The Indian bomb is not specifically aimed at Pakistan, so the question of retaliation does not really arise. Islamabad, like any other nation, is naturally concerned about any nuclear activity in a neighbouring state, but its response ought to be tempered by reason. India has extensive borders and seaboards and is surrounded by several states.

Pakistan is only one of several factors that resulted in a perceived need for the tests. One of the provocations that immediately preceded them came, in fact, from activity in the southeast, diametrically opposite to Pakistan's location. The bomb is a blanket solution for national security, no matter which point of the compass the problemoriginates from. It would be all too easy for the Pakistani political and military establishments to reduce the situation to a simplistic Hindu bomb versus Muslim bomb issue.

They have already reduced Pakistani domestic politics to a distressingly basic level, by repeatedly using the Indo-Pak problem to assure unimaginative, uncommitted politicians adequate votes and underemployed generals a bit of work. But it would be dangerous to play the old Kashmir game with the nuclear issue.

Pakistan should also ponder on whether its economy, perched on a very narrow base, can stand the strain of sanctions. Whatever political capital its government makes out of a retaliatory test will, very likely, be lost in the economic slowdown that will follow.

If Pakistan keeps its nuclear programme in abeyance, however, it stands to gain substantially in US military aid. Pakistan should appreciate that any conflict with India may, in theory, begin with the nuclear option, but it will end with old-fashioned foot-slogging.In the wars -- limited, surrogate or formal -- that it has waged with India so far, it has not been able to demonstrate a superiority in conventional terms. It would find it profitable to accept the carrot that the US is proffering, rather than get involved in competitive testing, a game that it cannot hope to win.

The BJP government has neglected to perform some of the diplomatic functions that ought to go with a nuclear test. It has been in contact with every government in the world except the ones it should have spoken to in the first place.

Right after Pokharan II, the Prime Minister should have unilaterally offered a no-first-use guarantee to Pakistan and China. In the canon of deterrence, the point of acquiring nuclear weapons capability is to create a situation where it does not have to be used. That is assured by government-to-government initiatives, not -- as the US and the USSR realised long ago by creating larger and larger stockpiles. It is now time for the Prime Minister to start speaking tothe two powers he has studiously avoided. And specifically, he must assure Pakistan that the bomb does not have Islamabad's number on it.