Vers la Stabilité Stratégique en Asie du Sud

Abstract

Analysis of strategic stability in South Asia has been predominantly viewed through the bipolar Cold War prism of US-Soviet relations and has thus been insufficiently cognisant of the specificities of nuclear dynamics in South Asia. This paper argues that security analysis in South Asia needs to give attention to the economic, political and social factors which condition the core politico-military relationship as well as to that relationship itself. It argues further that nuclear dynamics in South Asia, characterised by asymmetries, may not play out as Cold War models would predict and consequently that there is a need for an agenda for the promotion of strategic stability which reflects the distinct dynamics of nuclear rivalry in South Asia (deterrence, command and control and arms control and confidence-building measures).