Crisis and Opportunity: The 1990 Nuclear Incident in South Asia
Karthika Sasikumar, Former Liu Postdoctoral Fellow, UBC
February 1, 2010
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The edited volume “Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia: Crisis Behaviour and the Bomb“, edited by Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur features this chapter by Karthika Sasikumar, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research. The edited volume explores competing perspectives on the impact of nuclear weapons proliferation on the South Asian security environment.
The spread of nuclear weapons is one of the world’s foremost security concerns. The effect of nuclear weapons on the behaviour of newly nuclear states, and the potential for future international crises, are of particular concern. As a region of burgeoning economic and political importance, South Asia offers a crucial test of proliferation’s effects on the crisis behaviour of newly nuclear states. This volume creates a dialogue between scholars who believe that nuclear weapons have stabilized the subcontinent, and those who believe that nuclear weapons have made South Asia more conflict prone. It does so by pairing competing analyses of four major regional crises: the 1987 “Brasstacks” crisis, the Indo-Pakistani crisis of 1990, the 1999 Kargil war, which occurred after the nuclear tests; and the 2001–2 Indo-Pakistani militarized standoff. In addition, the volume explores the implications of the South Asian nuclear experience for potential new nuclear states such as North Korea and Iran.
