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It was only a few years ago that the greatest threat the Indian subcontinent posed to world peace was not the plots hatched by Islamist militants, but the prospect of a nuclear holocaust. Eight years ago, the world's first conflict between two nuclear-armed nations was only narrowly averted by the last-minute intervention of the world's leading powers. A dispute that began in December 2001, when Islamist extremists based in Pakistan attacked the Indian parliament, escalated to the point that, by the following year, Pakistan's president was warning India "not to expect a conventional war".

Similar tensions surfaced in 2008, when another group of Pakistani terrorists attacked Mumbai's hotel district, and 174 people lost their lives. As in 2001, the...