Some good comments on the article:
The fact is that Pakistan's dispute with India, wether on Kashmir or otherwise, is not about its security. Pakistan's dispute with India, in line with its raison d'être, is ideological, now heavily imbued with Islamic overtones. No matter how ridiculous it sounds, Pakistan views itself as India's equal and therefore seeks parity in all respects, culturally, militarily and economically. This is why it insists that any visit to India by a US president must be "balanced" by a visit to Pakistan. Of course, the reality is very different and so, as it finds itself trailing India in almost all respects, it seeks parity by seeking to retard India's growth and development by making itself a constant nuisance and threat through terrorist activity and by stoking an arms race with India that. The real problem is that the US continues to view Pakistan's actions in terms of security and keeps trying to address that through economic and military aid and pressure on India to engage and address Pakistan's "security concerns". It is this futile diplomacy to which Modi has now put a stop and this is what the West needs to do as well, i.e. stop rewarding Pakistan's bad behaviour and nuclear blackmail, otherwise things will only get worse for all of us.
When India sneezes Pakistan screams. And vice versa. And yet Pakistan is by the far more dangerous of the two, not because its government is less democratic (though it is) but because it's so weak. Its military is in bed with extremist groups like the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba and even al-Qaeda (do we know as yet who was protecting bin Laden in Abbottabad?), and Mr. Sharif sits idly by blaming India for his nation's problems. At some point the Salafists are going to move on from Quetta and Peshawar and mount a real threat to Islamabad. Hopefully, the U.S. and Russia have jointly come up with a plan to move those nukes out of Pakistan before that happens. If not, we may, in fact, end up with a nuclear state controlled by terrorists. If so, the betting line for the continued existence of our planet will be greatly altered.
There are well published dirty deal of the Afghan war that Pakistan dictator Zia had extracted a concession early on from Reagan that Pakistan would work with the CIA against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and in return the United States would provide massive aid and would agree to look the other way on the question of the bomb. Pakistan was considered to have great strategic importance. It provided Washington with a springboard into neighboring Afghanistan - a route for passing US weapons and cash to the mujahideen, who were battling to oust the Soviet army that had invaded in 1979. Starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan's presidency and the great harm he manage to inflict on America like sustaining Mujahideen and turning blind eye when Pakistan was developing Nuclear weapon. History will no doubt rate Reagan near the bottom of US presidential list.
India did not develop nuclear weapons because of Pakistan - because it already had a conventional weapons superiority over Pakistan. In fact building nuclear weapons would ensure parity between two nuclear weapons states instead of the clear superiority in conventional weapons terms which India enjoyed starting in the 1970's. India developed nuclear weapons because China threatened to intervene in India-Pakistan military dispute and it is a nuclear weapons power. China basically made Pakistan a nuclear weapons power through illegal sale and support. India believed it needed nuclear weapons because China (Pakistan's backer and supporter) had nuclear weapons. Finally, just compare India's proliferation record with Pakistan before expressing a view - India's record is impeccable, Pakistan's a disaster.
Let us begin by acknowledging the reality that Pakistan is a state owned by its military rather than the other way around. This explains why Pakistan's nuclear capability is so much more dangerous. Its large and rapidly growing nuclear arsenal is controlled entirely by the military whlle India's is controlled by its elected civilian leaders. The Pakistani military views that arsenal as actual weapons of war rather than of deterrence, as evidenced by its decision to develop and deploy tactical weapons. Thus, Pakistan refuses to adopt a no-first use policy, while India does, making Pakistan the greater threat to nuclear stability in the Subcontinent. Finally, the claim that India is a threat to Pakistan's national integrity and survival used to justify unstable Pakistan having one of the world's largest nuclear stocks, is patently absurd. Why would India with its own huge developmental challenges want to take on Pakistan's nearly broke economy and conflict-ridden society. Rather, bringing us full-cirlce, the threat from India is the narrative used and hyped by the Pakistani military for seven decades to legitimize its ultimate control of Pakistan's national decision-making and its actual control of what is conservatively estimated to be a third of its economy.