Its hard to talk about nukes without getting scared, but I think this conference got it right. Pakistan is doing the best they can, but more nukes makes the world more dangerous.

The idea of India responding to another terrorist attack, with that response escalating to nuclear exchange, is a little much. But it is not so far outside the scope of possiblity that it shouldn't be discussed. It was asking a lot for a million man army with modern air power to sit on their hands after Mumbai. If it happens again, it is good that the most responsible instutions in both countries will be deciding what to do, but wars are full of miscalculations. I'm reminded of William S Lind suggesting we launch nukes on Afghanistan after 9/11. Cooler heads prevailed, but responsible leadership is not something to be taken for granted. Read The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.

Sadly, its cheaper to build nukes than build an army. Nukes don't lobby for health care beneifits. They are right that the problem is the threat- terrorist and Indo-Pakistan. 7 Billion dollars in military aid doesn't go as far as it used to.

Its hard to talk about nukes without getting scared, but I think this conference got it right. Pakistan is doing the best they can, but more nukes makes the world more dangerous.

The idea of India responding to another terrorist attack, with that response escalating to nuclear exchange, is a little much. But it is not so far outside the scope of possiblity that it shouldn't be discussed. It was asking a lot for a million man army with modern air power to sit on their hands after Mumbai. If it happens again, it is good that the most responsible instutions in both countries will be deciding what to do, but wars are full of miscalculations. I'm reminded of William S Lind suggesting we launch nukes on Afghanistan after 9/11. Cooler heads prevailed, but responsible leadership is not something to be taken for granted. Read The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman.

Sadly, its cheaper to build nukes than build an army. Nukes don't lobby for health care beneifits. They are right that the problem is the threat- terrorist and Indo-Pakistan. 7 Billion dollars in military aid doesn't go as far as it used to.

I'm thinking of the parent who smokes 3 packs a day but insists to their children it's bad and they shouldn't do it. May not be a perfect analogy, but how long can the US expect people do do what we say and not what we do? Like you mentioned about retaliation for Mumbai....if a group of men with assault weapons wandered through the streets of Washington D.C. and shot over 160 people...there isn't a chance in hell that we'd restrain ourselves, or allow anyone else to insist we do so. Anyone who does insist such a ludicrous thing would be vilified as 'anti-American' or we'd put them on another arbitrary axis of something or other.

Now I'm not staying up at night thinking about India/Pakistani nuclear exchanges, but just on the point that if India is attacked again, I don't know how much self control one country can have. It has to inevitably come to a point where their own citizens will demand blood. Maybe not a nuclear attack, but any military action on the subcontinent could lead to it.

Someone once told me during the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia had about a 30-minute alert to prepare for an incoming attack. Surely that time window must be mere minutes between India and Pakistan, meaning their collective populations would pretty much die in place, let alone have enough time to take protective measures against radioactive fallout. . .even with a limited nuclear war option.

We used to speak of "mutually assured destruction," but it took a while for that to become an actual reality, as the Soviets gave us some breathing room before finally catching-up to us. For India and Pakistan, that seems to be the reality here and now?

I wonder if Delhi and Islamabad even have a hot line, and if either knows who to talk to in a crisis?

Yes, New Delhi and Islamabad/Rawalpindi do have hot lines. They at least have one between their Director Generals of Military Operations, and I believe there may be one between the offices of the Prime Ministers. This is helpful, but the history of their use in past crises should give everyone pause. At times, the hotlines have been in place during a crisis but not used for days or weeks at a time while tensions escalated. At other times, they have been used to spread disinformation or propoganda. At other times, they were used as one would hope they would be used. They are useful tools particularly during inadvertant crises or unintended increases in tensions. If a "second Mumbai" occurs, the crisis will be real and intended, and it is not clear whether direct communication will help much. I'm all for having it in case it could help. Most unfortunately, I just wouldn't count on it being a cure-all.

I agree with the commentary in the main post here. The United States and the old Soviet Union had more than a generation to accommodate themselves to the realities of a world with nuclear weapons. They did not share a border and had never fought a major war against one another. Neither one of them sponsored terrorist organizations launching mass casualty attacks on civilians in the other's cities. Still, there were many close calls.

It is profoundly disquieting to think of the Pakistani security services, the greatest burden on their country's prospects for the future, investing in nuclear weapons as tokens of prestige and expanding that investment even in the face of rampant domestic terrorism from some of the most anti-Indian elements in the country. They're not backed into a corner, they started out that way. I wonder if, by speaking only in hushed tones about the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, we are not allowing very dangerous ideas about how easily use of nuclear weapons may be justified to spread in Pakistan.

It is foolhardy to encourage Indian involvement in Afghanistan as it lends a touch of reality to Pakistan's paranoia. Much of Pakistan's fear of India is theatrics aimed at furnishing its fractious populous with an external threat to focus upon. This makes the people think they need the ISI and Army to protect them. If they forget, ISI just stirs-up Kashmir or sponsors terrorist acts inside India.

Pakistan is a toxic "ally" while India is a necessary ally. India is an emerging world economic power whose primary rival is China. If Pakistan would allow it, I suspect that India would be perfectly willing to ignore Pakistan and let it stew in its own dysfunctional juices.

