Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: The 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis

Did India and Pakistan nearly fight a nuclear war in 1990? In a provocative 1993 article, Seymour M. Hersh claims that they did. During a crisis with India over the rapidly escalating insurgency in Kashmir, Pakistan openly deployed its main armored tank units along the Indian border and, in secret, placed its nuclear-weapons arsenal on alert. As a result, the Bush Administration became convinced that the world was on the edge of a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. Universe of cases is admittedly small, but my argument is supported by recent research indicating that preemptive attacks of any kind have been historically rarer than conventionally believed. The nuclear era has seen two instances of preventive attacks against nuclear facilities-the 1981 Israeli bombing of Iraq`s Osirak nuclear facility and the allied coalition`s 1991 air war against Iraq-but both of these actions were taken without fear of nuclear reprisal. In situations where nuclear retaliation has been a possibility, no leader of nuclear weapon state has chosen to launch a preemptive first strike. 97 refs.