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January 17, 2002—Americans would
do well to start worrying less about the handful of US
fatalities and more about the dozen-odd dead in border clashes
between Pakistan and India. Enraged by Pakistani separatist
attacks on the Kashmiri Parliament and the Indian Congress in
New Delhi, the Indians, after stewing for a month, have edged
the nations towards a war that neither could probably
control.
Well over a million troops are
mobilized on both sides, the greatest since the catastrophic
Partition in 1947, when almost a million died. The difference
between earlier border wars (1971) over Kashmir is that both
countries now openly have not only dozens of nuclear
weapons, which they proved in tit for tat
detonations in 1998, but also the missiles to deliver
them—missiles that can reach almost every square mile of their
putative enemy.
The Parliament terrorists thought
that attention would be diverted by Afghanistan, instead the
paradox of the US forcing Pakistan to help destroy their own
protégés (the Taliban) focused attention on the hypocrisy of
ignoring Pakistani-sponsored terrorism like nothing else
could. The Indians have suffered periodic attacks, and have
reacted massively to the specter of gunmen blasting their
Congress (imagine, say, if Cuban gunman shot up the US
Capitol). But, like the often brutal Israeli campaign against
the Palestinians, they seem unable to ratchet it down, even
after Musharraf's powerful pledge and initiation of a
crackdown on terrorists. Once they have the rapt attention of
the Pakistanis, it's hard to release it. Musharraf has reason
for fear: despite a rough qualitative equality in their
nuclear forces, India has four times the area, seven times the
population, two times the troops, and two-three times
the nukes. Yet his bending over backwards to assuage Indian
demands, while eminently wise in the short run, may make his
position domestically untenable, since support of Kashmir is
one of the only issues uniting the fractious Paki factions.
The extremists will probably strive for further outrages if
only to derail the attempted peace. Musharraf promised to turn
over at least the Indian-citizen terrorists the Indians are
demanding and his moderating the maniacal madrassas schools
that teach jihad from a butchered Koran could save America
from the next generation of holy warriors.
What is happening now, though, has
never happened before: a nuclear face-off between countries
with only a few dozen weapons and missiles—which is far more
dangerous than when they have thousands, because the paranoia
about the enemies' launching will create an irresistible
pressure for a first strike to destroy their
missiles on the ground, which is only possible with such a
tiny number of targets. (America had functioning accurate
quick launch ballistic missiles before the Soviet Union—the
so-called missile gap never really existed.) Periodically a
thousand people are hacked to death in religious
"disturbances" in India, both peoples are highly excitable,
and often seem to hate each other more than the Israeli's and
Arabs.
"It's so stupid, they're the
same people," moans a Pakistani-American in Seattle.
Indian PM Vajpayee comes from a hardline nationalistic
faction. His General has claimed India was fully prepared for
war and promised the use of nukes by Pakistan would be
"punished so severely" their survival would be doubtful. With
spectacularly bad timing, the Indians are going ahead with two
annual large scale war games on the border, including measures
"to prepare for a nuclear attack." To the rattled Pakis, these
measures could appear offensive, not defensive.
One report has Pakistan almost dropping a nuclear
bomb in response to Indian war games in 1990. India
has pledged to use nukes only in defense, but it's not clear
if Pakistan could resist using them if faced with a large
conventional defeat.
In a chilling comment that flitted
through the press, China has pledged to assist Pakistan in a
nuclear war, which could turn a regional nightmare into a
global one—something both America and Russia shouldn't allow.
China has only 30 or so aging liquid fueled missiles, but they
can't resist meddling. According to a Pakistani defense
website, "Pakistan is thought to possess about 42 nuclear
capable missiles ready to launch in 7-10
minutes," the biggest of which—Ghauri 3—might reach
Calcutta; and 24-50 nuclear weapons. India's Agni-2 missile
can reach all of Pakistan and China, and they are estimated to
have 50-100 nuclear bombs. All these bombs are supposedly
"little" Hiroshima-like fission bombs, 6-20 kilotons, though
both countries have the capability to build thermo-nuclear
bombs 50 times larger. Even these primitive weapons could
kill 30 million in a war against cities.
Pakistan does have mobile truck-mounted missiles that would
argue against any first strike because they are so difficult
to target.
Both countries have paid dearly
for their nuclear aspirations. Pakistan spent $5 billion and
lost several times that much on aid from the US embargo, while
India spent $10-25 billion over 10 years; meanwhile they sit
138th and 139th in world countries on
the human development index, behind such luxurious places as
Nigeria or Kenya. India has 400 million souls making under
$1/day and Pakistan has rung up $37 billion of foreign
debt.
Both countries are trembling on the
brink—anything: a flock of birds, a radar failure or error, a
weather rocket launch, or a computer glitch could convince one
side that the other is launching nuclear missiles and provoke
a full scale retaliatory launch . . . and the nuclear hell on
earth that the US and Russia prepared for so assiduously for
45 years. Leaders don't initiate a nuclear attack to destroy
their enemy; they do so because they are convinced the enemy
is about to attack them. Even if they manage,
as it looks now, to defuse this crisis, that danger will
remain for the next decade, unless they settle the open sore
of Kashmir and retrap the evil genie of nuclear-tipped
missiles. |
