Nuclear stability in South Asia

International Security

Volumn 33, Issue 2, 2008, Pages

  Ganguly, Sumit ^a,b  

^a Department of Political Science ^*

^b INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 55749112682     PISSN: 01622889     EISSN: 15314804     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/isec.2008.33.2.45     Document Type: Article

References (127)

1. On their respective roads to the nuclear tests, see Sumit Ganguly, "India's Pathway to Pokhran II: The Sources and Prospects of New Delhi's Nuclear Weapons Program," International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 148-177;
2. and Samina Ahmed, "Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons Program: Turning Points and Nuclear Choices," International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), pp. 178-204.
3. On the concept of opacity, see Benjamin Frankel, ed., Opaque Nuclear Proliferation: Methodological and Policy Implications (London: Frank Cass, 1991).
4. For details about U.S. goals in this dialogue, see Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004).
5. For the origins of the war and its conduct, see Survit Ganguly, Conflict Unending: India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
6. Sumit Ganguly, "Pakistan's Never-Ending Story: Why the October Coup Was No Surprise," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 2 (March/April 2000), pp. 2-9.
7. On the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, see The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002).
8. See also James F. Hoge Jr. and Gideon Rose, eds., How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001).
9. President William Jefferson Clinton, as quoted in Alex Perry, "On the Brink," Time, May 27, 2002, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,250061,00.htm.
10. On this subject, see S. Paul Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007).
11. See also Polly Nayak and Michael Krepon, "U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia's Twin Peaks Crisis," No. 57 (Washington, D.C.: Henry L. Stimson Center, 2006);
12. and Mario E. Carranza, "Avoiding a Nuclear Catastrophe: Arms Control after the 2002 India-Pakistan Crisis," International Politics, Vol. 40, No. 3 (September 2003), pp. 313-339.
13. For arguments about nuclear stability, see Sumit Ganguly and Devin T Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry: India and Pakistan in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005);
14. John Arquilla, "Nuclear Weapons in South Asia: More May Be Manageable," Comparative Strategy, Vol. 16, No. 1 (January 1997), pp. 13-31;
15. and David J. Karl, "Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996/97), pp. 87-119.
16. For a contrary formulation, see Rajesh M. Basrur, Minimum Deterrence and Indian Nuclear Security (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2006).
17. I refer to the Kargil incursion both as a crisis and a war. It counts as a war because it met the standard criterion of 1,000 battle deaths in an interstate conflict. On this subject, see J. David Singer and Paul Diehl, eds., Measuring the Correlates of War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990).
18. The classic statement remains Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002).
19. Scott D. Sagan, "The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons," International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), pp. 66-107.
20. Scott D. Sagan, "The Perils of Proliferation in South Asia," Asian Survey, Vol. 41, No. 3 (November-December 2001), pp. 1064-1086.
21. Timothy D. Hoyt, "Pakistani Nuclear Doctrine and the Dangers of Strategic Myopia," Asian Survey, Vol. 41, No. 6 (November-December 2001), pp. 956-977, at p. 976.
22. Michael Krepon, "The Stability-Instability Paradox, Misperception, and Escalation-Control in South Asia," in Rafiq Dossani and Henry S. Rowen, eds., Prospects for Peace in South Asia (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2005), chap. 10.
23. Kapur, Dangerous Deterrent.
24. For discussions of the history of wars and crises in the region, see T.V. Paul, ed., The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
25. For an early treatment, see Russell Brines, The Indo-Pakistani Conflict (New York: Pall Mall, 1968).
26. The literature on the Kashmir dispute is voluminous. See, for example, Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846-1990 (Hertingfordbury, U.K.: Roxford, 1991);
27. H.V. Hodson, The Great Divide: Britain, India, Pakistan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997);
28. Chandrasekhar Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, 1947-48 (New Delhi: Sage, 2002);
29. Jyoti Bhusan Das Gupta, Jammu and Kashmir (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968);
30. Lord Birdwood, Two Nations and Kashmir (London: Robert Hale, 1956);
31. Michael Brecher, The Struggle for Kashmir (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953);
32. and Sumit Ganguly, The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
33. For a discussion of Pakistan's identity, see Stephen P. Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2004).
