NARRATOR: India and Pakistan each exploded five nuclear devices in a series of weapons tests last May, raising worldwide concern about the possibility of nuclear war on the Indian subcontinent. What led to the recent nuclear tests? And where does the world go from here? Can the nuclear neighbors, long mired in a bloody territorial dispute, resolve their differences before it is too late? This week, America's Defense Monitor will explore the grim possibility of nuclear war between India and Pakistan

India and Pakistan's recent atomic explosions raised the specter of nuclear war in an already tense region. The nuclear neighbors have fought each other in three separate wars in the past half-century. India also shares a border with China, and a territorial dispute there led to war in 1962.

KHELI: In a sense, the psychological barrier against war isn't there in South Asia...

NARRATOR: Shirin Tahir-Kheli, a former staff member of the National Security Council, is a distinguished scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

KHELI: … when it's necessary, either as a last resort, or when it's thrust upon the leadership, war is talked about, which is unsettling.

NARRATOR: The region's most volatile dispute is the conflict between India and Pakistan over control of Kashmir--a picturesque, mostly Islamic territory which lies at the northern end of the India-Pakistan border. Today, Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan along a 500-mile Line of Control.

But throughout Kashmir, militant groups favoring Indian control, Pakistani control, or Kashmiri independence continue to battle each other and the authorities. During the past decade, violent conflict in Kashmir has claimed nearly 30,000 lives, and created countless refugees.

Michael Krepon is President of the Stimson Center, an influential, non-partisan organization seeking to reduce nuclear dangers. He warns that as bloody as the conflict in Kashmir has been, it could get worse.

KREPON: There is a very dangerous game of chicken going on in South Asia.... the fear is that the fighting that's going on now across the line of control that separates Kashmir will escalate in ways that neither side really wants, but that neither side has the capability to defuse.

I. WHAT LED TO THE NUCLEAR TESTS

NARRATOR: Nearly a quarter-century ago, in the wake of three wars with Pakistan and defeat in a border war with China, the Indian government of Indira Gandhi exploded a nuclear device in what it termed a 'peaceful nuclear test'. Since India's first nuclear explosion, observers have suspected both India and Pakistan of secretly building nuclear weapons.

OAKLEY: ...Indians having fought a war with China and seeing China test, they decided they'd better get the nuclear capability. Then there was a war between India and Pakistan, and Indians tested, so Pakistan said, 'we'd better have a nuclear capability.'

NARRATOR: Robert Oakley is a visiting fellow at the National Defense University, and served as the United States' Ambassador to Pakistan during the Bush Administration.

OAKLEY: I think the primary Indian motivation was desire to be seen and to be treated as a major power, analogous to China. India feels they should be treated the same way the Chinese are treated, they're burning with resentment that they haven't been.

NARRATOR: Last May, India and Pakistan each exploded five nuclear weapons. While the tests came as a surprise to much of the international community, close observers describe them as one more step in the struggle for power and prestige in South Asia that has been in progress for decades.

India and Pakistan are home to more than a billion people. Both possess well-equipped military forces. And, both countries have had the capability to produce nuclear weapons for years. But in the eyes of the world, China is the only country in the region with 'great power' status. This is largely because of China's nuclear arsenal, complete with inter-continental ballistic missiles.

According to professor Sumit Ganguly of Hunter College, a knowledgeable expert on conflict in South Asia, it was fear of China that inspired India's nuclear tests as much as any direct threat from Pakistan.

MR. SUMIT GANGULY: ... also in part it was directed at the Chinese because, despite U.S. dissembling on this subject, it is quite clear that the Chinese have played an important role in terms of supplying Pakistan components of nuclear weapons, in terms of providing Pakistan with missilery.

NARRATOR: China, an established nuclear power, conducted nuclear test explosions as recently as June, 1996, and has supplied Pakistan with superior nuclear and missile technology, tipping the balance of power in South Asia against India. This has been a cause for concern in India, especially among the Hindu nationalists who today head the Indian government.

India's 1997 elections brought to power a coalition government led by a conservative party of Hindu nationalists. Much as the Republicans' "Contract with America" called for higher military spending and missile defense, the election manifesto of the hawkish BJP called for India to go nuclear.

The new Indian government's policy broke from India's previous tradition of declining to build and deploy nuclear weapons, despite their capability to do so. In fact, India's leaders have had a history of lecturing the world's powers about the need to eliminate all nuclear weapons.

India's testing atomic weapons broke with that country's traditions, and it also struck a serious blow to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, a global effort to stop the spread of nuclear weapons beyond the world's five established nuclear powers: The United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and China.

