• The Indo-Pakistani Conflict: The Risk of Nuclear War
  • The Possibilities & Limits of ‘Strongman’ Trump

By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Nuclear War in South Asia?

In the latest Indo-Pakistani military stand-off, there were no ultimatums, no red button alerts.

“Yet the cycle of military retaliation, veiled signals and swift international mediation quietly evoked the region’s most dangerous shadow. The crisis didn’t spiral towards nuclear war, but it was a reminder of how quickly tensions here can summon that spectre,” writes the BBC’s Soutik Biswas (May 15).

Even scientists have modelled how easily things could unravel.

A 2029 study by a global team of scientists opened with a nightmare scenario where a terrorist attack on India’s parliament in 2025 triggers a nuclear exchange with Pakistan.

Today, in real life and six years later, there was an actual precarious stand-off -- though contained by international mediation and a US-brokered ceasefire Saturday two weeks back – stoked fears of a full-blown conflict.

It also revived memories of how fragile strategic stability in South Asia can be.

As the crisis escalated, Pakistan sent “dual signals” – retaliating militarily while announcing a National Command Authority (NCA) meeting, a calculated reminder of its nuclear capability.

The NCA oversees control and potential use of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

It is difficult to ascertain whether this move was symbolic, strategic, or a genuine alert.

It also came just as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stepped in to defuse the spiral (BBC).

President Trump claimed the U.S. didn’t just broker a ceasefire – it averted a “nuclear conflict”.

In an address to the nation, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “There is no tolerance for nuclear blackmail; India will not be intimidated by nuclear threats.

Any terrorist safe haven operating under this pretext will face precise and decisive strikes,” Modi added.

Indian & Pakistani Arsenals

India and Pakistan each possess about 170 nuclear weapons, according to the think tank Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

[This is not only sufficient to obtain mutually assured destruction (MAD), but also to bring death and destruction to South Asia and neighboring regions. South Asian nations must, therefore, act singly and jointly, to pacify the region’s antagonistic nuclear powers].

As of January 2024, SIPRI estimated there were 12,121 nuclear warheads worldwide.

Of these, about 9,585 were held in military stockpiles, with 3,904 actively deployed – 60 more than the previous year.

The US and Russia together account for more than 8,000 nuclear weapons.

The bulk of both India’s and Pakistan’s deployed arsenals lies in their land-based missile forces, though both are developing nuclear triads capable of delivering warheads by land, air and sea, according to Christopher Clary, a security affairs expert at the University at Albany in the U.S.

Pakistan’s surface-to-surface Shaheen II missile is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

India’s nuclear capable Agni-5 missile has a range of over 5,000 km. (puts almost the whole of China within its target range).

“India likely has a larger air leg (aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons) than Pakistan…

“While we know the least of Pakistan’s naval leg, it is reasonable to assess that India’s naval leg is more advanced and more capable than Pakistan’s sea-based nuclear force,” Clary told the BBC.

One reason Clary said, is that Pakistan has invested nowhere near the “time or money” that India has in building a nuclear-powered submarine, giving India a “clear qualitative” edge in naval nuclear capability.

The Antagonists’ “Nuclear Doctrines”

Since testing nuclear weapons in 1998, Pakistan has never formally declared an official nuclear doctrine.

India, by contrast, adopted a no-first-use policy following its own 1998 tests.

But this stance has shown signs of softening, according to BBC’s Biswas.

In 2003, India reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in response to chemical or biological attacks effectively allowing for first use under certain conditions.

Further ambiguity emerged in 2016, when then-defence minister Manohar Parrikar suggested India shouldn’t feel “bound” by the policy, raising questions about its long-term credibility.

(Parrikar clarified that this was his own opinion.)

 The absence of a formal doctrine doesn’t mean Pakistan lacks one, writes BBC’s Biswas.

Official statements, interviews and nuclear developments offer clear clues to its operational posture, according to Sadia Tasleem of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Pakistan’s nuclear threshold remains vague, but in 2001, Khalid Kidwai – then head of the Strategic Plans Division of the NCA – outlined four red lines:

  • Major territorial loss
  • Destruction of key military assets
  • Economic Strangulation
  • Political destabilization.

In 2002, then-president Pervez Musharraf clarified that “nuclear weapons are aimed solely at India,” and would only be used if “the very existence of Pakistan as a state” was at stake.

In his memoir, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote that he was jolted awake at night to speak with an unnamed “Indian counterpart” who feared Pakistan was preparing to use nuclear weapons during the 2019 stand-off with India.

Around the same time, Pakistani media quoted a senior official issuing a stark warning to India: “I hope you know what the [National Command Authority] means and what it constitutes…

“I said that we will surprise you. Wait for that surprise…

“You have chosen a path of war without knowing the consequences for the peace and security of the region.”

During the 1999 Kargil War, [instigated by Pakistan’s Musharraf] Pakistan’s then-foreign secretary Shamsad Ahmed warned that the country would not “hesitate to use any weapon” to defend its territory.

Years later, US official Bruce Riedel revealed that intelligence indicated Pakistan was indeed preparing its nuclear arsenal for possible deployment, indicating that its nuclear threshold was much lower than that of India’s – which then accused Pakistan of “nuclear blackmail”.

Skepticism on both sides over “Nuclear Brinkmanship”

Former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria wrote in his memoir that Pompeo overstated both the risk of nuclear escalation and the US role in calming the conflict in 2019.

And during Kargil, Pakistan “knew the Indian Air Force wouldn’t cross into its territory’ – so there was no real trigger for even an implicit nuclear threat, insist Pakistani analysts.

