India, Pakistan and The Day After

Begin mei kende het al lang sluimerende conflict tussen India en Pakistan over het beheer van de noordelijke regio Kasjmir weer een bloedige opflakkering. Even leek het er zelfs op dat beide kernwapenstaten tot een escalerende oorlog zouden komen waarbij ook de inzet van kernwapens werd overwogen. Op 10 mei 2025 bereikten beide aartsvijanden dan toch een wapenstilstandsakkoord na een bemiddeling door de VS. Een analyse door C. Rammanohar Reddy, een journalist van The India Forum.

Are we now so casual about the dangers of nuclear weapons that we do not realise what we have escaped from with the decision by India and Pakistan to cease fire on May 10? The events that led to the intervention of the US in South Asia remain murky, but what did happen for sure is that India and Pakistan were brought down from a nuclear weapon escalatory ladder.

This is not the first time India and Pakistan have come to the edge of a precipice. We will have to wait for historians and declassified records to give us a true picture of past events.

But the diaries and accounts of US officials of the time tell us with some persuasion that the two countries have had to be pulled back after one or the other threatened to use these weapons of mass destruction at least thrice earlier: in 1990, 1999 and 2019.

2025 is the fourth such occasion where at the very least the nuclear sabres were rattled. A news report on the third day of the conflict announced that Pakistan had convened a meeting of its National Command Authority, the body taking decisions on matters nuclear.

The report was predictably later denied; the sequence of events may have been a case of ‘signalling’. If so, this was a dangerous tactic for a nuclear power to play.

The US intervened this time as well to prevent escalation, but the next time neither the US nor any other mediator may be able to.

De Nanga Parbat vormt de meest westelijke uitloper van het Himalayagebergte en is een van de meest indrukwekkende massieven van achtduizenders. Het massief ligt net ten zuiden van de Indus in het Diamer-district van Gilgit-Baltistan in het door Pakistan bestuurde deel van Kasjmir (foto: Atif Gulzar, via Wikipedia).
De Nanga Parbat vormt de meest westelijke uitloper van het Himalayagebergte en is een van de meest indrukwekkende massieven van achtduizenders. Het massief ligt net ten zuiden van de Indus in het Diamer-district van Gilgit-Baltistan in het door Pakistan bestuurde deel van Kasjmir (foto: Atif Gulzar, via Wikipedia).

Blackmail

When India went openly nuclear in 1998 (quickly followed by Pakistan) we were told that with the power of deterrence, military conflict with conventional forces would end. It did not happen.

We were also told that there would be red lines to conflict with conventional forces. That did not happen either. And of course, we were told that with both countries holding nuclear arsenals, neither would be emboldened to use these weapons against the other that it would deter a nuclear attack.

Mercifully there has been no nuclear war, but we seem to have come close to that on more than one occasion.

Kasjmir: het betwiste grensgebied tussen India en Pakistan. De rode lijn duidt de grens aan van de vroegere prinselijke staat Jammu & Kasjmir die deel uitmaakte van het Britse koloniale rijk. Het groene gebied is het deel van Kasjmir dat onder Pakistaanse controle staat, het oranje gebied valt onder India. De noordoostelijke regio Aksai Chin staat momenteel onder Chinese controle (bron: Wikipedia, Public Domain).
Kasjmir: het betwiste grensgebied tussen India en Pakistan. De rode lijn duidt de grens aan van de vroegere prinselijke staat Jammu & Kasjmir die deel uitmaakte van het Britse koloniale rijk. Het groene gebied is het deel van Kasjmir dat onder Pakistaanse controle staat, het oranje gebied valt onder India. De noordoostelijke regio Aksai Chin staat momenteel onder Chinese controle (bron: Wikipedia, Public Domain).

Clear the fog around the theory of nuclear deterrence and we can see it very simply for what it is: blackmail. Attack me with nuclear weapons, and I will use mine with such force that it will inflict unimaginable destruction on you.

This blackmail that is contained in nuclear deterrence is supposed to work because the opposing party is expected to act rationally and not cross the threshold in the use of nuclear weapons.

