CISS Insight Journal

South Asia in Transition

Mazhar Jamil — 2025-12-31

The strategic landscape of South Asia is largely defined by the balance of power dynamics between two nuclear-weapon states, i.e., India and Pakistan. The historically contentious relationship between India and its neighboring states also influences the security dynamics of this region. Instead of focusing on peace through cooperative frameworks, South Asia often contends with a zero-sum security approach. Alongside, India’s ambitions for regional hegemony and its aspirations for a great power status have further undermined the stability of this region. Under the current leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the emergence of a Hindutva-inspired ideology, along with the conceptualization of Bharat as a Hindu Rashtra, has significantly transformed the security landscape of South Asia, thereby making it more complex and volatile. India’s ideological shifts, accompanied by a revisionist historical narrative, coupled with a false sense of conventional superiority and hegemony, have begun to undermine regional peace and stability in an unprecedented way. This paper aims to assess how India’s evolving strategic thought is influencing the regional security environment, peace, and stability. Additionally, the paper explores how Pakistan can respond to these developments as a responsible nuclear-weapon state. It also offers possible avenues for mutual strategic restraint to maintain peace and stability in the region.

Türkiye, NATO and Extended Deterrence

Ali Alkis — 2025-12-31

This article analyzes Türkiye’s evolving role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s nuclear deterrence posture, focusing on its participation in nuclear-sharing arrangements and exercises, such as Steadfast Noon (military exercise). As a member of the Alliance since 1952, Türkiye has played a geostrategically critical role by hosting the United States (US)’ tactical nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base and supporting NATO’s collective defence strategy. The study traces the historical trajectory of Türkiye’s nuclear involvement, from Cold War deployments to its current engagement with modernized B61 nuclear bombs and associated readiness activities. It examines the operational contours of Steadfast Noon and the Turkish Air Force’s contributions, particularly through its F-16 fleet. The analysis also addresses key challenges, including Türkiye’s exclusion from the F-35 program, complications in air force modernization, its geopolitical balancing between the US and Russia, and tensions between its commitments to non-proliferation and assertive strategic discourse. The findings show Türkiye’s continued importance to NATO’s southern nuclear posture while highlighting how Ankara’s pursuit of strategic autonomy introduces uncertainties that the Alliance must carefully navigate to maintain deterrence credibility and cohesion.

Semiconductors, Strategic Vulnerability, and Selective Decoupling

Sobia Hanif — 2025-12-31

In the contemporary era marked by technological breakthroughs, advanced semiconductors are widely recognized as the “currency of power,” with their control determining geopolitical leverage, national security, and digital supremacy. As the prime assets of modern economic and defence systems, command over high-end chips is redefining the power dynamics of the Twenty-first century. This study aims to investigate China’s unprecedented push for technological self-sufficiency amid perceived vulnerabilities associated with its dependency on foreign sources for microchips and the weaponization of semiconductor value chains by the United States (US). This study examines the national security imperatives that shape states’ behaviour in an anarchic system. Employing the qualitative case study approach, the study aims to investigate the significant ramifications of the US-China semiconductor rivalry for the stability of the global technopolitical and geopolitical order. Additionally, it aims to assess the policy approaches and national security priorities of China related to its techno-nationalist aspirations. The research findings reveal that the technological competition between the US and China is set to grow exponentially in transnational domains.

Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban after 2021

M. Sheharyar Khan — 2025-12-31

Since the Afghan Taliban’s return to power in 2021, relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government have deteriorated despite earlier expectations of improved cooperation. Islamabad anticipated that a friendly regime in Kabul would help curb cross-border militancy and contribute to regional stability. Instead, persistent security challenges and militant violence have deepened mistrust. Pakistan’s border management and counterterrorism measures are perceived by the Taliban as coercive, while the Taliban’s continued support of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is viewed in Islamabad as a direct security threat. Beyond ideological affinity, the TTP also holds instrumental value for the Taliban in terms of internal cohesion and leverage, complicating efforts to address Pakistan’s concerns. Based on the above premise, this paper examines the evolving Pakistan–Taliban relationship between 2021 and 2025, and argues that the relationship is marked by a security dilemma between a sovereign state and a quasi-state authority. The paper further highlights how misperception, limited trust, and divergent understandings of security sustain this dynamic. The paper concludes by discussing policy-relevant implications for Pakistan and regional stability.

