India and Pakistan are sliding toward war. Perhaps we should not be surprised. There has been bad blood between the two kindred nations since they came semi-conjoined into existence in 1947. Indeed, the sanguinary circumstances of their birth defined their future enmity.

What with everything else going on, we have been slow to wake up to the danger of conflict between the two nuclear states. They have fought at least three, arguably four, wars before, but never with the Bomb.