Be Prepared for an India-Pakistan Limited War
Why is there an assumption that nuclear weapons would preclude a limited conflict between India and Pakistan?
The author argues that limited conventional war is possible.
Yeah, welcome to the worry club. Although I haven't posted about Cold Start in a while.
The problem is either nuclear escalation from the problem of insufficient information and incorrect signal sending and reading; or nuclear escalation from a basic mistake of thinking your own nukes deter a nuclear response to a major conventional defeat of the enemy that is viewed as an existential threat to the nation itself.
And that doesn't only apply to India defeating Pakistan's military, prompting Pakistani use of nukes to warn India away from pursuing total victory.
If Pakistan inflicted enough of a defeat on India at the conventional level, that might lead India to nuke Pakistani targets as a warning to China not to exploit the Indian defeat.
Remember, with small arsenals perhaps vulnerable to first strikes (at least in theory and in your own worst-case scenarios regardless of the reality) and very short flight times, the risk of generating a "use them or lose them" attitude toward their nukes in the middle of a conventional fight is very real.
I think anything larger than a Kargil War-scale of fighting poses a risk of nuclear escalation.
