even sven A nation isn’t merely a mass of territory with people in it. If you destroy the civil infrastructure by killing off it’s bureaucratic class you no longer have a nation but a bunch of disconnected tribes.
Not to mention that there’d be a disproportionate share of the death toll among educated & trained people in general.
Good God, there seems to be a lot of ignorance about S Asian politics and affairs here
- evennsven, check out the links, Pakistani missiles are upto 2500 KM range (and this can be increased with a smaller payload), they can hit any target in India. And India’s chances of surviving are zilch, zip, nada, their industrial, economic and political centers will be pollution over the Asian Landmass, the country will not exist as a viable political entity. Most of the outlieing areas will simply secceed, as they have been trying to do for decades and there will be no Indian Security Forces to stop them as they have been doing. As for agriculture, Indian agriculture is dependant on one province; Punjab, which is right next to Pakistan and would probably be fought over.
2)mswas, the US would do what it did in 2002, which is sit back in the bases. And China coming in on India’s side? That is one of the most patently ridiculous ideas I have heard. China is Pakistan’s greatest ally, hell the Pakistani nuclear programme was helped by them to a large extend. What you are suggesting is something like having the US come in on the Arabs side in a middle east war.
3)lokji, Check out the a map and the road and rail links between Afghanistan and Georgia (ignoring for the moment that Georgian ports have been mauled by the Russians in THAT little spat in August), you will discover that they are none. The SOviets had huge logistial problems in Afghanistan in the 80’s and they were contigous. Indeed the Mujahideen were able to cut off the line for months at a time. The routes into Afghanistan from C Asia are small, and inaccessable in the winter. Unlike the ones from Pakistan.
It seems you are really misunderstanding the importance of logistics in warfare. Lets say a formation needs X amount of supplys to fight, but it needs Y amount to be able to carry out an offensive operation. A supply line can only provide a certain amount and THAT dictates what ops take place. Look at N Africa in WWII when the Libiyan ports could only supply 8 divisons worth of material. The supply lines you mention can NOT bring in enough supplies to carry out an offensive operations. Hell I doubt they can sustain NATO at current levels. The alternative supply lines can supplament the lines from Pakistan, they can’t replace them.
In your own post you said that the US started by placing nukes in Turkey, how does the quoted sentence follow from there?
The nukes were put there in the Eisenhower administration. They were supposed to have been removed but never were. Kennedy wanted to swap them out for the missiles in Cuba but couldn’t publicly do so for fears it would look like he was backing down. They finally came to a back channel agreement that the US would remove the Turkish missiles quietly at a later date.
Both countries certainly had ICBMs pointed at the other. That was acceptable by the standards of the day. Adding smaller tactical nukes wasn’t supposed to be a trigger for a full-scale war, but Cuba showed that they very well could be.
That’s what Kennedy didn’t start. He had to work within the system that was in place, but he didn’t take the possibly escalating steps during the crisis that many advisers wanted him to. Same for Khrushchev who had to squelch his own hard-liners.
Exactly.
Do mean like in Kuwait?
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
Somehow I doubt China would continue to support Pakistan in the face of it’s imminent demise.
Wikipedia’s article on the Cuban missile crisis says that the Jupiter IRBM’s were deployed to Turkey in 1961. Kennedy took office on the 20th of January 1961. So is the article wrong, or were they deployed before January 20? Another (non-wiki) article says the Turkish ones became operational in November 1961.
I wasn’t alive during this time and haven’t studied it much, but on the surface it looks like you are wrong. To me it seems that Kennedy had a part in it too, as much as Khrushchev did. As I understand it, the Eisenhower administration negotiated the deployment with the Turks, but Kennedy ordered the follow through.
**Vox Imperatoris **. Like in the '73 war. Or 82, or 2006.
mswas. Chinese supported Pakistan in all its wars, after 65 it supplied enough material for 3 new divisions, it send ammunition and supplies as well as equipment in '71 as well as '99 in Kargil and in the 2002 standoff. So China has been supporting Pakistan “in face of its imminient demise” for eons.
Or Kennedy just didn’t stop it.
Why would the PRC be targeted by India? While Pakistan and the PRC are allies, I can’t see a case where India would engage in nuking the Chinese if no hostile intent is given by the latter. (On the other hand, the earlier US SIOP was rigged to destroy the Warsaw Pact nations, along with the USSR & PRC regardless of who started it and who was innocent, so the possibility of this can’t be ruled out for historic reasons).
China has roughly 50 to 120 land base nuclear tipped missiles. The PRC believes this number is the minimum necessary for deterrence.
If the PRC gave the order, it would take hours, if not days before the missiles could be launched. For one thing, the nuclear warheads are kept separate from their launchers (because the PRC doesn’t trust its junior officers to follow orders). And historically, the PRC doesn’t rattle the nuclear saber unless it’s threaten (unlike the US)
My, you like telling people to consult maps. So, yes… of course there is not direct rail or road line from Georgia to Afghanistan, there’s the small manner of the Caspian sea between them, for starters. You do, however, have the trans-caspian railroad, and Azerbaijan whom we are on friendly terms with. Turkmenistan’s only major port is almost directly east of Azerbaijan. From Turkmenistan you have several options of roads into Afghanistan, and while winter is a supply problem for us it is also an operational problem for the Taliban as well. And we still have the world’s largest strategic and tactical airlift capability. We are also already positioned there with most of our durable assets in place. You seem to think Pakistan is absolutely crucial to our position in Afghanistan and I just don’t think that is necessarily the case. The alternate routes are longer and more expensive but the important thing is that they exist as alternatives.
Hmmmm…
This explains some of the comments I got (back in HS/College when we did D&D). When I DM’d, monsters always ran away if they looked like they would lose and also would not engage unless they thought they would win. They also tried to attack smart (depending on INT and alignment - LE more organized, CE less).
I still remember the frustration/fun a group had when they were 10 lvl 1 camping characters being ambushed all night by band of 11 orcs. The thief in the group managed to break off the assault by killing 2 of the orcs. 
Many liked that, some did not.
Well India with 1,129,866,154 to Pakistan’s 164,741,924 means Pakistan is only 14% as populated as India.
Pakistan has one huge city Karachi 11.8 million to India which has three huge cities
Mumbai 19.2 million, Delhi 18.6 million and Kolkata 15.5 million.
Lahore with 6.3 million people is Pakistan’s second largest city and situated right on the border with India.
It’s commonly thought both China and India due to their populations over over 1 billion would survive all but the biggest nuclear attack. Sure the countries wouldn’t be like they are now but they would still be.
China would support Pakistan simply by massing troops. They still claim parts of India as South Tibet. They wouldn’t have to attack really. Much the same way Italy massed troops and half heartedly attacked France, as Hitler rolled in from the north. While the Italian troops didn’t do much they kept French troops occupied.
The biggest problem is Pakistan doesn’t even control all it’s territory now. After a major war they’d lose all control but the major urban parts. Nukes could be sold to terrorists easily. If not nukes then nuclear materials
Markxxx The question isn’t whether people would still exist in the territory currently called India, but if it would still be called India. A Nation-State isn’t a patch of territory, it is a social infrastructure and sovereignty over individual humans. If you annihilate its civil service class it pretty much screws it. That’s why places like Zimbabwe are shitholes.