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"Nothingman: How does India fit in to the picture?"

Velveeta,

That (like Cuba) is getting out of the realm of what I feel that I really know much about. I don't follow India too closely. But they fit into the larger picture in that they are trying to reduce tensions and renew dialogue with Pakistan, and that has the crazies in Pakistan spitting nails. (They are afraid Musharaff will compromise on Kashmir, the disputed territory that they have fought three wars over in the past half century.) Rumsfeld had to personally engage in shuttle diplomacy in 2002 to keep nuclear war from breaking out. So they have come a long way . . .

They impact the situation in that the folks trying to kill Musharaff (and destabilize Pakistan) see India as the enemy, and Musharaff was already riding the tiger before this whole Khan thing broke (two assassination attempts in December). His back is really against the wall now. If he goes down, his replacement will probably be weak, the extremists will assert themselves and exert greater influence on the new government, and will seek to provoke new crises with India (as when Pakistani-backed terrorists bombed the Indian parliament a few months after 9/11).

This is why things are destabilizing. Musharaff is trying to clean house and for the Islamists this means war. For all we know, Bin Laden, Zawahiri, et al are not in Iran or Wazirstan Province, but as were KSM and Bin al-Shibh, are holed up in Karachi or Rawalpindi, perhaps under the protection of elements of ISI. If they aren't, it is a reasonable supposition that other senior AQ leaders are.

The assassination attempts against Musharaff were extremely professional. It wasn't a shoe bomber or a guy with nails in a vest. That indicates internal high-level complicity, and that is disturbing in a nation with a decent sized nuclear arsenal which helped create AQ.

China has had border frictions with India (not serious like 1962, but the frictions are there) and China is a strategic ally of Pakistan. It is uncertain under what circumstances China might intervene if nuclear war were to break out on the subcontinent and Pakistan were to begin to lose. (Somewhat akin to the question under what extreme circumstances might China intervene in a Second Korean War as they did in December 1950)

It is uncertain under what circumstances China might intervene if nuclear war were to break out on the subcontinent and Pakistan were to begin to lose.

That's the biggie question. Thank you for your thoughts on the subject.

On what do you base your summations?