BOOK REVIEW: P. R. Chari, Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema and Iftekharuzzaman (eds.), Nuclear Non-Proliferation in India and Pakistan: South Asian Perspectives (New Delhi: Manohar, RCSS, 1996), 236 pages.

This review assesses a timely edited collection that interrogates South Asia’s nuclear choices through strategic, legal and political lenses. The volume’s contributors probe deterrence doctrines, domestic coalitions, technology acquisition and export-control regimes, while tracing how insecurity spirals and prestige logics interact. The review highlights chapters that examine crisis behaviour, the role of confidence-building measures and the credibility gap in global non-proliferation norms as perceived from the region. It commends the book’s multi-disciplinary method and accessible prose, noting its value for diplomats and scholars seeking historical texture before the watershed tests of the late 1990s. The editor’s framing, the review argues, avoids moralism and invites policy-relevant debate.

After summarizing the book’s architecture—strategic history, institutional constraints and forward-looking policy prescriptions—the review engages three themes. First, it considers how regime asymmetries and security externalities complicate compliance incentives for regional powers. Second, it discusses crisis-management chapters that evaluate hotlines, notifications and observation regimes as practical stabilizers even absent treaty adherence. Third, it reflects on domestic politics: civil-military relations, party competition and scientific bureaucracies that shape procurement and doctrine. The review then situates the volume in comparative context, contrasting South Asia with other late-industrializing nuclear aspirants. It closes by identifying research gaps—command-and-control sociology, procurement political economy and media narratives—and by underscoring the book’s enduring utility for understanding risk, reassurance and restraint in a contested regional nuclear order.