Regional Approaches to Proliferation Prevention -- South Asia Region -- The Stanley Foundation

The Importance of the South Asia Region to Global Security and Stability

Projects of the South Asia Region
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Fighting Terrorism and WMD Proliferation: The Importance of South Asia

Ever since the attacks against the Twin Towers in NY on September 11, 2001, both the United States and the larger global community have been increasingly focused on the latent danger of WMD proliferation to transnational terror groups whose sole goal is to wreak destruction against the Western—defined, globalized political and economic order—a seemingly unlimited moral and political agenda with no prescribed limits on the level of violence. Accordingly, security analysts have been increasingly focused on the possibility that transnational terrorism may eventually incorporate the awesome power of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), particular nuclear weapons.

It has become a cliche that the fight against transnational terrorism cannot proceed without fully addressing the underlying (and growing) economic inequalities, resource scarcities, and general lack of political and social development characterizing large parts of the Third World. However, these concerns are given added weight in South Asia by the existence of traditional border disputes, conventional arms races, and nuclear and missile proliferation between Pakistan and India. In this region, transnational Islamic fundamentalism, national economic underdevelopment in Pakistan and India, ethno-religious rivalries both within and between Pakistan and India, and the increasingly unstable Indo-Pakistani nuclear rivalry have all become intertwined. These intertwined transnational, national, and intra-national trends could result in nuclear arms racing, conventional or nuclear conflict, increased cross-border terrorism, and even the eventual combination of transnational terror groups with WMD capabilities—if the state-held nuclear and missile assets were to ever leak to independent groups or become available through massive political changes.

How should outside powers and the larger international community tailor and coordinate their foreign policies toward this region, with the goal of reducing conflict at all levels between and within Pakistan and India?

India and Pakistan Domestic Crises and Their Effects on Regional (and Global) Security and Stability

The rise of extremist forces and ideologies in India and Pakistan is a continuing trend for the indefinite future. Both countries are experiencing rightward trends and social instability, pushing them toward internal threats (terrorism) and external confrontation (periodic crises). Hindutva in India and religious extremism in Pakistan are clear manifestations of this trend, yet there is not a very clear understanding of their impact on the foreign policy outlook of the two countries.

Pakistani Domestic Politics
What are the prospects for democracy and stability in Pakistan? It is a nuclear power experiencing rising instability: for the first time in its history, it is becoming the target of extreme militants with the capacity to cause immense harm, including through WMD terrorism. While the US is attempting an exercise in state building in Afghanistan, there may be an even more urgent need to prevent state collapse in Pakistan. Should outside powers and the international community bank on the Pakistani army to prevent not only terrorism, but also the rise of "illiberal democracy" based upon democratically-elected Islamic fundamentalist parties with anti-globalization aims?

Indian Domestic Politics
There is a huge shift underway in India concerning the concept of the nation-state; an idea of India as a regional power is finally emerging. What is the evolving definition of Indian nationalism and nationhood, and with what consequences for peace in Kashmir, relations with China and Pakistan, and relations with the United States?

Kashmir
Kashmir is the preeminent nuclear flashpoint between India and Pakistan, and some believe the Kashmir issue has the same war potential that the Balkans did for 19th-century Europe. It embroils nuclear powers as well as an array of ethnic groups and identities (not merely Hindus and Muslims). Moreover, the dispute involves both a transnational terror dimension and a self-determination dimension, both of which involve neighboring Pakistan. The main thrust of terrorism in Kashmir is from Islamic "jihadis" imported from abroad (whose existence is connected to regime legitimacy in Pakistan), whereas the movement began with, and retains, a publicly supported but strategically weak Kashmiri identity that is antithetical to Islamic fundamentalism. Does the international community need to come up with new thinking on how to advance the cause of peace in Kashmir? Should it adopt or utilize the ongoing deliberations and findings of the track-2 Kashmir Study Group?

