What If a War Between Pakistan and India Went Nuclear?

[Soumitra]

If Pakistan doesnt want a nuclear war why doesnt it declare a No First Use policy

 

[dray]

no one gonna nuke anyone. india and Pakistan both are poor countries and they cant afford nuclear war. if nuclear war begins whos gonna win ? Pakistan or India ? infact whole south asia will turn in ashes. so mate don't predict that Pakistan will gonna nuke india. we are also human beings and we have many more serious problems then nuking india. same apllies to india as well. Pakistan economy is improving day by the and leadership is changing and more mature steps are taken to assure peace in the region. peace

Who has the access codes to launch these tactical nukes? If I am not mistaken, then either the commanding officers on the battlefield have it, or these tactical nukes are in ready to fire configuration without any such access code. Please let me know...

 

[GURU DUTT]

If Pakistan doesnt want a nuclear war why doesnt it declare a No First Use policy

what if told you 90% of pakistanies beleve that there should be such a war as that is the onli thing unfortunatelli that gives them a hope .... irony man irony

 

[Soumitra]

Deterrence on steroids: Pakistani strategists embrace nuclear option as answer to Indian threat
Credible minimum deterrence was simple, elegant ‒ and enough. But then, the boys decided it was not enough
Cyril Almeida · Today · 12:30 pm

Photo Credit: Aamir Qureshi/AFP
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The good thing about nuclear weapons is that they’re relatively simple to understand. None of that order of battle stuff and how one set of jets stacks up against another set of tanks and what not.

I have a bomb and if you invade me, I’m going to use the bomb, so you better not ever think of attacking me. Simple.

The bad thing about nuclear weapons is that, when their purpose and potential use is articulated by military minds, they can get awfully complicated. And complicatedly dangerous.

Just don’t expect the boys here to let you in on that.

“In view of the growing conventional asymmetry, the National Command Authority reiterated the national resolve to maintain ‘Full Spectrum Deterrence Capability’ in line with the dictates of ‘Credible Minimum Deterrence’ to deter all forms of aggression, adhering to the policy of avoiding an arms race.”

Thus spake the Pakistan's Inter Services Public Relations in a press release this week.

It sounded terribly important, so it made splashy headlines. But what did it mean? Few seemed to understand or even care. Not even some of the civilian participants in the National Command Authority meeting, if the picture accompanying the press release is anything to go by.

But matter it does, so let’s get down to it.

What's new

Gone though the boys are pretending it’s not ‒ is the old nuclear doctrine of credible minimum deterrence. That was the simple business of having a handful of nukes to ensure India would never invade us.

It was based on the fairly robust presumption that India would not like to be nuked and that, no matter what it did, no matter how massively and widely and quickly it attacked, it could never be sure we didn’t have a surviving nuke or two to lob India’s way.

Credible minimum deterrence was simple, elegant ‒ and enough. But then, because they can and because of the way they see the world and understand security, the boys decided it was not enough.

In its place came this newfangled business of full-spectrum deterrence. It is based on, roughly, four elements. First is the high-end of the spectrum ‒ long-range missiles. In March Paistan tested something called the Shaheen-III, which has the rather specific stated range of 2,750 km.

Why 2,750 km? Well, if you pull out a map and look for the Andaman and Nicobar islands, you’ll see they’re roughly 2,750 km from Pakistan. India controls those islands and is apparently working on militarising them. And India has plenty of long-range missiles of its own.

Theoretically, if India had a land mass somewhere that Pakistani missiles could not reach, then India could put a bunch of nuclear missiles there and apparently threaten Pakistan.

So we need to be able to hit the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the farthest outpost of India from Pakistan, with our own nukes. Because, apparently, being able to hit every other part of India with nuclear missiles is not credible enough.

Tactical weapons

Second, the low-end of the spectrum: very-short-range missiles, aka tactical nuclear weapons. That controversial expansion was based on an even more controversial idea ‒ vague Indian musings on Cold Start and the possibility of rapid and shallow India military ingresses into Pakistan.

Apparently, there’s a way for India to make war on Pakistan without declaring war on Pakistan ‒ and to contend with that, we needed to develop tiny little nukes that we can use to bomb the Indians on our soil. Go figure.

Third is an assured second-strike capability. Missiles can be found, planes can be knocked out of the sky, but nuclear submarines ‒ now they are always on the move and impossible for an enemy to find all simultaneously.

So, yes, at some point you’re going to hear that Pakistan is going for a sea-based nuclear option, ie nuclear submarines. At that point, you’ll also wonder how it’s possible to keep warheads and missiles physically separate in a nuclear submarine, like we say we do with the rest for security reasons. It’s not.

Fourth is something called ambiguity: we don’t tell the world or India just how many, even in rough terms, nuclear weapons we have. The idea is to keep India guessing ‒ if they can’t be sure how many we have, they can’t be sure if any war plan of theirs will succeed.

