DIVERGING NUCLEAR PATHWAYS IN SOUTH ASIA

Abstract

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb, by Feroz Hassan Khan. Stanford University Press, 2012. 544 pages, $29.95.

Managing India's Nuclear Forces, by Verghese Koithara. Brookings Institution Press, 2012. 304 pages, $59.95.

Keywords:

• India
• Pakistan
• South Asia
• nuclear weapons

Notes

1. George Perkovich, India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

2. On the sources of the Chinese nuclear weapons program, see John Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1991). For a discussion of India's quest for a nuclear guarantee, see Andrew Kennedy, The International Ambitions of Mao and Nehru: National Efficacy Beliefs and the Making of Foreign Policy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011). And for an explanation that traces the origins of the Indian nuclear weapon program to external threats, see Sumit Ganguly, “India's Pathway to Pokhran II: the Sources and Prospects of India's Nuclear Weapons Program,” International Security 23 (Spring 1999), pp. 148–77.

3. Stephen M. Meyer, The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

4. An important exception to this proposition was the role of General Krishnaswami Sundarji. See his fictional work, K. Sundarji, Blind Men of Hindoostan: Indo-Pak Nuclear War (New Delhi: UBS, 1993).

5. Sumit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur, “The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Islamist Militancy in South Asia,” Washington Quarterly 33 (January 2010), pp. 47–59.

6. Ashok Kapur, Pakistan's Nuclear Development (Leiden: Croom Helm, 1987).

7. On Pakistan's clandestine activities, see Gordon Corera, Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network (London: Oxford University Press, 2006).

8. Jim Mann, “China Said to Sell Pakistan Dangerous New Missiles,” The Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1992, <http://articles.latimes.com/1992-12-04/news/mn-1437_1_chinese-missiles>.

9. On the Pakistan-North Korea connection, see Gaurav Kampani, “Second Tier Proliferation: The Case of Pakistan and North Korea,” Nonproliferation Review 9 (Fall/Winter 2002), pp. 107–16.

10. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons (London: Walker and Company, 2007).

11. See “Pak Defence Strong, Says Army Chief,” Independent, April 19, 1999, cited in Sumit Ganguly, The Kashmir Question: Retrospect and Prospect (New York: Frank Cass and Company, 2003), p. 142.

12. The terms of the debate are discussed at length in G.G. Mirchandani, India's Nuclear Dilemma (New Delhi: Popular Book Services, 1968).

13. Kerry Boyd, “India Establishes Formal Nuclear Command Structure,” Arms Control Today, January/February 2003, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_01-02/india_janfeb03>.

14. Charles L. Glaser, “Why Even Good Defenses May be Bad,” International Security 9 (Autumn 1984), pp. 92–123.

15. Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, “Pakistan Is Rapidly Adding Nuclear Arms, US Says,” New York Times, May 17, 2009, <www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/world/asia/18nuke.html?_r=0>.