Tactical Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia: Pakistan’s Stabilisation-Destabilisation Dilemma 47 Tactical Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence Stability in South Asia: Pakistan’s Stabilisation-Destabilisation Dilemma Ghazala Yasmin Jalil * Abstract Pakistan’s testing of the nuclear-capable tactical ballistic missile ‘Nasr’ and its India’s counterpart ‘Prahaar’ has renewed a debate on deterrence stability in South Asia. The introduction of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) by Pakistan is a result of heightened threat perceptions resulting from India’s development of ballistic missile defence (BMD), its pursuit of the aggressive limited war doctrine Cold Start, and Pakistan’s growing conventional military imbalance with India. The pursuit of TNW presents a stabilisation-destabilisation dilemma for Pakistan. While demonstration of TNW capability may be stabilising for Pakistan, since it aims to deter India from pursuing limited war, the actual deployment and use of the weapons in the battlefield is destabilising, since it presents a host of problems such as dangers of pre-emption, complicated command and control, risk of advertent and inadvertent use, and issues of escalation control, which make deterrence highly unstable. The paper argues that one way out of this stabilisation-destabilisation dilemma may be to deploy a limited number of weapons for signalling or warning to India, instead of opting for large-scale battlefield deployment, which has the potential of escalation to an all-out war. Introduction Pakistan‟s testing of nuclear-capable short-range ballistic missile (60 km range) Nasr on 19 April, 2011 has renewed the debate on India-Pakistan nuclear deterrence and strategic stability. Although India‟s limited war doctrine Cold Start is widely believed to have triggered the development of tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) by Pakistan, it needs to be understood in the wider context of India-Pakistan nuclear and conventional weapons balance. The introduction of tactical nuclear weapons by Pakistan, and perhaps by India 1 , is a new development fraught with its own issues and dangers. However, it is a development within a chain of events, which necessitates an examination of the South Asian security dilemma that is driving the security competition between India and Pakistan. * Ghazala Yasmin Jalil is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad.