How robust is India-Pakistan deterrence?

The risk that hostility between India and Pakistan may generate nuclear war depends upon factors too diverse and shifting for a simple prediction or a ssessment. Overall, the underpinnings of deterrence seem less solid than th ey had become in at least the later years of the Cold War between the Unite d States and Soviet Union. Stability in that setting became, however, very robust, and to say that risk is higher in South Asia is not to say that it is in absolute terms at all high. Nevertheless, the magnitude and repercuss ions of the catastrophe, should it happen, require that everything practica ble be done to reduce the risk. By far the biggest contribution would be a settlement of the Kashmir conflict.