The 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan caught the attention of international relations theorists as never before. While the earlier analyses of South Asia came primarily from those working on nonproliferation issues and regional conflict-prevention perspectives, the advent of overt nuclear weapon status of India and Pakistan presented IR scholars with the opportunity to explore a range of hypotheses about new nuclear powers. Was South Asia going to be able to take advantage of its backwardness/late entry into the deterrence game and learn from the considerable research and experience of the two superpowers during the Cold War? Were India and Pakistan as rational as the United States and the Soviet Union (if not more), and could they manage their rivalry without resorting to nuclear exchange? Will their overt nuclear weapons capabilities make India and Pakistan more careful in their responses to each other's provocative moves? Is a rivalry based in political ideology (like the U.S.-USSR one) more susceptible to rational decision making than a rivalry based in religious ideology (supposedly the primary basis of the India-Pakistan dispute)? A related set of questions raised by the tests focused primarily on the reasons/motivations behind Indian nuclear tests and their impact on the nuclear nonproliferation regime.

The Kargil war between India and Pakistan in 1999, just a year after their nuclear tests, elevated international concerns about the risks of escalation to nuclear war in the region. The war also brought into sharp relief the assumptions and hypotheses of nuclear deterrence theorists, as well as those who tended to downplay the differences between the domestic factors in India and Pakistan when offering assumptions about dyadic behavior with and without the presence of nuclear weapons.

The two volumes under review examine South Asia after Kargil, but from different perspectives. Lowell Dittmer's edited volume explores the complexities of the security problem in South Asia. It offers thoughtful analyses on the domestic and external factors that have, and are likely to have, a strong influence on deterrence stability in South Asia. The book by Balder Raj Nayar and T. V. Paul, on the other hand, looks primarily at Indian behavior on nuclear and military issues and situates it in the larger realist theme of power transitions.

Dittmer has put together a logically coherent set of topics and authors, which, according to his introduction, uses South Asian nuclearization as a test case to explore “challenges to the international nonproliferation regime in a post–Cold War Unipolar world” and the impact on “development and security among developing countries” (p. viii). Chapters by Rahul Roy-Chaudhary (nuclear and naval capabilities), Hasan-Askari Rizvi (Pakistani tests), and Sumit Ganguly and Kent Biringer (crisis stability) explore economic, political, and technological dynamics in India and in Pakistan that have determined the bilateral relationship of insecurity. Lawrence Saez provides a good overview of the arms race literature and also some evidence to show that “the economic asymmetries that confront India and Pakistan have a significant strategic impact” (p. 28).

The chapter by Dinshaw Mistry on the strategic significance of India's nuclear and missile forces provides a comprehensive picture of the way in which Indian civilian and defense capabilities on the nuclear and missile/space side have been integrated over time, and the likely role of missile defense forces in this mix. The chapter will be especially useful for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, who will find clear expositions of such concepts as counterforce, countervalue, Theater Missile Defense, and crisis stability—particularly as applied to South Asia.

Timothy Hoyt's examination of the Pakistani nuclear doctrine is especially noteworthy. He decisively distinguishes between the existence of rational and efficient structures for making operational decisions and the aggressive and poorly conceived strategic policies that emanate from the military leadership. In brief, his contention is that although the “Pakistani military has been intimately connected with the military planning and political authorization of Pakistan's offensive failures” (p. 131) it has not helped change Pakistan's war-fighting doctrine: It continues to favor preventive attacks and an aggressive forward defense. The military leadership has a propensity to use a mix of regular, irregular, and insurgent forces to achieve tactical objectives, but displays strategic myopia in assessing Indian and international reaction to such bold moves in a nuclear environment. In such a situation, Hoyt argues, the doctrinal emphasis of Pakistan on first use, its military's continuing efforts to revise the status quo, and its poor strategic judgment will ensure that even perfect command-and-control systems cannot guarantee stability in South Asia. Samina Ahmed's assessment shows that for a variety of reasons, the Pakistani military under General Pervez Musharraf continues to depict the Kargil operation as a military success and holds the civilian government responsible for “capitulating to external pressure and opting for unilateral withdrawal” (p. 147).