According to Shirin Tahir-Kheli, India's leaders have long objected to the NPT. To begin with, India has no strong allies among the five nuclear powers.

KHELI: India has for years said that this is, as they call it, a system of nuclear apartheid... where a group of countries, five countries, have a capability that is forever denied at all levels essentially in their book, to a country such as India. India has a particular problem because one of those five countries happens to be China. And India and China have had a border war.

NARRATOR: If India's sudden decision to flex its nuclear muscles came as a shock to many, few were surprised when Pakistan responded by conducting its own series of five nuclear explosions.

KREPON: I don't see much change in Pakistani attitudes. They don't want to go first on matters pertaining to the nuclear options. But they will go second. And they've proven that last May.

NARRATOR: But there was more to the Pakistani nuclear tests than a simple tit-for-tat exchange with India. The atomic bomb has become the newest weapon in the war of wills over the fate of Kashmir.

II. IS THERE A DANGER OF NUCLEAR WAR?

GANGULY: ... there is some legitimate concern about the possibility of war and the war escalating to the nuclear level.

NARRATOR: According to most observers, the likeliest cause of a nuclear war in South Asia is the fight for control of Kashmir. The dispute over Kashmir predates Indian and Pakistani independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Even though Kashmir had a largely Muslim population, its Hindu monarch chose to join India, rather than Pakistan. Pakistan felt cheated.

GANGULY: For Pakistan, as the homeland for Muslims, as the homeland for Muslims in South Asia, it was vitally important to incorporate Kashmir, because otherwise Pakistan would not be complete...

NARRATOR: Mushahid Husain, the Pakistani government's Minister of Information, recalls that Pakistan's proposed solution, which calls for a popular vote in Kashmir to decide that territory's fate, has been endorsed by the United Nations. But the Indian authorities have thus far resisted.

HUSAIN: There are UN resolutions, resolutions of the United Nations, which say there should be a plebescite in Kashmir, and let the people of Kashmir decide whether they want to go with India or Pakistan.

NARRATOR: Still no agreement exists to settle the dispute, which at times has reached the pitch of holy war.

KREPON: Pakistan wants international help in resolving the Kashmir dispute with India.

HUSAIN: Let us focus on resolving Kashmir, because now, after the nuclear tests between, the Indian and Pakistani tests, there is an inextricable linkage between Kashmir and the larger issue of peace, stability and security in South Asia.

KREPON: Pakistan is seeking to get that help by pointing to the Kashmir dispute as a nuclear flashpoint. And to lend credence to that, Pakistan has heated up that line of control, with a lot of firing and a lot of violence. India has responded in kind. So it's a very dangerous game.

NARRATOR: Some observers had hoped that a balance of nuclear terror in South Asia would have a sobering effect on relations between India and Pakistan. But thus far the specter of nuclear war has failed to quell the violence in Kashmir. (border ceremony. more Kashmir gore)

KHELI: institutions like the intelligence agencies think they have much greater leeway than they might actually have, thinking the envelope is that much further to push. Because if war is unthinkable, that gives greater latitude. So in all ways I think it makes the potential for war more likely.

NARRATOR: But could escalation of the Kashmir conflict lead to a nuclear war? Unlike the more experienced nuclear powers, India and Pakistan do not have a clear, published doctrine of when and how nuclear weapons would be used in a war. But leaders in both countries do stress that their nuclear weapons are only a deterrent, and not an offensive weapon.

CHANDRA: We have said that we will never undertake a first use.

NARRATOR: Naresh Chandra is India's Ambassador to the United States.

CHANDRA: We have clarified that we viewed our nuclear capabilities as a deterrent, not as a means of projecting aggressive designs on any neighbor.

NARRATOR: Pakistani officials have echoed India's claim that its nuclear arsenal is also for defensive purposes.

HUSAIN: Of course, we say Pakistan's bomb is meant only for security and self-defense.

NARRATOR: But wherever there are nuclear weapons, there is an implied willingness to use them. And both India and Pakistan are today developing and testing new medium-range missiles, which could potentially carry nuclear warheads. The climate of tension, secrecy, and mistrust which surrounds these missile programs may present the greatest nuclear danger in South Asia.

III. INDIA AND PAKISTAN: HOW WOULD A NUCLEAR WAR START?

KREPON: Neither India nor Pakistan has the ability to read what each other is doing with its missile programs. They don't have the intelligence capabilities. And this is a very jittery region. So if a missile moves, if a missile is flight-tested, people go on edge.

NARRATOR: In the tense environment of South Asia, missile tests and other military exercises, including nuclear tests, could be misinterpreted as actual preparations for war. As each side responds to the other's movements, a state of rising mutual alarm could erupt into a crisis. In such an event, whatever controls exist over the use of nuclear weapons could break down.

