Keeping an eye on South Asian skies

Since declaring their nuclear weapons capabilities in 1998, India and Pakistan have engaged in three major crises that each threatened to escalate into war. In each crisis, the USA engaged in active diplomacy to dissuade the South Asian rivals from taking escalatory actions. Previous literature on the crises has described the American role, but has not theorized third-party involvement in a nuclearized regional rivalry. We apply Timothy Crawford’s pivotal deterrence theory to the nuclearized India–Pakistan conflict, and extend the original theory to cover the novel condition of a non-superpower nuclear dyad, in the context of a single-superpower international system. We find that America’s pivotal deterrence generally enhanced stability in the India–Pakistan crises, and unlike in pre-nuclear South Asia, other great powers supported American diplomacy. However, we suggest that future regional crises between nuclear rivals, in South Asia or elsewhere, may present greater challenges for pivotal deterrence

China · Context (archaeology · Deterrence theory · Development economics · Diplomacy · Economics · Geography · International relations · International trade · Neorealism (international relations · Nuclear weapon · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Rivalry · Superpower · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · South Asian Studies and Conflicts

• Deterrence or taboo? Explaining the non-use of nuclear weapons during the Indo-Pakistani post-tests nuclear crises

  Mario E Carranza•Arms Control•2018

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