While many foreign policy thinkers can’t resist exploring the growing probability of military rivalries between the West and East, the cold reality is that the states most likely to experience future arms races are actually within the Asia-Pacific region itself.

Terrorist attacks in Mumbai on July 13, 2011 brought back to the forefront the issue of national security in South Asia. The bombings in India’s financial center will likely be connected to groups based in nearby Pakistan, just as previous attacks had been. While proliferation talks these days often circle around North Korea and Iran, the long and deep enmity between India and Pakistan has been considered the world’s greatest nuclear flashpoint for years.

The killing of Osama bin Laden last month highlighted the fight that is underway over the direction of Islam in Pakistan and the rest of the Islamic world. Militant Islamists who share views commonly associated with bin Laden, and who represent a small minority of Muslims, are attempting to impose their puritanical version of Islam on the moderate Muslim majority. In Pakistan, this has led to an increase in violence against Sufis.

No event exemplifies the rise of South Asia’s richest better than the grand housewarming party hosted by Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai in late 2010. Valued at over $1 billion, his family skyscraper rises 570 feet and towers over the world’s largest slums where 9 million poorer souls live, providing the starkest contrast between rich and poor anywhere on earth.

It was the stuff of nightmares. Early morning on December 3rd, 1984, as an entire community slept their homes were invaded by a silent, lethal foe. Before daylight, thousands would perish in a “blinding, vomiting, lung-searing hell.” People trampled each other in their rush to escape, leaving the streets littered with the dead.

Most of us are familiar with the conflict scenarios most likely in South Asia: a Mumbai 2008-style terrorist attack; a cross-border shelling and incursion, such as the Kargil skirmish of 1999; armed clashes between government forces and militants, in Kashmir or Baluchistan; nuclear missile exchanges between India and Pakistan; or civil war such as the one that engulfed Sri Lanka for decades.

Indian media coverage of recent diplomatic dynamics centered on Rahul Gandhi’s remarks to the U.S. Ambassador to India that Hindu extremism could pose a greater threat to the nation than Islamic militants. Coalition government spokespeople scrambled to perform damage control, and the press questioned whether Gandhi was responsible for the Congress party’s failure in elections recently held in Bihar state.