Steven Lee Myers

About the author: Steven Lee Myers is a reporter for the New York Times. He frequently writes about events in Southeast Asia.

Nuclear tests by India and Pakistan in 1998 have made the possibility of nuclear war more likely. The two countries share a disputed border and have engaged in three wars against one another. Should either India or Pakistan develop the technology to deploy its nuclear weapons, they are unlikely to exercise the restraint and caution that the United States and the former Soviet Union did during the Cold War. Furthermore, China—Pakistan's ally and one of the five nuclear powers—could be pulled into the conflict, and the stability of Southeast Asia could be destroyed.

On their northern border, high in the Himalayas, India and Pakistan have for years been...