ABSTRACT

With twenty years having passed, nuclear India and nuclear Pakistan still continue to perceive threats from each other with the intense nuclear arms build-up driven by the severe security dilemma. This chapter focuses on investigating the dynamics of conflicts between India and Pakistan and their deepening complexities that, in turn, challenge regional stability. This chapter argues that the rising issue of terrorism and the long-standing core issue of Kashmir have not only changed the dynamics of crises in the South Asian nuclear age, but also produced the possibility of serious conflict between India and Pakistan. To understand key crises and their prospects for key lessons learnt by India and Pakistan, this chapter first begins to understand briefly the origin of India’s and Pakistan’s enduring rivalry and the possibility of future crises in South Asia. This chapter then builds a section on India’s war-fighting or escalation dominance strategy, asking why India appears to be heading toward these strategies and how they could be challenging for India, in general and South Asian strategic stability, in particular. The chapter finds that although nuclear weapons have successfully deterred both nuclear India and Pakistan from waging bigger wars, they continue to face a high probability of limited crises, mutual vulnerabilities, and risk-taking strategies with the potential for escalation. It thus becomes imperative to undertake effective measures that could encourage the South Asian nuclear weapon states to undertake a comprehensive dialogue process in order to sustain peace and prevent war.