Nothing Can Possibly Go Wrong

India has decided to join the general sanity by revoking the special status which Kashmir has held for sixty-five years and announcing plans to carve up the territory. There is a state-wide communications blackout, and Pakistan has reacted much as one would expect, sending the Indian ambassador packing and expressing concern lest the Modi government should wish to resurrect the good old days of the Gujarat riots. (Although the word Muslim appears in the report by Britain's leading liberal newspaper, the term Hindu nationalist is, impartially enough, nowhere to be seen.) Still, the occurrence of these uncomfortable events during the anniversary week of the glorious victories at Hiroshima and Nagasaki should remind us to take comfort in the fact that both Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons. It was, of course, the presence of Anglo-American weapons of mass destruction which kept the peace in Europe throughout the Cold War; and the claimants of Kashmir have no need to deal with either the beastly machinations of Brussels or the notorious Soviet urge to march into Whitehall.