ABSTRACT
The interaction of global, regional, and domestic developments made South Asia very unstable in 1990. The Kashmir conflict re-ignited just when both countries were losing the support of their former Cold War benefactors, and were beginning to grope their way forward toward an accommodation with new global realities. Democracy had been “restored” in Pakistan in 1988, and India underwent an important election in 1989. Both elections were applauded by Western analysts and there was a general assumption that liberal, two-party democracies would, in South Asia, as elsewhere, make war between them difficult if not impossible in the future.14
