[thechat] Your Opinion is Required

[Madhu Menon]

Hi John. Normally I avoid discussing politics, especially when it involves
India (my country) and Pakistan. The usual result is a lot of flaming, and
you don't seriously expect either side to budge from its opinion/stance, do
you?

Saw this little snippet quoted below and I'd like to respond to that.

At 07:04 PM 5/29/2002, John H wrote:

>Bluntly, they attempted to prevent those programmes from occurring
>in India and Pakistan in order to avoid a future hypothetical
>situation where those two countries would start seriously considering
>using nuclear weapons as part of an armed conflict, the external
>consequences of which would be astonishingly profound.

As much as the possibility of such a nuclear conflict scares me (and having
been through three wars, we no longer rule out armed conflict), the
probability of it is low. Unlike USA and the good ol' USSR, the two
countries aren't separated by a pond. In fact, they're right next to each
other. If either country launched a nuclear weapon, they'd probably hurt
themselves as well. I also know that India has second strike capability
(Pakistan probably does too), so the retaliation would be swift, and would
probably wipe out the whole of Pakistan, or about a quarter of India.
There's no point winning a fight if you're all too dead to celebrate victory.

A nuclear weapon's primary purpose is as a deterrent. It's a "if you attack
me, I'll blast you arse" veiled threat. (If you forget USA, of course - the
only country ever to use a nuclear weapon.)

I really don't want to get into an India/Pakistan debate (i.e. flame war)
onlist (mail me offlist if you're interested) so that's all I'll say about it.

Regards,

Madhu

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Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net