India-Pakistan, Limited War and Lopsided Deterrence: A Perspective

摘要

The paper analyzes India-Pakistan's lopsided nuclear deterrence and military strategies. India plans to deliberately escalate a limited war against Pakistan. Pakistan is determined to neutralize India's schema on different planes, a limited conventional, limited nuclear to strategic nuclear wars. It is destabilizing and complicating South Asia's nuclear deterrence matrix. Pakistan's threshold has depleted due to its "two-frontal" security dilemma. It has considerably increased Pakistan's reliance on nuclear weapons. It is deduced that, India-Pakistan's inflexible and egocentric cultural mooring is inhibiting them from stepping back from perilous military strategies, which can trigger miscalculations, enhance misperceptions, or may lead to the outbreak of accidental/inadvertent limited conventional or nuclear war. Both countries need to recognize the imperative of a stable nuclear deterrence and peaceful coexistence instead of crafting unpredictable and dangerous strategies. The shared risks of nuclear catastrophe should motivate them to pursue rational and realistic policies.