The rewards of ambiguity

Ambiguity works because it creates doubt ‒ but it also turns on its head credible minimum deterrence. That worked by suggesting a few is enough; full-spectrum deterrence works by suggesting you have more bombs at every tier than the enemy can ever be sure his military can find and neutralise.

The boys insist full-spectrum deterrence is not open-ended. The four elements ‒ long-range missiles; tactical nuclear weapons; assured second-strike capability; and ambiguity ‒ add up to a finite, but classified, number of nuclear weapons that we need.

The immediate problem

But then they slip in something else ‒ deterrence is not static. Which is just another way of saying an arms race can’t be ruled out. The really wild and woolly frontiers are out there: MIRVs (essentially, multiple warheads atop a single missile ‒ the most dangerous kind); missile defence (you’d need more nukes to swamp a futuristic system); and space.

Scary as that sounds, that’s for the distant future. The more immediate problem is already here: the boys have internalised nukes as the answer to an ever-growing range of threats that they perceive from India.

Indian military base in Andaman and Nicobar? Build a big nuke. Cold Start and Integrated Battle Groups? Build a small nuke. India is going the sea route? Get nuclear submarines and build sea-based nukes.

Full-spectrum deterrence is about the creeping nuclearisation of most conflict scenarios ‒ and the swagger that comes with the belief that defeat can never be suffered.

Really, what could go wrong with that?

 

[X-2.]

By Michael O’Hanlon


Newsweek - September 5 , 2015

In my new book, The Future of Land Warfare (Brookings Institution Press, 2015), I attempt to debunk the new conventional wisdom (which began with the Obama administration but also permeates thinking beyond): Messy ground operations can be relegated to the dustbin of history.

That is a paraphrase and dramatization, to be sure—but only a modest one, since the administration’s 2012 and 2014 defense plans both state that the U.S. Army will no longer size its main combat forces with large-scale counterinsurgency and stabilization missions in mind.

This is, I believe, a major conceptual mistake, even if not yet one that has decimated the Army. But it will cause increasing harm with time if we buy into the idea.

The active-duty Army is already below its Clinton-era size and only slightly more than half its Reagan-era size. Reductions to the Army Reserve and Army National Guard have been almost as steep. None need grow at this juncture, but the cuts should stop.

I recognize that we need to maintain counterinsurgency and stabilization capacity, as well as a robust deterrent against possible threats to NATO by Russian President Vladimir Putin and to South Korea by North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, among other concerns.

But we also need to think about nontraditional scenarios. While unlikely—and unpalatable—on an individual basis, they may be hard to avoid. To paraphrase the old Bolshevik saying: We may not have an interest in ugly stabilization missions, but they may have an interest in us. In some cases, the needed response may entail not just trainers and drones, but brigades and divisions.

Escalation in South Asia

The scenario that I’ll focus on here—though I develop more in the book—concerns India and Pakistan and how the two countries might come to the threshold of all-out nuclear war. It is, I fear, all too plausible—and there are ways it could unfold that could make American ground forces nearly unavoidable.

A nuclear confrontation would be devastating in South Asia, enormously disruptive to the world economy and highly dangerous to the whole planet (particularly with the prospect of loose nukes afterwards).

An Indo-Pakistani war remains a real possibility today. There have already been three or four, depending on whether one counts the Kargil crisis of 1999, and it is remarkable that there have not been more.

If the nuclear weapons threshold were crossed in the future, a foreign military role could become much more plausible, particularly to reinforce a ceasefire. To date, Delhi in particular has eschewed any foreign role in diplomacy over Kashmir or related matters. But in the aftermath of the near or actual use of nuclear weapons, calculations could change dramatically—such a world could be characterized by a far different political psychology than today’s.

The path to war could begin, perhaps, with a more extremist leader coming to power in Pakistan. Imagine the dangers associated with a country of 200 million with the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, hatred of India and America, numerous extremist groups and claims on land currently controlled by India. Such an extremist state could take South Asia to the brink of nuclear war by provoking conflict with India, perhaps through another Mumbai-like attack.

Why could nuclear weapons be employed, even after 70 years of non-use globally? Even if it was the provocateur, Pakistan could come to fear for its own survival in this type of scenario. Having aided a group like Lashkar-e-Taiba, with its extremist anti-Indian views, Pakistan would have given India ample grounds for retaliation. Even a limited Indian conventional counterattack, perhaps influenced by its so-called Cold Start military thinking, could quickly put Islamabad, Lahore and other Pakistani cities at risk.

In such a situation, Pakistan might well see military logic in the use of several nuclear weapons against Indian troops, facilities, or other tactical targets. It is not even out of the question that Pakistan could conduct some attacks over its own territory.

If the weapons were detonated a kilometer or so up in the air, the effects of the explosions could be catastrophic to people and military equipment below, without creating much fallout due to dirt and rock upheaval that would later descend on populated areas downwind.