34. For the ideological basis of Pakistan's claims to Kashmir, see Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, The Myth. of Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
35. For the Indian position on the Kashmir dispute, see Sisir Gupta, Kashmir: A Study in India-Pakistan Relations (New Delhi: Asia Publishing House, 1966).
36. For a discussion, see Sumit Ganguly, "Wars without End? The Indo-Pakistani Conflicts," Annals of the American Academy of Social and Political Science, No. 541 (September 1995), pp. 167-178.
37. On these crises, see Jyoti Bhusan Das Gupta, Indo-Pakistani Relations, 1947-1955 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1959).
38. The Brasstacks crisis is discussed at length in Kanti P. Bajpai, P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, Stephen P. Cohen, and Sumit Ganguly, Brasstacks and Beyond: Perception and the Management of Crises in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 1995).
39. On the origins of the Sikh insurgency in the Punjab, see Mark -Puny and Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs, Gandhi's Last Battle (Calcutta: Rupa, 1985).
40. On this subject, see Devin T. Hagerty, The Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation: Lessons from South Asia (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998).
41. For a detailed discussion of the origins of the Kashmir insurgency, see Sumit Ganguly, "Explaining the Kashmir Insurgency: Political Mobilization and Institutional Decay," International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 76-107.
42. On Pakistani involvement in and support for the insurgency, see R.A. Davis, "Kashmir in the Balance," International Defense Review, Vol. 24, No. 4 (April 1991), pp. 301-304.
43. For one of the better accounts of the crisis, see P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Stephen Philip Cohen, Perception, Politics, and Security in South Asia: The Compound Crisis of 1990 (London: Routledge, 2003).
44. Quoted in Mushahid Husain, "Pakistan, Responding to Change," Jane's Defense Weekly, October 14, 1989, p. 779.
45. Gen. V.N. Sharma, interview, "It's All Bluff and Bluster," Economic Times (Bombay), May 18, 1993.
46. Raja Asghar, "Bhutto Predicts Victory for Kashmir Independence Campaign," Reuters Library Report, March 13, 1990.
47. Quoted in Moses Manoharan, "Indian Leader Tells Pakistan to Stay Out of Kashmir Uprising," Reuters Library Report, March 13, 1990.
48. See the discussion in Ganguly and Hagerty, Fearful Symmetry.
49. Much of this discussion has been drawn from ibid.
50. Praveen Swami, The Kargil War (New Delhi: Leftword, 1999).
51. For a discussion of the origins of the nuclear tests, see, for example, Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India's Quest to Be a Nuclear Power (New Delhi: Harper Collins India, 2000).
52. On Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons, see Ashok Kapur, Pakistan's Nuclear Development (London: Croom Helm, 1987).
53. There is a paucity of Pakistani literature on the origins of and motivations behind the Kargil crisis. Gen. Pervez Musharraf's memoir, In the Line of Fire (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), is not especially revealing, as it is both self-exculpatory and disingenuous. In this book he claims that the principal goals of the Kargil incursion were to plug existing gaps along the Line of Control to prevent Indian incursions. The memoir of his Indian counterpart
54. Gen. Ved Prakash Malik, titled Kargil: From Surprise to Victory (New Delhi: HarperCollins India, 2006), is somewhat more forthcoming. It too shifts the bulk of the blame for the intelligence failure onto his civilian counterparts in India.
55. For details of the Indian military operation, see Amarinder Singh, A Ridge Too Far: War in the Kargil Heights, 1999 (Patiala: Motibagh Palace, 2001).
56. See also Maj. Gen. Ashok Kalyan Verma, Kargil: Blood on the Snow: Tactical Victory, Strategic Failure (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002).
57. On various aspects of the conflict, see Jasjit E. Singh, ed., Kargil, 1999: Pakistan's Fourth War for Kashmir (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 1999).
58. For the official Indian account of India's intelligence failure and the subsequent conduct of the war, see Kargil Review Committee, From. Surprise to Reckoning: The Kargil Committee Report (New Delhi: Sage, 2000)
59. [hereinafter The Kargil Committee Report].
60. For a crisp summary of Pakistani military and political motivations in launching the Kargil operation, see Prasun K. Sengupta, "Mountain Warfare: The Kargil Experience," Asian Defence Journal, Vol. 10 (October 1999), pp. 42-46.
61. For a discussion of the concept of a fait accompli strategy, see Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).
62. For an Indian perspective on the Siachen Glacier dispute, see Anand K. Verma, "Siachen: An Episode to Remember," Indian Defence Review, Vol. 22, No. 3 (August 2007), http://www.indiandefencereview.com/?p= 63.
