Forget North Korea. The Next Nuclear Crisis Festers On The India-Pakistan Border

While President Donald Trump is focused on North Korea’s nuclear madman, a more alarming threat is rising in South Asia: an explosive mix of nuclear weapons, terrorism and hair-trigger war plans.

Pakistan, already a major nuclear weapons power with well over 100 warheads and the missiles to carry them, is racing to expand its arsenal of short-range tactical weapons meant as a deterrent against India, its larger, more powerful neighbor and blood enemy. India is thought to have around 100 nuclear warheads of its own. (North Korea is estimated to possess enough fissile material to make several warheads.)

But it’s not the numbers of weapons between India and Pakistan that most worry analysts and diplomats. It’s the instability of their nuclear stand-off and the possibility that an accident, a miscalculation or a terrorist attack could ignite a catastrophic nuclear war.

Bitter and distrustful, the two countries have fought four wars since 1947 and skirmished in numerous border clashes that continue to this day. Analysts now warn of a growing risk that another border clash could swiftly escalate into a nuclear crisis.

 

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