Thank you!

Many thanks to @laurensukin.bsky.social and @rohanmukherjee.bsky.social for organizing this fantastic roundtable on Navigating the New Nuclear Map!

Read the whole roundtable here: tnsr.org/roundtable/n...

Within Southern Asia, states are seeking space to escalate at lower levels of conflict to address nuclear & military asymmetry. Pakistan is seeking to create space to escalate at lower levels of conflict against India, while India is doing the same against Pakistan on one side & China on the other.

While Washington & Beijing are responding to each other’s nuclear arsenals, India is responding to China’s arsenal, & Pakistan is responding to India’s nuclear modernization. The technology transfers and submarine proliferation in the Indo-Pacific precipitated by AUKUS are intensifying this dynamic.

There is a cascade of reactionary vertical proliferation that is occurring in the Indo-Pacific as a result of China-US strategic competition.

How is U.S.—China rivalry fueling a dangerous cascade of nuclear proliferation across Southern Asia? @debak.bsky.social explores the ripple effects of AUKUS and regional competition.

📖 Read here: tnsr.org/roundtable/n...

Congratulations, Chris!

Ultimately, the Space Launch Vehicle-3 was successfully launched in July 1980. A few years later, the first stage of the solid fuel SLV-3 became the first stage of the nuclear-capable Agni IRBM that is today in India's nuclear forces.

Confirming these assessments in 1979, Satish Dhawan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, told the Indian Parliament consultative committee that the Space Launch Vehicle, SLV-3, could, after some modifications, be used as an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM).

In 1978, France concluded that all indicators in India’s space program—building laboratories for solid and liquid fuels, acquiring the license for the Viking engine, and India’s cooperation in the Ariane program—could be interpreted as a strong signal to acquire nuclear weapons.

India collaborated with France on space technology through the 1970s. French MoD discussed France's space technology for a potential Indian nuclear delivery system in April 1976. It concluded that the bilateral cooperation in space concerned both civilian and military domains.

Meanwhile, even within the Indian government, it was suspected that INSAT (Satellite program) for TV was “the public rationale for the nation pursuing an ambitious space programme, particularly the development of very large rockets…broadly equivalent to inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM).”

The U.S. tried to stop India. Daniel Moynihan, US ambassador to India, said to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that Washington should get India to privately agree “to go very slow in testing. Nothing more for a year or two. No weapons. Rocketry restraint. No missile system.”

After India's Peaceful Nuclear Explosion in 1974. A NATO Situation Room Report stated that India could have a modest nuclear strike force three years after deciding to go ahead