Beyond crisis management: the lessons of US interventions in Indo–Pakistani nuclear crises

Abstract

An Indo–Pakistani nuclear and missile race—combined with recent changes in both countries’ nuclear doctrines and the resulting increase in danger of nuclear use—has made it extremely difficult to stabilize nuclear deterrence in South Asia. India and Pakistan are “shooting for a century” of continuing conflict, and may not be able to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of their independence if the next crisis between them cannot be defused in time. This excellent book shows the critical role played by the United States and other third parties, including the United Kingdom and China, in de-escalating the first three nuclear crises since the May 1998 Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests. The Indo–Pakistani nuclear competition does not occur in a vacuum, and the two countries’ leaders cannot ignore the international community’s concerns about the potentially catastrophic consequences of a nuclear exchange on the subcontinent. There are a number of studies of the India–Pakistan post-testing nuclear crises, but there is a dearth of in-depth analyses of the processes and mechanisms that shape the behavior of the rival states and affect the outcomes of those crises. Traditional explanations use bilateral deterrence and two-actor bargaining models, and do not systematically use a three-actor bargaining framework. This book breaks new ground, developing a sophisticated model of “brokered bargaining.” It starts from the premise that the combination of regional nuclearization and global unipolarity will almost inevitably lead the United States to intervene in regional nuclear crises, because it has an intrinsic interest in preserving the nuclear taboo (p. 29). Yusuf draws on Timothy Crawford’s “pivotal deterrence” model, “the most comprehensive framework” to explain the role of third parties as “de-escalators” during regional crises in the post-Cold War era. According to Crawford, “pivotal deterrence involves the manipulation of threats and promises in order to prevent war.” In regional crisis situations, a third-party pivot (such as the United States) is “called on to deter two sides from provoking or escalating fighting.”