Daily Times

The year 1998 observed the overt nuclearisation of South Asia when archrivals, India and Pakistan detonated their nuclear devices. The year is celebrated as the advent of a second nuclear age, the first being the Cold War that ended in 1991. So, the peril of horizontal proliferation in South Asia embodied another nuclear arms race after the end of the Cold War. Till now, both India and Pakistan have persistently developed more nuclear weapons than they had in 1998. Critics believe that both countries have meticulously developed enough nuclear weapons to destroy each other thrice.
The number of nuclear weapons in South Asia, no matter whether strategic or tactical, gives birth to numerous hard questions on the deterrence equilibrium and strategic stability. For example, how much of a numerical advantage or additional nuclear weapons do Delhi and Islamabad think they need over each other? Are Islamabad and New Delhi over-reliant on their nuclear arsenals? Critics believe that for maintaining credible minimum deterrence, the credibility of a sufficient number of nuclear weapons has more significance than trivial nuclear superiority.
The arms race’s stability in South Asia benefited Pakistan to maintain its minimum, sufficient, survivable and potent nuclear weapons whereas most critics believe that the pace is execrably fast. Nevertheless, Pakistan attributed its development of nuclear weapons to widening conventional asymmetry with its neighbour. It is argued that conventional asymmetry is inversely proportional to lower nuclear threshold, which resulted in execrable nuclear weapons development in South Asia. Pakistan is advocating rising conventional disparity, putting it on a perilous road to maintain credible minimum deterrence (CMD). One critic raised questions about CMD as renunciation of nuclear war fighting.
Ironically, Pakistan is surrounded by two nuclear neighbours and that is the basic reason behind the motivation for nuclear tests, a timely decision by Pakistan. There was a need to maintain balance of power and necessary deterrence in the region keeping in mind the relations between India and Pakistan. However, it is imperative to highlight the biggest driving agent behind such a crucial and highly criticised decision of conducting nuclear weapons tests in Pakistan. India started this race of acquisition of nuclear weapons in the region. It was India that actually upset the balance of power in the region. Pakistan has long claimed that it did possess nuclear technology but had not intended to test weapons. However, circumstances nudged Pakistan to test nuclear weapons for deterrence and the balancing of power. No country can overlook its security concerns and issues.
Evidently, Pakistan has fought three wars and has many border clashes with its immediate neighbour, India. Furthermore, India ironically designed its Pakistan centric foreign policy to let prevail its supremacy in the region and also lobbied with developed nations. It is an open secret that numerous trade and military sanctions were imposed on Pakistan in that decade. The government of Pakistan took the hard decision of not giving in to international pressure by triggering the button for nuclear weapons tests to keep intact the sovereignty and security of Pakistan. Local and foreign observers acknowledge that without being a nuclear power, the country might have suffered a serious setback when its eastern neighbour amassed troops on the border in a threatening posture in 2002.
The history of nuclear weapons in the region can be traced backed to 1974 when New Delhi showed its intent to become a nuclear power. During the same time period, it exploded an atomic device, a weapon of mass destruction and named it Smiling Buddha. After that incident, the then leader of Pakistan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, commissioned a team of experts to begin preparations to respond on the basis of “even if the nation has to eat grass” to achieve it. Fortunately, succeeding rulers also understood the need and did not prove to be an obstacle in the way of achieving the target of becoming nuclear power.
After the bold decision of conducting a nuclear weapons test, Pakistan faced isolation on the international stage. New Delhi’s policies, particularly of acting as a hostile upper riparian and its adamant stand on Kashmir, cannot by any stretch of the imagination be termed friendly. May 28 is a day of pride for many Pakistanis, not only for Pakistan but also for the whole region as after the tests unbalanced power in the region lost its potential.

The writer is a research associate at the Strategic Vision Institute and can be reached at beenishaltaf7@gmail.com