APLN Policy Brief 73

The following is a summary. Click on the adjacent link to download the full brief.

In this Policy Brief, Dr. Hanson highlights the complex nuclear dynamics and the risks inherent in Indo-Pakistan-China relations and the lack of substantial regional security frameworks. She recommends immediate steps to lower the risk of deliberate or inadvertent nuclear use through a series of confidence and security-building measures (CSBMs), including:

• Revisiting and fully operationalizing CSBMs agreed at Lahore in 1999 as soon as possible.
• Relocating heavy weaponry away from the Line of Control (LoC), limiting the size and frequency of exercises conducted near the LoC and agreeing not to violate air space across the LoC.
• Engaging China in a new approach to regional security and managing nuclear relations. This could include encouraging China to act via CICA (The Conference on Interaction and Confidence- Building Measures in Asia). CICA has typically been used to address external threats to the region, but Xi Jinping stated in 2016 that it could form the basis for a “new architecture of regional security cooperation”.

About the Author

Dr. Marianne Hanson was a Stipendiary Lecturer in Politics at Magdalen College, Oxford University before she joined the University of Queensland in 1995. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues, Department of International Relations at the University of British Columbia, a Visiting Fellow at the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth and a Visiting Scholar at Sciences Po in Paris. Her research interests include international security and arms control and disarmament.

Image: Oleksii Liskonih.