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- Title
Conceptualizing India-Pakistan Competing Counterforce Strategies and Possibility of Conflict in South Asia.
- Authors
Khan, Zafar
- Abstract
As India and Pakistan embark on developing more warheads, they will require more sophisticated delivery systems to the assigned targets. Since nuclear weapons tests in May 1998 just twenty-four years ago, the South Asian strategic environment has significantly changed. Both India and Pakistan strive for successful completion of their triad deterrent forces with all ranges of delivery systems. This paper explores the changing deterrent force patterns in South Asia and conceptualizes competing counterforce strategies in order to find out how such strategies raise the prospects of serious conflicts between India and Pakistan in general and challenge the South Asian deterrence stability in particular. To this end, the paper concludes that if India and Pakistan convert most of their deterrent nuclear forces while being ready to be deployed for action, the prospects for miscalculation and inadvertence get higher. However, if these South Asian nuclear rivals largely practice nuclear restraint, non-weaponized deterrence, and prevent a bigger Cold War type arms race through the establishment of some form of strategic restraint regime, then the possibility of nuclear conflict gets lower and serious conflicts in turn could likely be prevented in South Asia.
- Subjects
PAKISTAN; SOUTH Asia; INDIA; NUCLEAR weapons testing; ARMS race; POSSIBILITY; COLD War, 1945-1991; KASHMIR conflict (India &; Pakistan); NUCLEAR accidents
- Publication
International Journal of Korean Unification Studies, 2022, Vol 31, Issue 1, p85
- ISSN
1229-6902
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.33728/ijkus.2022.31.1.004