In a sealed conference hall in Islamabad last year, a retired Pakistani general delivered a blunt message to a gathering of strategists. “Pakistan does not have a No First Use policy, and I’ll repeat that for emphasis. Pakistan does not have a No First Use policy,” declared Lt. Gen. Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, former head of the nation’s Strategic Plans Division. Across the border, India’s leaders publicly espouse the opposite stance – a doctrine pledging that India would not be the first to launch nuclear weapons. But behind these divergent nuclear postures lies a worrisome reality: both South Asian rivals are quietly expanding their atomic arsenals, refining their missiles, and straining a fragile deterrence with new ambiguities.