The Efficacy of Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: A Case Study of Pakistan and India

This study attempts to understand and explain the phenomenon of strategic stability which is closely associated with nuclear weapons and its deterrence. The study tries to evaluate the type of strategic stability that prevailed during the Cold War between the two superpowers and investigates any similarity to the strategic situation prevailing between Pakistan and India in the post-nuclear period. A process-tracing method provides the methodical framework of the study in which the various variables have been broken up and their cumulative effect has been measured to cast effect on the causality of the events that unfolded between Pakistan and India. Defensive Realism suggests that nuclear weapons provide the much-needed stability which rests upon the non-usage of these weapons thus providing a strategic equilibrium. The notion of strategic stability is fragile between Pakistan and India and nuclear-related fear which provides the foundation for nuclear deterrence is amply and maximally present between Pakistan and India.