ABSTRACT
Indian and Pakistani views on no first use, limited stockpiles and even ideas on ‘ambiguity’ and ‘restraint’ remain quite similar to that of Beijing. Contrary to the dominant view in South Asia, the experience of the last eight years since May 1998 indicates that China’s role in the nuclear relationship between India and Pakistan has not been as simple and straightforward as ‘containing’ and ‘diminishing’ India and boxing it into the South Asian subcontinent. China’s compulsions in this regard lay in the fact that Pakistan shared long borders with China’s potentially unstable Muslim majority province of Xinjiang. China had neither fully anticipated nor planned for all the possible outcomes of its involvement in Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programmes. The nuclear tests of 1998 were to actually expose Beijing’s lack of a firm grip on the evolution of Pakistan’s and, therefore, South Asia’s nuclear deterrence.
