The Problem From Hell: South Asia’s Arms Race

[Abingdonboy]

Don't you know? They have invented an assault rifle that shoots nuclear tipped bullets, and have named it after some central Asian plunderer.

Must've missed the news! Damn.

 

[Dr. Strangelove]

faltu thread

 

[janon]

faltu thread

That's what happens when certain "first worlders" and pure-landers hijack it. The thread could have been useful, if people discussed it without rhetorical chest thumping about how India is nothing compared to the pak army and so on.

 

[Dr. Strangelove]

That's what happens when certain "first worlders" and pure-landers hijack it. The thread could have been useful, if people discussed it without rhetorical chest thumping about how India is nothing compared to the pak army and so on.

what else they can do except trolling..?

 

[xyxmt]

Please contradict the Indian Policy with good logical points rather than usual trolling, do u even know the details of the Cold Start?? Indian armed forces have tested it in number of war games (ofcourse they don't acknowledge it in open) with success. Plus, don't u think if this policy was against the Indian interests, it would have not formed in the first place??

Sri Lanka had won both Warld War I & II in War games

 

[janon]

Sri Lanka had won both Warld War I & II in War games

The more our forces sweat in peace, the less they bleed in war. Wargames are not computer games played in front of a screen like CoD. It's the operational testing of theoretical concepts, and is done continuously by all professional militaries during peacetime. Your army too is presently doing a wargame near the Indian border. Disparage it all you want, but Indian forces have the luxury of continuously preparing themselves for war, since they are not burdened by counter insurgencies and continuous war with its own people like yours are with the talibs.

 

[OrionHunter]

LET'S BE CLEAR ONCE AND FOR ALL. THERE IS NO SO CALLED 'COLD START' DOCTRINE THAT HAS BEEN ADOPTED SO FAR NOR WILL THERE EVER BE ONE! PERIOD!

 

[OrionHunter]

Cold-Start is 'innovative'? It is just an Indian version of Blitzkrieg and that too , a failed one.

Get 10,000 bucks from me on the day India actually dares to deploy cold-start against an adversary like Pakistan. Pakistan Military will either utterly destroy Indian invasion OR in case of an Indian success , the war will escalate into an all out war on all fronts. In both of these cases , India comes out as a big loser. So what is the point of even having such useless doctrine?

Cold start is very good against countries like Sri Lanka though....

When will people like you stop spouting crap? When will people like you stop smoking esoteric herbs? You guys have lost all 4 wars with India. Because if you had won, then Kashmir would have been part of Pakistan by now!! Right? Elementary logic, Dr Watson!

So you will 'UTTERLY DESTROY' an Indian invasion? Wow! Yours is an army of supermen? Dude, go get some fresh air. The smoke around you is getting stifling, what?

 

[Storm Force]

TEETA

Kindley explain yourself with this remark

Pakistan can mobilize its entire military to Indian border in a matter of hours. India just can't do that

THE LAST TIME I CHECKED

INDIA outnumbered Pakistan by 4-1 on transport cargo planes
And 5-1 ON HELICOPTERS

FAR superior WAR reserves and TEN FOLD $$$$ financial advantage.

I assume you are comparing INDIA & PAKISTAN & not INDIA WITH USA........

 

[Hobo1]

Pakistan is loose cannon here.
The writer seems to be totally blind to Pak terror machinery.
And author has completely ignored latest Chinese effort in helping Pakistanis fine tune their nukes and nuke deliver systems.
And it is real stupid to blame India's cold doctrine to Pak ever increasing nuke asneral.

What is so unique about cold doctrine, if Chinese go to war with India or for that matter Yanks go against mexico both of these would use the cold doctrine. No country wants to fight on its own land and specially when there are nukes involved and every country wants fast mobilization of its troops in an event of war. So what's so unique and frightening about CD.

The world is so got used seeing India kicked around that even such kind of non evolutionary war doctrine is making them so spooked.

