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Article: India and Pakistan: going critical. (nuclear weapons production)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- May 4, 1996
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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JUST as nuclear weapons are going out of style almost everywhere (a treaty signed last month made Africa the world's newest nuclear-weapon-free region), India and Pakistan risk getting caught up in a chain reaction that might turn their bad-neighbourly relations nuclear. Both could assemble nuclear weapons at speed, but both have stuck to a could-but-haven't form of mutual deterrence. One trigger for an open arms race could be a victory for India's avowedly pro-nuclear opposition group, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in the general election that ends on May 21st. Given their poor political relations and intense military rivalry, if India were to drop its veil of nuclear ...