GANGULY: One of the real shortcomings is that neither decision-makers in India nor Pakistan thought of what they would do the day after. They were so enamored of the nuclear weapons themselves, and the ability to test nuclear weapons, that no-one gave adequate thought to what kinds of command and control would we like.

NARRATOR: The lack of established safety and control measures increases the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear explosion in a crisis, which could set off an all-out nuclear war.

GANGULY: there should be clear controls... So that it's not devolved to a local commander who, in a moment of mental weakness decides, 'well, I'm going to teach the Pakistanis a lesson', or 'I'm gonna teach the Indians a lesson'.

NARRATOR: Professor Ganguly does not imply that India or Pakistan would behave any more or less responsibly than other nuclear powers. Rather, his focus on the potential for accidents is precisely because a conscious decision by India or Pakistan to start a nuclear war simply does not make sense. To begin with, the countries are so close together, that neither could attack from a safe distance.

CHANDRA: I think the nuclear devices cannot possibly be used in Kashmir or nearabout, because people talk a lot of proximity of India and Pakistan. That also is insurance that nobody would attack each other with nuclear devices.

NARRATOR: India and Pakistan share important natural resources, including water resources, which could be destroyed if either side uses a nuclear weapon against the other. There is also a familial connection between the two countries. In fact, there are nearly as many Muslims in India as there are in Pakistan.

NARRATOR: A rational decision on either side to use nuclear weapons is also highly unlikely given their history. Even when India and Pakistan have been at war, they have both followed unwritten rules against inflicting high levels of irrevocable destruction on each other.

GANGULY: .... These were real gentlemen's wars, if one may use that term. India could have very easily bombed water resources in the Pakistani Punjab and wreaked havoc. And the Pakistanis could have done the same thing, but they chose not to do that.

NARRATOR: Even though a rational, calculated decision by either India or Pakistan to use nuclear weapons is unlikely, a false alarm, a sudden and intolerable provocation, escalation of a conventional war, or a tragic error in a moment of crisis--any of these could set off a nuclear nightmare.

IV. NUCLEAR WAR BETWEEN INDIA AND PAKISTAN: WHAT WOULD BE THE CONSEQUENCES?

NARRATOR: Regardless of how a nuclear war might start in South Asia, there is little doubt that it would be the worst disaster of modern times.

KHELI: ... this is a weapon of horror, and the consequences of its use would be disastrous for both sides.

KREPON: There have been some studies of the consequences of a nuclear exchange by South Asians. And they've all arrived at the same conclusion. That the use of a nuclear weapon is very likely to cause casualties far in excess of those that were incurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

GANGULY: The costs would make Hiroshima look like a minor skirmish.... There is no point of surviving a nuclear war. In fact the survivors might actually envy the people who died.

NARRATOR: Some of the world's most densely populated cities could be destroyed, and water and land resources, upon which countless millions of people depend, could be rendered toxic forever. A region already underdeveloped, and at times unstable, might never recover from such devastation.

Apart from the inconceivable costs in lives lost and environmental damage, a nuclear war in South Asia would threaten stability all over the world.

GANGULY: I think politically it would have a devastating effect on international relations. Because there has been a nuclear taboo since Hiroshima and Nagasaki. People have come to the brink, have stared into the abyss and then pulled back.... And I worry that once that nuclear taboo is broken, what consequences that has for the future of the taboo. And most international relations scholars agree on this.

NARRATOR: Just as there is agreement on the destructiveness of a nuclear war in South Asia, there is widespread agreement that the United States has a role to play in helping to avert such a nuclear nightmare.

V. AVERTING A NUCLEAR WAR: A ROLE FOR THE U.S.

NARRATOR: There are two important roles the United States can play in averting a crisis in South Asia. We can share our experience and expertise in matters related to safety and controls over nuclear weapons. And we can use our international standing to reduce tensions in the region by helping to negotiate and support a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir conflict, just as we have done recently in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and the Balkans.

KHELI: I think that one of the most important things the United States and others in the international community can do is to very actively--not just encourage--but push India and Pakistan into normalization between the two of them....

NARRATOR: Ironically, one potential avenue for increased cooperation between India and Pakistan is in the field of nuclear weapons. In order to guard against the possibility of an accident or miscalculation leading to a nuclear disaster, India and Pakistan must be willing to share information about each other's nuclear weapons programs.

OAKLEY: ... they're gonna have to work it out for themselves. I'm glad they've begun to talk to each other, and they've begun to talk to each other about just this. How they can have better early warning, how they could make sure they don't accidentally touch off a conflict by surprising the other side, more transparency, all these things...