 

[Storm Force]

Pakistans a lot of noise but not much THREAT.

For example THEY could never INVADE india cause they dont have the resources

THEY threatened MAD with NUKES but that would leave much smaller pakistan completely destroyed. Pakistans LAND MASS is 25% of india,s . imagine how much carnage INDIAN NUKES wud inflict.

FINALLY i agree that real full scale war is lot less likely now both sides have nukes and india has huge economic advantage in south asia almost 10-1

 

[S_O_C_O_M]

India has responded to Pakistan's nuclear build-up by innovating and adopting a controversial concept called "Cold Start."


South Asia is going through what can be called the first bounce of the nuclear ball, an arms buildup. This is a time when Pakistan and India focus on acquiring fissile material and building weapons. This drives Pakistan’s plutonium mills and India’s commercial nuclear power deal with the United States.

The second bounce of the ball may be quite different than the first. For example, it may see intense crises and shocks – aggravated by the enlarged nuclear forces. So it would be a mistake to assume the current environment will be the environment of the future. Like the first nuclear age, the Cold War, there are likely to be ebbs and flows in competition, with different problems and shocks developing over time, interspaced with periods of relative calm.

India has mainly responded to Pakistan’s nuclear buildup not with one of its own, at least not yet anyway, but with strategy innovation, improved intelligence, missiles, and a nuclear triad. Strategy innovation is especially important because it is one of the great drivers of competition, and may transcend the political issues that are the original source of rivalry.

In the first nuclear age innovation – technological and strategic – was a major factor in the arms buildup. The appearance of strategic innovation in South Asia is important, therefore, in a way that goes beyond the particulars of any one innovation. An example of India’s strategy innovation involves new ways of using conventional forces in a nuclear environment. India’s “Cold Start” strategy, for example, calls for prompt mobilization of fast-moving battle groups made up of armor, helicopters, and mechanized forces to thrust into Pakistan as punishment for a Pakistani attack or a terrorist outrage.

Cold Start’s subnuclear option recognizes the nuclear threshold explicitly. The concept behind it is to fight below this threshold, if possible. But Cold Start has a nuclear element, too. Should Pakistan fire nuclear weapons at this Indian force, India can escalate with nuclear strikes of its own.

Cold Start provides fascinating insight into the dynamic interactions of the two military systems on the subcontinent. It shows how both countries have shifted from conventional war-fighting to escalation strategies. I do not believe this is a matter of a conscious choice by either country. Rather, it is an emergent property of the interacting nuclear systems in South Asia. They have little choice but to play the game this way, short of a sweeping arms control or disarmament initiatives.

Escalation as a strategy has come into being not because anyone wanted it too, but from the mutual interaction of both sides having nuclear weapons. While escalation strategies have always existed in South Asia, they are now front and center. This marks a fundamental change from the conventional attrition strategies of previous wars.

Cold Start shows something else, too. The dynamics in the region go beyond nuclear weapons in the narrow sense. There is no rigid arms race with each side matching the other in atomic bombs. If this were the case it would actually be easier to control. But the arms race is more complicated because it involves parallel changes in other key subsystems, and these have their own momentum.

If the arms race in South Asia was limited merely to nuclear weapons, which is the way many observers look at it, it would be one thing. But the competition is broadening, with India tightening linkages among intelligence, command and control, cyberwar, and strategy innovations like Cold Start. For example, the “front end” of Cold Start is better intelligence to determine exactly what Pakistan has done and the readiness of its conventional and nuclear forces. India has invested heavily in satellites, advanced radars, signals intelligence, and reconnaissance to give its commanders an accurate picture of what Pakistan is up to. The “tight coupling” of these elements, in turn, is linked to a rapid mobilization of India’s army and air force. Any delay in mobilization would undermine the entire strategy of counter-escalation against Pakistan.

Cold Start is controversial for good reason. The United States, in particular, has tried to discourage India away from it because it looks like a fast way to produce a nuclear war in South Asia. This is especially true if Pakistan, as many suspect it is in the process of doing, deploys tactical nuclear weapons on its border with India in response to Cold Start.

