In past years the global community has on occasion held its collective breath, watching as the newest members of the most exclusive club in the world threaten to play the game to its ultimate nightmarish conclusion. In this club platinum is insignificant---but plutonium gets you a VIP pass. This is the nuclear club, in which India and Pakistan now play chicken over the most dangerous piece of real estate in the world: Kashmir

The more remote roots of this conflict lie in the 8th century, when Islamic troops conquered the Indian regions of Sindh and Multan - the future Pakistan. After centuries of tension, both Muslim and Hindu unexpectedly found themselves under the colonial thrall of some young thugs on the rise - England. British rule of India both soothed and exacerbated the religious-cultural tensions. After WWII, a beat-down England relinquished its former colony and partitioned the Indian Empire. The smaller Islamic state became Pakistan while the larger India remained the home of Hinduism. It didn't take long for the two to become bitter archrivals. And Kashmir became the symbol of their hatred.

Once a flowering of Shaivist and Buddhist culture, Kashmir became the Asian subcontinent's Cold War battlefield. In 1948, a mere 6 months after their mutual independence, India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir. A ceasefire was brokered and a Line of Control established between the bickering enemies. Nevertheless a second war broke out in 1965---not ending until the Line of Control was reestablished. To make a bad situation worse, in 1966 India declared its pursuit of a nuclear arsenal. In 1998 they made good on that promise, testing five nuclear devices. To the surprise of everyone, including the dumbfounded folks at US intelligence, Pakistan followed with its own show of force---testing six nuclear weapons (one more than India of course). The newest members of the nuclear playaz club had just bum rushed the door.

Thus when a third dispute over Kashmir erupted in 1999, the world paid attention as both India and Pakistan made it quite plain they had no qualms in doing the unthinkable. Suddenly the nightmare of thermonuclear holocaust, relegated to old US-Soviet tensions, became very real again. And from Washington to the UN, diplomats were sent scurrying to defuse the situation. A solution was reached just as the game of nuclear poker reached dangerous levels. And along the Line of Control India and Pakistan backed down, averting disaster.

In 2001, the conflict arose yet again. As Islamic militants daily attacked Indian security forces in Kashmir, the Indians blamed Pakistan for supplying the insurgents. They responded by shelling Pakistani military targets. When an armed terrorist attack on Indian parliament left 14 dead, India again pointed its finger at Pakistani backed Kashmir militants. Dramatic military build-up began along the Pakistani-Indian border, with both nations again rattling sabers. Indian forces battled Kashmir militants regularly, all the while holding Pakistan responsible. This has now culminated in more than a million troops from India and Pakistan poised at the Line of Control, on the brink of a war that could quickly turn nuclear.

The US led War on Terror has until now overshadowed what could turn out to be a War of Horror on the sub-continent. At last realizing the danger, the US administration has scrambled top officials to the region in the hopes of defusing the crisis. In a remarkable bout of irony, one of the world's nuclear superpowers is trying to persuade the newest members to its club to simma' down naw.

Since the US first dropped Fat Man and Little Boy on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it has fiercely guarded membership to its club. The effort has been less than successful. The Soviet Union would be the first to join, helping launch the already burgeoning Cold War. Today membership has extended to the UK, France, China, Israel, India and Pakistan. Others applying for membership have included Libya, Iraq, Iran and N. Korea. A few like Algeria, Argentina, Belarus, Brazil, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up on joining. S. Africa actually returned its membership card, opting for sanity. By far the biggest playaz in the club are the US, with about 11,000 nuclear warheads, and Russia with a massive 22,000. All together there are probably 35,000 nuclear weapons in the world. The current nuclear clock (reflecting how close the world is to a nuclear war scenario) is set at 7 minutes to midnight. The farthest it has ever been is 14 minutes to midnight (1991). The closest it has ever been is 2 minutes to midnight (1953).

The atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 by the US killed some 200,000+ people. Many more would die in later years from the fallout. Today's higher yield nuclear weapons make their atomic ancestors an obsolete joke. The US Navy's 18 Trident Missile Submarines alone have enough nuclear firepower to end near all human life on the planet - twice.

Of late the founder of this elite club has been playing at contradictions. On the one hand the US recently signed a historic nuclear arms pact with Russia, drastically reducing their "strategic" arsenal. The US has spoken out heavily against nuclear proliferation, actually paying some nations not to seek membership. Yet on the flipside, the US has threatened to destabilize the already dangerous nuclear balancing act by pulling out of the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, attempting to develop a 50/50-chance-of-working missile defense system and purposefully leaking its inflammatory nuclear deployment strategy in a flex of muscles. With such mixed messages, it's hard to imagine the younger playaz are going to listen to this O.G.

So here we are in the summer of 2002, with many officials warning that India and Pakistan are closer to nuclear war than both the US and the Soviets were during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Pakistan has responded to Indian military build-up by showing off its short-range missiles, all of which could be outfitted to carry nuclear warheads. India is estimated to have between 40 to 150 warheads. Pakistan may have 25 to 50. But it doesn't take too many to cause a holocaust.

Estimates show that a limited nuclear exchange between the two would kill some 12 million people---immediately. This doesn't include those that will die later from fallout, firestorms, etc. The radiation cloud would cause an unprecedented ecological disaster throughout most of Asia, spreading as far as the Middle East. Depending on climate and wind conditions, there is no reason to think the effects could not be felt as far away as the US. The humanitarian catastrophe alone would overwhelm both feuding nations, deplete their neighbors and exhaust agencies worldwide. Could it possibly get worse? Oh ... with nuclear weapons, there's always a "worse" around the corner.

The sum of all fears is that the feuding is not contained. The larger nuclear power in the region is China, who until recently has been an enemy of India. So far the Chinese have been silent, thankfully urging calm. The world will have to wait and see however if they remain so. What an actual nuclear exchange would mean for the US and Russia - who yet has their nuclear weapons poised at each other - is truly unknown. Oppenheimer's deadly toy has only been used twice in human history. And Nagasaki and Hiroshima still show the scars. Were the genie to be loosed from the bottle again, no one knows what the future would hold.

Most Americans don't take such things as nuclear weapons seriously anymore. With the Cold War over, our minds have turned to trading dot.com stocks and watching reality shows. Yet, nuclear weapons still exist, sitting in their silos and their stockpiles. There are still men and women in heavily guarded facilities keeping watch over them. They're still pointed at somebody. And in unstable regions like Russia, some "might" actually be missing. Scare yourself silly sometime and ponder on just who might have made off with em' and where and how they'll pop up.

For all of you concerned with your little items of minor playa status - from ya' ice to the Cristal---keep in mind there's a much bigger and important game being played out there. And like De La said, "The Stakes is High!"---for everybody.

"...uneasy is the peace that wears a nuclear crown. And we cannot be satisfied with a situation in which the world is capable of extinction in a moment of error, or madness, or anger." -- President Lyndon B. Johnson

MORPHEUS- Exposin Fake Shyt