Dr. Frank's What's-it

India and Pakistan move one

India and Pakistan move one step further toward the unthinkable...

I hate to say it, but I think Josh Trevino is probably right about the impending India-PAK war (this is from post #1 on May 20-- scroll down to "holy cats"):

India will crush Pakistan in conventional warfare; Musharraf knows this, and he'll go nuclear once defeat looms. New Delhi and a few other Indian cities will be destroyed -- and in response, India will end millenia of human occupation of the Indus valley. Pakistan's alternative, is to hit India first, going nuclear from the get-go, and hope that Indian retaliatory capacity is sufficiently dimished to allow Indus civilization (if not the Pakistani state) some measure of survival. It's a false hope -- the tactic won't work, and they'll still end up with a termination of national existence.

In the meanwhile, Hindu nationalists will almost certainly massacre and/or expel millions of Indian Muslims, and probably a few Christians, Parsis, and Bahai as well.

Nuclear war is coming. It's fantastically stupid any way you slice it. Stupid of the Pakistanis to support terrorism (and make no mistake, they do) and force this response. Stupid of the Indians to take it to this level.

Is Musharaff that stupid? (Or suicidal-ideological-insane enough that he might as well be?) Suman Palit thinks so, and he may be right. But even if not, as Richard Bennett puts it, "the pressures on Musharraf and the tensions within his country and between Pakistan and its neighbors are such that going completely crazy would be a short trip for the dude." If Musharraf hasn't yet taken that trip, he must be counting on some intervention to prevent or forestall the war. It's worth a shot, and Colin Powell should probably hop to it, because if there is a full-scale war, it will be nuclear. Here's Palit again:

If the Indian military had the technological, logistical and operational means with which to wage a low-level offensive battle, they would have had it over with last December. Instead, they have resorted to the only available response - the threat of large-scale war on multiple fronts, followed by the inevitable tit-for-tat nuclear response. Which is why you heard the Indian army brass last winter talk about how they would wait for spring (and the melting snows) before launching an attack. Now you hear them talking about a post-monsoon offensive..! Bad weather is simply an excuse for the generals to not go to war, since they only war they can wage will inevitably result in mutual self-destruction. How long before they run out of excuses..? How long before the political threat to the survival of the ruling coalition in India surpasses the risks of nuclear war in the minds of the politicians involved..?

Holy cats, indeed. I hope he's wrong, but I don't think he is.

Posted by Dr. Frank at May 21, 2002 07:02 PM | TrackBack