From Civilian Nuclear Aspiration to Strategic Deterrence: The Nuclearization of South Asia (1953–1998)

Abstract

The nuclearization of South Asia constitutes one of the most significant regional security transformations of the post-Second World War era. Between 1953 and 1998, India and Pakistan transitioned from advocates of peaceful nuclear development to overt nuclear-armed rivals. This paper examines that transformation through the theoretical lenses of the security dilemma and nuclear deterrence theory. It argues that South Asian nuclearization was not an inevitable outcome of technological diffusion, but rather the product of mutually reinforcing threat perceptions, regional asymmetries, and structural inequities within the global nonproliferation regime. Civilian nuclear cooperation provided the technological foundations, while wars, crises, and external power politics intensified insecurity and pushed both states toward weaponization. By tracing developments from the Atoms for Peace era to the 1998 nuclear tests, this study demonstrates how nuclear weapons emerged as instruments of strategic deterrence aimed at preventing existential threats, even as they introduced new risks of instability under the nuclear shadow.