Twenty-five years have elapsed since India carried out six nuclear tests and announced its ambitions to be a nuclear power. Pakistan reacted with seven tests. Worldwide condemnation followed. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council enforced sanctions. A year later, the Kargil conflict, which was limited in terms of geography and quantum of force, was fought under the nuclear shadow, even though at that time both nations hardly had any operational nuclear weapons capability. Yet it played a role, and to some unknown extent contained the conflict. In the quarter of the century that has gone by,…