Kargil demolishes the rosy assumption that nuclearisation would impart stability or maturity to India-Pakistan relations, or make conventional conflict between them unlikely. The assumption stems in the first place from Cold War dogma. In reality, nuclear weapons make war and conflict more, not less, likely. They do not prevent states from fighting conventional wars. The former USSR and China fought bitterly across the Ussuri for years.
Nuclear deterrence is deeply flawed.
Gen Lee Butler, who long commanded the U.S. nuclear arsenal, says it is not nuclear deterrence, nor calculation of 'mutually assured destruction', that prevented a catastrophe in the Cold War. It was luck, 'the Grace of God'. India and Pakistan are especially vulnerable to a nuclear catastrophe. Neither state has the command and control structures to prevent accidental, unintended or unauthorised use of nuclear weapons. Their history is replete with conflict escalation through war-mongering and pressure from fanatics, as well as misperception and miscalculation.