ABSTRACT
Since the nuclear testing by India and Pakistan in May 1998, many countries have expressed the need for introducing an effective restraint regime in South Asia. The continuing conflict over Kashmir was seen as a potential flashpoint that could cause a nuclear exchange between the two countries. Unable to convince India and Pakistan to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), many Western countries began to describe South Asia as an unstable region, which could witness the first nuclear war between the two countries. This may have been an important strategy to pressurize the two countries into signing the treaty, or, possibly, to warn them of the impending doomsday. While it is difficult to deny the risks involved in acquiring and maintaining nuclear weapons, to insinuate that both India and Pakistan were irresponsible nations was more than a little unreasonable.
