Stabilizing the Option: Deterrence, Confidence Building, and Arms Control in South Asia
Last updated: October 21, 2008
Author
Published by Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
ACDIS Research Report series
March 1995
Full text [PDF]Summary
While concepts of formal arms control are fairly new to the region, South Asia has not been empty of efforts at conflict resolution and confidence building. Though many such efforts have been declaratory and symbolic in nature, without associated verification regimes, the complete record of India–Pakistan relations evinces that conflict has not precluded cooperation. That both countries have seen fit to settle some disputes reveals a mutual awareness of the costs of unrestrained antagonism. Since the 1972 Simla agreement India or Pakistan have not lacked “incentives” for war, particularly in recent years. The dispute over the disposition of Kashmir has greatly intensified in the last several years, in the form of a sort of proxy war through assistance to secessionist rebels and charges of human rights violations. During the 1987 Brasstacks episode India and Pakistan came closer to actual war than at anytime since 1972. Yet amidst the rancor some notable cooperative ventures have been attempted, though some proposals, such as Indian “no-war pacts” and Pakistani nonproliferation schemes, have been more exercises in public-relations diplomacy than genuine arms control efforts. Some of the formal India–Pakistan efforts at conciliation and cooperation offer valuable precedents and models for future agreements.This study explores potential arms control measures relevant to South Asia, primarily India and Pakistan, two neighboring states with a history of conflict and admitted capabilities to build nuclear weapons. Some of these measures are also applicable to India–China arms control, or might be implemented as multilateral regional efforts. Without judging the political desirability of helping threshold or newly declared nuclear weapons states to develop safe and secure nuclear forces, this study suggests measures which might be adopted by India and Pakistan to enhance regional deterrence and crisis stability, and prevent the use of nuclear weapons. This survey of arms control measures necessarily draws heavily from the extensive Western (mainly U.S.–Soviet) historical experience with arms control, a crucial source of arms control concepts and models. Two approaches to arms control are considered: (1) arms management, or efforts (such as confidence building measures) to reduce the incentives to engage in military conflict by enhancing deterrence and crisis stability, and (2) arms limitations, comprised of weapons reductions, eliminations, prohibitions, or renunciations of the ability to make certain kinds of weapons. Some may view this study as a mere catalogue of arms control measures, about most of which American arms control experts know more than could ever be included here. While the author enthusiastically embraces an audience of American nonproliferation and arms control specialists, the study’s primary mission is educational. In particular, it is hoped that, as they think about their region, South Asian scholars and policy makers will see in its pages arms control possibilities.