During the cold war period nuclear weapons dominates the thinking of most of the scholars concerned with the concepts of peace and state security. The interwar period (1918–1939) had proved the ineffectiveness of collective security in preventing wars and the fragility of the idea of sustained peace. With the deterioration of wartime alliance between the United States and USSR, each side implemented new strategic doctrines and pile up nuclear arsenal, and many suspected that another great military contest was inevitable.⁴ The probability and fear of another and perhaps the deadliest world war was only compounded by the exploration of the atom and the spread of nuclear weapons. Many, and sometimes rival arguments have been given to ascertain the role of nuclear weapons in disturbing or ensuring peace.

Nuclear peace theorist argues that under certain circumstances nuclear weapons do have a stability impact upon states’ behaviour which decreases the chances of crises escalation and helps in preventing large scale wars. It plays an important role during the cold war period when both the US and the USSR possessed nuclear weapons and presumably also a credible second strike capability. The principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) and huge risk in indulging in crises escalation prevents these two superpowers to indulge in manoeuvrings, behave responsibly and avoid any direct confrontation. Proponents of nuclear peace have even argued that controlled nuclear proliferation is good to ensure stability and deter states in indulging in military adventurism. Although the Cold War occasionally gets fierce, especially in the developing world, where it frequently played out, it never managed to escalate to World War III. Many scholars have argued that the cold war period should be better viewed as the ‘Long Peace’.⁵ Despite the fall of Soviet Union and end of bipolarity the world didn't witnessed any direct military confrontation between two nuclear powers. Although, violence has erupted in new forms such as terrorism, civil wars etc.

The major debate over this issue was between Kenneth Waltz, the founder of neorealist theory and Scott Sagan, a leading proponent of organizational theories in international politics.⁶ Waltz has argued that the world has enjoyed more years of peace since 1945 than had been known in this century—if peace is defined as the absence of general war among the major states of the world. He further claimed that the Long Peace during the Cold War is attributed to bipolarity and nuclear deterrence. He argued that the “more may be better”,⁷ and new nuclear states will use their nuclear capabilities to deter threats and preserve peace. Scott Sagan rejects Waltz hypotheses and stated that the “more will be worse”, since new nuclear states often have weak institutional mechanism and inadequate organizational controls over their weapons, which leaves adequate scope for a high risk of either deliberate or accidental nuclear war. The possibility of theft of nuclear material by terrorists to perpetrate nuclear terrorism can also not be denied.

Critics of nuclear peace argued that nuclear proliferation not only increases the chance of interstate nuclear conflict, but also increases the chances of nuclear material falling into the hands of non-state groups/terrorists that are free from the threat of nuclear retaliation. Surprisingly, the nuclear peace hypothesis, which is one of the central tenants of realist explanations for the Long Peace, has received relatively little quantitative scrutiny.

With the advent of nuclear weapons the traditional concept of deterrence has changed as now the states find themselves helpless in protecting against a nuclear threat. It has busted all the conventional strategies of ensuring a credible deterrence against a nuclear state, and somehow now the nuclear deterrence has replaced the concept of traditional deterrence. From the beginning of nuclear age, proponents of nuclear deterrence have argued that atomic weapons have the capacity to reduce the probability of conventional wars.⁸ Some scholars have claimed that this was indeed what happened during the Cold War when despite dozens of crises and numerous proxy wars, the United States and the USSR avoided a direct military conflict because each feared that matters might escalate to nuclear war.⁹ Michael Mandelbaum in his book, The Nuclear Future (1983), postulated that the nuclear future would be much like the past.¹⁰ He argued that the nuclear future would follow a middle path because the alternatives, disarmament and war, were either too difficult to achieve or too terrible to risk. Unlike conventional deterrence which was based on defensive strategy, military preparedness and treaties and alliances; nuclear deterrence is extremely robust. It is supposed to be more of an offensive strategy of defence rather than as such defence per se. It was so effective that even the irrational/unintelligent leaders are likely to recognize the high cost of war. Scholar like Waltz is of the opinion that the probability of major war among states having nuclear weapons approaches zero.¹¹ He argued that since nuclear weapons are believed as having no war-winning ability, they are only fulfilling rational functions in deterrence, by providing its possessors with a ‘minimum deterrence’.¹²

Scholars like Mueller, although, believes that while nuclear weapons may have substantially influenced political rhetoric, public discourse, and defense budgets and planning; they have not had a significant impact on the history of world affairs since World War II.¹³ The enormous costs of World War II, new norms of state's behaviour guided by a thrust of sustained peace and bounded by international morality and emergence of international regimes and changes in identity have made the possibility of a major war obsolete. Thus, the Long Peace was a hyped notion to justify nuclear weapons. In other words, what had happened was bound to happen and nuclear weapons have as such no deterrent value because there was nothing to deter; nobody wants to fight a major war.

