Social Science Research Council

On January 16-18, 2004, the Program on Global Security and Cooperation held a workshop in Washington, DC, entitled "Understanding South Asia's Nuclear Crisis and Crisis Behavior." The meeting, which was held at the SSRC's Washington Office and at George Washington University's Elliot School of International Affairs, was the second in a series of meetings for the Program's South Asian Nuclear Project. Over the three days, scholars from India, Pakistan and North America met to discuss the meaning of "crises" in relation to South Asia, particularly the factors which influence the process of decision-making in the countries, and to consider what insights could be drawn from a comparison of South Asia with other nuclear crises, especially the 1969 Sino-Soviet clashes, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The meeting also included a private screening of the Oscar winning Erol Morris documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara.

This workshop was focused on developing a theoretical and empirical understanding of "crises" in South Asian. From 1987 onwards, when both India and Pakistan had developed (though not declared) nuclear weapons capability, the frequency and intensity of military crises has objectively increased. In 1987 there was the serious Brasstacks crisis, followed the 1990 crisis. Cross-border attacks and conflict-related fatalities increased substantially during the 1990s, and, following the tests of May 1998, we have had the Kargil conflict (1999) and most recently a long, drawn-out military stand off between India and Pakistan through much of 2002, following the attack on the Lok Sabha. The Kargil conflict was accompanied by at least a dozen nuclear threats made by senior members of the governments of India and Pakistan, leading to a new form of shuttle diplomacy, by the US and UK in particular, to prevent threats from breaking out into hot war.

Even as the term "crisis" is used with greater frequency than ever before, we lack a systematic understanding of the threshold conditions that lead to moments of inter-state tension between India and Pakistan being classified as a "crisis" rather than as something else. We also lack a careful comparison of these different crises to see whether a "racheting" effect has taken hold, i.e., that each succeeding hostile event begins more readily, is classified as a crisis more easily, and reaches a qualitatively higher state of intensity at a faster rate. We don't understand the role and importance of the media in the representation of crises, and we are not sure whether crisis behavior is now becoming a habitual element of the strategic portfolio of both states. What difference, for instance, does the presence of US troops in Pakistan and the region mean for the likelihood of new crises?

The third meeting of the South Asian Nuclear Project will take place in late 2004.