Science Diplomacy

Safia Malik — 2025-12-31

Science diplomacy is increasingly recognized as an effective tool for addressing global non-traditional challenges, promoting international collaboration, and enhancing national capacities in various sectors. It involves leveraging international scientific collaboration to address global issues, enhance foreign relations, and foster scientific partnerships for national benefits. Pakistan has enormous potential to benefit from science diplomacy. The research paper examines Pakistan’s existing science diplomacy-related initiatives at the bilateral and multilateral levels and also assesses key future areas of cooperation where science diplomacy can be utilized as a foreign policy tool to promote national development. By applying the theory of sustainable development, the study argues that Pakistan adheres to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals to promote shared economic prosperity. This qualitative study focuses on how Pakistan can leverage scientific cooperation to foster innovation and contribute to global science diplomacy initiatives. The findings of the study suggest that regional and global collaboration on joint research projects, technology sharing, and strategic investments in science diplomacy initiatives could strengthen Pakistan’s image outwardly and growth inwardly.

CISS Insight Complete Journal

CISS — 2025-12-31

Center for International Strategic Studies(CISS), Islamabad

Pakistan-India Relations

Mobeen Jafar Mir — 2025-12-31

Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary’s new book, titled Pakistan-India Relations: Fractured Past, Uncertain Future, provides a timely and comprehensively informed account of one of South Asia’s most enduring rivalries between two regional nuclear powers, Pakistan and India. Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhary has dedicated almost four decades to the Foreign Service of Pakistan, culminating in his appointment as Foreign Secretary from 2013 to 2017. His distinguished career also includes serving as Ambassador of Pakistan to both the United States and the Netherlands, as well as holding the position of Deputy Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the United Nations in New York. In addition, he has represented the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as its spokesperson.

Drawing upon decades of diplomatic experience, Chaudhary’s book unpacks the historical, political, and strategic factors that shape Pakistan India ties. His work traces the roots of Muslim-Hindu nationalism to the sixteenth century, leading to the partition of British India into Pakistan and India in 1947, and post-independence political developments climaxing in the most recent episodes of crisis and confrontation of 2025.

Going Nuclear

Anam Murad Khan — 2025-12-31

The book ‘Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World’ by Tim Gregory (PhD) is a seminal commentary on the enduring relevance of nuclear science. While the world struggles to find practical ways to achieve global net-zero, this book emerges as a timely contribution. Tim Gregory, a nuclear chemist within the British nuclear enterprise, a renowned author, and a regular presenter on British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Science, brings both expertise and passion to the nuclear discovery delights in the book. He employs scientific literacy and rational optimism to dispel decades-old fears of nuclear science. With his blend of human warmth and scientific proficiency, he deconstructs complex global security challenges and impediments to their nuclear solutions. The author articulates net-zero technologies, nuclear science, and nuclear energy through scientific reasoning.

Gregory’s thirteen-chapter monograph offers a wide-ranging and well organized overview of nuclear science, tracing its intellectual trajectory from mythological origins to contemporary technological applications. In the opening chapters, he explains how the atom appears in both cultural imagination and empirical inquiry, moving from Promethean myths to the experimental validations of Röntgen, Becquerel, and Curie. This dual framing highlights the persistence of symbolic anxieties surrounding nuclear energy, even as its foundations rest upon reproducible observation and measurement. The main argument of the writer is that nuclear science, often portrayed as mysterious or uncontrollable, is in fact rational, comprehensible, and amenable to systematic management. By starting with the cultural and historical story of atomic discovery, he sets the interpretive lens through which subsequent technical and political discussions are to be understood.

Weapons in Space

Haseeb Ahmad — 2025-12-31

Militarization of space is not science fiction anymore, but it has transformed into an important security front. The book ‘Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative’ was written by Aaron Bateman, who is an Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University and a member of the Space Policy Institute. He has published widely on intelligence, transatlantic relations, and the military use of space during the Cold War and beyond. For scholars and policy makers in Pakistan, the work of Bateman is not just a history lesson; it is a road map that one must have to master in the long-term perilous combination of technology, strategy, and politics in space. This book provides a pertinent historical revelation of the program that sets the stage for the “Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI).” By depending on declassified American, Soviet, and British documents, the space policy historian puts forward the argument that the SDI was not just a pipe dream in terms of its technology. It was an influential strategic and political power that changed the balance of the Cold War. Its legacy continues to affect great power politics to this day.