HONOLULU -- Senior American envoys like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage deserve praise for their seemingly successful efforts to move India and Pakistan back from the brink of war once again. As history has brutally demonstrated, even a conventional armed conflict between these two South Asia adversaries would cause untold human suffering on both sides. It would also seriously detract from Washington's continuing war against terrorism and could even put U.S. military forces based in Pakistan directly at risk. But alarmist reporting notwithstanding, the current confrontation was and is not likely to denigrate into a nuclear confrontation.
Both Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf have made it clear, publicly and privately, that the use of nuclear weapons is not being contemplated. For its part, New Delhi is on record proclaiming a nuclear weapons no first-use policy. More importantly, India not only doesn't need to resort to nuclear weapons but actually puts itself at a strategic disadvantage if it were to do so, given its overwhelming conventional superiority.
Meanwhile Islamabad, while appreciating the role of its nuclear arsenal as the "great equalizer," also fully understands the "last resort" nature of such weapons. Unless the survival of the nation is at stake -- and India's clear objective is not Islamabad but terrorist camps inside Pakistani Kashmir -- use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan makes no strategic sense; in fact it would hasten the end of the Pakistani state.