Policy Briefs

In 2021, the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN) and the Toda Peace Institute launched a research project examining the nuclear and defence dynamics between China, India, and Pakistan. Building on previous APLN papers and the Brookings ‘Strategic Chain’ report, this project seeks to map the contours of the China-India-Pakistan nuclear relationship, identifying the key drivers of conflict, as well as practical nuclear risk reduction, crisis stability, and confidence building measures. The project also aims to explore the possibility of a nuclear restraint regime that includes all three countries. At a workshop organised by the project in February 2022, experts from the Indo-Pacific region, including from China, India, and Pakistan, presented scholarly and policy analyses on the trilateral dynamics in Southern Asia. This report synthesises the analysis from those discussions.

We are living in an era of transition and uncertainty in the global nuclear order where nuclear security and nuclear risks are changing and the ways, ends and means devised to manage the nuclear condition are under pressure. This is the result of a technological, geopolitical and normative change and transformation across the nuclear ecosystem. Taken together, these developments are calling into question the way that we manage nuclear threats, and particularly how we think about strategic stability and arms control. While there have been periods of unsettling, rapid, and potentially revolutionary change in the global nuclear order in the past, today appears to be different because the phenomenon is so wide-spread, multifaceted, and because the challenges go right to the heart of how we think about and conceptualise the nuclear condition.