Beyond their immediate military effects, such attacks would signal Islamabad’s willingness to escalate. Despite the huge risks, there would be few better ways of making a threat to attack Delhi credible than to cross the nuclear threshold in tactical attacks.

Presumably, Pakistanis would have to assume the possibility of Indian attacks against Pakistani armed forces. But that might be a risk the country’s leadership would be willing to accept, if the alternative seemed to be defeat and forced surrender after a conventional battle.

It’s not clear whether Indians would interpret such a finely graduated nuclear attack as a demonstration of restraint, particularly if any of the Pakistani attacks went off course and caused more damage than intended. Thus, the danger of inadvertent escalation in this kind of scenario could be quite real. It might not even take nuclear attacks by Pakistan to cause nuclear dangers.

A role for U.S. troops?

If such an Indo-Pakistani war with nuclear implications began and international negotiators became involved, it’s imaginable that an international force could be proposed to help stabilize the situation for a number of years. Kashmir might be administrated under a U.N. mandate and protected by a U.N.-legitimated force, with an election eventually determining the region’s future political status.

The fact that nuclear conflict might have occurred by this point would have raised the stakes enormously for both sides, making it hard for any leader to accept a simple ceasefire absent a credible political process. The mission could last a decade or more, time enough to allow for a calming of tensions, for political transitions in both countries, and for Pakistan to clamp down on terrorist groups.

India in particular would be adamantly against this idea today. But things could change fundamentally if such a settlement, and such a force, seemed the only way to reverse the momentum toward all-out nuclear war in South Asia.

American forces would likely need to play a key role, as others might not have the capacity or the political confidence to handle the mission. By my estimates, an international force numbering into the low hundreds of thousands of troops could be needed for a period.

Is such a scenario likely? Hardly. Is it crazy or implausible? I don’t think so. Could we really sit it out if it happened? I fear not.

Can we design the future American Army without factoring in such possibilities? In fact, it would be a big mistake. As we consider questions from the imminence of possible sequestration this fall on the proper size, character, and cost of the U.S. military under our next president, such considerations must factor clearly in our minds.

Michael O’Hanlon is senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Pak has more warheads so they can cleanse India easily let suppose India nuke first and back second both get damage
Then there will be many other Muslim nations but no Hindu Nation in this world

 

[Kathin_Singh]

Pak has more warheads so they can cleanse India easily let suppose India nuke first and back second both get damage
Then there will be many other Muslim nations but no Hindu Nation in this world

Kamaal hai ..har baat main RELIGION kaise jod dete ho..Bhai kamaal hai!

Ye instinctively nikalta hai ya esaka koyi course karna padta hai?

 

[X-2.]

Kamaal hai ..har baat main RELIGION kaise jod dete ho..Bhai kamaal hai!

Ye instinctively nikalta hai ya esaka koyi course karna padta hai?

I'm just saying one of outcome

If Pakistan doesnt want a nuclear war why doesnt it declare a No First Use policy

May be later pak change the mind of doing on first strike so

 

[Kathin_Singh]

I'm just saying one of outcome

Apko ye kaise gumaan ho gaya ki Hindustan Islaam ko tabah karne ke liye jee raha hai ..agar aisa hota to yahan muslimo ki abaadi India main badti nahi ghat rahi hoti.

Aur doosri baat hai ..apko kya lagta hai ..ki saare Muslim countries Pakistan ke dost hain .. ok start with Afghanistan

 

[Joe Shearer]

Pak has more warheads so they can cleanse India easily let suppose India nuke first and back second both get damage
Then there will be many other Muslim nations but no Hindu Nation in this world

Do Muslims think like this the moment they get into France?

 

[X-2.]

Apko ye kaise gumaan ho gaya ki Hindustan Islaam ko tabah karne ke liye jee raha hai ..agar aisa hota to yahan muslimo ki abaadi India main badti nahi ghat rahi hoti.

Aur doosri baat hai ..apko kya lagta hai ..ki saare Muslim countries Pakistan ke dost hain .. ok start with Afghanistan

Gujarat Kashmir Assam etc shows the Hindu thrust of Muslim blood
Even if some one eat cow he is beaten
It's India who is against Pakistan pak never destabilise India
Everyone knows India terrorism in pak , blouchistan Karachi kpk etc
From countries afg gov is puppet gov of USA
Taliban the real owners have no issues we pak
Pak has zero Muslim country as enemy

Do Muslims think like this the moment they get into France?

It's just for sake of response otherwise pak never interfere like India in blouchistan and in Karachi
Thx for negative rating other then arguing here lol

 

[Kathin_Singh]

Gujarat Kashmir Assam etc shows the Hindu thrust of Muslim blood

What does it even mean ?

Pak has zero Muslim country as enemy

So do we except You.

 

[waz]

Why on God's green earth did you resurrect such an old thread? Closed!