While South Asia specialists have long seen China as an important factor in both nuclear/missile proliferation as well as military calculations in South Asia, the Dittmer volume takes it a step further and correctly expands the regional security canvas to include two interlinked deterrence dyads: India-Pakistan and India-China. Jing-Dong Yuan's conclusion is that Chinese analysts continue to be divided on how Beijing should regard and treat New Delhi. Nevertheless, he expects that their upward economic and military trajectory is bound to lead India and China into each other's perceived sphere of interests. He remains cautiously optimistic about the future, which is currently undergirded by regular, high-level dialogue and growing economic cooperation. T.V. Paul's assessment of Chinese interests and policies regarding Pakistan provides a clear picture as to the limits of India-China bonhomie. According to Paul, China has curtailed some of its nuclear and missile transfers to Pakistan due to U.S. pressure and the increasing interaction of Beijing in international institutions and regimes, but the rest will stop only when China perceives the diminishing utility of containing and balancing India through Pakistan. These analyses suggest an interesting hypothesis when the instability of the India-Pakistan dyad is contrasted with the stability of the China-India dyad: that the internal characteristics and doctrines of the weaker side determine the level of deterrence stability.

In sum, the Dittmer volume will be useful for those interested in a comprehensive treatment of the different components that make up nuclear deterrence scenarios in South Asia: military capability, institutional capacities, doctrines, and alliances.

Nayar and Paul's book follows the classical realist tradition, borrows heavily from the power transition theories, and uses the neorealist insights on the importance of nuclear weapons in determining international power distributions. The authors see India's nuclear behavior as a response to the Indian elite's long-held positions that a) India deserves to be treated as a major power and not equated with a minor, risk-acceptant, and unstable state like Pakistan, and b) the acquisition of an independent nuclear capability is the key to obtaining major power status. They also explain the response of the major powers (the nuclear five) to Indian nuclear tests as predictable actions: using nonproliferation as a tool to discourage other actors in the international system from giving India the recognition it seeks, in order to preserve the status quo of power distribution, where they alone have a monopoly on “legitimate” nuclear capability.

The authors argue that India has always faced a status inconsistency between its role aspiration and the actual role assigned to it by the major powers and the international institutions established by them. India has always aspired to the role of a major power, characterized by restrained and responsible behavior. This aspiration was visible in Indian foreign policy between 1945 and 1990 when the country attempted to compensate for its economic weakness by using soft power (leadership of normative groupings like the nonaligned movement). This self-perception has become more overt as India has begun to use its rapidly growing macroeconomic strength to compete with China for spheres of influence in Southeast and Central Asia, and to start a series of strategic interactions with the United States, the European Union, Russia, Israel, and Japan.

To assess whether India's aspirations now have a basis in reality, the authors provide a detailed comparison of Indian capabilities vis-à-vis the recognized major powers, as well as with some of the countries that are often categorized with India (Brazil, Nigeria, Pakistan, etc). Although the data are a bit dated by a few years—during which India has seen improvements on some axes—they will allow the readers to come to their own conclusion.

Demographic, economic, and technological changes in India have already highlighted the status inconsistency to some extent: In Pakistan People's Party terms, India is the fifth largest economy in the world, yet it has only recently been invited to join in the Group of 8 discussions. It has the largest, largely indigenous, and most ambitious nuclear energy program in Asia, yet major foreign investors cannot invest in this sector due to nonproliferation sanctions. With the recent successful launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, its space program can be ranked among the top 10 in the world, yet missile proliferation concerns have warned off most potential partners except Russia—and this joint project has produced the supersonic cruise missile Brahmos. With its significant civilian nuclear and space capabilities, India is a major challenge to the international nonproliferation regime: It is outside the Nuclear Nonproliteration Treaty and is not bound by the export restraints of informal regimes, such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR).

This work, therefore, will be especially interesting to those who have attempted to “categorize” and “explain” Indian behavior on nuclear issues and on the nonproliferation regime and have found the traditional theoretical divides (neorealist, institutionalist, constructivist) unsatisfactory.