Pakistan has unleashed the jihadis on India, again, calculating that Pakistani nuclear weapons mean that India won't dare touch Pakistan in response:
The Pakistani generals believe that, since Pakistan got nukes in 1999, it can torment the Indians with these unprovoked border attacks without fear of escalating retaliation turning into a major war. Indian diplomats are reminding their Pakistani counterparts that nukes are not an absolute guarantee that the border incidents and continued Pakistani army and ISI support for Islamic terrorists working to attack inside India won’t lead to a nuclear exchange. India would be badly hurt, but Pakistan would be destroyed.
Pakistan believes that Pakistan can hit India below a certain threshold and that India won't respond.
This calculation works the other way. If India uses their Cold Start doctrine to quickly mobilize a mechanized division to smash into Pakistan for 10 kilometers or so to really tear up some Pakistani border positions, and then withdraws, will Pakistan really unleash their nukes on India? Won't Indian nukes deter Pakistan from escalating retaliation?
That's the problem with nukes. They tend to deter only nation-threatening attacks. Nukes are the obvious form of that threat. Conquest is another. But how much conquest? Would it be smart or stupid for Pakistan to unleash their nukes if India takes 70% of Pakistan? How about half? A third? Ten percent?
When such a decision could mean the destruction of the whole thing?
When India claims that they'll recover from a nuclear exchange in better shape than Pakistan? Whether or not that is true, if India believes it is true does it matter to Pakistan's decision making if it isn't true?
And all this calculating by two adjacent nuclear powers has to be done without the relatively endless time that we and the Soviets had in the Cold War when we had a whole 20 minutes from launch to impact of ICBMs to decide what to do.
And for real fun, how sure are the Pakistanis that their tame jihadis going after India don't think that making Pakistan an entire nation of involuntary martyrs isn't a good price to pay in order to take down so many Infidel Hindus in a nuclear exchange that they might provoke? That's another type of math altogether, no?
