Abstract
Since 9/11, counter-terrorism officials have fretted over the possibility of jihadist terrorists obtaining and deploying a nuclear weapon. Although acknowledging that such anxieties are well grounded, I offer here a reconceptualisation of the jihadist terrorist nuclear threat that focuses alternatively upon the remote but real possibility that jihadist terrorists may seek to advance their goals by trying to provoke an Indo–Pakistani nuclear confrontation. Such a confrontation would serve jihadist goals by aggravating religious polarisation on the sub-continent while dramatically weakening the Pakistani state. The system-destabilising consequences of such a catastrophe would likely also offer the jihadists their best opportunity to revive their faltering movement, which otherwise appears fated to terminal decline. In the light of this assessment, I argue that a higher priority must be accorded towards strengthening Indo–Pakistani crisis stability and advancing regional reconciliation if the risk of a jihadist-provoked nuclear exchange is to be minimised.
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Notes
I expound on the clash between the contemporary state system's constitutional values and jihadist ideology in greater detail in Phillips (2011, pp. 272–275).
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Phillips, A. Horsemen of the apocalypse? Jihadist strategy and nuclear instability in South Asia. Int Polit 49, 297–317 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2012.1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ip.2012.1