A new Security Nexus paper by Shyam Tekwani, titled “War in South Asia Is a Wake-Up Call: Achieving Peace Through Strength in an Age of Industrial Deterrence,” explores how a brief but intense conflict between India and Pakistan served as a powerful stress test for South Asia’s defense-industrial landscape.

The paper draws on real-world capabilities and scenario-based vignettes to analyze how deterrence today is shaped not just by platforms, but by performance—supply chains, maintenance cycles, co-production, and delivery speed.

Key insights include:

  • India’s pursuit of defense autonomy and the operational costs of delays.
  • Pakistan’s reliance on Chinese and Turkish systems and the vulnerabilities that emerged.
  • Smaller South Asian states’ diversification strategies to enhance resilience and sovereignty.
  • Opportunities for the United States to strengthen trust through faster delivery, co-development, and sustainment partnerships.

Tekwani argues that in an era of high operational tempo, trust is not built through declarations, but through reliability—measured in systems that launch, recover, and relaunch under fire.

Read the full paper: https://dkiapcss.edu/nexus_articles/war-in-south-asia-is-a-wake-up-call/

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