Why the World's Most Dangerous Flashpoint Isn't North Korea: Its Between India and Pakistan | World Defense

Why the World's Most Dangerous Flashpoint Isn't North Korea: Its Between India and Pakistan

Arjun

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Why the World's Most Dangerous Flashpoint Isn't North Korea: Its Between India and Pakistan
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One factor Indian leaders would be forced to consider is how the other third of Asian nuclear triangle, China, would react. Although the Stimson Center event focused primarily on India and Pakistan, China has always been the primary focus of India’s nuclear program. Beijing is also a staunch if informal ally of Pakistan, with a growing economic stake in the country. It is this multipolarity that is the hallmark of the second nuclear age.

With the world’s attention firmly fixated on North Korea, the greatest possibility of nuclear war is in fact on the other side of Asia.

That place is what could be called the nuclear triangle of Pakistan, India and China. Although Chinese and Indian forces are currently engaged in a standoff, traditionally the most dangerous flashpoint along the triangle has been the Indo-Pakistani border. The two countries fought three major wars before acquiring nuclear weapons, and one minor one afterwards. And this doesn’t even include the countless other armed skirmishes and other incidents that are a regular occurrence.



At the heart of this conflict, of course, is the territorial dispute over the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, the latter part of which Pakistan lays claim to. Also key to the nuclear dimension of the conflict is the fact that India’s conventional capabilities are vastly superior to Pakistan’s. Consequently, Islamabad has adopted a nuclear doctrine of using tactical nuclear weapons against Indian forces to offset the latter’s conventional superiority.



If this situation sounds similar, that is because this is the same strategy the U.S.-led NATO forces adopted against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In the face of a numerically superior Soviet military, the United States, starting with the Eisenhower administration, turned to nuclear weapons to defend Western Europe from a Soviet attack. Although nearly every U.S. president, as well as countless European leaders, were uncomfortable with this escalatory strategy, they were unable to escape the military realities undergirding it until at least the Reagan administration.


At an event at the Stimson Center in Washington, Feroz Khan, a former brigadier in the Pakistan Army and author of one of the best books on the country’s nuclear program, said that Pakistani military leaders explicitly based their nuclear doctrine on NATO’s Cold War strategy. But as Vipin Narang, a newly tenured MIT professor who was on the same panel, pointed out, an important difference between NATO and Pakistan’s strategies is that the latter has used its nuclear shield as a cover to support countless terrorist attacks inside India. Among the most audacious were the 2001 attacks on India’s parliament and the 2008 siege of Mumbai, which killed over 150 people. Had such an attack occurred in the United States, Narang said, America would have ended a nation-state.

(This first appeared in July.)

The reason why India didn’t respond to force, according to Narang, is that—despite its alleged Cold Start doctrine—Indian leaders were unsure exactly where Pakistan’s nuclear threshold stood. That is, even if Indian leaders believed they were launching a limited attack, they couldn’t be sure that Pakistani leaders wouldn’t view it as expansive enough to justify using nuclear weapons. This is no accident: as Khan said, Pakistani leaders intentionally leave their nuclear threshold ambiguous. Nonetheless, there is no guarantee that India’s restraint will continue in the future. Indeed, as Michael Krepon quipped, “Miscalculation is South Asia’s middle name.”

Much of the panel’s discussion was focused on technological changes that might exacerbate this already-combustible situation. Narang took the lead in describing how India was acquiring the capabilities to pursue counterforce strikes (i.e., take out Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in a preventive or more likely preemptive strike). These included advances in information, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to be able to track and target Islamabad’s strategic forces, as well as a missile-defense system that could take care of any missiles the first strike didn’t destroy. He also noted that India is pursuing a number of missile capabilities highly suited for counterforce missions, such as Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs), Maneuverable Reentry Vehicles (MARVs) and the highly accurate BrahMos missiles that Dehli developed jointly with Russia. “BrahMos is one hell of a counterforce weapon,” even without nuclear warheads, Narang contended.

As Narang himself admitted, there’s little reason to believe that India is abandoning its no-first-use nuclear doctrine in favor of a first-strike one. Still, keeping in mind Krepon’s point about miscalculation, that doesn’t mean that these technological changes don’t increase the potential for a nuclear war. It is not hard to imagine a scenario where the two sides stumble into a nuclear war that neither side wants. Perhaps the most plausible scenario would start with a Mumbai-style attack that Indian leaders decide they must respond to. In hopes of keeping the conflict limited to conventional weapons, Delhi might authorize limited punitive raids inside Pakistan, perhaps targeting some of the terrorist camps near the border. These attacks might be misinterpreted by Pakistani leaders, or else unintentionally cross Islamabad’s nuclear thresholds. In an attempt to deescalate by escalating, or else to halt what they believe is an Indian invasion, Pakistani leaders could use tactical nuclear weapons against the Indian troops inside Pakistan.

