I doubt they'd be at war right now even if nukes were out of the picture.  No evidence, just a feeling.

OTOH, while the Mumbai attack may not have triggered an invasion, it's a somewhat safer bet that something else in the past fifteen years would have.  How many shooting wars were there between India and Pakistan post-partition, pre-nukes?  Three?  And there seems little doubt that nuclear weapons CAN have such a peacemaking effect.  Can anyone doubt that had Oppenheimer, Teller, & Co never set off their Los Alamos firecracker the USA and USSR would have duked it out on the plains of central Europe at around 1960 give or take five years?

Michael Crowley writes:

On PBS tonight a man interviewed on the street in Mumbai angrily called for an Indian invasion of Pakistan. He argued that conquest would be easy because India is so much larger than its neighbor. The man seemed to forget, or didn't know, that Pakistan has a bunch of nukes for just this reason.

Which prompts a question: Would India and Pakistan be at war now--or well on the path to war--if both sides didn't have nuclear weapons? Is it a good thing, in a warped way, that they do? (Leaving aside the whole terrorists-stealing-one-and-killing-us-all part, of course.)

George responds:

India and Pakistan would be far less likely to go to war if the people of both nations understood the manner in which they were indoctrinated as children to internalize a sense of self that revolves around things like caste, class, religion, tribal affliation, skin color and the like.

Imagine for example this thought experiment.

Arif and Hassan are born on the same day. They are twins. But [for whatever reason you might imagine.....their parents die] Arif stays in Pakistan and is raised in the traditions of [and learns the cultural and religious values of] his new Pakistani parents and their community mores. They are Muslims.

Hassan, however, is adopted by an Indian couple. They are Hindus. They take him to live in a village outside New Delhi and he is raised in the traditions of [and learns the cultural and religious values of] his new parents and their community mores.

See how arbitrary and adventitious an "identity" can be?

If India and Pakistan were to go to war the hypothetical Arif and Hassan might well end up trying to kill each other.

Think of it like this:

Every single baby that comes into this world has certain fundamental needs. They need food and water. They need clothing and shelter. They need health care. They need to be loved and nurtured.

They need to be protected. They need to have their innate curiousity stimulated. They need a social structure in which to learn how to interact with others. They need rules of behavior.

But if you are a baby born in Pakistan or India or Israel or Iran or Sudan or Saudi Arabia or Bolivia or Zimbabwe or America or Russia or China you may pick up many other more conflicting and contradictory identity traits that you do not essentially need: xenophobia, religious intolerance, homophobia, bigotry, racism, sexism, classism, tribalism.

This is, in one respect, how the very wealthy and the very powerful in this world sustain their own privileges. If you investigate demographic ststistics in both India and Pakistan you will find that wealth and power is controlled by a much smaller percentage of the population then the percentage that are controlled by poverty.

Maybe someday this will change. But it will not be very likely to if people continue to identify themselves in prejudiced or purely fortuitous ways.

george walton

Crowley makes certain assumptions. Firstly, are the same Pakistani elements that would destabilize India also responsible for its nukes? Secondly, strategic nukes set a ceiling for a response to the use of state force, not a floor. There's a huge gray area in which neither India nor Pakistan can use state force. Without nukes New Delhi could retaliate proportionately, and even if violence escalated, no options would be as quick and final as a nuclear strike. Now any retaliation starts a process leading to nuclear reprisal. Without nukes, New Delhi, which might very well know exactly the nature of its foe, could pinpoint the exact target with the proper tactical response. But, in a situation where Pakistan does not have the proper safeguards to ensure nuclear retaliation will not occur, India cannot respond rashly, and probably not at all.

I am no scholar on Indian-Pakistani relations, but my layman's opinion is that they would absolutely be at war right now if not for nuclear weapons.

Since Pakistan's independence, they've fought four wars, and I highly suspect that without the threat of mutual annihilation, a massive terrorist attack that can be blamed (rightly or not) on Pakistan could easily push them into a fifth. Even with the threat of mutual annihilation, they've barely shifted their aggressive stances towards one another; it isn't just idiots taking advantage of a chance to mouth off to the press, but the Indian government ministers that blamed Pakistan within hours, not seeming to grasp that their public statements have an effect on the chances that their two countries will end up a radioactive wasteland, and that calm assessments are in everyone's interest...

aeromonas is correct  in his "OTOH" analysis - nuclear deterrence prevented a U.S. - Soviet war in Europe.  The Warsaw Pact had overwhelming convetional superiority and would have rolled up Western Europe.  George F Will dismissed the Reykavick (sp?) fireside talks between Reagan and Gorbachev for complete nuclear disamament as "making the world safe for Soviet conventional warfare".  

Similarly deterrence will hopefully avert conventional warfare between India and Pakistan.

Mr. Crowley. Is this musing a piece  of path grooming by which to consider the relative consequence of a nuclear Iran? Le virtue of L'enfant Terrible?

Un unexamined assumption of the what-ifs being bandied about here is that an Indian invasion of Pakistan would be a bad thing. I mean, sure, for all the actual people who would die or be maimed or displaced and thrown into refugee poverty, I'll grant that for those people an all-out war between India and Pakistan would be a terrible thing. But for the overall global situation, would such a war really be a bad thing on balance? That conclusion cannot be assumed.