63. For a Pakistani perspective, see Humera Niazi, "The Siachen Glacier: 1984 to 1998," Defence Journal, January 1999, http://www. defencejournal.com/jan99/glacier.htm.
64. Sengupta, "Mountain Warfare."
65. The dubiousness of these assertions is forthrightly dealt with in Ashley J. Tellis, C. Christine Fair, and Jamison Jo Medby, Limited Conflicts under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 2001).
66. Praveen Swami, deputy editor, Frontline (New Delhi), personal communication with author, June 15, 2008.
67. Further details about the military dimensions of the initial intrusions can be found in Maj. Gen. Ashok Krishna, "The Kargil War," in Krishna and P.R. Chari, eds., Kargil: The Tables Turned (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), pp. 77-138.
68. Manoj Joshi, "The Kargil War: The Fourth Round," in Kanti Bajpai, Afsir Karim, and Amitabh Mattoo, eds., Kargil and After: Challenges for Indian Policy (New Delhi: Har-Anand, 2001).
69. "Pakistan May Use Any Weapon," News (Islamabad), May 31, 1999.
70. The Kargil Committee Report.
71. See also P.R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema, and Stephen P. Cohen, Four Crises and a Peace Process: American Engagement in South Asia (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2007);
72. and Malik, Kargil: From Surprise to Victory.
73. Marcus P. Acosta, "The Kargil Conflict: Waging War in the Himalayas," Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (September 2007), pp. 397-415.
74. Ibid., p. 405.
75. Sengupta, "Mountain Warfare."
76. "India Retakes Two Key Peaks in Kashmir," Straits Times (Singapore), June 16, 1999.
77. "India Reports Major Highway Recaptured from Rebels," New York Times, June 21, 1999.
78. Farhan Bokhari and Mary Louise Kazmin, "U.S. General Presses Pakistan on Kashmir," Financial Times, June 25, 1999.
79. C. Raja Mohan, "Pak Must Pull Out Troops," Hindu, June 28, 1999.
80. See White House, Office of the Press Secretary, "Joint Statement by President Clinton and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan," July 4, 1999. For a detailed firsthand account of the negotiations at Blair House, see Bruce Riedel, American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House (Philadelphia: Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, 2002).
81. Agencies, "Sharif to India-Let's Talk, Not Waste Time," Indian Express, July 13, 1999, http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/ple/ ie/daily/19990713/ige13071.html.
82. Barry Bearak, "26 Die as Suicide Squad Bombs Kashmir Legislative Building," New York Times, October 2, 2001.
83. Celia W. Dugger, "India Wants End to Group in Kashmir Attack," New York Times, October 3, 2001.
84. For the classic statement on the subject, see Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991).
85. Joanna Slater, "A Tremor at the Fault Line," Far Eastern Economic Review, December 27, 2001-January 3, 2002, pp. 22-23.
86. Celia W. Dugger, "India Recalling Pakistan Envoy over Delhi Raid" New York Times, December 22, 2001.
87. For a discussion of Pakistan's involvement with terrorist groups, see Jessica Stern, "Pakistan's Jihad Culture," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 6 (November/December 2000), pp. 115-126;
88. and Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States That Sponsor Terrorism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
89. Celia W. Dugger, "Group in Pakistan Is Blamed by India for Suicide Raid," New York Times, December 15, 2001.
90. Economist Global Agenda, "Terror in India," Economist, December 19, 2001, http://www5.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID= EI_JTSDPQ.
91. John F. Burns, "Pakistan Moves against Groups Named by India," New York Times, December 29, 2001.
92. John F. Burns and Celia W. Dugger, "India Builds Up Forces as Bush Urges Calm," New York Times, December 30, 2001.
93. Quoted in "We Are Prepared: Army Chief," Hindu, January 12, 2002.
94. Sumit Ganguly, "From Aid to the Civil to the Defense of the Nation: The Army in Contemporary India," Journal of Asian and African Affairs, Vol. 26, Nos. 1-2 (1991), pp. 1-12.
95. See "President of Pakistan General Pervez Musharraf's Address to the Nation," Islamabad, January 12, 2002, http://www.millat.com/president/ 1020200475758AMword%20file.pdf.
96. Todd S. Purdum and Celia W. Dugger, "Powell Now 'Very Encouraged' on Kashmir," New York Times, January 19, 2002.
97. Edward Luce and Farhan Bokhari, "Bombers Kill 33 in Kashmir as U.S. Envoy Visits India," Financial Times, May 15, 2002.
98. "Indian PM Calls for a 'Decisive Fight,'" Reuters, May 22, 2002. For a detailed depiction of the full-scale Indian war plan for early June, see V.K. Sood and Pravin Sawhney, Operation Parakram: The War Unfinished (New Delhi: Sage, 2003).
99. Josy Joseph, "The Mood Is for War," India Abroad, May 31, 2002, p. 3.
100. Quoted in Elisabeth Bumiller and Thom Shanker, "Bush Presses Pakistan on Kashmir and Orders Rumsfeld to Region," New York Times, May 31, 2002.
101. Raymond Bonner, "India Believes Pakistan Restrains Militants," New York Times, June 6, 2002.
102. Josy Joseph, "India Removes Overflight Ban on Pakistani Aircraft," India Abroad, June 21, 2001, p. 15.
