I don't mean to downplay the PA, but if you are right that a rethink actually happened, then what happened in Kargil? Wasn't that the same exact kind of mistake?
Here is my take - The world as we knew it from 1945-1990 completely changed to a unipolar world from 1991-2018. Going forward however we are moving to a new era of a destabilized multipolar world were new powers have emerged and old powers have waned.
The US with Trump is declining rapidly in its international stature. US military is exhausted from fighting long wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan (and 100 other secret places it doesn't advertise). Post-Covid19 we will see further destabilization. Countries previously under US sway are now acting independently with unprecedented proxy wars taking place where, for the first time in history, we have the US as a side-show (Syria) or a no-show (Libya / Yemen).
The US itself is facing tremendous internal dissent. It's allies that were hard-glued to them now feel betrayed or are themselves of much lesser status than before. Case in point - Europe. Case in point the decline of the UK as a military force.
The era we have entered is eerily reminiscent of the 1930s. And we have a Nazi ideological equivalent in Modi, whose aim is, in no uncertain terms, to engage in progroms against Muslims, to repopulate Kashmir with Hindus, and to take back Pakistani Kashmir.
Whether Modi continues or not, this Hindutva ideology is only waiting to express itself, now or in whatever time it takes to realize. So, while I understand Pak is prepared for a "Cold Start", with thrusts in the theater north and south of Multan axis, the real attack will come somewhere in Azad Kashmir and what we call the northern areas.
Will international players intervene? Who? The US? What will the US do - send a fleet to stand and watch? Do you think the US will militarily rescue Pakistan? That will never happen. The US is not going to war with India, neither does it have the capability and will to do so. Sanctions will do little to stop Modi, who has shown that he is willing to forgo India's economic future for Hindutva supremacist goals.
India and Pakistan now are among the largest, most professional militaries in the world. There is no physical intervention from the UN or the US.
Generals often prepare for the last war they've fought, not the war they will fight in the future. This is exactly the case here but perhaps the pride of Pak generals is refusing to allow them to see this. If India knows you are prepared for x, I assure you they will not be preparing x for you. They will prepare a-z - everything except x. If you are waiting for a 2 week war, I don't think that is what you will get.
A forward thinking Pakistan would then prepare for a war that is to come, now or whenever. A war instigated by India or preempted by Pakistan. And that war may perhaps start as a reverse of Kargil - India attempting to take back Kashmir in a limited war.
Except there is a high chance that it won't remain limited, but like 1965, will conflagrate into an all out war.
If you look at PM Imran Khan's speeches, he understands where India is headed. He just doesn't know how to deal with it except making speeches.
Will the fear of a nuclear exchange eventually stop the war or create limits to its belligerents? Yes it will. But not in the way we are assuming. The real nuclear threshold will not be reached if India manages to take Azad Kashmir and northern areas. Nor is tactically nuking Kashmir a viable solution politically.
Will Pakistan taking Rann of Kutch or Hariyana or sections of Indian Punjab cause India, the aggressor to reach the nuclear threshold. I would say no. Not unless we reach New Delhi.
The world does not always work as it has in the past. Sometimes things happen that never happened before. Take for instance the Coronavirus. It just came out of the blue and totally changed the world. Finance guys call these "black swan events". You see, when the white man reached Australia he saw something that he had never seen before - black swans.
Swans were white. Where always known to be white. The western world had always understood that this was one thing that would stay white just like them. But the world didn't work as it always worked. It showed them a black swan and viola, they ultimately came up with the "black swan" theory - that the world throws stuff at you that is unprecedented.
A conventional war between India and Pakistan, two nuclear nations would be unprecedented. It has never happened before. But logic suggests it will happen and already did happen to some extent in Kargil. Kargil lasted 2.5 months and did not have a racial supremacist Hindutva ideology fueling it.
If Kargil lasted that long, imagine how long a future mega-kargil could last. If we take a 95% confidence interval and assume that this event will take place at that mark, and we play around with a bit of statistics, I think that the next war can last between 1 to 6 months.
To keep things relatively simple, let's assume the next war will last 4 months. Let's also assume that this 4 month war will start in Kashmir but will then move to the international border.
Let us also assume that the DGMO having more foresight than past generals, actually planned in advance for this war, and convinced the COAS to approach PM Imran Khan to enlarge the armed forces through conscription.
Now let us assume that a division has approximately 15000 soldiers, and we wish to raise 10 new infantry division for our war with India. Let us assume a FIFO system (First in First Out) and that conscription will have wastage of 10%. To retain conscripts, we will need to recruit for about 200,000 of them.
(should I continue?
@PanzerKiel )
