Wars are never desirable, and wars between two nuclear powers are particularly dangerous.
Such conflicts are almost unheard of, except where India and Pakistan
are concerned, as the rival neighbors have engaged in intermittent
skirmishes for generations.
This week seems to be a particularly substantial engagement between the
two sides, with India claiming to have killed hundreds in a Monday
strike on Pakistani soil, and both sides having subsequently shot down warplanes.
These are all tit-for-tat escalations. India’s first attack was meant to be revenge for a JeM terror attack, though it appears to have failed.
Pakistan’s military insisted they had no choice but to respond, and did
so. India responded to that, two Indian planes were shot down, and so
on.
The Indian planes were shot down in Pakistani airspace. One crashed on
Indian soil, and the other in Pakistan, where the pilot was captured.
Though Pakistan insists the pilot is being treated well, India accused
them of violating the Geneva Conventions for even showing video of him
drinking tea.
But while the international community counsels restraint, and Pakistan’s
civilian leader offers talks, the militaries seem for now to be locked
into a spiral of escalation. Such seemingly unbreakable spirals are a
major concern, but the history of India and Pakistan getting into such
problems and managing to extricate themselves without a nuclear war does
raise hope that cooler heads will ultimately prevail.
Isn’t it nice to know that the militaries of these two nation, poised to go to general war, can by themselves create nuclear winter and annihilate large portions of the earths population?
Better send in Pompeo and Bolton to cool things off.
“These are all tit-for-tat escalations.”
Maybe not. There are reports of India moving large armored columns into place for its strategy of a sudden strike. There are reports of the Indian Navy sending ships with cruise missiles to strike Pakistani ports. This is not just tit-for-tat, it is movement in preparation for a 1914-style March of Folly.
The Indian plan for a fast deep strike is well known, with public planning and discussion going on for years. So is the Pakistani response, which is to nuke those strike forces when they are on Pakistani territory, in hopes that they can thus nuke an Indian army without nuking Indian territory, and so avoid a nuclear exchange. Fat chance. March of Folly.
These two act as proxies for U..S. and Russia.
Both India and Pakistan are notorious for teasing each other with nukes and then jumping back at the last minute. It’s the worlds deadliest game of chicken and both the armies involved are too powerful to be reigned in by there own governments.
We can hope. Actually, they don’t seem to have been entirely aware last time, on either side. American and Russian experts who went there with charts and urgent warnings came back appalled.