Abstract
The military crisis in 2002 reinforced the centrality of nuclear weapons in Pakistan’s national security. Pakistan’s nuclear program began with the central premise that nuclear weapons were the only recourse for national survival and the only way to deter a hostile neighbor from attacking its weaker neighbor.1 Demonstration of nuclear weapon capability in 1998 did not calm Pakistani anxieties. The expanding size and quality of India’s conventional forces and its advancing nuclear capability continues to make Pakistan vulnerable to Indian coercion—and to present a credible threat to its very existence. The evolution of Pakistan’s nuclear force posture is directly related to India’s conventional force postures, military doctrines, and periodic force mobilization.
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Notes
Within a month of its devastating defeat in December 1971, Pakistan’s new leader Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto made his intentions known, though serious effort to acquire nuclear capability never got under way until after India conducted nuclear weapon test in 1974. Thence onwards seeking nuclear weapon capability became synonymous with national survival. See Feroz Hassan Khan, “Nuclear Proliferation Motivations: Lessons from Pakistan,” Nonproliferation Review, vol. 13, no. 3, November 2006, pp. 501–517.
T. V. Paul, The India-Pakistan Conflict: An Enduring Rivalry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 3–24.
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Avner Cohen, “Israel: A Sui Generis Proliferator,” in The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia, Muthiah Alagappa, ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), pp. 241–268.
Feroz Hassan Khan, “The Independence-Dependence Paradox: Stability Dilemmas in South Asia,” Arms Control Today. October 2003.
For details see Feroz H. Khan, Christopher Clary, and Peter Lavoy, “Pakistan Motivations and Calculations in Kargil,” in Asymmetric War in South Asia: The Causes and Consequences of the Kargil Conflict, Peter Lavoy, ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (New York: W.W Norton and Company, 2003), pp. 92–95.
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Stephen Cohen, India the Emerging Power (Washington, DC: The Brookings, 2002), p. 18.
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Peter R. Lavoy, “Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation,” in The Proliferation Puzzle: Why Nuclear weapons Spread, Zachary S. Davis and Benjamin Frankel, eds. (London: Frank Cass, 1993), pp. 192–212.
Michael Mandelbaum, “Lessons of the Next Nuclear War,” Foreign Affairs, 1995.
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© 2011 Zachary S. Davis
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Khan, F.H. (2011). Pakistan’s Nuclear Force Posture and the 2001–2002 Military Standoff. In: Davis, Z.S. (eds) The India-Pakistan Military Standoff. Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118768_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118768_6
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