. intervention or to a concern about avoiding a bellicose international image. Instead a highly jingoistic regime, which had defied international public opinion the previous year through a series of nuclear tests, chose to exercise restraint because of Pakistan's possession of nuclear weapons. In 2001, despite grave Pakistani provocation through a series of terrorist attacks, India could only respond with a strategy of coercive diplomacy.

The Evolved Security Dynamics of South Asia: Challenges to Pakistan’s Nuclear Threshold

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (Summer 2020) ◽  
pp. 75-86
Author(s):  
Haris Bilal Malik ◽  
Muhammad Abbas Hassan
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Threshold Level ◽  
Security Architecture ◽  
Unresolved Issue ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Global Security ◽  
Security Environment ◽  
Military Modernization

The longstanding unresolved issue of Kashmir serves as a nuclear flashpoint between India and Pakistan. Since 2019, the prevalent security environment of the region has dominated the discourse surrounding the regional and global security architecture. India’s policies during the Pulwama-Balakot crisis and the revocation of Kashmir’s constitutional status demonstrate the country’s intentions of dominating the escalation ladder in the region and marginalizing the muslim community of Kashmir. Because of the conventional disparity in South Asia where India is big interms of size, economy and military build-up, Pakistan has been further threatened by India’s aggressive policies and provocative military modernization. Consequently, Pakistan may be compelled to further revisit its nuclear threshold level to overcome India’s aggression.

Nuclear Weapons, South Asia and Morality

Think India ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 535-546
Author(s):  
ABHISHEK CHOUDHARY
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Moral Perspective ◽  
The Us ◽  
Positive Duties ◽  
Nuclear Development ◽  
Asian Context

The paper analyses the concerns arising from a moral perspective in the context of a renewed arms race in South Asia. It challenges the idea that possession of nuclear power could in any way contribute to any sort of balance. The emulation of so-called great powers and expecting that balance would arrive as it did in the case of the US and the erstwhile-USSR during cold war is detrimental to the temporal and spatial uniqueness of South Asia. Deterrence, based on rational choice theory, does not apply to the South Asian context due to ambiguity owing to mutual mistrust especially in the case of India and Pakistan. Also, it no longer only sates that are sole actors in the international arena. One cannot expect the non-state actors to behave in a rational manner. Furthermore, the idea of ‘credible minimum deterrence’ itself is questionable as it is a flexible posture adjusted to relative prowess and ambiguity in policy further aggravates the situation. The paper argues from a consequentialist notion of ethics and argues that the principles of harm and equity ought be part of nuclear decision-making. Another aspect that the paper uncovers relates to the ‘reification’ of nuclear power. Using a neo-Marxist framework and concept of Lukács, the paper argues that it is no longer the state as a repository of power that decides the trajectory of nuclear development. Rather the nuclear technology has started to dictate the way states are looking at regional and international relations. This inverted relationship has been created due to neglect of any ethical toolkit. The paper thus proposes an ethical toolkit that focuses on the negative duties of not to harm and also the positive duties to create conditions that would avoid harm being done to people.

The Subtle Knife

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Peter Rautenbach
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Psychological Effects ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Cyber Warfare ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Hybrid Warfare ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Polar Opposite

This article looks to tie together the polar opposite of hybrid warfare and nuclear deterrence. The reason for this is that hybrid warfare and its effects on nuclear deterrence need to be explored as there appears to be substantial increases in hybrid warfare’s usage. This article found that hybrid warfare has an erosion like effect on nuclear deterrence because it increases the likelihood that nuclear weapons will be used. This may be due to both the fact that hybrid warfare can ignore conventional redlines, but also because the cyber aspect of hybrid warfare has unintended psychological effects on how deterrence functions. how does this relate to nuclear war? In short, cyber warfare attacks key concepts which make nuclear deterrence a viable strategy including the concepts of stability, clarity, and rationality. Therefore, hybrid warfare increases the chance of nuclear use.

A Bifurcated Global Nuclear Order

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramesh Thakur
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The World ◽  
The United Nations

The very destructiveness of nuclear weapons makes them unusable for ethical and military reasons. The world has placed growing restrictions on the full range of nuclear programs and activities. But with the five NPT nuclear powers failing to eliminate nuclear arsenals, other countries acquiring the bomb, arms control efforts stalled, nuclear risks climbing, and growing awareness of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear war, the United Nations adopted a new treaty to ban the bomb. Some technical anomalies between the 1968 and 2017 treaties will need to be harmonized and the nuclear-armed states’ rejection of the ban treaty means it will not eliminate any nuclear warheads. However, it will have a significant normative impact in stigmatizing the possession, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons and serve as a tool for civil society to mobilize domestic and world public opinion against the doctrine of nuclear deterrence.

India’s Doctrinal Modifications: Counterforce Temptations in South Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110190
Author(s):  
Iftikhar Ali ◽  
Jatswan S Sidhu
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Indian Policy ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Technological Capabilities ◽  
Nuclear War

This paper assists in understanding contesting technological capabilities and doctrinal modification between India and Pakistan that are drifting South Asia towards instability, leaving the nuclear deterrence in a dark abyss. Hawks on both sides of the nuclear armed rivals are unprecedentedly chanting threats of nuclear war. More bothersome is the indications of shifting the Indian policy of No First Use (NFU), calls for doctrinal modifications and counterforce temptations. An Indian quest for escalation dominance and Pakistani quest for stability against India is in fact a mutual struggle beyond ‘minimum credible’ to ‘assured second strike’ capabilities.

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