South Asia once again is in a cycle of violence. It began with the drama of the seven-day hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814. The ordeal came to a shocking end on the eve of the new millennium as India's external affairs minister, who vowed to not give in to the terrorists' demands, swapped three "terrorists," whose release was demanded by the hijackers, for the hostages. Although the hijacking was resolved, India and Pakistan remain enveloped in a cycle of violence whose facets include a blame game, a diplomatic campaign, the trading of accusations, cross-border skirmishes and intensified violence in the Kashmir Valley.
Violence in South Asia is nothing new. India and Pakistan have fought three major wars in the half century since Britain left the subcontinent. Even during the lull in these conflicts they were not at peace. Yet what sets the new cycle of violence apart is that it contains a nuclear component, whose accompanying logic of deterrence could have dire ramifications.
Deterrence is one of the few military-strategic theories that has earned international credibility. The theory, which denotes the manipulation of behavior in a security context, seeks to prevent unwanted behavior by promising to punish adversaries for unacceptable actions and deny them any chance of success. The theory implies a process of "mutual mind-reading" with a calculated attempt to induce a perceived enemy to do something or refrain from doing something by threatening a penalty for noncompliance. The process led to the buildup of nuclear arsenals and delivery systems by the United States and the Soviet Union, and to a situation where the principle of mutually assured destruction involved them both in a zero-sum trap. While the element of rationality continues to guide policymaking in a nuclear context, miscalculation or irrationality may lead to risks of mutual annihilation.