DIVERGING NUCLEAR PATHWAYS IN SOUTH ASIA

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb, by Feroz Hassan Khan. Stanford University Press, 2012. 544 pages, $29.95.

Managing India's Nuclear Forces, by Verghese Koithara. Brookings Institution Press, 2012. 304 pages, $59.95.     

India's Pursuit Of Ballistic Missile Defense

This article analyzes India's efforts to deploy a Ballistic Missile Program (BMD). The article has three objectives. First, it argues that scientific-bureaucratic factors and India's incapacity to deter Pakistan's use of terrorist proxies have driven its quest for BMD. Second, the article also evaluates the current state of India's two-tiered missile defense shield. In spite of various claims on the part of India's defense science establishment, the paper estimates that India still lacks a deployable BMD system and is still far from developing an effective strategy of deterrence-through-denial. Third, the article analyzes the implications of the development of India's BMD system for nuclear stability in South Asia. The article shows how India's BMD capacities, however limited, have indirectly exacerbated the security concerns of India's regional rival, Pakistan.     

SPARRING ON THE SUBCONTINENT

South Asian Security and International Nuclear Order: Creating a Robust Indo-Pakistani Nuclear Arms Control Regime, by Mario Esteban Carranza. Ashgate, 2009. 208 pages, $99.95.     

India and Pakistan: Bargaining in the Shadow of Nuclear War

Based on the experience of the Cold War, some scholars hoped that the introduction of nuclear weapons into South Asia would promote peace between India and Pakistan. Instead, nuclear weapons made Pakistan less fearful of India's conventional military forces, and therefore help explain recent conflicts between them. Moreover, US expressions of concern about the possibility of inadvertent nuclear war in South Asia may have provided an incentive to both sides to be intransigent in order to elicit US intervention.     

The Fire Within: Naxalite Insurgency Violence in India

India is at a crossroads today. While it is fast emerging as a global power with a vibrant democratic polity, a robust economy and a nuclear-weapons capable military, the country is also witnessing a growing polarisation between the rich and poor and between urban and rural areas, a rise in communal tensions, large numbers of suicides by impoverished and indebted farmers and a spurt in terrorist activities and attacks by various disgruntled organisations and groups. Of these various challenges, as attested to by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself, the most dangerous threat to India's territorial integrity, prosperity and wellbeing has come from the Naxalite insurgency or ‘people's war’ that is manifest in large areas of eastern, central and southern India. But what factors account for the formation and persistence of Naxalite insurgency in India? What are the key objectives of the Naxalites and why is violence directed against the Indian State? And how has the Indian State (both central and state governments) responded to the Naxalite insurgency and with what effect? These are the main research questions that we attempt to answer in this paper. We put forward two broad arguments. First, the Naxalite insurgency in India is the latest manifestation of peasant struggles caused by grinding poverty, exploitation and inequality that have prevailed in rural areas for centuries. What sustains these struggles to this day is the fact that socio-economic conditions in rural areas have changed little and the policies followed by the post-independent Indian State have generally failed to mitigate rural problems. Second, the Naxalite insurgency has emerged as the most dangerous threat mainly due to the movement's spatial spread, growing support base in tribal and backward areas and enhanced fighting capabilities. The Indian State has viewed the movement as a ‘law and order’ problem and responded with force. But a ‘law and order’ approach to the Naxalite insurgency is unlikely to produce a lasting resolution of the problem, since it would not effectively redress deep-rooted grievances felt by a majority of India's rural poor for decades.     

Special Section: Nuclear Stability In South Asia

The question of nuclear stability in South Asia is a subject of both academic and policy significance. It is the only region in the world that has three, contiguous nuclear-armed states: India, the People's Republic of China, and Pakistan. It is also freighted with unresolved border disputes. To compound matters, all three states are now modernizing their nuclear forces and have expressed scant interest in any form of regional arms control. These issues and developments constitute the basis of this special section, which explores the problems and prospects of nuclear crisis stability in the region.