How would the world respond to a successful nuclear attack?

Let’s say that two nuclear countries, perhaps India and Pakistan, find themselves at war. At first it begins with conventional warfare, but let’s suppose that some event triggers a nuclear response-- perhaps a panicked Indian colonel in control of nukes is about to be overrun by enemy troops and thus launches his payload before its too late. The Indian army leadership realizes that Pakistan will respond in kind and thus launches its full complement of nukes at probable locations of Pakistani nukes to avert a nuclear retaliation. Perhaps one or two Pakistani nukes makes it through and hits Indian targets.

Probably a stupid scenario, but let’s say it happens, and that India ends up winning this nuclear war. Most of Pakistan is now a radioactive wasteland less than a day after nuclear hostilities commenced.

How would the world respond?

I doubt the other nuclear powers would send their own nukes at India now, right? Although if India succeeds at wiping out an enemy with nukes and faces little retribution, doesn’t that send a very interesting message to everyone else?

So, I imagine huge economic sanctions, etc. etc. But then, India may become more and more desperate as its economy is strangled, its people are hungry, and so on. They may be forced into using the same type of nuclear brinksmanship that North Korea does, and they would be far scarier in this role (IMO).

So, what would the various world organizations and powers do? (feel free to use other examples besides India-Pakistan)

What do you suppose will happen to all the radioactive dust created by these bombs? Where will the wind blow them? I imagine some fairly pissed off Chinese, Afghans or former Soviet states at the VERY LEAST. If it went worldwide, India would be TOAST. Howzabout, nobody trades with them for a decade or two? With their overpopulation problem and increasing dependence on world trade, the death toll would be staggering.

And that’s about the mildest sanction I’d imagine they’d get.

Oh, shoot, now we’ll have the free trade crew in hear complaining that it only hurts yourself to refuse to trade with a nation that uses nukes. I’ll bet they’d even recommend that Pakistan not erect trade barriers to India in your scenario.

Since several thousand nuclear devices have been detonated on, under, and over the land, I don’t think that the dozen or two that India and Pakistan manage to set off would make too large of an impact, fallout-wise.

Assuming that the exchange was limited to India and Pakistan, India is virtually assured of its survival, while Pakistan is virtually assured of its destruction. India has a much larger population over a much larger area, and has superior delivery systems for its nukes.

Regardless, I think that during the attacks themselves (assuming a total timespan of several hours), the rest of the world would stop air traffic, issue some “If any of those things get near us, we’ll flatten you” statements, and wait and see. Not much else that can be done, in the short term, is there? In the long run, I doubt that there would significant sanctions. Both nations could very well be devestated, (Pakistan could cease to exist as a nation). Millions dead, economies destroyed. Maybe the UN would take WMD proliferation more seriously in the future, but I don’t see any serious sanctions on the nations actually involved.

about 99.999% of those several thousand nukes were detonated in either U.S.S.R. tundra, French islands, or U.S. desert.

I’m sure the fallout of a nuked urban area would be a MAJOR issue, at least over the highly populated nation of India.

[hijack… hurt ego] An Indian colonel panicked in front of Pakistani troops? Ha! Laughable, at best, as history has shown plenty of times. Substitute with Chinese troops, and there you might have a case for a panicked Indian colonel :D[/hijack… ego intact again]

Seriously though, I don’t think any responsible nation (with nukes) would leave the control of said nukes with a colonel. Or any individual military personnel, for that matter. It should, and does in most cases, rest with the head of the elected government. At least it does in the case of India.

I think the question that needs answering is how would the world react to a first nuclear strike, successful or not. And how would it advise the victim of the nuclear strike. Use the India-Pakistan scenario if you like!

The reaction of the world would depend entirely on who was the one making first strike. With the case of India-Pakistan, I think that it would be a diplomatic measure taken against the offending nation, and the other nation would receive huge amounts of international aid.

In the case of North Korea launching against, say, Japan or South Korea, you would most likely see a military action undertaken against North Korea.

The world’s reaction would entirely depend on who the nation launching first strike was. And, it would most likely depend on the United States’ relationship with that country.

I can’t imagine what a trade embargo after the fact would acomplish other than making the country poor(er). It’s stupid. The world should starve some third world country because their leaders went insane? And how effective have embargos been in Cuba, Iraw or anywhere else?

In the context of the OP, the international community would likely use the threat of sanctions to force the combatants to cease hostilities.

If anything, the international community would kick in MORE aid to help the victims of the nuclear strikes.

The country that used nuclear weapons would likely be preasurred to provide reparations.

War crimes charges might even be filed agaisnt those responsible for the nuclear attack.

I long wondered why the world didn’t have a “Great Convention” for deterrence, like in Frank Herbert’s Dune series–where anyone who used nukes against human beings faced immediate nuclear annihilation by everyone else.

But then I realized that, post-Cold War, proving guilt in such a case (and confining guilt to a geographic area susceptible to retaliation–witness a loose international group like Al Qaeda) would not be so easy.

My vote for the India-Pakistan exchange (or anything, unlike NK, China, Israel, etc., that would draw in allied nations like the US) would be: the world would make no action in response, would get very nervous that others might get dragged in, and would quickly pass a toothless condemnation of some sort through the UN.

I pretty much agree with what MSMITH wrote. I’d add that I would expect tremendous international pressure for the two countries to eliminate their remaining nuclear arsenals.

