Almost all aspects of this article were forseeable on September 12.
I have long held that our Asian target was Pakistan. More precisely Pakistan's nuclear capabilities.
Bush has been playing the little general like a fiddle. First Afghanistan with a surrogate army (NA) and now Pakistan with a surrogate army (India).
Big boom potential there.
I'm not so sure of Reeve's analysis re: the capabilities of the two militaries. I've read that the Paki nuclear capability is very good and may even exceed that of India. It won't be pretty if a war starts there. Pakistan will certainly use nukes rather than accept a battlefield defeat from India. Not to mention that China is an ally of Pakistan if for no other reason than China's rival in the area is India.
Thanks for this interesting angle. Especially this:
"... (2) Will the Indians trust the guarantees of the Americans who have been (irrationally) pro-Pakistan most of these 50 years? ..."It used to be a mystery why, amidst all the "freedom" and "democracy" blowhardism of the US government, we have never been the friends of India that we, morally, should have been; and instead have cultivated close--seemingly unbreakable--ties with some of the most brutal oligarchies a smiling Mohammed ever envisaged.
But, ever so slowly, I'm growing up--in some areas, anyway.