Nor are sanctions alone likely to prove effective. The crisis is genuine. The three wars between India and Pakistan since they gained independence just over 50 years ago, their geographical proximity and the resulting hair-trigger response time for using nuclear weapons, the insurgency in Kashmir, the complicating triangular relationship with China, and their lack of survivable command, control and communications facilities make their nuclear balance unstable. Nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament are two sides of the same coin. The whiff of hypocrisy in statements from those who have nuclear weapons robs their condemnation of much value in shaping the nuclear choices of India and Pakistan.
Nuclear weapons are of little military use to anyone anymore.
But it is difficult to convince some states of this while all who have such weapons insist on keeping them. In present circumstances, there are some security arguments for the United States, Russia, and China to keep nuclear stockpiles even while working more seriously to reduce their numbers. But the continued possession of nuclear weapons by Britain and France seems to be driven more by national pride and a quest for status than by genuine national security concerns. A dramatic gesture by either of these states toward genuine nuclear disarmament might be able to reverse the nuclearization trend before India and Pakistan come to blows. The British government could usefully make a unilateral, but conditional, declaration of nuclear disarmament.