This edited volume explores competing perspectives on the impact of nuclear weapons proliferation on the South Asian security environment.
The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the world’s foremost security concerns. The effect of nuclear weapons on the behaviour of newly nuclear states, and the potential for future international crises, are of particular concern. As a region of burgeoning economic and political importance, South Asia offers a crucial test of proliferation’s effects on the crisis behaviour of newly nuclear states. This volume creates a dialogue between scholars who believe that nuclear weapons have stabilized the subcontinent, and those who believe that nuclear weapons have made South Asia more conflict prone. It does so by pairing competing analyses of four major regional crises: the 1987 "Brasstacks" crisis, the Indo-Pakistani crisis of 1990, the 1999 Kargil war, which occurred after the nuclear tests; and the 2001–2 Indo-Pakistani militarized standoff. In addition, the volume explores the implications of the South Asian nuclear experience for potential new nuclear states such as North Korea and Iran.
1. Introduction Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur 2. A Dangerous Exercise: Brasstacks as Non-Nuclear Near War Varun Sahni 3. Brasstacks: Prudently Pessimistic John H. Gill 4. Nuclear Optimism and the 1990 India-Pakistan Crisis Manjeet S. Pardesi 5. Crisis and Opportunity: The 1990 Nuclear Crisis in South Asia Karthika Sasikumar 6. The Kargil War: An Optimistic Assessment Devin T. Hagerty 7. The Kargil War and Nuclear Deterrence Neil Joeck 8. A War to End a War: The Causes and Outcomes of the 2001–2 India-Pakistan Crisis Praveen Swami 9. To War or Not to War: The India-Pakistan Crisis of 2001–2 Kanti Bajpai 10. North Korea’s Nuclearization and the Fallout from the Subcontinent Andrew Scobell and Michael R. Chambers 11. The Implications of a Nuclear-Armed Iran in Light of South Asia’s Nuclear Experience Devin T. Hagerty
Few regions of the world are fraught with as many security questions as Asia. Within this region it is possible to study great power rivalries, irredentist conflicts, nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation, secessionist movements, ethnoreligious conflicts and inter-state wars. This series publishes the best possible scholarship on the security issues affecting the region, and includes detailed empirical studies, theoretically oriented case studies and policy-relevant analyses as well as more general works.