India’s double jeopardy – Nuclear threats and violent asymmetric conflict: Issues and dilemmas in a turbulent region

Abstract

India faces a critical phase of its post-independence existence with an alarming besiege of hostile states and violent non-state actors. The existential security predicament has emerged in an irony that features India’s steady and solid economic growth and development. Despite the robustness of the economic and strategic macro-fundamentals, India is in the throes of a critical siege of violent asymmetric conflict in a South Asian region besieged by state-failure and economic fatigue. A United States and allied strategic dilemmas vacillate in Afghanistan, a Pakistan in the throes of a new round of critical internal destabilisation with a massive spurt in radicalisation threatening to engulf the Afghanistan–Pakistan region and a China that exploits India’s unsettled boundary issues leveraging support to Pakistan, all present India its double jeopardy.

The employ of the term ‘Double-Jeopardy’ is a legalistic term that connotes that a person cannot be penalised twice for the same crime. The employ of ‘Double-Jeopardy’ in this analysis reflects India’s existential threats of violent asymmetric conflict and its pathological consequences and the perilous impact of nuclear weapons associated with such groups and their state sponsors.

This chapter endeavours to examine (a) India’s critical security vulnerabilities and responses emergent from the worsening Afghanistan–Pakistan situation; (b) the consequences of a US retreat from Afghanistan and the Chinese assertive rise in the South Asian region; (c) critical imperatives and operational safeguards in India’s nuclear security; and (d) future pathways of India in the region.

Citation

Lawrence, W. and Prabhakar, S. (2013), "India’s double jeopardy – Nuclear threats and violent asymmetric conflict: Issues and dilemmas in a turbulent region", Nuclear Disarmament: Regional Perspectives on Progress (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 21), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 35-49. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1572-8323(2013)0000021009