India and Pakistan: Thinking about the Unthinkable

Abstract

Developments in South Asia during 1999 reminded the world that the nuclear tests undertaken in 1998 by India and Pakistan had ominously increased the danger of nuclear conflict. Pakistani occupation of territory in the Kargil and Dras sectors on the Indian side of the Line of Control in the state of Jammu and Kashmir precipitated the fourth sustained engagement between the armed forces of India and Pakistan in the fifty years since independence and underscored the violent potential of incompatible claims in Kashmir by the two countries. The coup d'etat in Pakistan in October 1999 raised questions about governance, stability, and democratic pluralism in a country that had spent about half of its political life since independence under military rule. Late in the year, the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 by Pakistani militants introduced into the conflict the specter of state-supported terrorism. Together these events created the climate for the 28 percent increase in India's military budget that was announced early in 2000. Early in this chain of events, shortly after the nuclear tests in May 1998, the U.S. Naval War College, in Newport, Rhode Island, undertook a series of simulations and "decision events" designed to examine the consequences of these developments. The project started from the premise that the tests had increased the possibility of weaponization, deployment, and use of nuclear weapons in South Asia. In the tradition of games that the Navy had conducted in Newport for more than a hundred years, the college's Decision Strategies Department organized a series of events that gathered experts from the U.S. government, academia, foreign governments, business, private voluntary and nongovernmental organizations, and military commands to react to a prepared scenario set in the year 2003.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jan 01, 2001
Accession Number
ADA530651

Entities

People

  • Paul D. Taylor

Organizations

  • Naval War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Counter WMD
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Asia
  • Commerce
  • Government (Foreign)
  • Governments
  • International Law
  • International Security
  • Military Education
  • Military Personnel
  • Nongovernmental Organizations
  • Nuclear Weapons
  • Pakistan
  • Personnel Management
  • Security
  • South Asia
  • Thinking
  • United States
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Nuclear Non-Proliferation and International Security
  • Political Violence and Terrorism Studies.
  • Strategic Security Studies