India's nuclear tests in May 1998 shocked the world. On May 11 and 13, India conducted a total of five tests. According to official Indian statements, the tests comprised three low-yield explosions, a 12 kiloton (kt) fission bomb, and a 43 kt thermonuclear device. The Indian tests triggered a quick response from Pakistan. On May 28 Pakistan conducted five nuclear tests, followed by a further test on May 30. Although some Western analysts have cast doubt on whether the two countries actually carried out the number and size of tests they claimed, India and Pakistan did conduct nuclear testing. These tests run counter to the global trend of nuclear arms reduction and have undermined not only the peace and stability of South Asia but of the world as well.

India and Pakistan have long been regarded by the international arms-control community as "nuclear threshold" or "de facto" nuclear-weapon states. They have now become declared nuclear-weapon states. The nuclear testing in South Asia will inevitably have a serious impact on regional and world politics, security, and diplomacy. This paper, which draws upon Chinese sources, analyzes the motivations of India and Pakistan and the consequences of the nuclear tests.

History has demonstrated that national leadership, time, and diplomatic genius will be needed to solve the thorny issue of the nuclear arms race in South Asia, so closely connected is it to the underlying and enduring Indian-Pakistani hostility. A Chinese source has quoted a senior Indian official as saying: "[t]he Cold War does not end in South Asia." The Chinese estimate that this confrontation will last well into the twenty-first century. How the international community responds to the tests will be crucial in determining whether the nonproliferation norm survives with credibility or is further eroded.

The nuclear crisis in South Asia is serious. However, "crisis" in the Chinese language is composed of two characters: wei--danger--and ji--opportunity. The new international situation, characterized by the coexistence of "opportunity" and "challenge," does hold out some hope that the nuclear arms race in South Asia can be capped. The challenge that confronts the international community is to turn this threat into an opportunity. The international community must move urgently in the matter. China recognizes this challenge and will play its role in this regard.

Future regional conflicts will almost certainly involve politically less stable nations or other regional actors using theater ballistic missiles armed with either nuclear, biological, or chemical warheads. The United States Air Force is attempting to deal with this threat by developing the Airborne Laser (ABL) with the goal of shooting down missiles while they are still under power and before they can release submunitions possibly containing highly toxic biological agents. This paper presents the results of an analysis of this system. It is based solely on information found in the open literature and using the basic physics and engineering involved in transmitting intense laser beams through the atmosphere. The ABL's potential capabilities and possible theaters of operation are discussed at a non-technical level.

The tasks of preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention are neither self-evident nor value-neutral, as some of their proponents seem to believe. Diplomacy that aims to resolve long-standing conflicts may have to take sides and coerce powerful parties into concessions. Diplomacy that aims to manage conflict so that it does not become violent may have to sacrifice a quest for justice in deference to the powerful. Prevention might conflict with important national and even global interests. If, as President Clinton has suggested many times, the primary American interest in Bosnia is thwarting the spread of the war, then the arms embargo has been an unqualified success. If, however, the primary American and global interest has been denying Serbian aggression and upholding the principle of Bosnian sovereignty, then the embargo has failed.

A focus on prevention ignores the role that conflict plays in driving political change in societies. For grievances to be redressed, they must be vocalized. If they are vocalized, those with a stake in the status quo will attempt to suppress them. Often the balance of change depends on the ability of the grieved to amplify the conflict to increase their support. If we have learned anything from the disparate cases of conflict resolution in recent decades -- the civil rights movement in the United States, the fight for human rights in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the fight for national self-determination in the Middle East, the fight against apartheid in South Africa -- it is that some conflicts must be intensified before they are resolved.

Preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention do not lessen the difficulty of choices for leaders, nor do they really lessen costs. For either to succeed, policymakers must still spell out their interests, set priorities among cases, and balance goals with resources. The president will still need to educate the American people about the rationale behind a policy and convince them of the need for action. Absent well-defined interests, clear goals, and prudent judgment about acceptable costs and risks, policies of preventive diplomacy and conflict prevention simply mean that one founders early in a crisis instead of later.