ABSTRACT
This chapter examines more fully the nuclear dimensions of the compound 1990 crisis. The possibility of India or Pakistan deploying and using nuclear weapons definitely accelerated American interest in the crisis, and alarmed at least some South Asian leaders. It also led to the most extraordinary speculation about the 1990 crisis in subsequent years. It was this putative nuclear element that attracted the attention of the American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, and spawned a sensationalized account of the crisis by two others.1 These, in turn, have shaped perceptions of the region by many outsiders (and also regional strategists), who either feared that India and Pakistan were “on the edge” of a nuclear crisis, or desired that the events of 1990 should, in fact, be deemed to constitute such a crisis.