I think that if the Pak/India scenario were to happen that the UN, pushed heavily by the Western nations, would demand a dissarmament from both countries and other countries that hav’nt signed or followed the rules of the NPT. With such a great loss of life I do not see sanctions as enough of a penalty f they dissarm. i can even see the crazy scenario that if a country say, like China, threatened a veto, then the US would “unilaterally” (along with all of the other western nations) use force to remove the nuclear threat (thats if the countries dont open themselves up to nuclear inspections utterly and completely with no strings attached) from India, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and hopefully Israel.

If North Korea were to start playing with their toys, however, that would be ipso facto casus beli. Any target the DPRK would likely aim at would put American troops in danger. South Korea and Japan have enough American troops to warrant a “retaliation in kind”.

Well, of course, that was just a novel, where the author has complete control over all factions and can force an idealistic idea to work.

In the real world, you’d have many, many practical problems. What if a nuke is launched by accident? Do you annihilate the country? What if it can’t be determined for sure whether it was an accident or on purpose?

And what if the nuke was sent off as retaliation? For example, Pakistan launches one nuke and India responds by launching 100. Does the world strike out at both countries or just Pakistan?

And, of course, what do you to the the outside countries that use their nukes to annihilate the first nuker and are now technically in violation of the same Convention?

And so on. There are so many practical problems with this idea.

Don’t forget that the rulers controlled entire planets, thereby negating any fallout effects on the “good guys”.

Herbert’s idea isn’t that far fetched.

Yes.

Who cares? The lesson here is simple: Keep control of your nukes.

Well, instead of launching 100 nukes back at Pakistan, India should instead join the rest of the world in launching nukes at India through whatever process is in place.

(This works much better in Dune, because everyone is on different planets. No fallout issues, no worries about just turning the whole place into glass.)

This is silly.

Using them against the initial aggressor isn’t a violation, it’s a punishment. You could use the same argument to say that the police shouldn’t carry guns because shooting people is a crime.

The main practical problems with the idea stem from taking something written for many different planets and applying it to countries on the same planet.

People are gonna be scared shitless and they’re gonna want blood. Depending on the effect of the fallout, the sanctions could range from a toothless document to retaliatory nuclear strikes. I find the notion that people would take trade notions under consideration here to be laughable. If people were that rational and cool-headed, wars would never happen.

Yes, but are you going to impose trade sanctions on an economically devastated and ruined country, where millions are already dead, and tens of millions are facing starvation, disease, and famine? And it also assumes that the government that launched the nukes will remain in power. I don’t think that is very likely. I can imagine many people in the military of the aggressor country whose families were killed by the retaliatory strike wouldn’t be too pleased with the dictators who launched the nukes.

The probable response wouldn’t be trade sanctions, it would be the military removal of the offending government. Once the government is removed, trade sanctions don’t make sense any more. And I personally can’t see the US and Europe allowing a government that throws nuclear bombs around to stay in power. Expect invasion within weeks, barring a coup and cooperation by the new regime.

Um…because it’s INSANE?

Because it’s not practical? (Other than the US or Russia, who even posesses enough inter-continental nuclear weapons to do anything to Russia or the US other than provoke an overwhelming nuclear response?)
Debaser - must be nice to see everything in black and white.
By the way, Draconian sanctions sure worked well against Germany after WWI.

Typical knee-jerk reaction. Why do you want to wait for a nuclear flare-up before ‘demanding’ disarmament? And how about those countries who have no record of nuclear proliferation - why should they give up their nuclear deterence because a war in another part of the world?

Right. Sanctions on a country already devastated by war. What are you going to do? Stop buying their radioactive wheat? :rolleyes:

Oh I see… American troops in danger warrant a nuclear retaliation, but anyone else facing a nuclear strike dare not ‘retaliate in kind’?

Huh?!

So using nukes in retaliation to a nuke is okay then? Amusing.

Umm… it’s very likely that one or both countries leadership would be dead since New Delhi is certainly within strike range. You have to know that Pakistan has a very good idea where the Indian Command and Control facilities are since they’ve spent the last 40 uyears or so preparing for war and watching the Indians and running intel ops in India. The reverse is obviously true of Karachi and the Paki forces. This means an exchange wouldn’t be simply against civilian centers but more likely targeted on government centers.

With the government dead or severly crippled embargoing the countries isn’t in any way useful.

In any event, it’s very likely that the Chineese would invade India, and possibly Pakistan, since they would see the chaos and lack of control as a direct threat to themselves. They are also in strike range and share a significant border. This is much the same way the US might intercede if Canada collapsed into civil war, and for the same reasons. It’s not that they particularly want to invade, but that there is too much risk to them NOT to seize control of key military assets and systems, especially the Nuclear ones. Less so in the case of Canada, but the US would NOT permit Canada to devolve into open civil war.

They know they can’t sustain a military presence there indefinately (Not even China can invade India), but they would act to restore SOME order (for their own safety) and disable/destroy every remaining Nuke they could find and start trying to set up some sort of civil authority.

I would not at all be surprised if Russia/China and the US had some sort of joint operations plan in case of a post nuclear conflict need to invade India/Pakistan. It’s not as unlikely as it sounds. Russia and China (especially) have security issues and the US does as well (and would rather be in a multi-national force than not so as to make sure it’s not the Peoples Republic of India which is being set up by the Chineese.).

Regards,
-Bouncer-

India has a population of over one billion. They could lose half in a nuclear exchange, and still comfortably field an army that is several million strong. Nobody is going to invade India any time soon. (Though I grant the possibility that China would use the opportunity to do a bit of ‘border redrawing’ and snag a bit of land here and there. Doubtfull, though.)