103. For a discussion of the limitations of Indian capabilities, see Rahul Bedi, "The Military Dynamics," Frontline (Chennai), June 21, 2001.
104. See also V. Sudarshan and Ajith Pillai, "Game of Patience," Outlook (New Delhi), May 27, 2002, pp. 35-39.
105. It is, of course, possible that another source of Indian restraint stemmed from India's reluctance to launch a military strike against Pakistan because it would have inevitably interfered with and diverted attention from the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan, reliant as it was on both Pakistani support and the use of its territory and airspace. That said, there is no evidence that this consideration weighed heavily in the strategic calculations of India's decisionmakers. One of the few suggestions in the literature that U.S. misgivings about an Indian attack influenced Indian military calculations is provided in Sood and Sawhney, Operation Parakram.
106. On this subject, see Walter Ladwig, "A Cold Start for Hot Wars? An Assessment of the Indian Army's New Limited War Doctrine," International Security, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Winter 2007/08), pp. 158-190; and V.R. Raghavan, "Limited War and Nuclear Escalation in South Asia," Nonproliferation Review, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Fall-Winter 2001), pp. 1-18.
107. Ganguly, "India's Pathway to Pokhran II."
108. For a reasonably comprehensive list of these jihadi groups, see K. Santhanam, Sreedhar, Sudhir Saxena, and Manish, Jihad is in Jammu and Kashmir: A Portrait Gallery (New Delhi: Sage, 2003).
109. On this subject, see J.N. Dixit, India-Pakistan in War and Peace (New Delhi: Books Today, 2002), p. 55.
110. Midlevel Indian Air Force personnel, interviews by author, Washington, D.C., December 1999. For more evidence, see Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India (New Delhi: Rupa, 2006).
111. On the Indian military debacle of 1962, see Steven A. Hoffmann, India and the China Crisis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
112. For details about the Indo-Pakistani military balance in 1965, see Brines, The Indo-Pakistani Conflict.
113. On the decline of Nehruvian inhibitions about the use of force, see Kanti Bajpai, "India: Modified Structuralism," in Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Asian Security Practices: Material and Ideational Differences (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998).
114. See also Sumit Ganguly, "India's Foreign Policy Grows Up," World Policy Journal, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Winter 2003-2004), pp. 41-47.
115. Gen. Ved Prakash Malik, chief of staff of the Indian Army, interview by author, San Francisco, California, November 1999.
116. K. Subrahmanyam, "Capping, Managing, or Eliminating Nuclear Weapons?" in Kanti P. Bajpai and Stephen P. Cohen, eds., South Asia after the Cold War: International Perspectives (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1993), p. 184.
117. On this subject, see Hodson, The Great Divide.
118. See also the rather self-serving account of Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir: The Story of the Kashmir War, 1947-48 (Karachi: Pak Publishers, 1970).
119. Brines, Indo-Pakistani Conflict.
120. The best discussion of Pakistani decisionmaking can be found in Richard Sisson and Leo E. Rose, War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).
121. On the war proneness of weak democratic regimes, see Jack L. Snyder and Edward D. Mansfield, "Democratic Transitions, Institutional Strength, and War," International Organization, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 297-337.
122. For a sound assessment of the limited evidence, see Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002).
123. For a thoughtful assessment of the contradictory claims, see Ayaz Amir, "The Ghost That Won't Go Away," Dawn (Karachi), July 23, 2004.
124. See also Shaukat Qadir, "An Analysis of the Kargil Conflict, 1999," Royal United Services Journal, Vol. 147, No. 2 (April 2002), pp. 24-30. The controversy about the extent of Sharif's knowledge of Musharraf's war plans continues. In an interview (in Urdu) with a private Pakistani television channel, Geo TV, on June 2, 2008, Gen. Jamshed Gulzar Kiyani, the deputy director-general of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate during the Kargil operation, claimed that Sharif had not been fully briefed on the likely costs and consequences of the operation. The interview is accessible at http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=WpeaO119CDE&feature=related. (I am grateful to Aqil Shah, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University, for providing me with the electronic link.)
125. David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, "U.S. Secretly Aids Pakistan in Guarding Nuclear Arms," New York Times, November 18, 2007.
126. Basrur, Minimum Deterrence and Indian Nuclear Security.
127. Daniel Dombey and Edward Luce, "Ties Expected to Prosper Despite Diplomatic Setback," Financial Times, June 11, 2008.