Pakistan’s Nuclear Tests: Twenty Years On
Salman Bashir
Pakistan’s nuclear tests on 28 and 30 May 1998 marked a watershed in the nation’s quest for security. The devices tested conformed to weapon configuration capable of delivery....
Strategic Stability Challenges in South Asia
Syed Rifaat Hussain
Stability is a contested intellectual construct with no consensus on its precise meaning. As noted by Patrick A. McCarthy, “it is overly simplistic and, more than that,...
The 20th Anniversary of South Asia’s Overt Nuclearisation
Najmuddin A. Shaikh
The month of May this year marked the completion of two decades since India and Pakistan carried out nuclear tests and made the South Asian sub-continent publicly...
Revisiting Pakistan’s Nuclear Restraint
Mansoor Ahmed
State behavior is largely a product of rational decision-making based on a careful cost-benefit analysis. Countries pursuing crash covert nuclear weapon programs are less likely to remain sensitive...
The Illogic of Regime Change
Cheryl Rofer
As the United States withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) and John Bolton takes his place as Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor,...
How Pakistan Went Nuclear
Samson Simon Sharaf
1996-97 was a politically unstable time for India. BJP despite emerging as the single largest party could not muster a majority in thirteen days. A consensus candidate...
Going Nuclear: A Personal Recollection
Zamir Akram
As I drove to work at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington DC, where I was posted as Deputy Chief of Mission, early on the morning of 11 May...
Book Review: Brokering Peace in Nuclear Environments: U.S. Crisis Management in South Asia
Syed Ali Zia Jaffery
South Asia has been prone to crises ever since the inception of India and Pakistan. This volatile theatre has been vitiated as both countries have gone...
Security Predicated On Suicide: Two Decades In Armageddon’s Shadow
Ilhan Niaz
The first episode of the 1980s BBC comedy Yes Prime Minister (“The Grand Design”), sees James Hacker, having manipulated his way to the premiership, wrestle with the contradictions...
Of Sanctions and Defiance
Rabia Akhtar
The U.S. non-proliferation policy utilizes economic, political and military sanctions enshrined in non-proliferation legislation to deter proliferation behavior in countries around the globe. Three laws –– the Symington...
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High Energy Laser Weapons: A Boon for Pakistan?
Safia Mansoor
In 1960, Theodore Maiman, an American physicist and engineer, invented the Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of...
Making a Case for the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline
Haider Ali
In the complex tapestry of South Asian geopolitics, the Iran-Pakistan (IP) Gas Pipeline project stands out as...
Mapping Emerging Trends in Space Warfare
Safia Mansoor
"Space is a war-fighting domain, just like the land, air, and the sea”
Former...