The South Asian Bomb The Politics of South Asia's Nuclear Crisis Zia Mian, Ph.D.t After 50 years of independence, yet impoverished by an unremitting arms race, the people of India and Pakistan now confront a dangerous future in the shadow of the bomb. The nuclear peril is sharpened by a history of armed conflict over Kashmir and a contiguous and contested border that makes accidental and unintentional war a real possibility. While grappling with each other, Indian and Pakistani policy mak- ers see two different sets of issues at work. For India, the struggle has been to find its place in a world dominated by nuclear weapon states. Pakistan, for its part, has been intent on maintaining some kind of parity with India. Having worked so hard to acquire nuclear weapons and with large right wing constituencies in both countries supporting them, it is unlikely that either state will renounce its weapons in the absence of global nuclear disarmament. [M&GS 1998;5:78-85] T The half century of Indian and Pakistani states. For many, possession of nuclear independence has been marked by three wars, a conventional arms race, weapons means there is now even less reason to compromise. Thinking themselves safe behind their "nuclear shield," their practice of intervening in the violent conflicts in each other's countries may continue and possibly escalate. This leads to the danger of war erupting by accident, by misadventure (as it did in 1965), or through escalation (as hap- pened in 1971). This time the outcome could be nuclear war. ? and the determined development of nuclear weapons and missiles. Now both states have openly tested nuclear weapons and have announced their capacity to deploy them. The decades of conflict and enmity have ensured that policy makers in India and Pakistan-and significant sections of public opinion-are unwilling to compromise over the supposed differences between the two The future is grim. A hard line Hindu nationalist government, in power in India for the first time, and a Pakistani government struggling with a collapsing society and econ- omy make even détente unlikely in the near term. Mired in seemingly endless crises and with their mega-cities only a three-to-five- minute missile flight time away, the people of India and Pakistan face a nuclear future with no time to think and no place to hide. t At the time of publication ZM was Research Associate, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, Princeton University. 1998 Medicine & Global Survival South Asia's Nuclear Crisis 78 Medicine & Global Survival, October, 1998; Vol. 5, No. 2
A South Asian Arms Race itary spending). The situation has reached a The emergence and consequences of point, as of August 1998, that Pakistan is fac- nuclear weapons in South Asia can only be ing a shortfall of 70 billion rupees (just over $1 billion) simply trying to meet defense needs and debt service [5]. understood in the context of a history of hos- tility punctuated by war. But such enmity is not self-sustaining. The experience of the