Ever since Snyder (1965) has pointed out in his seminal essay, which was later dubbed as stability instability paradox thatthe greater the stability of the ‘strategic’ balance of terror, the lower the stability of the overall balance at its lower levels of violence¹⁴ a new debate among scholars had begun with renewed focus on the stabilizing impact of nuclear weapons on a state's behaviour. The theory predicts that when the two rival countries possess nuclear weapons the probability of a direct war between them decreases greatly which might force them to indulge in minor conflicts, indirect proxy wars or covert operations. The likelihood of an increase in such kind proxy wars can also be not ruled out. This mainly occurs because rational actors want to avoid a mutually destructive nuclear war.

Although Snyder gave a detailed explanation of the stability-instability paradox, certainly he was not the first one to recognize its existence. B.H. Liddell Hart¹⁵ for example in 1954 speculated that the effects of nuclear weapons might prevent another world war, but might nevertheless generate more local aggression and small conflicts. He has pointed out a decade earlier that strategic stability made wars below that threshold more likely. Realist scholar Kenneth Waltz has also warned that while nuclear weapons might reduce the chance of major war between nuclear powers, they could produce a spate of smaller wars.¹⁶ During the cold war the US doctrine of massive retaliation in case of a nuclear face-off was quickly qualified and subsequently deferred with the same spirit as a declared policy. Both the United States and Soviet Union can retaliate in a massive fashion so it was not taken seriously and didn't qualify for more than a bluff. In Glenn Snyder's words, the Soviets could still engage in a range of minor ventures which they can undertake with impunity, despite the objective existence of some probability of retaliation.¹⁷ Massive retaliation actually gave way to the quest for proxy wars options and limited war doctrine, but these adjustments never really altered the fundamental precepts of the stability-instability paradox. Robert Jervis has also argued that, “this very stability has allows either side to use limited violence because the other's threat to respond by all out retaliation cannot be very credible".¹⁸ Despite each other's offsetting nuclear weapon capabilities they didn't hesitate in taking the risk of indirect clatters.

India is by and large a peaceful nation as it had no commendable history of external wars; but since it was born out of a bloodied communal partition and positioned in a tough geopolitical and geostrategic setting, it was bound to be concerned about its security. India's nuclear programme started as early as 1944; and notably it was not initiated to counter or balance anyone, especially it has to nothing with the yet to be born modern Pakistan or China. But the unfortunate experience of border war and subsequent loss of territory to China has forced India to reconsider its position and provided the Indian government a great impetus for developing nuclear weapons as a means of deterring potential Chinese aggression in future. Infect, in case of India and Pakistan, the later took an advantage of possessing nuclear weapons and forced India to regulate its critical strategic thinking vis-à-vis Pakistan.

Pakistan's nuclear energy program dates back to the 1950s, but it was the loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in a war with India that probably triggered a January 1972 political decision (just one month later) to begin a secret nuclear weapons program.¹⁹ Sumit Ganguly and Devin Hagertyhave noted that the ‘core aim of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program is to prevent a repetition of 1971… to deter an Indian attack that might reduce Pakistan's size even further, or perhaps even put the country out of existence entirely’.²⁰ Deterring India's nuclear weapons and augmenting Pakistan's inferior conventional forces are widely believed to be the primary missions for Islamabad's nuclear arsenal.

