Dude, I am not contesting that CSD may get blown into a nuke response by Pakistan, but its idiotic to assume that Pakistan will cross the threshold and just because they use tactical nukes, India will not up the ante.. And thats what my response was. Pakistanis have a tendency to believe that they can define the boundaries of an engagement.. Like Pakistan's attack in 1965 banked on the assumption that India will not open the front on the IB. Similarly in Kargil, Musharraf assumed that India will not up the ante.. In both cases India did not conform to those assumptions and Pakistan lost the initiative. And its never the doctrines that are suicidal, but the doctrines which assume that the opponent will play by your rules are bound to fail.
Somehow , your mind is still stuck in the warfare of the third generation ... So , basically the entire premise of the CSD is flawed since it can lead upto a full scale nuclear war then , right ? ... Basically , India would have upped the ante to a very high level by invading the neighbor then , the next move will be made by Pakistan ... What else are you proposing ? ... Actually , it has very high likelihood of leading to a Mutual Assured Destruction scenario for the reason I have explained before ... No , that is not idiotic or far-from-reality to assume that India will retreat if it ever makes the mistake of crossing the borders and perhaps some thresholds , getting a couple IBG's or armored columns nuked and not backing off and eventually ending up on the point of no return , rationality somehow dictates here that no country would risk its entire population for some segments of the army
... The nuclear poker of continue , risk a billion , retreat , save them ... Likewise , I have said before that Pakistan isn't planning to use nuclear weapons when the first IA soldiers crosses the borders , that is the assumption of your dear countrymen , not ours ... We are well aware of the conventional fighting capability and caliber of the seventh largest army in the world ... Pakistan can hold on its own without nukes and defend the motherland for weeks ... Both the times you mobilized your troops , we were ready at the border to welcome you , our geography grants us that particular advantage ... Actually , it is starting to appear to me that today Indians have a tendency to underestimate the adversary and overestimate themselves ... Read a few posts by your countrymen in this thread amongst many made on the same topic and you will end up reading that somehow " Pakistanis will welcome the invading army " , " Islamabad cant use nukes by any chance " , " Pakistan army will disband immediately " , " Without nukes , they cant hold for even a day "
... Even the most senior Indian members always postulate the best case scenarios for themselves , why ? I do not know ... Is the " Shining India " delusion making them already feel like a super power ? ... Pakistan banked on the assumption of war limiting to the Kashmir region in '65 , I agree it was dead wrong ... But what happened in the Kargil one , did you dare cross even the LOC - forget the IB here ? No , the same nuclear deterrent prevented you then too , agree to it or not , it doesn't matter ... You ended up with more causalities than Pakistan whilst the Indian defense analysts and former Generals called for crossing atleast the LOC and cutting the supply lines ... What do you mean by India upping the ante then is beyond me because you were fighting for the whole time in your own controlled areas , not ours ...
Some are just more than others and your thought-over doctrine is one of them !
We aren't hoping/asking for India to play by our rules , we just expect them to not make the foolish mistake of implementing this doctrine which is itself by its definition and objectives a recipe for catastrophic disaster ...
btw, have you imagined this scenario.. Indian army opens a front in Punjab and one or more strike corps moves say 40-50 km inside Pakistani borders in Lahore sector. Your contention is that Pak will use Nukes to destroy this strike corps and India will not escalate the Nuke war.. Though the assumption is laughable, but for a moment lets go with it.. So India loses a strike corps, but remember Pakistan just nuked its most fertile area and made it unusable for next 100 years. Along with killing thousands of its own civilians. Think about it.. bet you never did
I bet you never really paid any attention to the geography classes at school since you are talking of heavy mechanized offensives in the Northern Punjab when the area's geography doesn't permit that in the first place ...
Go with a lighter force than that and Pakistan Army can make it worth your while for you , it is always difficult to mount an offensive there and relatively easy to defend them ... Whats next ? Would you talk of tanks rolling down the LOC and opening a front there ? The general area where the CSD can be/is most likely to be implemented is the Southern Punjab and Sindh where the IBG's and armored columns can be used effectively and where we are at a disadvantage and fortunately both are desert lands with almost negligible populations and zero infrastructure ... So nuking a desert land and neutralizing the adversary and at the same time defending the motherland and teaching the enemy a hard lesson isn't that big a price to pay ... @
notorious_eagle explained it in better words in another thread
"Punjab serves as a natural impediment against advancing Armour. The topography, environment, vegetation and canals serve as a natural barrier for any advancing force and a wonderful force multiplier for the defending force. "
Can you post some details about Operation Brasstacks that back your contention from a impartial source? The only mobilization India did and backed away from was in 2002. And the reasons then were more political after Musharraf did a lame cop out by publicly promising to not back terrorism in India. Its funny how you conveniently forget the global embarrassments Pakistan had to go thru because of its shenanigans and only remember India's reactions .. Maybe your mind refuses to accept painful memories of you heads of state's public humiliation ..
