Russia Took Pakistan’s Side In South Asia’s Tit-For-Tat Missile Tests

[ZedZeeshan]

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov staunchly defended Pakistan’s “sovereign right to take care of its security” amidst South Asia’s tit-for-tat missile tests, with this unprecedented statement not only signifying the strength of the Russian-Pakistani Strategic Partnership, but also potentially being a response to the Indian Ambassador to the US’ recent hint that his country will prioritize the undertaking of an anti-Russian military pivot towards the Pentagon during Modi’s second term in office.

Tit-for-tat missile tests aren’t really a new trend anywhere in the world, but the latest ones in South Asia have captured the world’s attention because of the tense context in which they’re occurring. Pakistan recently gave India a “bloody nose” a few months ago in February after Modi’s military misadventure ended in failure following the downing of at least one of his country’s warplanes, which in turn prompted the incumbent premier to make anti-Pakistani hostility one of the main platforms of his re-election campaign. He ended up winning handsomely, but Pakistan sent him the message that he shouldn’t think about carrying through on his campaign rhetoric when it tested a new nuclear-capable missile on the same day that Modi declared victory.

Unaware observers might have predicted that Russia would condemn Pakistan for “saber-rattling” against Moscow’s Soviet-era ally, but the exact opposite actually occurred when Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov staunched defended Pakistan’s “sovereign right to take care of its security”. This stance shouldn’t be surprising to those who have been following Russia’s “Return to South Asia” and realized that the global pivot state of Pakistan is intended to form its main component, which isn’t for an arbitrary reason either but is a direct “balancing” response to India’s pro-American pivot through the so-called “Indo-Pacific” concept that Foreign Ministry Lavrov earlier decried as an “artificially imposed” plot to “contain” China.

That said, Russia’s multibillion-dollar arms deals with India greatly contribute to the national budget and have become all the more important during the last five years of surviving under increasingly strict sanctions. It’s actually because of the looming threat of CAATSA sanctions, however, that India might abandon its S-400 dealwith Russia and replace its much-needed anti-air systems with American THAADs instead, especially judging by what the Indian Ambassador to the US just hinted on the day of Modi’s re-election. He made it clear that India intends to prioritize the undertaking of an anti-Russian military pivot towards the Pentagon during Modi’s second term in office by replacing even more of its Moscow-provided arsenal with Washington’s wares.

If executed rapidly enough and in parallel with the US’ ever-tightening sanctions regime, this could cripple the Kremlin’s socio-economic development plans that are supposed to coincidentally be implemented during this exact same timeframe and therefore make it much more likely that Russia will be forced to make the many “concessions” that the US demands of it in exchange for a “New Detente“. Russia realizes the game that the US and India are playing and that’s why it’s been steadily diversifying its military partners over the past couple of years ever since it became evident that the Indo-American alliance is to its strategic detriment, which relevantly culminated in turning its rapidly accelerated rapprochement with Pakistan into a strategic partnership.

Although the Pakistani arms market is by no means comparable to India’s and could never replace the revenue that Russia stands to lose from the latter, its importance derives from how it figures into Moscow’s strategic calculus. Russia’s 21st-century grand strategy is to become the supreme “balancing” force in Afro-Eurasia, to which end it’s inclined to militarily tilt towards Pakistan the more than India pivots towards the US. The recent tensions in South Asia also revealed that India, not Pakistan, is the real rogue state, which has been proven even more by the regionally destabilizing effect that its pro-American pivot is having, so it makes sense why Russia would side with the most responsible state in the region, Pakistan.

From Russia’s perspective, Pakistan is entirely in the right to test a new state-of-the-art nuclear-capable missile on the same day as Modi declared victory because it wasn’t Islamabad that almost brought the region to the brink of nuclear war earlier this year but New Delhi. There’s a high likelihood that India’s alliance with America will see it continuing to behave aggressively as the US cheers it on in order to justify more arms sales to the world’s second-largest customer, which would undoubtedly disrupt the regional balance of power. In response, Russia would naturally consider selling its own wares to Pakistan in order to restore the aforementioned balance that the US and India disrupted, as signaled by its support for Islamabad’s tit-for-tat missile tests.

https://eurasiafuture.com/2019/05/2...ide-in-south-asias-tit-for-tat-missile-tests/

 

[khansaheeb]

Time for Pakistan to nuke the moon?:-
https://inmilitary.com/strange-but-...19&utm_campaign=Blog - In Military - LT - AMU
Strange But True: The US Military Once Wanted to Blow Up the Moon












Editor’s Note: This article is satire. It is supposed to be funny. We take no responsibility if it is not funny. Apparently, some readers may have confused this article for a serious scientific paper.

By Wes O’Donnell
Contributor, In Military/ In Cyber Defense. Veteran U.S. Army & U.S. Air Force.

The United States military once wanted to detonate a nuclear weapon on the moon without a full understanding of its consequences. Sheer lunacy, you say? But the story is true. Well, sort of.

At the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union pulling ahead in the Space Race, the U.S. Air Force devised a plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon. Officially known as “A Study of Lunar Research Flights or Project A119,” the idea was to trigger a nuclear device on the moon’s surface.

The explosion, which would have been visible from Earth with the naked eye, was to be a distinct show of force of the United States’ capabilities. This top-secret plan was developed in 1958, just one year after the Soviet Union’s surprise successful launch of Sputnik 1.


Scientist Carl Sagan Recruited for Air Force’s Plan to Blow Up the Moon

Oddly enough, the Air Force recruited a young Carl Sagan, then only 24, to handle the mathematics and predictive models for the nuclear explosion. Sagan would later become an outspoken voice in the fight against nuclear proliferation. In fact, it was during research for a 1999 biography of Sagan that the project details were uncovered by biographer Keay Davidson.

Moon Destruction Called Off Due to Fears of Adverse Public Reaction

Despite the project’s full revelation in 2000 by team leader Leonard Reiffel and project documents that have now been made public, the U.S. government continues to deny its official involvement in the project. In a horrifying twist, later research from 2010 revealed that the Soviet Union planned its own nuclear strike on the moon, also as a show of force.

Both countries ultimately realized that there could in fact be an adverse public response to blowing up Earth’s only natural satellite – to say nothing of what it could do to the moon. In addition, thanks in part to Sagan’s mathematics, project leaders became increasingly concerned about radioactive fallout on the moon and its challenges to future lunar colonization.

Instead, the U.S. focused its efforts on landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth. The final blow to the project came with President John F. Kennedy’s Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which barred nuclear weapons tests in the atmosphere, underwater and in space.

Nuclear Weapons Situation Is More Complex Now

Certainly, the world is more complex today than it was at the height of the Cold War. For instance, the U.S. and Russia are no longer the only countries with nuclear weapons.

In addition, their major bilateral nuclear missile treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, is set to expire in just six months. There are no plans to renew it.

The death of the INF Treaty adds another link in the chain of nuclear escalation. It could potentially result in the reintroduction of hundreds of medium-range nuclear weapons and loony ideas like blowing up the moon.

Moon Still Unlikely to Be Destroyed Due to International Space Cooperation

Despite the likelihood of the INF Treaty being abolished, space has been an arena of cooperation between the U.S. and the Russian Federation since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps cooler heads will prevail the next time a military leader feels like nuking a heavenly body.

After all, what would life on Earth be like without the moon? There would be no tides, no solar or lunar eclipses, and no moonlit nights. Frank Sinatra’s estate would have to change the lyrics of his most popular song to “Fly Me to the Debris Field.”

A world with no moon is a world I wouldn’t want to live in.