HUSAIN: We feel that it is essential that nuclear rules of the game be established now between India and Pakistan. More so after both have become nuclear powers. And the U.S. can play a role in helping devise and establish and implement these nuclear rules of the game.

NARRATOR: The door is open for the United States to counsel these new nuclear neighbors on the importance of clear, published guidelines on the use of nuclear weapons. In addition, the United States can use its experiences with the Soviet Union to help India and Pakistan implement safety and control measures.

GANGULY: I know this is completely heretical to the non-proliferation community in this country, but I would work both with India and Pakistan to suggest things like Permissive Action Links… These are various kinds of technological devices which ensure that nuclear weapons are not accidentally fired, for example. That command and control of nuclear weapons remains fairly tight--under fairly tight controls.

NARRATOR: But in order to lend its experience and support to any nuclear dialogue between India and Pakistan, the United States must be willing to change its view of South Asia as a strategically unimportant region, and rethink our chilly diplomatic posture toward both India and Pakistan.

HUSAIN: This region includes 1.2 billion people. One fifth of humanity. And this is the only region with two nuclear-armed adversaries.

KREPON: It's very rare for India and Pakistan to get the kind of high-level attention that they now have gotten from the executive branch.

NARRATOR: The United States government responded to the May nuclear tests by promptly imposing economic sanctions on India and Pakistan. But since the shock has worn off, and because both India and Pakistan have declared that they will not test any more nuclear weapons in the future, most of the sanctions have been lifted and a constructive dialogue with the United States has begun.

OAKLEY: Saying, 'hold it right there,' that's the important thing. I think that's happened, now we're trying to get them to take some concrete steps, and this is going to take a little while. It took us and the Russians almost 20 years, and we're expecting India and Pakistan to do it in 6 months? That's the only part where I think we're sort of unrealistic. I think we've made a lot of progress.

CHANDRA: luckily I found it personally, and so did my government, that channels of communication were open, and media, the think-tanks, academia, congressmen, were all available for discussion. I got a lot of understanding everywhere. And it can only happen in U.S. I think in no other country would the Ambassador have had such great opportunity to talk to people and present the case of his government…

NARRATOR: A growing well of trust and understanding between the United States, India and Pakistan has made a three-way nuclear dialogue possible. But the essential step to avoid a costly arms race or a nuclear confrontation in South Asia is for India and Pakistan to negotiate a peace agreement over Kashmir. After all, the easing of conflict in South America eventually led that continent to declare itself a nuclear-free zone.

OAKLEY: Argentina and Brazil were willing to give up their nuclear weapons when the tensions between them went down. And the governments inside both countries changed and they said, 'OK, together we'll do this.'

CHANDRA: we have been pursuing a possible dialogue with Pakistan, recently that dialogue has been resumed. And we are hopeful that the two governments can sit together and resolve all differences.

HUSAIN: India and Pakistan have started talking to each other. But we have had 7 or 8 rounds of talks, and it's become a dialogue of the deaf. A reaffirmation of old positions. So there's no forward movement....

NARRATOR: The United States has the stature, and the opportunity, to play a major part in promoting peace in South Asia. The main question is whether we have the desire to do so.

KHELI: The U.S. became in 1986 the major trading partner for India, and continues to be until this day. So even economically it's a very important country. For Pakistan, it's had a history of good relations with the United States, and there is an expectation and experience of looking to the U.S.

HUSAIN: If the U.S. is involved, if the U.S. is interested in this region, which is the world's premier flashpoint, then the U.S. can play an effective role in defusing tensions, and trying to get Kashmir resolved.

NARRATOR: American mediators have played vital roles in negotiating peace agreements in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Northern Ireland. The current climate of tension in South Asia demands that the United States reverse its diplomatic neglect of the region, and of the Kashmir conflict in particular.

HUSAIN: So on Kashmir, the U.S. could consider appointing a special envoy, a special coordinator, who could be assigned to work full time...

NARRATOR: South Asian leaders are aware that the continuation of the conflict there is leaving them behind the rest of the world's progress toward stability and peace.

HUSAIN: Before our eyes, in our own time, things have changed. Why not Kashmir? Why not India and Pakistan? How can South Asia be immune to the immutable forces of change? To the logic of history? And I think the demands of peace, the demands of realpolitik, U.S. Interests, interests of the international community, dictate a very active, a very assertive, and a very proactive role on Kashmir and on South Asia, and we hope that Washington takes the initiative.

ADM. CARROLL: Minister Husain's call for action in Washington is right on the mark. As the most powerful nation in the world, U.S. leadership is essential in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. Until we set the example for the other nuclear powers,