Preventing Catastrophe

Whether the U.S. likes it or not, India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Despite the international successes of the NPT in other parts of the world, South Asia's principal antagonists have joined the nuclear club. The region is unstable-in recent years the common animus shared by India and Pakistan has deepened through a series of worrying developments. The danger is real, and potentially disastrous, as the two nations include one quarter of the world's population. Will the U.S. continue its myopic adherence to hard line NPT standards and risk catastrophe, or will it address South Asia's proliferation in a manner that decreases bitterness and controls risks? This paper takes a critical look at U.S. regional objectives and suggests how they might be achieved. If current U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy is failing to adequately address the danger in South Asia, perhaps a new policy line is warranted. One approach-a regional nonproliferation regime between India and Pakistan with U.S. participation in a third party or mediating role-could be realistically acceptable to all sides. Indian and Pakistani embassy officers, U.S. government officials from DOD, DOS, and Capitol Hill, and other regional experts considered the notion of a regional regime during a number of author-conducted interviews in December 2000.