In May 1998, India and Pakistan put to rest years of speculation aboutwhether they possessed nuclear technology and openly tested theirweapons. Some believed nuclearization would stabilize South Asia; othersprophesized disaster. Authors of two of the most comprehensive books onSouth Asia s new nuclear era, umit Ganguly and S. Paul Kapur offercompeting theories on the transformation of the region and what thesepatterns mean for the world s next proliferators.Ganguly begins with an outcome-based approach emphasizing the resultsof militarized conflict. In his opinion, nuclear weapons have prevented Indo-Pakistani disputes from blossoming into full-scale war. Kapur counterswith a process-based approach stressing the specific pathways that leadto conflict and escalation. From his perspective, nuclear weapons havefueled a violent cycle of Pakistani provocation and Indian response, givingrise to a number of crises that might easily have spun into chaos. Kapurthus believes nuclear weapons have been a destabilizing force in SouthAsia and could similarly affect other parts of the world.With these two major interpretations, Ganguly and Kapur tackle all sidesof an urgent issue that has profound regional and global consequences