Abstract
The endless efforts of India and Pakistan to enhance their nuclear and conventional military capabilities have heightened the risk of nuclear holocaust in the region besides putting increased stress on their meagre resources, which are crucially required for human security needs. Their efforts to up-grade their military capabilities have exacerbated each other’s security dilemma and given rise to arms race. Accordingly, India's missile tests have invariably attracted response from Pakistan in the form of similar missile tests, which can only be explained by arms race model. From 1998 to July 2012, India and Pakistan conducted almost equal number of ballistic missile tests (60 and 55 respectively), which is not justifiable in the backdrop of asymmetry in their resources and threat perceptions. Pakistan's development of Nasr battlefield nuclear weapon system designed to upset India's Cold Start Doctrine contemplating offensive operations into Pakistan under nuclear overhang and flight test of Ababeel surface-to-surface ballistic missile using Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) technology as a reaction to India's decision to deploy Ballistic Missile Defence are two apt examples. The situation calls for institution of an arms control and disarmament (ACD) regime for India and Pakistan, which in the past has been non-existent. However, the dynamics of India-Pakistan equation being significantly different from those, which guided the ACD process of the Cold War era, South Asia requires a different model. The model must accommodate the unique security requirements of both countries including India's security calculus, which regards China as its main threat. Likewise, in view of the contemporary ground realities the scope of ACD will have to be expanded by including more types of weapons, technologies, issues (humanitarian, economic and governance), and actors (international organizations, and non-governmental actors).