Will terrorist tensions in Kashmir drive India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war?
- How Islamabad responds to New Delhi’s ‘pre-emptive’ cross-border air strike will determine what the future holds for the nuclear-armed neighbours
Pakistan has rejected India’s claims, with Prime Minister Imran Khan even promising to take domestic and international media to the “claimed area of the strike” so that they can “see the facts on the ground”.
India’s air strike on Pakistan militant camp escalates tensions
Yet at the same time, Khan has also vowed a response to India’s “uncalled for aggression” that would be delivered “at the time and place of [Pakistan’s] choosing”.
Pakistan to my mind has two choices: one is to take the higher diplomatic path and “reject” India’s claims by taking the international media to Balakot, as Khan said he would do. This would enable Islamabad to put New Delhi on the defensive and force it to come up with its own evidence of the supposed damage done to terror camps in the wake of the strike.
Balakot, meanwhile, represents the first use of air power against a target in the other country’s territory since the two sides were at war in 1971. In the event that Pakistan responds in kind with warplanes or missiles – something that India would have taken into account when planning the strike – the possibility of a limited war is now on the cards.
In every war-game scenario so far envisioned, the two neighbours’ nuclear capabilities are the greatest cause for concern.
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But it is precisely this capacity for annihilation via escalation that will prevent any nuclear exchange from taking place, according to a former president or Pakistan and retired army general, Pervez Musharraf.
“Indian and Pakistan relations have again reached a dangerous level. [But] there will be no nuclear attack,” he said in a recent interview that took place after the suicide bombing in Pulwama.
“If we would attack India with one atomic bomb, then [it] could finish us by attacking with 20 bombs. Then the only solution is that we should first attack them with 50 atomic bombs so that they cannot hit us with 20 bombs. Are you ready to first launch an attack with 50 bombs?”
China’s stance on Kashmir attack will test ties with India
New Delhi’s repeated assertion that the strike was “pre-emptive” and based on intelligence it received that JeM was planning attacks elsewhere in India carries a subtext of implied restraint.
The government also defines the action as “non-military” because it sees it as a counterterrorism operation, which does not threaten Pakistan’s territorial integrity or any of its civilian or economic assets.
If Pakistan can credibly “reject” the Indian claim of an attack on Balakot and also quietly begin to clamp down on groups like the JeM then there may still be a peaceful way forward.
But army generals who have invested in what has been termed “nuclear weapon-enabled terrorism” may be tempted to act in a volatile or irrational manner – akin to the “madman theory” of nuclear deterrence once championed by former US president Richard Nixon.
The only question now is: will such theories be put to the test by the realities of life on the troubled Indian subcontinent?
