Rabia Akhtar

Signaling solidarity is not the same as issuing a blank check of military intervention. Islamabad is not offering Riyadh a covert “nuclear button,” and Riyadh is not signing up to fight in Kashmir. Defense cooperation ≠ automatic war pledge, and signaling ≠ nuclear guarantee.

@rabsaa.bsky.social has released her edited volume, "Strategic Reckoning: Perspectives on Deterrence and Escalation Post-Pahalgam", offering timely insights into the dynamics of deterrence, crisis management, and regional security in South Asia.
www.belfercenter.org/research-ana...

Pakistan’s Army Rocket Force Command Rabia Akhtar (Note: This piece offers a preliminary read of the ARFC announcement and its implications, pending further

Beyond Nukes. Pakistan’s Army Rocket Force Command aims to hit hard without crossing the nuclear line, cleaner command, better targeting, and a faster kill chain to stress Indian IADS. Why this matters & what to watch next! Here's my initial assessment of ARFC.
pakistanpolitico.com/arfc/

Like seriously! Who’s with me?

Beyond the Brink: Game Theory and the Future of Indo-Pak Security in the Age of Stealth Applying game theory to understand the precarious balance of power in South Asia’s emerging stealth competition.

Beyond the Brink: Game Theory and the Future of Indo-Pak Security in the Age of Stealth
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YouTube video by CSSPR InFocus With Ejaz Haider EP71: Deterrence in the New Nuclear Age

Third Nuclear Age is already here. May 2025 showed how non-nuclear tech, politics, and misperception can unravel deterrence. @nktpnd.bsky.social breaks it down with Ejaz Haider.
youtu.be/il_GY3h34Ec?...

To all my PhD students!

Rabia Akhtar (@rabiaakhtar1) From Escalation to Explanation: The Fight for the Last Word https://open.substack.com/pub/rakhtar/p/who-owns-the-story-the-real-battle?r=i1g3g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=fals...

From Escalation to Explanation: The Fight for the Last Word
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The Collapse of Attention: Losing the Right Mind Mapping the Fall of the Reflective Mind

We are not just witnessing a decline in the humanities, we are watching a civilizational shift toward control, fragmentation, and forgetting. What happens when a society stops teaching meaning? McGilchrist offers a warning we can’t ignore.

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Remember Your Humanity: Why the Nobel Laureate Declaration Is a Call for Strategic Recalibration Marking the 80th anniversary of the Trinity test, Nobel Peace Laureates and experts issued a powerful declaration urging urgent global action to reduce nuclear risks amid rising geopolitical instabili...

The world does not need more deterrence posturing. It needs strategic humility. In this piece for @belfercenter.bsky.social, I reflect on the Nobel Laureate Declaration and its urgent call to recalibrate how we think about nuclear risk.
www.belfercenter.org/research-ana...

In Search of Equity: Understanding Pakistan’s Conditions for the FMCT Strategic Fracture in the Global Nuclear Order: Why the FMCT Fails to Convince Pakistan

Pakistan’s resistance to the FMCT is not a diplomatic anomaly. It is a calculated stance shaped by asymmetry, strategic parity concerns, and treaty design flaws. I unpack the strategic logic behind Pakistan’s position. open.substack.com/pub/rakhtar/...

Just launched: Elusive Stability by @alizia1992.bsky.social. If you care about where South Asian nuclear and strategic debates are headed, this Substack will shape how we think about tomorrow’s crises today.

I am happy to launch my Substack, Elusive Stability. Subscribe, engage, and take the debate forward.

open.substack.com/pub/alizia1992…

Actually after trying to do a very simple operation to merge data from two GeoTIFF files I now understand why Oppenheimer is involved with this. It is a cautionary tale...!!!

Tesla, Vibration, and the Echo of the Universe What if consciousness did not emerge from us, but flowed through us?

“We are eternal vibrations, not accidents of matter.” Tesla’s message transcends time. A call to awaken, resonate, and return to the source. Love is the highest frequency. A reminder that the universe may be less mechanical and far more conscious than we imagine.

open.substack.com/pub/rakhtar/...

