Strategic Stability Paradigm in South Asia

The advent of nuclear weapons has brought into discussion the strands of strategic stability that initially occupied the Cold War rivals and later the neighboring states of South Asia. Both the Soviet Union and the United States due to distanced geography with that of settled strategic language have almost brought a positive tendency in crisis management and strategic stability. Contrary to Cold War rivals, the South Asian nuclear opponents have gone through a vulnerability of strategic miscalculation and crisis instability. That is why at most of their direct military stalemates, the US and Soviets had to jump in to defuse the crises. Moreover, Indian military modernization, deliberate maintenance of conventional asymmetry, application of sub-conventional warfare, state-sponsored terrorism, regional dominance and global aspirations interlinked with the containment of China under Indo-US strategic partnership has altogether shaped the contemporary discourse of strategic stability in South Asia. This study makes the point that the strands of strategic stability between the two regional powers of South Asia are tied to the complex web of the bilateral, regional and global framework. It is in this larger construct that strategic stability in South Asia can be best described. This study is deductive in nature and theoretically evaluates the notion of strategic stability paradigm to deconstruct the prevailing fault lines.