WARS WITHOUT END - THE INDO-PAKISTANI CONFLICT

The three Indo-Pakistani conflicts (1947-48, 1965, and 1971) were all characterized by a low threshold of violence, limited scope, and short duration. A number of factors explain the limited extent of these con flicts: the common British imperial heritage, the lack of doctrinal in novation, and the paucity of highly sophisticated weaponry. Although t hese three factors are no longer relevant today, the current recrudesc ence of violence in Kashmir is unlikely to lead to another full-scale war between India and Pakistan because, oddly enough, the incipient nu clearization of the region has introduced a level of stability at high er levels of violence. Only through misperception, miscalculation, and inadvertence could war once again erupt between these two states.