Traditional Strategic Issues: Minimum Deterrence, Missile Defense, Dual-Use Technology Trade, and the Role of Major Outside Powers

What Minimum Deterrence Means
There has been little coordinated effort to define the concept of "minimum deterrence" in either Pakistan or India (at least not outside secret government circles), and there has alsobeen a lack of consensus within the Western policy community on what the term implies. Yet how the concept "minimum deterrence" is defined will be fundamental to the potential for arms racing in the region. In turn, how India and Paksitan define deterrence will set a precedent for other regions and will have far-reaching ramifications for global nonproliferation efforts, including the behavior of states such as Iran and North Korea.

Currently, there is a latent fear in Iran about the future political and religious direction of Pakistan—because radical Sunni Islamic groups in Afghanistan have strong representation in various outlying Pakistani regions, and are also supported and even equipped by the Pakistani central government for the purpose of jihadi operations in Kashmir. As it happens, this radical version of Sunni Islam incorporates explicit hostility toward the type of Shia Islam that underlies Iran's entire Islamic Republic. (In the 1990s, Al-Queda connected radicals broke into the Iranian embassy in Kabul and murdered Iranian embassy staff, leading to a short-term border standoff between Iran and Afghanistan).

For now, the secular-minded military leaders of Pakistan keep these religious groups in check, using them for purposes of keeping the Kashmir issue alive vis-a-vis India and also playing the "religious card" in national elections by appealing to Islamic groups and describing Pakistan as an Islamic state. However, if and when the current Army leaders were to fall out of power, the more militant groups who advocate a blending of security policy with religious policy might gain more control, possibly affecting nuclear policy toward both Iran and India—with clear implications for stability not just in South Asia, but also in the Persian Gulf and the larger Middle East.

Missile Defense in India
Just as India's nuclear policy will be a strong determining factor in both regional and global security, its approach to missile defense could set a precedent for the behavior of states in both the Persian Gulf and Northeast Asia. Iran is slowly but surely building up closer relations with India in the areas of economics, energy, and international diplomacy. Iran views India as a growing regional power that is successfully managing the tension between maintaining its national identity while at the same time courting the major global powers for influence, prestige, development, and military power. Iran might therefore view an avid Indian pursuit of both nuclear weapons and missile defense as a general template for its own defense policies, again with ramifications for Gulf and Middle East stability.

Will India's interest in missile defense against Pakistan's nuclear and missile arsenal cause an arms race with Pakistan? Should the United States or other outside powers be supportive of the Indian interest in missile defense?

Technology Transfer to South Asia
There is an urgent need to ensure the safety and reliability of Indian and Pakistani nuclear operations—from secure and efficient command, control, and communications; to real-time intelligence that is accurate; to warhead safety devices. However, there are also global nonproliferation norms to which the US is obligated, and which in fact are still be used as justifications for US policies to isolate other potential nuclear powers such as North Korea and Iran.

How should the United States and other major powers determine their position on the "deterrence stability" vs. "proliferation prevention" tradeoff? What are the United States, Britain, France, China, and Russia considering for trade approval in the areas of space or nuclear technologies? How much assistance should the existing nuclear powers give both parties to ensure safe and reliable nuclear operations during crises? The answers to these questions could support the nonproliferation status quo and strengthen global regimes, or they could have the revolutionary effect of undermining existing arms control and nonproliferation efforts.

Projects of the South Asia Region

Related Resources

Independent Task Force on US Strategies for National Security: Winning the Peace in the 21st Century
What is the ideal US strategic role in those regions of the world where strategic threats (WMD and missile proliferation) are combined with transnational terrorist actors, economic underdevelopment, resource competition, and heated ideological and military conflicts both within and across borders?

Project Information
Meeting Notes (PDF 59 KB)

A New Equation: US Policy Toward India and Pakistan After September 11
As tensions escalate in South Asia, four US nonproliferation and regional experts present a timely discussion of the promises and perils of the new US relationship with India and Pakistan. The Carnegie Working Paper is based on policy briefs and discussions commissioned and organized by the Stanley Foundation in October 2001.

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