“Strategic signaling reminds the world that any conflict can spiral – and with India and Pakistan, the stakes are higher due to the nuclear overhang…

“But that doesn’t mean either side is actively threatening nuclear use,” Ejaz Haider, a Lahore-based defence analyst told the BBC.

But nuclear escalation can happen by accident too.

“This could happen by human error, hackers, terrorists, computer failures, bad data from satellites and unstable leaders,” Prof. Alan Robock of Rutgers University, lead author of the landmark 2019 paper by a global team of scientists, told the BBC.

In March 2022, India accidentally fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile, which travelled 124 km into Pakistani territory before crashing, reportedly damaging civilian property.

Pakistan said India failed to use the military hotline or issue a public statement for two days.

Had this occurred during heightened tensions, the incident could have spiraled into serious conflict, experts say.

[Months later, India’s government sacked three air force officers for the “accidental firing of a missile”.]

Yet, the danger of nuclear war remains “relatively small” between India and Pakistan, according to Christopher Clary.

“So long as there is not major ground combat along the border, the dangers of nuclear use remain relatively small and manageable,” he insisted.

“In ground combat, the ‘use it or lose it’ problem is propelled by the possibility that your ground positions will be overrun by the enemy.”

[‘Use it or lose it’ refers to the pressure a nuclear-armed country may feel to launch its weapons before they are destroyed in a first strike by an adversary.]

Sumit Ganguly, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, believes that “neither India nor Pakistan wants to be labelled as the first violator of the post-Hiroshima nuclear taboo.”

“Furthermore, any side that resorts to the use of nuclear weapons would face substantial retaliation and suffer unacceptable casualties,” Ganguly told the BBC.

Return to the ‘Status Quo Ante’

Despite repeated crises and close calls, both sides have so far managed to avoid a catastrophic slide into nuclear conflict.

“The deterrent is still holding. All Pakistanis did was to respond to conventional strikes with counter-conventional strikes of their own,” writes Umer Farooq, an Islamabad-based analyst.

Yet, as the BBC-correspondent Soutik Biswas writes, “the presence of nuclear weapons injects a constant undercurrent of risk – one that can never be entirely ruled out, no matter how experienced the leadership or how restrained the intentions.”

“When nuclear weapons can be involved, there is always an unacceptable level of danger,” John Erath, a senior policy director at the non-profit Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told the BBC.

“The Indian and Pakistani governments have navigated these situations in the past, so the risk is small. But with nuclear weapons, even a small risk is too large.”

Trump on the World Stage

“There are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

So said the Russian revolutionary leader and founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

The diplomatic whirlwind that has surrounded US President Donald Trump last week suggests the old Bolshevik might have been onto something.

For the protectionist president, who promises always to put America First, has in recent days instead been busy bestriding the world stage (James Landale/BBC, May 17):

“He and his team have done business deals in the [Persian] Gulf, lifted sanctions on Syria; negotiated the release of a US citizen held by Hamas; ended military strikes on Houthi fighters in Yemen; slashed American tariffs on China; ordered Ukraine to hold talks with Russia in Turkey; continued quiet negotiations with Iran over a nuclear deal; and even claimed responsibility for brokering a ceasefire between India and Pakistan…

“The pace has been breathless, leaving allies and opponents alike struggling to catch up as the US diplomatic bandwagon hurtled from issue to issue” (BBC).

Pomp & Flattery in Saudi Arabia

In his visit to the Persian Gulf, Trump set out – in word and deed – his vision for a world of interstate relations based on trade, not war.

In a speech in Riyadh, Trump said he wanted “commerce not chaos” in the Middle East.

But even here, the show was more important than the substance.

A ‘none of our business’ approach

Absent from Trump’s approach was any mention of possible collective action by the US and other countries; no talk of multilateral cooperation against the threat of climate change, no concerns about challenges to democratic or human rights in the region.

Trump made his clearest argument yet against Western interventionism of the past, attacking what he called “the so-called nation-builders and neo-cons” for “giving you lectures on how to live or govern your own affairs.”

Pros of policy in one man’s hands

The centrality of Trump to US foreign policy has also become apparent last week.

On show was the lack of involvement of other parts of the US government that traditionally help shape US decision-making overseas.

The president’s extraordinary decision to meet Syria’s new president and former jihadist, Ahmed al-Sharaa, and lift sanctions on Syria was a decisive and bold step.

This was clearly the president’s personal decision, after heavy lobbying by both Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

However, this pattern of impulsive decision-making without wider internal government discussion is common in the White House.

The result is not always positive, as in the policy process regarding Ukraine.

Friend and foe are now familiar with the pattern of US policy: issue maximalist demands, threaten , victory!

Limitations of Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’

This kind of the ‘art of the deal’ strategy might work on easily reversible decisions such as tariffs.

It is harder to apply to longer term diplomatic conundrums such as war.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a case in point. On this, Trump’s policy has been very fluid, to put it mildly.

Trump has been flip-flopping all along!

Change, but no change

For all the glitz of Trump’s tour through the Middle East, the fighting and colossal humanitarian crisis in Gaza continues unresolved.

For all the talks about ending the war in Ukraine, there is no greater likelihood of the guns falling silent.

Putin’s ambitions seem unchanged.

And for all the deals to cut US tariffs, there is still huge global market instability.

Trump may want to focus on his primary concern, namely China, China, China -- but that may prove an elusive ambition.

As the BBC, so aptly notes: “If there are weeks when decades happen, there are also weeks when nothing happens.

The writer can be reached at:

shashipbmalla@hotmail.com