Stardate 20020522.1241

(On Screen): I'm starting to get really worried about the tension between India and Pakistan. It's not obvious to me whether we're seeing India play a game of brinkmanship, or whether the Indian government really has gotten fed up and has decided to attack.

The proximate cause of this particular round of tension was an attack on an Indian army camp in Kashmir, which resulted in 30 dead. Since then, there have been artillery duels ongoing for several days and probably other skirmishes we haven't heard about.

The Prime Minister of India has gone to the region and started giving pep-talks to Indian troops. The UK has pulled its diplomats and their families out of Pakistan, and warned all British nationals to leave.

Pakistan has tried to make a concession to defuse the situation, but it may be too little, too late. And unfortunately, it sounds just a bit too much like the insincere Palestinian Authority condemnations of terrorist attacks against Israel.

One of the reasons why is that whether Musharraf has good intentions or not, he may not actually have enough control to truly prevent that kind of thing. There's still the problem that the Pakistani ISI is a loose cannon. The Indians may decide that this isn't a genuine offer.

Even if this is brinkmanship, there is a danger that if the threats get too loud and the preparations too advanced, then they won't be able to back down without looking foolish. Or worse, something unforeseen might happen and battle start without either side actually planning it, possibly because a mid-level officer gets fed up with dithering and orders an attack on his own, or simply because someone makes a mistake. That's why those artillery duels are so scary; that's the kind of spark that could begin a full conflagration.

Of course, the reason all this is worrisome is because both sides have nuclear weapons. A lot of people don't believe that either side would first-use a nuke against an enemy city, and I agree that's extremely unlikely. In fact, any offensive use of nukes, even as a battlefield weapon, is extremely unlikely. Wargaming has shown that far and away the most likely first-use scenario in any theater is defensive.

So let us script a nightmare. Fullscale war begins, and the Indian army breaks through the Pakistani center and threatens to move a substantial force west, cutting Pakistan in half. For all of Pakistani aspirations, the Indian army is a lot bigger and a lot better. This would be a military disaster for Pakistan on a number of levels; it would permit the Indians to defeat Pakistani forces in detail, or to lay siege to the northern part of the nation which would be cut off from world shipping through Pakistan's ports. Occupation of substantial amounts of Pakistani territory by India would be a political disaster inside Pakistan; it could lead to a coup or to revolt of some areas of Pakistan which are not fully under central control. And India could use that position for a left-hook attack into the rear of Pakistan's part of Kashmir.

So in this scenario, as the Indian army breaks through and begins to advance towards the Indus River with Pakistani forces retreating ahead of them, Pakistan uses a nuke against the Indians within Pakistani territory, as a defensive measure to stop their advance.

Once that happens, the floodgates are open. The political pressure inside of India to respond with a nuke of its own, somewhere, some way, becomes almost irresistible. There are several escalation scenarios available which lead to a city-trading duel with immense casualties on both sides.

There's historical precedent for the "mid-level officer" scenario. That's how Japan's conquest of Manchuria started in 1931. Accidental wars have also happened on occasion. The whole place is a tinderbox.

I'm not sure I believe that either side still has made the decision to go to fullscale war. What I'm afraid of is that both sides will find themselves fighting one anyway.