Ten Years of Instability in a Nuclear South Asia

nuclear tests of May 1998 put to rest years of speculation as to whether the two countries, long suspected of developing covert weapons capabilities, would openly exercise their so-called nuclear option. The dust had hardly settled from the tests, however, when a arestorm of debate erupted over nuclear weapons’ regional security implications. Some observers argued that nuclearization would stabilize South Asia by making Indo-Pakistani conoict prohibitively risky. Others maintained that, given India and Pakistan’s bitter historical rivalry, as well as the possibility of accident and miscalculation, proliferation would make the subcontinent more dangerous.1 The tenth anniversary of the tests offers scholars an opportunity to revisit this issue with the beneat of a decade of hindsight. What lessons do the intervening years hold regarding nuclear weapons’ impact on South Asian security? Proliferation optimists claim that nuclear weapons had a beneacial effect during this period, helping to stabilize India and Pakistan’s historically volatile relations. Sumit Ganguly and Devin Hagerty, for example, argue that in recent years “the Indian and Pakistani governments, despite compelling incentives to attack one another . . . were dissuaded from doing so by fear that war