THE PROBLEM WITH INDIA’S NEW MISSILE GAMBIT India’s reported pursuit of a missile able to carry a ‘bunker-buster’ like the US’ Massive Ordnance Penetrator presents a perilous

India’s new Agni-V "bunker-buster" is no ordinary missile. It's a conventional warhead meant to strike deeply buried nuclear sites. But the strategy behind it is deeply flawed. My new piece in Dawn explains why.
www.dawn.com/news/1925251...

The Nobel Laureate Assembly Declaration for the Prevention of Nuclear War Tremendous progress has been made in reducing global nuclear stockpiles and nuclear risks, but we are now heading in the wrong direction. Poised at the beginning of a new, complex, and dangerous nucle...

“Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”
Guided by these words, we signed the Nobel Laureate Assembly Declaration in Chicago to stop the drift toward nuclear war. Clear steps. Shared responsibility. Urgent action.
thebulletin.org/2025/07/the-...

🗨️"Pleasing #Trump isn’t #Putin's priority. Putin has no reason to stop."

👉 @belfercenter.bsky.social‘s @mbudjeryn.bsky.social ‬

➡️Full show: f24.my/BJVm.x

@en.france24.com #Trump #Ukraine

The Islamic Republic’s New Lease on Life How the U.S.-Israeli strikes empowered the Iranian regime.

In an article published in Foreign Affairs, Mohammed Tabaar argues "Israel’s June 13 assault on Iran, designed to decapitate Tehran’s military and nuclear program, is one of the worst setbacks the Islamic Republic has ever experienced."
www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/islam...

Rethinking Strategic Depth in the Age of AI: Lessons from May 2025 In the aftermath of the May 2025 Indo-Pakistan crisis, a 4-day high-intensity, multidomain conflict, the traditional notion of strategic depth demands rethinking.

Rethinking Strategic Depth in the Age of AI: Lessons from May 2025
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Is India rewriting the logic of nuclear deterrence in South Asia? Yes and it is doing so openly, deliberately, and dangerously.
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Disappointed to see this from Chatham House: removing source data from chart, referencing secondary sources, using outdated nuke data when updated is available, misrepresenting “nuclear arsenal” data. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Her is link to primary data source: fas.org/initiative/s...

India’s Strategic Revisionism: How India Is Legitimising Pre-emptive Force Reading 'Operation Sindoor' as India’s Most Dangerous Shift in Strategic Thinking Yet

The new e-book on Operation Sindoor is not just a post-crisis account, it is India’s blueprint for normalising pre-emptive force against Pakistan. My latest analysis examines why this strategic shift should alarm anyone concerned with nuclear stability in South Asia open.substack.com/pub/rakhtar/...

Huntington, Fukuyama, and the Futures They Couldn't See There are books that predict the future.

What if Huntington’s clash never truly happened and Fukuyama’s end never arrived? 25 years later, we revisit the thinkers who tried to define the world. Some got it right. Most missed the tremors. Check out my mew post on rereading globalization in 2025.
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Embed EDTs into Crisis Simulations
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In a post-May 2025 world, deterrence stability depends not only on nuclear doctrines but also on how EDT usage is framed, signaled, and constrained. open.substack.com/pub/rakhtar/...

Algorithmic Fractures: How Emerging Tech Rewires Strategic Stability Lessons from the 4-Day Indo-Pak May 2025 Crisis, the 12-Day Iran-Israel War and the Russia-Ukraine War

From the 4-day Indo-Pak clash to the Iran-Israel war and Ukraine, emerging tech is the architecture.

Algorithmic Fractures: How Emerging Tech Rewires Strategic Stability open.substack.com/pub/rakhtar/...

In a world of shifting alliances and sharpened rivalries, Pakistan stays the course, balancing great powers by playing the space in between!

Echoes of Alignment: Ceasefires, Crisis Diplomacy, and the Weight of Old Choices In May 2025, after 87 tense hours of high-intensity conflict, it was the United States once again stepping in to broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.

From Cold War calculus to Trump 2.0, Pakistan has sustained relations with competing powers by leveraging relevance. Here’s my latest substack on Pakistan’s quiet masterclass in geopolitical calibration.

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In the next episode of the Centre for Security, Strategy and Policy Research (CSSPR) Webinar Series, I look forward to hosting Ludovica Castelli , PhD for a conversation on her excellent co-authored book, "The Global Third Nuclear Age. The book can be read here: lnkd.in/g-gdG25P