India and Pakistan
...surface-to-surface missile (SSM) was launched on April 11, 1999. It did not take long for Pakistan to respond, launching its own liquid-fuel Ghauri II and the solid-fuel Shaheen I soon after on April 14, 1999. The brewing of a nuclear arms race in South Asia is far from surprising; conflict and misunderstanding have plagued Pakistan-India relations for decades. The intervention of the U.N. Security Council restored order. The two countries stopped making weapons but continued fighting. With the arrival of the missile age and of independent and restless Third World countries in south Asia multiplied the senses in which politics had become global. Intercontinental rockets, which are the most destructive weapons known, could now be propelled halfway around the world in minutes. With the world now knowing that India and Pakistan have nuclear capabilities, a new cold war seemed to be inevitable. This intense competition has affected the fields of science, technology, economic growth, social welfare, race relations, and image making. India and Pakistan are two nations that have experienced war with each other in 1947 over Kashmir, the Punjab area in 1965, and the Multan-Sind-Kutch region in 1971. The larger political objectives in any of the three wars have never been clearly spelled out. A result of these directives has been the creation of a hard, forward-defended Zone of Defense on both sides, stretching continuously along the border. Whether it is religious conflict, territorial claims, or security threats, both nations breathe tension and hostility toward each other. With an ever-increasing spread of weapons of mass destruction, the South Asian region does not escape this trend. The increase of nuclear proliferation is evident in the nuclear programs of both India and Pakistan. Both countries are still known to be accumulating relatively large stockpiles of nuclear explosive materials: plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The accumulation of weapons has furthered feared the West that an escalation of nuclear arms to counter one another is a resemblance of what the United States and the Soviet Union did back in the 80’s. India and Pakistan have two things in common. Both of them have ordered five nuclear tests, and both of them justified their orders by claiming that their nuclear weapons are defensive. As the most destructive weapo...