Exactly what specific details do you need about Operation Brasstacks ? The 400,000 personnels of the Indian Army brought within the 100 miles of the borders of Pakistan ? Indian Navy commandos training near the sea-borders of my country ? The biggest mobilization since the WWII itself ? What was it if not a plan to attack Pakistan ? General Zia-ul-Haq warning that
" "If your forces cross our border by an inch, we are going to annihilate your cities. " ? ... Even the startling revelations by your army's general that it was Sunderjee's plan to pave way for an attack on Pakistan ...
According to General Hoon's memoirs, a letter was directed to Sundarji by Western Command, arguing that "when such a large exercise is conceived", the movement of Indian forces is going to attract the attention of Pakistan.[7] General Hoon maintained that, General Sundarji did not inform Prime minister Rajiv Gandhi about the scale of the operation and such details were hidden to him.[7] Hoon also wrote in his memoir: "Brasstacks was no military exercise. It was a plan to build up the situation for a fourth war with Pakistan." Indian scholar, Paul Kapur further argues that during the Operation Brasstacks, Indian army persuaded multiple times, but unsuccessfully, to attack Pakistan.[9]
What should I call it now ?
Are you that ill informed of your own history ? Both Indian and Pakistani leaders have from time to time made statements that their respective territory wouldn't be used against each other ... Did it get any special if Musharraf said so after '02 in the wake of a crisis ?
... The world then needed us more than ever and would never have supported India over Pakistan if a war ever happened ... Would you rather not be ashamed of mobilizing your army yet again which took almost a month , giving enough time for the PA to reach the border and making you lose 700+ personnels of Indian Army without firing a single shot and then forcing you to back off ? Cant attack a 5x smaller adversary even ? Painful memories coming to your mind now ?
That's why Pakistan always loses the plot internationally. No long term thought process...It was not enough to make Pakistan the bad guy.. India needed itself to be seen as the Good guy too.. which all but killed Pakistan's stand on Kashmir. Post Kargil, the regular stream of statements about Kashmir from international sources which use to pop up at regular intervals has slowed down to less than a trickle..
Always ? Is it some another form of " delusions of grandeur " repeatedly demonstrated by your lot on this forum and other ones ? Pakistan fought against a super power and made it retreat without getting attacked or at worse nuked ... Just one amongst other examples ... Ok , Pakistan was the bad boy , I am asking what was stopping you from going all guns blazing and acquiring a few of the strategic territories on the LOC and bringing the Siachen deployment costs to almost negligible ? The International opinion was already in your favor , wasn't it ? You just wouldn't have tarnished it by crossing the border and then justifying it by citing Pakistan's aggression but something stopped you ? I am guessing nuky nuky nukes !
Actually your whole argument is based on defining Pakistan nuclear threshold as extremely low and India's extremely high..Which may be true because today India has much to lose in case of a nuclear exchange, and Pakistan pretty much has nothing and your argument of Pakistan behaving like a suicide bomber may well be true. But strategies need to factor in changing environments and unless you believe that Pakistan will always stay in the dumps like it is today, such a strategy is extremely flawed. Compound that with your assertion of nuking your own land (and your own civilians) to stop an advancing army inside your borders, and you have a failed strategy on your hands...
No , my whole argument as I have explained in my previous two posts is that " Pakistan owing to its geographic disadvantage of having no strategic depth and having most of its major cities and towns situated near borders , adding the size of the adversary it is fighting and its limited offensive capability has the more probability of getting its threshold crossed " hence has the higher probability of coming down to the point where " it has nothing to lose " but to take the " enemy down with it " and " inflicting unacceptable damage to the extent of even ceasing the existence of the adversary " ... Read " Samson's Option " ... Strategies are changed , refined with time but we are talking about the present , where did you see me declaring the strategy relevant for another 30 or 50 years ?
... Pakistan is not in that worse state as portrayed by your media nor rivers of milk and honey are flowing in India ... Do not get me started on that ... The defense of the motherland isn't a suicidal idea , for we exist because of it ...