when discussing the prospects of tossing around a few dozen nuclear weapons, I’m not so convinced that the nuclear dissuasion that appeared so effective during the Cold War would necessarily apply to the South Asian context. What I hear instead is Indians casually dismissing the threat of 10-15 million dead from a Pakistani nuclear strike, then enthusiastically describing the opportunity to respond by wiping Pakistan off the map after “absorbing” the Pakistani nukes.

And of course the danger for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is that the government has such a tenuous grasp on things that sooner or later a nuke will slip away into the hands of Allah only knows who…