I wouldn’t be surprised if India changed the name, Cold Start, because it connotes going to war quickly, from a cold start. But while the name may change, the broader strategic concept probably won’t, because India has to come to grips with nuclear realities of South Asia in some way, and because its army and navy want to play a role in the defense of India – even in a nuclear context.

As to where the arms race in South Asia is headed, there are several different possibilities. There is a tendency for some analysts to use the past and simply extrapolate it into the future. But this straight-lining of past trends into the future can be misleading. India is a much richer country than it was in the past, and much of this wealth comes from technological and business innovation.

India’s military in the past was a gigantic, inefficient, sluggish infantry with bloated headquarters and support staffs. But there are more dynamic possibilities for the future, ones that do not involve across the board modernization of every single element of the Indian armed forces. In fact, India is currently in the process of reallocating its defense capital from “old” programs to “new” ones, including nuclear weapons, missiles, submarines, intelligence, stealth, cyberwar, and satellites. One reason for this shift is that India already has a large edge over Pakistan in the old military programs of tanks, artillery, and aircraft, and investing more capital in these capabilities results in diminishing marginal returns. The greater opportunity for India lies in the new program areas, especially in a nuclear context and with respect to China.

The arms race in South Asia now underway is only the first act of a longer drama. Acts two and three could look quite different than the current situation does. For this reason, new, additional frameworks are needed to understand what is taking place. At the moment, the deterrence and nonproliferation are the frameworks most often used to understand the subcontinent. Both put the spotlight on the number of nuclear weapons in each country’s respective arsenals. But future acts require new, different frameworks. The two discussed here are escalation and counterescalation, and the tight coupling that develops among key subsystems like intelligence, cyberwar, and nuclear weapons. In order to understand the nuclear dynamics of South Asia a wider set of frameworks are needed, ones that go beyond traditional approaches.

The Problem From Hell: South Asia's Arms Race - The Diplomat

indians would be so stupid if they ever initiated "cold start" on Pakistan. it would only lead to the destruction of india.

 

[Azadkashmir]

This is typical of Asians it a donkey concept which west wins again n plunder us further. at one point our hatred was dying down n almost opening up trading ideas n tourism on both sides. now another long years of hatred while west sits back n laughs. some nations just dont learn from history n doom to repeat it like getting burnt fingers cos you put ur hand in the heater yet you do it again.

 

[janon]

This is typical of Asians it a donkey concept which west wins again n plunder us further. at one point our hatred was dying down n almost opening up trading ideas n tourism on both sides. now another long years of hatred while west sits back n laughs. some nations just dont learn from history n doom to repeat it like getting burnt fingers cos you put ur hand in the heater yet you do it again.

You are right that hatred was dying down at one time. Do you know what changed that? The Kargil war, started by Pakistan. Most people in India today, and most members on this forum haven't seen any other war in their lifetimes between the two countries. And attacks like 2001, 26/11 etc. If these periodic nuisances didn't happen, the two countries could have let old hatreds die.

So there is only one side that deserves to be lectured on this. As far as India is concerned, it is not modernizing its military because conniving westerners are managing to lead us into unnecessary hatred for their profit - India is simply maintaining a military that a country of its size, resources, stature and threat perception is expected to maintain.

Kargil war has convinced most Indians alive today that Pakistan still covetes our territory, and actually has delusions of taking it from us. We are simply ensuring that that will never happen, no matter what superpower takes their side.

 

[Azadkashmir]

26/11 is too suspicious i am not saying that India is involved in it own false flag but it does benefit the talk of Kashmir on both sides being withdrawn one could say it benefits our enemies far away. i dont know much about kargil war so i cant comment.
shame one of the best regions of the world is to be played against one another. a heaven on earth lands to be destroyed and best of it people, after all first victims are the women n children then the loyal peasants, the rest will fly away to far away lands.