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We often imagine that countries with nuclear energy programs are nuclear weapons states waiting to happen. Yet there are multiple ways that states can enhance their nuclear security, even when they possess the requisite technology for a weapons program. They may undertake diplomatic efforts to reduce the level of threat, they may seek shelter under an ally's nuclear umbrella, and they may adopt unilateral military measures, up to and including the development of a nuclear arsenal. Over the past five decades, India has engaged in all three of these approaches. Since India's pursuit of nuclear weapons is already well-documented, this article focuses on its efforts to elicit nuclear restraint from other states through diplomacy and to seek the protection of nuclear-armed allies. Drawing on archival documents and interviews in New Delhi and Mumbai, it documents how Indian leaders eventually became disillusioned with these two alternatives to nuclear armament. In doing so, it depicts India's emergence as a nuclear power not simply as a response to regional threats, but also as the result of dissatisfaction with alternative paths to nuclear security. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this finding for possible U.S.-Indian cooperation in nuclear energy in the future. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While almost a decade old, Ted Hopf's observation that the democratic peace is an observation in search of a theory still has some validity. In particular, the mechanisms behind the observed lack of war between democracies are poorly understood, making it difficult for scholars to provide a compelling explanation. While there has been some innovative work, particularly with respect to learning and the ability of an increasing number of democracies to cement democratic norms, Müller and Wolff note that normative and structural explanations are monadic explanations for a dyadic phenomenon. Underappreciated in the existing work is the role of identity and the importance this has for driving the democratic peace. With a focus on developing a dyadic democratic peace mechanism and using a case study approach, this paper utilizes the Copenhagen School's securitization framework to examine how identity plays out in the U.S. response to the Indian and Iranian nuclear programs. It finds that in fact identity does play a significant role in how security policy is constructed. The potential implications of this finding, particularly on policy, are significant. If the democratic peace does rely on identity to trigger the constraining norms that limit the escalation of conflict to violence, it is unlikely the democratic peace can be spread by force and it is possible that states nominally democratic can be excluded from the community of democracies if their behavior or significant other aspects of their perceived identity are at variance with the accepted democratic identity standard. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests of May 1998, a considerable scholarly literature has compared deterrence in South Asia with the historical U.S.-Soviet context, illuminating similarities as well as important differences. However, one potentially fundamental difference has not been sufficiently scrutinized: recent India-Pakistan crises have played out under a deepening U.S. engagement in South Asia, whereas the Cold War superpowers had no comparable recourse to third-party intervention. Though the possibility of intervention may help stabilize the regional deterrent balance, it might also have the opposite effect: either Pakistan or India--or both--may have incentives to exaggerate their confrontational intentions (through bellicose rhetoric or low-level force use) in order to raise American fears of a nuclear war, in the hope that U.S. intervention might lead to an outcome more favorable to their regional interests. The potential danger of such a strategy is that neither of the principals can neatly compartmentalize the audience for its conduct: rhetoric or action intended to raise the stakes for the U.S. may inadvertently cross an ill-defined "red line" for the adversary, and thus trigger an escalatory response. This paper will argue that South Asian deterrence is a dynamic situation in which both principles have experimented with escalation, at least in part, to "scare Uncle Sam"--Pakistan in the 1999 Kargil War, and India in a 2001-02 major military mobilization along the international border--only to see the strategy backfire and the U.S. intervene in ways that temporarily limited rather than expanded their strategic options. It will also examine the relevance of Timothy Crawford's concept of "pivotal deterrence" to the contemporary South Asian context. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]