Mumbai Mayhem: Pakistan's Nuclear Option

Photo: http://www.mda.mil/

Ghauri
Two nuclear-armed foes adhering to a no-first-use policy are unlikely to have a nuclear exchange. Pakistan is simply incapable of quantitatively matching Indian demographics and conventional military forces (challenges only compounded by Islamabad's qualitative and technological disadvantages in relation to India). Nuclear weapons are Pakistan's ace in the hole. Consequently, Islamabad maintains an overt first-use policy.

India and Pakistan assessment of the escalation

Distance: Islamabad and New Delhi are less than 800 Kms apart. Dense populations, saddle both sides of the border, and the Pakistani demographic, agricultural and industrial heartland lies directly across a border from India - with no real geographic barriers to invasion. This increases the likelihood of conventional warfare and, therefore, the potential for escalation toward the nuclear realm.

Global scale: Pakistan and India, the historical alternatives to a massive confrontation along the Punjab border have been fighting in the mountains and on the glaciers of Kashmir, blockades of Pakistani ports, and the use of militant proxies. With military competition so close to home, the use of ballistic missiles and strike aircraft in conventional roles inevitably raises the spectre of their use in the nuclear role - and when the stakes are that high, one does not have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for clarification of intent once a missile makes impact. With any launch, one must assume the worst.

Mutually assured destruction: Though Pakistan's small, crude and low-yield arsenal could indeed be devastating, it does not threaten India with total destruction. With its own delivery systems capable of reaching every corner of Pakistan, New Delhi enjoys immense strategic depth that Islamabad cannot match with any current systems. India's arsenal is more mature and more robust than Pakistan's. Thus, Islamabad's first-use policy is actually defensive in nature; it is a deterrent against Indian aggression that, in the end, Pakistan knows it could not defeat.

The question, now that Pakistan appears to have drawn a very clear line in the sand, is how India will respond. How will the world community move to de-escalate a crisis that no one-not India, not Pakistan, nor anyone else-is interested in seeing deteriorate into a nuclear exchange (however unlikely this remains in practice)?
Pakistan's Nuclear Option
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Related Topics
India: Military
Pakistan: Military
The exact number of nuclear weapons in each country's possession is a closely held national secret. Despite this limitation, publicly available information and occasional leaks make it possible to make best estimates about the size and composition of the national nuclear weapon stockpiles.
Status of World Nuclear Forces 2008