With nuclear weapons introduced, Delhi’s no-first-use doctrine no longer applies. Indian leaders, knowing they’d face incredible domestic pressure to respond, would also have no guarantee that Pakistani leaders didn’t intend to follow the tactical use of nuclear weapons with strategic strikes against Indian cities. Armed with what they believe is reasonable intelligence about the locations of Pakistan’s strategic forces, highly accurate missiles and MIRVs to target them, and a missile defense that has a shot at cleaning up any Pakistani missiles that survived the first strike, Indian leaders might be tempted to launch a counterforce first strike. As former Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon wrote in his memoirs (which Narang first drew people’s attention to at the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Conference in March): “India would hardly risk giving Pakistan the chance to carry out a massive nuclear strike after the Indian response to Pakistan using tactical nuclear weapons. In other words, Pakistani tactical nuclear weapon use would effectively free India to undertake a comprehensive first strike against Pakistan.”

One factor Indian leaders would be forced to consider is how the other third of Asian nuclear triangle, China, would react. Although the Stimson Center event focused primarily on India and Pakistan, China has always been the primary focus of India’s nuclear program. Beijing is also a staunch if informal ally of Pakistan, with a growing economic stake in the country. It is this multipolarity that is the hallmark of the second nuclear age.
 

I.R.A

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With the world’s attention firmly fixated on North Korea, the greatest possibility of nuclear war is in fact on the other side of Asia.

I don't agree with words "Greatest possibility" in comparison to DPRK. DPRK still remains defiant and isolated, that man seems to have made up his mind. On the other hand ..... yes of course there is possibility of clash between India and Pakistan ...... but compared to DPRK both of them understand and know they have everything to loose. Another key point we skip in our comparison of DPRK vs rest of the allies and India vs Pakistan ........ the populations of all three countries are very different, North Koreans have little to no outside exposure compared to Indians and Pakistanis ....... this is literally classic example of a frog living in a pond and dolphins that have swam in free vast oceans ....... both would have different views of their surroundings and a very different behavior. Whatever form of governments in India and Pakistan would still be better than DPRK ...... they would have greater sense of responsibility, checks and balances than a single person with full control over everything. It boils down to do we want nuclear confrontation? In case of India and Pakistan ...... the answer no matter what the situation be would be "no" ....... and in case of DPRK you will witness a ICBM test fired every month.

Plus nuclear confrontation in India vs Pakistan has greater stakes ....... its almost end of the world thing. No one will escape it, so assuming that India and Pakistan are free canons compared to DPRK ........ well in my view is childish.
 

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I don't agree with words "Greatest possibility" in comparison to DPRK. DPRK still remains defiant and isolated, that man seems to have made up his mind. On the other hand ..... yes of course there is possibility of clash between India and Pakistan ...... but compared to DPRK both of them understand and know they have everything to loose. Another key point we skip in our comparison of DPRK vs rest of the allies and India vs Pakistan ........ the populations of all three countries are very different, North Koreans have little to no outside exposure compared to Indians and Pakistanis ....... this is literally classic example of a frog living in a pond and dolphins that have swam in free vast oceans ....... both would have different views of their surroundings and a very different behavior. Whatever form of governments in India and Pakistan would still be better than DPRK ...... they would have greater sense of responsibility, checks and balances than a single person with full control over everything. It boils down to do we want nuclear confrontation? In case of India and Pakistan ...... the answer no matter what the situation be would be "no" ....... and in case of DPRK you will witness a ICBM test fired every month.

Plus nuclear confrontation in India vs Pakistan has greater stakes ....... its almost end of the world thing. No one will escape it, so assuming that India and Pakistan are free canons compared to DPRK ........ well in my view is childish.

Besides this (which I largely agree with, barring some really psychotic mulla or sanghi going rogue), maybe it is my generation, but I genuinely feel there is still a people to people connect between India and Pakistan. Which I feel has been largely purged between North and South Koreans due to economic and cultural isolationism of decades. Hell, they even look different now. With a difference of uite a few inches in the average height .... which kind of strongly brings home the degree of social impact the cleavage had there on what was initially the same populace.

Barring incidents like 26/11 and some ghastly decapitations on the LOC, even our wars have had a degree of restraint ....

Cheers, Doc

P.S. Who's the cutie? Muscle Moron Jr? (:-)
 
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I.R.A

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Besides this (which I largely agree with, barring some really psychotic mulla or sanghi going rogue), maybe it is my generation, but I genuinely feel there is still a people to people connect between India and Pakistan. Which I fel has been largely purged between North and South Koreans due to economic and cultural isolationism of decades.

Barring incidents like 26/11 and some ghastly decapitations on the LOC, even our wars have had a degree of restraint ....

Both countries have been suffering from terrorism because of their own stupidity and unnecessary meddling into affairs of each other to settle the scores. We are two different Nations, two different beliefs but frankly behavior wise we are the same people ........ with nearly the same traits and attitude. Our scenario viz a viz DPRK and South Korea is totally different ......... we are saner at the moment and we have larger stakes than them ........ our going insane would mean "The End" for everyone.


P.S. Who's the cutie? Muscle Moron Jr? (:-)

Yep the youngest "Saifullah the destroyer" : [
 

I.R.A

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I miss that stage of my babies man. And their baby smell.

Enjoy it while it lasts. You will miss it when they grow up.

Cheers, Doc

He alone has destroyed tvs worth of 80K ......... and I won't count the other havoc he wrecks .........

But yes whenever they are away ........... every minute makes you miss them.
 
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