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India Pakistan Nuclear War

Unexpectedly (or may be, expectedly), the killing of bin Laden had some ramifications in the India Pakistan realm.

Pakistan issued thinly veiled threats against India that it should not even think about doing anything similar to what the U.S. Navy SEALs did. Hmmmm ...
Clearly, Indian generals were engaging in needless bluster when they declared that India had the capability to mount the same sort of mission that the U.S. did.

In an worst case scenario, Pakistan will resort to the use of nuclear weapons against India. I've a funny thought in this regard: what if Pakistan lets one fly into India, say New Delhi, and the missile ends up a dud.
I can well imagine the breathless reporting of the Indian TV news channel reporters. Imagine young reporters blabbering breathlessly with a sense of excitement that would be perhaps second only to if aliens make contact or if E.T. lands on Earth.

How would India respond to such an attack? Will trigger happy generals want to do as Pakistan did? Well, the ultimate control for the Indian nuclear weapons lies with the civilian leadership. Is the Indian leadership likely to indulge in some activity that will lead to thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths?
Do leaders in India think that the general Pakistani population harbors some deep seated ill feeling or mistrust towards India?

Of course, I am equally certain that Pakistani leadership will consider all the ramifications before launching a nuclear attack against India.

My thoughts turn to the Western nations who clearly were the pioneers in this arena. The United States and the Soviet Union each possessed once upon a time more than 20,000 active nuclear warheads once upon a time. So, when Western nations talk about how India and Pakistan are, sort of, juvenile, I tend to consider the track record of these two superpowers.

After all, what does it say about a nation or nations that does not worry about possessing 20,000 plus nuclear weapons. The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction is well known. But does it make sense?
If the superpowers were crazy enough even to consider a MAD scenario and indeed perhaps tout it as the highest kind of strategic vision, then India and Pakistan merely planning to kill millions of individuals would appear to be lesser evils.
The assumption of superiority by certain nations is unwarranted. Clearly, it's a dangerous possibility that nuclear weapons or designs might fall into the hands of various kinds of fanatics such as Islamic demagogues. And one must fight such possibilities with all the force one can muster. One must remember that all sorts of religious overzealousness is bad.




Follow me on Twitter: @sachi_bbsr

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