Opinion: The nuclear brink

If nothing else, President Bush's decision to dispatch Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to India and Pakistan should slow the rush to a war that could turn nuclear. Sending Rumsfeld and Armitage to the region -- even as non-essential U.S. personnel are being spirited out -- conveys the seriousness with which the Bush administration is approaching this crisis. A succession of U.S. administrations failed to do enough to prevent India's and Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons. Now that each side has a few dozen nuclear weapons in its arsenal, the stakes of another war over Kashmir have become global.

India and Pakistan still have time to pull back from the nuclear brink, but the most chilling aspect of this old dispute between new nuclear powers is that it has made the insane no longer seem so implausible. Strategists make matter-of-fact projections that about 12-million people would die from the immediate effects of a nuclear exchange. Leaders of these two uncomfortable neighbors weave deluded scenarios in which the deadly fallout -- radioactive, political and otherwise -- would somehow stay on the other side of the border.

The dispute over Kashmir is as old as the nations of India and Pakistan, but nuclear weapons have greatly escalated the consequences of another war over the region. Meanwhile, another element of irrationality has greatly accelerated the rush to war: Many of the apocalyptic Islamic fanatics who have found a fertile home in Pakistan actually relish the thought of a nuclear-tipped holy war with India. Terrorists linked to al-Qaida are responsible for murderous attacks in Kashmir and in the heart of India, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf hasn't done enough to restrain them and bring them to justice. The growing tensions have fomented religious-based violence within the secular democracy of India.

The Bush administration appears to be doing about all it can to slow the rush to war. Rumsfeld carries the authority to command the attention of Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. Enlisting the aid of China and other governments with influence in the region also is crucial. President Bush has been blunt in recent days in calling on Musharraf -- our vital partner in the war against al-Qaida -- to "live up to his word" to stop cross-border attacks by Islamic radicals in Kashmir. At the same time, he is pressuring India to give Musharraf the breathing room he may need to make a conciliatory gesture.

Another conventional war between India and Pakistan would be disastrous enough, bringing further instability and destruction to a region already hanging in the balance. From a U.S. perspective, a conventional war over Kashmir also would defer hopes for further Pakistani help in corraling terrorists who have relocated their operations to the lawless region near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

All of that pales against the fear that a conventional war could, through calculation or miscalculation, go nuclear, unleashing a horror the world has managed to avoid since World War II. Having allowed tensions along the India-Pakistan border to build to such dangerous levels, even sane leaders will need skill and luck to prevent a disaster on a scale that until recently seemed almost unimaginable.

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