[reg45]

India vs. Pakistan: What’s the betting line on which side throws the first nuke?

[Jonty30]

I’m under the impression that India is the more powerful army, so I’d be betting on Pakistan using nukes.

[Zhang Fei]

[India vs. Pakistan: What’s the betting line on which side throws the first nuke?]

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Neither. No nuclear power will use nukes against an adversary with a nuclear counter-strike capability. There’s no percentage in losing tens of millions of people, in a nuclear exchange, over a war where you might lose perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of troops, at worst. Life is not a Hollywood movie.

I know Pershings were deployed. Do I believe they would have been launched, if the Warsaw Pact had come through the Fulda Gap? No. But if the Soviets had detonated nukes against US forces, there would have been an all-out nuclear exchange. And that is precisely why the Soviets would have held back.

[This_Dude]

Pakistan, 3:1

[Tallguy]

I make Pakistan the prohibitive favorite: 4-to-1

[Cronos]

India has a no-first-use point of view. Pakistan has a “we will use the Islamic nuclear bomb the first chance we get” policy