Polemic®

More on the strategic nuclear balance from the Navy:

The asymmetries of strategic depth and offensive military capability give India an operational advantage, and may create a situation in which India’s conventional ground or air forces come into contact with Pakistan’s strategic nuclear forces. Pakistan’s shorter-range Hatf 3/M-11 ballistic missiles must be stationed fairly far forward to reach strategic targets in India, perhaps leaving them vulnerable to both air and ground attack. The same is true of Pakistan’s forward airbases, which are within easy striking distance of the border. This is a very troubling scenario because Pakistan places great emphasis on its strategic nuclear forces to deter a large-scale conventional attack by India.

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Pakistan’s presumed inability to identify and attack India’s C4I probably precludes any appreciable loss of command and control over India’s strategic force during a conventional war. This is reinforced by a several factors, including India’s reliance on negative control features, and its greater strategic depth. A conventional attack on India’s command and control structures probably would cause only a delay in retaliatory nuclear strikes, and not lead to the inadvertent use of nuclear weapons.

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[India and Pakistan's] asymmetrical conventional force capabilities and doctrines could create pressures for one side to launch nuclear weapons, even if they would prefer not to. The three scenarios of inadvertent war outlined above show how India’s superior conventional military power might so seriously degrade the Pakistan national command authority’s confidence in its nuclear deterrent that a nuclear war begins that nobody wants.

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I haven’t pointed out that India and Pakistan had a standoff in 2002 after the Indian Parliament attacks in December 2001, massing troops on the border. Later that year, a U.S. General testified to Congress that “neither India nor Pakistan have the sophisticated sensors that can determine the difference between a natural near-Earth object impact and a nuclear detonation.” 

What does that mean in practical terms? Well, first of all, an asteroid crash could be determined to be a high altitude nuclear explosion, which is the exact kind used to knock out command and control because its primary effect is a huge EMP. 

Pop quiz, hot shot. You’re an Indian Air Force office and tomorrow you detect a gigantic atmospheric detonation over your head. What do you do?

You better hope the US or Russia is on the goddamn phone with someone in charge. Same thing goes for Pakistan. 

The second thing it means is that their early detection systems suck. But even if they were state of the art, what’s the response time? Five minutes? Think about it. The Cuban missile crisis was largely due to the fact that much of the US could be hit before a response could come about, dangerously upsetting the strategic balance.

Today’s Baltimore Sun:

There’s no suggestion that the two nuclear-armed antagonists are close to brandishing any of their weapons (India, an estimated 100 warheads; Pakistan, roughly 60).

But it’s a dicey situation. Unlike the Cold-War U.S. and Soviet Union, India and Pakistan live side by side, reducing missile flight times — and crisis decision-making time — to under 10 minutes. That’s less than 600 seconds.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union emerged from the Cold War’s nuclear confrontation unscathed. But there were more than a handful of moments, including false alarms and cross signals, when things might have gone otherwise.  

In one case, a 1983 NATO “Able Archer” exercise was perceived by the Kremlin as active preparation for a nuclear attack and it began raising the alert status of Soviet nuclear forces. “Very dangerous,” was the subsequent assessment of Robert M. Gates, then a senior intelligence official, now Secretary of Defense.

That near-miss happened despite several decades of American and Russian experience  and tacit cooperation on nuclear crisis management — experience India and Pakistan do not have.

“India and Pakistan’s lack of sophisticated early warning and detection capabilities and command and control systems are some of the other factors that create strategic volatility and raise the risks of a nuclear exchange,” says an assessment by the Monterey Institute for Strategic Studies.

Oh, and the death toll? Some estimates are as low as 20m, but others are as high as one billion.

Welcome to the NFL, Obama.