Security dilemmas arise when a state's mechanisms for increasing its security negatively impact the security and threat perceptions of other states. The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the world's foremost security concerns.
The effect of nuclear weapons on the behaviour of the new nuclear states is dreadfully threatening to the security of the South Asian region. As a region of burgeoning economic and political importance, South Asia offers a crucial test for the proliferation's effects. Optimists argue that by threatening to raise the cost of war astronomically, nuclear weapons make armed conflict in South Asia extremely unlikely. Pessimists maintain that nuclear weapons make the subcontinent war-prone, because of technological, political and organisational problems.
The region experienced a paradigm shift in the strategic environment in May 1998, when India and Pakistan clearly established their nuclear facilities. The nuclear programmes of Pakistan and India were under global scrutiny for a long time. Long before the two countries displayed their nuclear might, analysts were speculating on the possibility of nuclear war in South Asia. The relation between the two neighbours is in the middle of a long-drawn-out low intensity conflict, which observers fear may spin out of control and lead to a nuclear devastation in South Asia. But the economic situation of both countries does not at all render large-scale production of weapons feasible.
South Asia has indeed been exceptionally troubled in the past half a century. Conflict between India and Pakistan followed their bloody partition in 1947 and broke out again in 1965 and 1971. India and China went to war in 1962. Indian forces got embroiled in the long-running hostilities in Sri Lanka from 1987 to 1990. Both India and Pakistan came close to full-scale wars in 1987, 1990 and 1999.
These days leaders in New Delhi claim that China is their equal rival, a perception they cannot justify given the vastly unequal military and economic status of the two countries. Analysts hold that geopolitical and geo-economic realities will keep China out of the South Asian nuclear picture. However, India's non-stop effort to drag China into nuclear equation is causing a security threat for South Asia. As Pakistan provides the counterweight in the India-China equation, an indirect shadow will always remain on India due to the China factor. China's secure ties with Pakistan have always been a great source of tension for the Indian leadership.
From India's perspective, the threat from China is of prime importance, and therefore, New Delhi's nuclear and missile development programme is geared, in part, towards countering Beijing with a secure deterrent. As one expert stated, the South Asian nuclear security concept involves several security dilemmas, including relations between Pakistan-India, India-China and Russia-United States.
The security dilemma in the South Asian subcontinent exists as a chain reaction that includes regional and extra-regional powers with competing interests. With this motivational framework in mind, one should examine recent proliferation-related developments in South Asia including the proposed Indo-U.S. nuclear cooperation, the significance of the Abdul Quder Khan Network, and links between South Asia and Middle East proliferation dynamics.
The writer is a student of Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Dhaka. [email protected]
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