Posted on 05/31/2002 9:11:00 AM PDT by swarthyguy
A respected American scholar says on the evening network news that the situation between India and Pakistan is so dangerous it makes the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 look like [children's games?] - your editor does not hear so well, so the metaphor may not be entirely accurate, but the scholar's intent was clear.
Had the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated to nuclear war, North America, Europe, and the Soviet Union would have been devastated. The US may well have attacked Chinese targets, to ensure these fellow communists did not provide a recovery base for the Soviets. US and allied bases around the world would have been attacked as well, so a good proportion of the world would have been reduced to radioactive ash, or taken from days to years dying of the residual radioactivity: the bombs of those days were big and dirty.
The world's population was about half of what it was today, and anywhere between 100- and 300-million people would have died, perhaps more. Most of them would have been bystanders to the American-Soviet dispute. The US DIA, using a highly inflated set of assumptions, says up to 12 million would die in an Indo-Pakistan nuclear exchange. Very few of these will be bystanders. Unless your editor is mistaken, the Indo-Pakistan crisis is child's play compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis, not the other way around.
Now, of course, what may underlie the scholar's statement is a racist assumption: India and Pakistan could spin out of control because after all, they are just plain ignorant brown natives. Washington-Moscow had the whole show under control, presumably because they were run by wise white men.
Your editor would like to ask this scholar some questions.
Suppose that to America's north lies not Canada, but the Soviet Union, circa 1970. The Soviets have been supporting a ruthless insurgency in New England for 15 years, and both sides daily exchange small arms fire, and on most days, mortar and artillery fire. Yet for 15 years the situation has not escalated into conventional war, leave alone nuclear war. Is this a plausible assumption? Three years ago, the Soviets quietly seize American controlled territory in Maine. The Americans fight back, taking heavy losses, but never cross the border, limiting themselves to fighting entirely on their own territory. Is this a plausible assumption? Including 1999, America and the Soviet Union have fought four wars. Yet never has either deliberately targeted any civilian facility - no command centers in a populated area, no power plants, no water facility, no arms factory, no telecommunications node. They have attacked only rail and road choke points that are directly related to the movement of enemy forces at the front. Is this a plausible assumption? If the American scholar can answer yes to all, then your editor would have to concede that there are some analogies between Cuba 1962 and South Asia 2002. If he answers no, then your editor has a favor to ask of him.
Please don't condescend to the South Asians. They have shown greater restraint and greater humanity to civilians than your country has in times of peril. Maybe one reason neither India or Pakistan seems overly concerned about the dangers of a nuclear war is that both understand the daily nuclear threats made by President Musharraf are just bluster. Indian and Pakistani generals could conceivably loose nuclear weapons at each other's advancing armies if faced with a massive defeat - it's a remote possibility, but it is a possibility. To suggest or to imply either country would deliberately aim at civilian centers is a belief that grows out of your mindset. It has no bearing on South Asia.
Now, your editor has little hope that the American scholar will understand any of this. These are old debates. Those Americans who know something about India and Pakistan do not need to be convinced. Those that know nothing will not be convinced. Nonetheless, there are other people more open-minded, and for them your editor will discuss tomorrow why conventional Americans notions of war fighting, strategy, crisis management and the like have absolutely no relevance to the present situation in South Asia.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the ships maintaining
the picket line to sink the Russian ship that was approaching
them ostensibly to breach the line. Had the ship not stopped,
we would have sunk her. Does that answer your question?
On the other hand, the Soviet Union was a tightly controlled government. Pakistan swarms with Afghan immigrants and Muslim extremists. Its intelligence service and army are susceptible to extremist influence too. The problem isn't racial, it's religious. I'd rather trust Stalin with nuclear weapons than Bin Ladin. No, Stalin was not a nice guy. He murdered up to a hundred million people, but at least he kept his nuclear weapons and his military under tight control.
Yep, that is why you guys keep fighting each other and continue to suffer. You claim moral superiority and yet people are still dying because of it. Isreal is using the same tactic with the "palastinians", and look where they are at. The US was also restrained from toppling Saddam, and look where that got us. We nuked Japan, and look what happened there. We helped to administer a "regime change" in Nazi Germany and won only after we went at there manufacturing sites in populated areas.
Crap or get off the pot. I don't not see a war, but after decades of this going on, the question has to be asked: Is strategy really worth all this death and destruction?
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Not to be picky, but that took place in Truman's time.
Complication comes when the US is so committed to a ineffectual, prevaricating dictator that the entire waronterror becomes a strategy to keep musharraf in power.
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