NUCLEARISATION IN SOUTH ASIA: Reactions and Responses

This volume addresses the core issues, problems and challenges that face the Nuclear South Asia. It is a patent fact that both India and Pakistan are now nuclear weapon states. Critical to this fact is the question of threat perceptions, the peculiar national psyche in India and Pakistan, domestic settings in both countries and unresolved bilateral disputes including Kashmir.

It is at this crucial juncture, a battery of scholars and specialists in this volume dispassionately examine alternative security paradigms essential for the de-escalation of nuclear threat not only to the peace, security and stability of the South Asia region but also to other volatile regions including the international peace, in general.

Departing fron the traditional understanding of and approaches to the nuclear question in South Asia, the volume focusses threat perceptions, socio-psychological problems, political and cultural factors which go a long way in determining the nuclear behaviour of India and Pakistan, contributors to this volume have examined in-depth the reactions and responses of great powers—US, Russia, China and Japan—including the world community to the nuclear weapon tests of India and Pakistan. It has also taken into account the fallout of the May 1998 tests in economic, strategic, security, military, political and cultural terms.

This volume should prove immensely useful as a reliable guide to top policy makers, nuclear decision-makers, strategic analysts as well as for academics and scholars engaged in nuclear, defence and strategic studies.