Pakistan which has a clandestine nuclear programme largely based on external help took it as an issue of pride and links it with the question of its ambiguous national identity. It has used all its authority and institutional resources to build pride in having nuclear weapons into the very national identity of the people. Pakistanis rejoiced and delighted by the very feeling of calling themselves as the citizens of ‘Nuclear-Pakistan’ - a term used by state media after the 1998 nuclear tests. The state of Pakistan broadly succeeds in creating nuclearized nationalism because as a nation its identity was not based on a sense of a shared place, or history, language, culture, or even religion. Interestingly, if we buy this argument then its identity is inextricably linked to a technology of mass destruction.²¹

According to deterrence theory, having a credible second strike capability will reduce the incentive of a potential opponents to strike first during a crises.²² The credible nuclear deterrent value of the nuclear arsenal of a state largely depends upon the nuclear “triad” of strategic bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and ballistic-missile launching submarines (SSBNs). Considerable investment was dedicated to that triad of forces throughout the Cold War to ensure there could be no single point of failure. During the Cold War nuclear arsenals of the former Soviet Union and the United States were so conservatively planned and technically redundant that neither state could completely destroy the other's retaliatory force by launching first, even in the worst no-warning case. The result of such a ‘non-splendid’ first strike promised, in the worst case, to be the destruction of the aggressor's population and industry after a ‘counter-value’ response. Nuclear deterrence somehow survived during the cold war, owing that conditional fear of mutual assured destruction (MAD) in which the shared vulnerability of the two nuclear superpowers created a sense of stability. But these conditions didn't exist in South Asia.

Many defence and strategic experts, scholars and even politicians were of the opinion that if nuclear deterrence can work effectively during the cold war period then it will definitely work in case of India and Pakistan. For obvious reasons nuclear weapons are an existential threat and none of the countries would be willing to opt for it. They have even argued that nuclear weapons largely remain successful in deterring India not to escalate an intended, planned, covert but limited aggression of Pakistan during the Kargil War, into a full-fledged war. However, considering it occurrence in less than a year after India and Pakistan openly tested nuclear weapons, the Kargil war has dispelled the common notion that nuclear-armed states cannot fight one another.²³ Those who argue that nuclear deterrence is at work and will remain effective in preventing a conventional war in South Asia invoke Glenn Snyder's ‘stability instability paradox’ but they overlook the limits of US diplomacy to prevent nuclear war in crises as both India and Pakistan have displayed lack of maturity on many occasions in the past.

The new Indian position that nuclear deterrence does not prevent ‘limited wars’ created a very dangerous situation, considering Pakistan's doctrine of nuclear first use and Indo-Pakistani nuclear and missile races that would inevitably raise the stakes in a future Kargil-like conflict. Stable nuclear deterrence had become very difficult to achieve, given the short distances involved, command and control problems, and the dangers of misperception, aggravated by the absence of adequate early warning systems. Considering the fact that India and Pakistan represents the ‘second nuclear age’²⁴ and unlike the first nuclear age they lack clearly stated intentions and demonstrated capabilities to ensure stability, and it might likely to lead to a destabilized international security environment. Refuting the argument of nuclear deterrence and predicting its irrelevance in case of South Asia, FerozHasan Khan has argued that after the nuclear tests of 1998, the region has witnessed increased regional tensions, a rise in religious extremism, a growing arms race, tense stand-offs and even armed conflict;²⁵ rather than the so called stability.

Pakistan which is comparatively a smaller military adversary of India has boldly exercised its policy of nuclear blackmail during conventional conflicts. On multiple occasions it has directly deterred India from crossing the threshold during a conflict initiated by Pakistan itself. V.R. Raghavan has observed that instead of seeking a stable relationship on the basis of nuclear weapon capabilities, Pakistan has used nuclear deterrence to support aggression. Kargil indicated that armed with nuclear weapons, Pakistan has increased confidence that it could raise the conflict thresholds with India. It demonstrated a willingness to take greater risks in conflict escalation.²⁶

Another argument that qualified against nuclear deterrent can be that if we discard the utility of nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict/war because of high risk of crises escalation and the fear of mutual destruction then the state which has a conventional military superiority will prevail. Nuclear weapons do have a deterrent impact but it has its own limitations, especially if an inferior military competitor would indulge in nefarious activities or indirect war against a superior adversary. May be Pakistan has understood this and despite the so called risk of crises escalation it had taken the risk of a proxy war.

Rejecting the applicability of stability instability paradox in South Asia, Rajesh Rajagopalan has argued that stability-instability paradox was framed to understand the relationship between the conventional and nuclear levels of war while in South Asia, it is routinely used to look at the relationship between sub-conventional (secessionist insurgencies or terrorism) and nuclear, which was not the original intent.²⁷ The harsh reality of nuclear deterrence in South Asia was that neither country was deterred by the other, in fact each was ready to push to the limit and then calculate their diplomatic cost against potential gains of that brinksmanship or even the limited use of force might bring. The fact of the matter is when they mutually failed to contain the likely crises escalation, the possible US diplomatic prudence brings about effective deterrence.