Otherwise, as George Carlin said when reflecting upon a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, "It couldn't happen to two nicer peoples."

The Cold War is over and India has emerged as a developing market and a functioning democracy. Pakistan, on the other hand, is a freakshow. An army without a nation - like Frederick the Great's Prussia without the enlightened despot at the top. W's move toward India was one of the very few things he did which I approved of.

Of course, there is the possibility that the Indians will respond to an attack by terrorists based in Pakistan by pre-emptively invading Bhutan...

Didn't they come very very close in 1990?

From the LA Time in March 1993:

"1990 India-Pakistan Nuclear Showdown Detailed in Magazine
March 23, 1993|Times Wire Services

WASHINGTON — Investigative reporter Seymour M. Hersh reported in a magazine article published Monday that the world was on the edge of a nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan in early 1990.

Hersh, writing in the New Yorker, termed the showdown "the most dangerous nuclear confrontation of the postwar era" and said the George Bush Administration kept the conflict secret, even from key members of Congress.

Hersh said the confrontation was defused by the intervention of Robert M. Gates, then President Bush's national security adviser, who was sent to India and Pakistan to handle negotiations. Gates confirmed Monday that he performed that mission.

That nuclear near-confrontation between the two Asian neighbors over the disputed region of Kashmir was reported by the Los Angeles Times in January, 1992."

I seem to remember reading about this elsewhere as well. I don't want to get into Sy Hersh bashing here - he's right more often than he is wrong.

It's interesting that SecDef Gates was the guy who Bush Sr. sent to defuse the thing and it seems he was able to do so. I remember reading somewhere that both sides had their Migs sitting on the runways with the nukes strapped underneath, ready to go.

Pakistan's foreign policy is shockingly irresponsible. Pakistan has legitimate fears of India, and a legitimate claim to Kashmir. By the same token, Mexico has a legitimate claim to Arizona. (We in the U.S. stole what is now the south-western United States in a war we started.) People would regard it as mad, indeed suicidal, if a nuclear-armed Mexican government supported terrorist groups operating against its much larger and more powerful neighbor in trying to regain Arizona. By the same token, Pakistani policy is mad, indeed suicidal, in supporting terrorist groups operating against its much larger and more powerful neighbor. Risking war with a country ten times your size is just crazy, no matter what the rights and wrongs. A rational Pakistani foreign policy would put cooperation and integration with India at its center.

The 30 minute flight time between the U.S. and USSR is not that useful. Remember, if the Soviets attacked NATO with a conventional assault, we reserved the right to launch nuclear weapons from our positions in West Germany. I believe the flight time from there to Moscow was less than 10 minutes.

Now, it is true that America never invaded and broke off a piece of Russia, the way India did to Pakistan in 1971. I think we in the West underappreciate just how shocking that was to the Pakistani military , which had been brought up the notion that it takes 10 Hindus to equal the strength and bravery of 1 Muslim. They have sought to even the score ever since, but they know that will not done through military-military conflict.

So, Pakistan pursued the asymmetric strategy of terrorism, which has had the effect of making India's claims to global importance seem hollow. After all, how can an emerging power be so impotent in protecting its most important commercial city from 12 men armed with machine guns and smart phone, while high on cocaine?

Pakistan can afford to pursue this strategy because nuclear weapons allow it operate from behind a shield. Pakistan has escalation control, meaning that India cannot be sure how far they can go in retaliating before Pakistan goes nuclear. Pakistan benefits from this degree of uncertainty, and sees not reason why they need to lessen it.

China to a large extent and US to a somewhat lesser extent would be responsible for India-Pakistan nuclear exchange.

China because it created Pakistan’s nuclear bomb to begin with. China carried out Pakistan’s first nuclear test on Chinese soil and then gave all its nuclear technology to Pakistan directly and ballistic missile technology to Pakistan via North Korea.

And US because it bought Pakistani baloney of only A Q Khan being solely responsible for Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation when it was Pakistani Army and Pakistan’s democratic as well as military governments that were totally responsible for the wholesale proliferation of China’s nuclear technology. US deliberately ignored Pakistan’s proliferation when it was going on and then whitewashed it.

Having said that, there is every possibility of a nuclear war breaking out between debtor US and creditor China as well since China has an upper hand in this second cold war currently going on between the two.

China has been continuously ignoring US demands to rebalance the trade between the two. Roots of US-Japan war were also planted over the trade frictions between the two.

How long will US tolerate this ever-increasing trade surplus in China’s favor? How long will US tolerate this ever-increasing foreign exchange reserves of China that could hit five trillion dollars in four years?

US is heading for a ’cornered tiger’ status who will have to fight back for its very survival versus China.

Barring some bizarre Pakistani interest in the Thorium fuel cycle (which produces fissile U-233), I think you meant Plutonium. Unless you're drawing a more tenuous link, like "they built so many centrifuges, they had to build a reactor to power them all."

Also, it seems really unlikely that Pakistan would build the fourth largest arsenal; that would put them between China and France.

Has anyone read the following 2 rebuttals to this article?

http://polaris.nationalinterest.in/2011/03/08/mad/

http://filtercoffee.nationalinterest.in/2011/03/08/the-worst-offense/

Thoughts anyone?