India-Pakistan Relations

The Prime Minister in his address to the Combined Commanders conference of the armed forces exhorted the Services to remain alert, due to the unfolding situation in Pakistan. The armed forces would be monitoring the situation closely, because preparedness is a professional obligation and a matter of pride. Thus, if another 26/11 were to occur India’s military options would need to be considered. This commentary reinforces arguments against war as an ‘option’ by looking at the probability of breakdown in deterrence in the event of an India-Pakistan conflict.

• Ali Ahmed
• October 27, 2009
• IDSA Comments

My presentation on, “ Use of Force - Possibilities in the Indo – Pak Context ” shall be brief and pointed. I shall make a few salient points, leaving the nitty gritty for discussion, in the interactive session that will follow. I may add that what I present today, is not any institutional position, but merely a personal opinion, albeit one that is steeped quite naturally, in my professional experiences and inclinations. May I also asterisk to the arguments that follow, a few caveats

• Raj Shukla
• October 2009
• Journal of Defence Studies

India is taking its time to reopen the dialogue process with Pakistan that has been suspended since 26/11. The meeting between Indian Prime Minister, Mr. Manmohan Singh and Pakistan’s President, Mr. Asif Ali Zardari, on the sidelines of the SCO meeting in Yekaterinburg in June had opened up possibilities of resumption. However, the joint statement following the one-on-one session between the two prime ministers at Sharm-el-Sheikh ran into rough weather.

• Ali Ahmed
• August 04, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Diplomatic and political naivety, coupled with enormous pressure from a clueless America helplessly flailing its superpower muscle in the Af-Pak region, and of course that old disease that all Indian Prime Ministers’ suffer from – a sense of manifest destiny to normalise relations with Pakistan – have led to a Joint Statement by the Indian and Pakistani prime ministers in Sharm-el-Sheikh which is full of concessions, compromises and climb-downs by India.

• Sushant Sareen
• July 20, 2009
• IDSA Comments

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Gilani and Indian Prime Minster Manmohan Singh signed a joint statement on July 16, 2009 at Sharm el-Sheikh inEgypt on the margins of theNAM summit. In India the statement has been seen as a softening of India’s stand towards Pakistan. In Pakistan it has been seen as a “victory” for Pakistani diplomacy.

• Arvind Gupta
• July 20, 2009
• IDSA Comments

India-Pakistan relations are best understood as an example of nuclear rivalry, in which nuclear weapons both exacerbate and limit hostility. In all such relationships, the minimal possession of nuclear weapons suffices to deter. Both India and Pakistan have adopted a minimalist posture, yet their strategic thinking tends to be inconsistent, which makes them vulnerable to needless expansion. This essay points to the conceptual basis for an optimal doctrine.

• Rajesh M. Basrur
• May 2009
• Strategic Analysis

Nuclear weapons deter by the possibility of their use, and in no other way. Although US and Soviet arsenals became grotesquely excessive in both numbers and diversity in the late 1960s, by the later 1908s there had been very extensive reductions in both numbers and types. NATO's collective doctrine had accepted that the only sen-sible role for its nuclear weapons was for war-termination. Western governments had increasingly accepted the idea of sufficiency, recognizing that notions of nuclear supe-riority were vacuous.

• Michael Quinlan
• May 2009
• Strategic Analysis

Contrary to the arguments of proliferation pessimists, this article contends that the overt nuclearization of South Asia has contributed to stability in the region. To that end this article carefully examines two recent crises in Indo-Pakistani relations and concludes that in the absence of nuclear weapons they would have culminated in full-scale war. Accordingly, while Indo-Pakistani relations may remain fraught with tension, the likelihood of major war in the region has dramatically diminished.

• Sumit Ganguly
• May 2009
• Strategic Analysis

• Arvind Gupta , S. Kalyanaraman , Ashok K. Behuria
• May 2009
• Strategic Analysis

The tenth anniversary of India and Pakistan's 1998 nuclear tests enables scholars to revisit the issue of South Asian proliferation with a decade of hindsight. I argue that nuclear weapons have had two destabilizing effects. First, nuclear weapons' ability to shield Pakistan against all-out Indian retaliation, and to attract international attention to Pakistan's dispute with India, encouraged aggressive Pakistani behavior. This provoked forceful Indian responses, ranging from large-scale mobilization to limited war.

• S. Paul Kapur
• May 2009
• Strategic Analysis