Fifteen years ago there were probably three major hotspots in the world: The Korean Peninsula, the Middle East and Kashmir. All three of them involved nuclear weapons.

Ranked in terms of potential flare-ups, the Middle East was at the top followed by Korea because the United States was heavily involved in both those disputes. Kashmir was well down the list because it was mainly a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan, although China also had a foothold in the picture postcard mountain region. Kashmir, however, seemed more manageable than the other two hotspots.

This month, however, Kashmir moved up the troublesome leader board after Muslim terrorists murdered a group of Indian tourists. The links between the Pakistan government and the terrorists is uncertain. What is known is that Pakistan is controlled by the army and the army is control by General Asim Munir, an Islamic scholar who recently referred to Kashmir as “the jugular vein of Pakistan.”

The Hindu nationalist government of Narendra Modi does not need much to encourage it to go after Pakistan. It did so this week by threatening to cut Pakistan off from vital water supplies and by launching a surgical strike 70 miles inside Pakistan in the important Punjab region.

Pakistan responded by shooting down Indian war planes and by firing the opening shots in South Asia’s first drone war.

Then, both sides appear to have taken a step back to catch their breath and review the situation. Pakistan has said it will respond to the latest fighting “at a time and place of its choosing,” which is usually interpreted a step towards a ceasefire.

All of this would be encouraging if the world had not moved on in the past 15 years—and not in a good way. For a start, in Ukraine, Europe is the middle of its first major conflict involving Russia since the end of War Two. On the other side of the European land mass, North Korea is nuclear-armed and equipped with the missiles to deliver them and China is making increasingly bellicose moves around Taiwan and the South China Sea.

In the Middle East, more than two million Gazans are being starved to death by an Israeli government who appears determined to condemn the region to perpetual war.

In Europe a string of populist and “illiberal” political parties and governments are dividing electorates and driving them away from cooperation towards narrow nationalist-focussed policies.

And finally, in the United States, voters have elected a president who is splitting the Western Alliance, relinquishing America’s leadership role and allying his country with autocratic and populist governments whose positions run counter to 250 years of tried and tested American values.

The world has changed dramatically in the past 15 years. A weakened and over-extended West and an unwilling America means that the revival of old conflicts in Kashmir can boil over faster and more dangerously than before.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”