(And I'll throw in with those who doubt that, absent nukes, such a war would now be starting. What, precisely, would India hope to achieve with an invasion of Pakistan? Just killing a bunch of the other guy's soldiers is not a war aim. Other potential aims are highly problematic: A punitive air campaign to cripple Pakistan's command-and-control structure would actually make Pakistan's terrorists relatively stronger. Seizing border-area military posts and airfields doesn't get India much for its efforts; Pakistan is prepared to cede territory and bases anyway. Seizing Islamabad is more trouble than it's worth. The only two objectives that make any sense to me are regime change, which would involve India in a long and probably worse-than-any-possible-alternative occupation; and direct action to impose law & order in the Tribal areas along the Afghan border, which India can't hope to accomplish unless it is prepared first to achieve the total destruction of the Pakistani state. So a full-scale war would only be brewing, I expect, if limited Indian punitive military strikes -- against, say, an ISI building somewhere, or jihadi camps in the Tribal areas -- led Pakistan to escalate to a ground war. And Pakistan may have the dumbest, lest capable government on the planet, but surely they're not that dumb or incompetent.)

Rhubarbs - re: Pakistan's governmental/military competence.

Let's remember that this is the same Pakistan that thought they could replicate Israel's preemptive surprise attack on the enemy's air force in the Six-Day War by flying their air force through 300 miles of Indian antiaircraft fire.

Granted, that was in 1971, but it does make my list of the top three Blackest Comedy Moments in War History, along with Pickett's Charge and Barbarossa's valiant engagement in the Kings' Crusade.

Modern history doesn't inspire much confidence that they've improved, either, given that the Pakistani president admitted that in the 1998 war with India, he simply lost control of his nuclear arsenal. The military made moves to deploy nuclear weapons on their own, and Bill Clinton had to inform the President what was going on.

Apologies, my references in my last post's last paragraph to the Pakistani President were intended to be references to the Pakistani Prime Minister.

Migu, "are the same Pakistani elements that would destabilize India also responsible for its nukes?" Pakistan's nuclear hero, A. O. Khan, had sold missile technology to N. Korea.  I don't know if he's part of LeT.  So perhaps he's not the same element, but he's equally if not more destabilizing.

Whether it is covering the presidential campaign, the unfolding economic crisis or the current tensions between Pakistan and India many pundits respond...by and large...as though they were up in a booth calling a horse race.

Or analyzing a bull fight.

Or providing a blow by blow color commentary on a bruising boxing match.

Or watching a chess game unfold and noting the significance of all the pieces being moved on the board.

This is not to pass judgment on these efforts. They are all necessary components for understanding the world as it unfolds historically.

But the deconstructions rarely delve into the motives of the political and military mandarins who manipulate the armies and the civilian spectators in choosing to call the conflicts struggles for or against this or that God.....or for or against one or another ideological narrative.

george walton

"Un unexamined assumption of the what-ifs being bandied about here is that an Indian invasion of Pakistan would be a bad thing." and if it is a nuclear exchange we can deal with global overpopulation and global warming all in one shot.

Sorry Rhub. I know that was not your intention with that line.

I don't know.  I think overall the chaos and destruction of a conventional war is preferable to both countries having nukes.  The former would be very bad; the latter threatens to kill us all (even a local exchange between the two could easily trigger a nuclear winter).  

satyendra:

No, A.Q. Khan has no relationship to Lashkar-e-Taiba. I agree his activities continue to be destabilizing for nonproliferation efforts. However, he is still under house arrest, and for all his support and privileges, I doubt he is in the loop  He's also very much a secular Muslim, and his wife is South African.

Nukes have prevented large-scale wars, like WW1 or WW2, but medium and small wars have proliferated beneath the level where strategic nukes are optimal to use. It's an open question whether people want to live in a world where a large-scale conflict could occur, or one where small, Mumbai-like assaults are more frequent, but preventable through intelligence and law enforcement. It's a trade-off in an imperfect world.

"I think overall the chaos and destruction of a conventional war is preferable to both countries having nukes.  The former would be very bad; the latter threatens to kill us all (even a local exchange between the two could easily trigger a nuclear winter). "

I thought your argument breath-taking. I don't think there has to be a trade-off between the deterrent effect of strategic nukes and the overall possibility of the first nuclear war. Reducing nukes is obviously a goal. There's no need for so many warheads globally. But, until states which believe they need nukes to keep their sovereignty are assuaged, nukes are a sobering deterrent on rash decision-making. I'm not going to take odds on the possibility of a nuclear conflict tomorrow, but, compared to the reality of the number of conventional conflicts going on right now, I'll go with a reduced number of nuclear-tipped missiles.

Reykjavík  -if anyone cares.

More on the topic. I side with the "yes, they would be at war" side of the debate. But I think the nuclear element has increased the overall danger. The previous war was relatively small-scale, unlike 1971 for example, and I think the risk of conflict escalating to nuclear exchange is greater than the likelihood that the threat of a nuclear exchange will keep everyone calm.