Most of the scholars after the May 1998 nuclear tests seems to agree on the point that nuclearization of the subcontinent is irreversible and that the only realistic research program is to find ways to maximizing ‘stability’ in a nuclear South Asia. As Thakur puts it, ‘for India, Israel and Pakistan, the question is no longer if they are nuclear powers but what kind of nuclear powers they are going to be’.²⁸ The conventional wisdom is that minimum nuclear deterrence will keep the peace in the region.

Stable nuclear deterrence is an impossible game in South Asia keeping in view of the geographical proximity, historical rivalry, rhetorical politics, brinkmanship diplomacy, lack of quick and reliable communication and early warning systems across borders, weak command and control system, possibility of technological glitches, and proven credible second strike capability of both India and Pakistan. The best way of avoiding a nuclear catastrophe is to establish a nuclear arms control regime as a first step to denuclearize South Asia. It will also help in minimizing the dangers of nuclear terrorism.

Ever since (May, 1998) India and Pakistan decided to go nuclear they already had two nuclear crises and a possible third one could well result in an all-out conventional war that might escalates to the nuclear level if the US government fails to intervene in time to defuse the crisis. Political instability in Pakistan is another factor which is detrimental to peace and only a stable democratic government could help in reducing possible conflicts. The war on terror adds another element of unpredictability to Indo-Pakistani strategic interactions as it might aggravate the Islamic terrorist threat.

In the wake of 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the dangers of catastrophic nuclear terrorism has created an urgent need to make progress toward a Fissile Material Cut off Treaty (FMCT) as one of several steps toward nuclear abolition. Highlighting the urgency of this Tannenwald has pointed out that the one group for whom the (nuclear) taboo may hold little meaning is terrorists.²⁹ Hence there is a potent need to strengthen the international regime based nuclear order to prevent terrorist organizations from gaining access to weapons-grade fissile material. Keeping in view of the Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups’ strong presence within and around Pakistan, this danger is particularly serious for Pakistan.

The vastly popular stability instability paradox of the cold war period also is of little relevance in South Asia. Dr. S. Paul Kapoor have underlined that such ‘paradox’ ‘does not explain Indo-Pakistani military behavior in a nuclear South Asia’, ³⁰ where ‘Pakistani aggression has relied not upon a high level of strategic stability, as per stability/instability logic, but rather upon the existence of a considerable measure of instability in the Indo-Pakistani strategic balance. He further argued that ‘the phenomenon at work in South Asia would better be characterized as an ‘instability/instability paradox’, under which instability in the strategic realm encourages instability at lower levels of conflict’.³¹ Hence ‘no strategic environment in South Asia is without conventional danger’. Kapur also shows that ‘the Indians’ confidence that they can fight a conventional war with Pakistan against a nuclear backdrop has been growing and resulting in increasingly forceful Indian responses to Pakistani adventurism’.³²

There is an urgent need to upgrade the hotline and established nuclear risk reduction centres across the borders.³³ Even more important is changing destabilizing policies, avoiding brinksmanship, and reading of one's nemesis properly. Intelligence assessments in South Asia have been badly wrong in the past, resulting in severe consequences. Most notably, the initiation or outcome of wars -and sometimes both- have come as a surprise to one side or the other. For example the Kargil war was termed as the result of a complete failure of Indian intelligence agencies. Highlighting the importance of calculating the perceived intention of the opponent Robert Jervis and others have argued that during the Cold War, Deterrence succeeds or fails in the mind of the attacker. But Indian and Pakistani leaders have repeatedly miss-calculated each other's intentions. Crises escalation control requires a careful and correct reading of one's adversary but unfortunately problems of misperception in the subcontinent have grown as the wall of separation between India and Pakistan becomes higher and thicker.

Although, nuclear optimists still believes that the past behaviour of India and Pakistan shows that there is little or no danger of either side firing a nuclear weapon in anger or because of miscalculation. Past Indo-Pakistani wars have been described as “gentlemanly wars.” In all the three wars, both sides avoided wars of attrition or deliberate targeting of population and industrial centres. Despite their penchant for inflammatory and bellicose rhetoric, no sane leader would willingly commit national suicide. They hope that this trend will continue in future.

Reference