But do nations at war act rationally? In the fog of war, as it is called, the most irrational of decisions are taken at the spur of the moment. The alleged protection against nuclear escalation is based then on as flimsy an assumption as human rationality during a crisis.

The argument for nuclear weapons is that they offer protection against existential threats, but some countries have much lower thresholds. For instance, in 2001, a senior army advisor to Pakistan on its nuclear policy drew red lines that include even economic sanctions, and destruction of key military assets.

As Achin Vanaik, the political scientist and peace activist has pointed out, India and Pakistan countries have fought as many as four conventional wars in the past 78 years: in 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999.

A history of frequent conflict adds an additional dimension of risk to the possession of nuclear weapons. It does not help that the two countries have not exhibited great maturity in talking about these weapons.

If one country has spoken of the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the other has asked “If nuclear weapons are meant to be used only for Diwali.” In the week since the cease fire, governments, media and political outfits have continued to speak casually about nuclear weapons and new and old doctrines.

This is seeping into wider public discourse. We would be horrified if we could only step back and see the implications of our conversations.

Banal evil

To rephrase a well-known phrase, there is a frightening banality in the casualness with which the governments and societies of the two countries now speak about these weapons. These are weapons that can cause civilisational damage.

That they have not been used in the past 80 years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki is no guarantee that they will not be used again. We know that during the height of the Cold War, the US and the then Soviet Union on more than one occasion escaped by the skin of their teeth from causing a global Armageddon, the most well-known escape being of course the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

All it will take is one miscalculation for things to go monumentally wrong. This is something that not just the US, Russia, China, UK, France, Israel and North Korea (the latter two the unstated nuclear powers) must remember.

The scope for provocation is increasing in South Asia with each round of conflict. More sophisticated and more powerful weapons are being used (compare 2025 with 2019). This takes us up the escalation ladder and in the heat of war a disastrous miscalculation can well take place.

De betwiste gebieden van Kasjmir: Pakistan (groen), India (paars) en China (geel) (bron: Wikipedia).
De betwiste gebieden van Kasjmir: Pakistan (groen), India (paars) en China (geel) (bron: Wikipedia).

Added to the military complexity is the emergence of war mongers on TV screens and social media who are neither aware of the dangers of warfare nor care for the human costs of war. They are yet driving public discourse, especially in India.

In both countries religious chauvinism is influencing national policy. It is now no longer a case of riding a tiger that the ruling political parties cannot get off. The culture of the past decade has been to look away from, if not to actively, encourage hate and hysteria. This has hatched an army of citizens that is consuming society with its poison.

At the height of the Cold War, a TV film The Day After presented a fictional portrayal of the aftermath of a nuclear war as experienced by two cities in mid-west US. The film unnerved the viewing public.

President Ronald Reagan himself wrote in his diary that it left him ‘greatly depressed’ and that it changed his view on nuclear war. Reagan later wrote that the signing of the 1987 nuclear weapons agreement with the Soviet Union could be traced to the impact of the film.

A right-wing president who laid store by militarisation changed his mind after realising the horrors of a nuclear confrontation.

Can we hope for a similar change in attitudes in nuclear weapons a week after South Asia came close to a nuclear confrontation? We must wake up and realise what we are sitting on.

One escalatory event after the other could lead to the use of nuclear weapons; and one use will cause a catastrophe that can never be reversed.

C. Rammanohar Reddy

C. Rammanohar Reddy is editor of The India Forum.

Source: ‘The Wire’, India

India, Pakistan and The Day After by C. Rammanohar Reddy (18 May 2025). We must wake up and realise what we are sitting on https://thewire.in/south-asia/india-pakistan-and-the-day-after/?mid_related_new

Lees ook:

Dehumanisation in a Time of War Hysteria

The loyalty-treachery divide in India silences voices of peace at home. State propaganda merges with public discourse, and war’s influence permeates civilian thought. By dehumanising people into targets, war makes the unacceptable seem necessary, eroding the humanity of both victim and perpetrator. https://www.theindiaforum.in/society/dehumanisation-time-war-hysteria


Lees verder (inhoud mei 2025)


Dit vind je misschien ook leuk...