India and Pakistan should stop playing with fire | Hacker News Reader

India and Pakistan should stop playing with fire

economist.com

26 pointsgodelmachine34 comments

I don't get this article. Pakistan's reprehensible support for terrorism started this conflict, but it's all Mr. Modi's fault because they don't like his politics?

Some non state actors started the conflict, and India decided to make it an official conflict. State actors can't really treat these non-conventional forces as extensions of the military of other countries and retaliate against them. Well they can but then they risk starting wars. Often these non-state actors do whatever they want on their own, despite their handlers telling them not to do something. If these two countries do go to war it's likely that both will suffer heavily because of it -- Pakistan may not survive but India may be badly damaged. With all the economic issues these countries have they should really avoid getting into something like war.

What a convenient non-argument. Would you term Pakistan's willful hiding of Osama Bin Laden [1] as state policy, or attribute it to non-state actors? Now, imagine if Pakistan neighbored the US, and not only hid, but provided financial, logistical and strategic support to a million Osamas, who constantly kill Americans. And on top of that, imagine Pakistan bestowing a "freedom-fighter" label on Osama. Would you consider that an act of the state, in aggregate?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_support_system_...

India is not blameless in its treatment of Kishmir either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_abuses_in_Jammu_a...

I don't understand the response. India deserves terrorism now?

You swing from "but they inaccurately blame the state" to "they deserve it because ...".

I never said any such thing. You are obviously extolling the virtues that all terrorism is evil. State violence is as evil as terrorism and two sides of the same coin. So you wish to paint a picture where evil Pakistan is the perpetrator where the truth is that Indian government and Indian army has done a lot to provoke militancy in Kashmir and should simply withdraw and all of Kashmir should be an independent state without evils of India or Pakistan affecting the region.

But Pakistan has radicalised the population of Kashmir to such an extent that they now want the establishment of an Islamic state under Sharia rule, not simply Independence.

> Some non state actors started the conflict, and India decided to make it an official conflict. State actors can't really treat these non-conventional forces as extensions of the military of other countries and retaliate against them.

Sorry but this is total BS. Pakistan as a state is known to support and sponsor terrorist groups including Jaish-e-Mohammed, which was responsible for the recent attack that led to deaths of 40 Indian soldiers. Jaish has terrorist camps in Pakistan occupied part of Kashmir. So even if what you claim is true, the Govt. of Pakistan has all the powers to put an end to these camps but they chose not to.

Government of India and the Indian military similarly has the power to stop all of its abuses of Kashmir but chooses not to... Each side is playing its game. They are both wrong.

The timing of the terrorist attack in India was at the worst time for Pakistan as the Saudi delegation was visiting at the time. And the attack was done by a kashmiri living in indian part of Kashmir that had been abused by Indian forces earlier. You can blame Pakistan but reality is it is India own behaviour in Kashmir that is causing the problems. Pakistan might have supported armed conflict in Indian Kashmir earlier but the current government and people in power are not interested in it. And by the way An Indian Navy guy (Indian claims retired) is in international Court being tried for terrorism in Pakistan. So it is not like India has not been doing the same in Pakistan province of Balouchistan

Terrorist groups like JeM and LeT are trained, funded and equipped by the Pakistan army. The Pakistani army provides covering fire to them when they try to infiltrate into India. Heck, the very fact that Pakistan tried to retaliate for an attack on - by their own admission - a JeM training camp shows that Pakistan feels as responsible for them as for their own military.

Despite Pakistan's claims to the contrary, they are hardly non-state actors.

If Israel and the united states have the right to invade into other countries because those countries are training and sponsoring terrorism, India has full right to attack Pakistan's terrorist bases whether those are close to Islamabad or not (remember US Seals killed Osama in Pakistan). Historically it is proven that Pakistan is the breeding ground all of the world's terrorism problems.

Yes indeed! India should pay heed to an opinion hit-piece authored by a citizen of the West with no connection to on-the-ground reality in Indian Kashmir, or India.

The truth is patently simple: Pakistan's ISI (it's version of CIA) provides direct financial, logistic, and strategic cover for terrorists who target and kill Indians, routinely. How exactly does any country deal with this?

I don't remember the economist publishing outrage over US' take-out of Osama Bin Laden, what's different here? Is it that the victim country differs from the author's home?

The truth isnt as simple as you make it out to be. Pakistan was just handed into the control of a new government which seems to be taking a proactive stand with popular measures coming into play.

India is entering into election terms which could be the reason these tensions are escalating. Both countries using this to further their own political agendas. India crossed the Line of Control, Pakistan shot down and captured pilots. And just announced the release of said pilot(s). It seems that Pakistan has no interest in playing with fire, although they are confident in dealing with any threat that comes their way. Indias current government seems more interested in playing this game and spurring nationalistic fervor since that particular regime has a very real interest in getting reelected.

Both countries have intelligence agencies that probably fund terrorist camps. So blaming just one country is highly misguided.

But yes i agree with you, its very easy for outsiders to cheaply throw words in an article without deeply researching whats actually happening.

To refresh your memory, 40 Indian soldiers were killed in Kashmir. Jaish-e-Mohammed claimed responsibility for this attack and is known to be based out of Pakistan. So blaming Pakistan is not misguided at all.

This is new- 'India has terrorist camps' lol. Your own foreign minister admits terrorist Masood Azhar live in Pakistan(whose brother hijacked Indian plane which everyone in the world knows).

This article totally misses the point, election or no election, any Indian (or non Indian) government would have to respond to 40 of its army men being killed by a terrorist group that gets sanctuary in Pakistan. Pakistan is known to have played a double game with the US too, removing terrorists that are anti-Pakistani but supporting terrorists that support the Pakistani expansionist agenda into Kashmir

Who could benefit from that terrorist attack? Answer. BJP and Indian PM Modi. India has 700,000 army persons in a small valley of Kashmir. Their intelligence service (R&W) has infiltrated all the terrorist orgs in Kashmir and conducts such bomb blasts for political gains whenever required. Modi required right-wing votes so required war-hysteria and jingoism which lead to all this situation.

Lol this is utter fantasy land, only an ISI agent would make such pantomime up

India isn't playing with fire. India has a clear no first use policy.

India is playing with fire because Pakistan doesn't have such a policy. If the situation appears dire for Pakistan, the Pakistani Army could resort to using tactical nukes.

Ah! So for Pakistan to be "playing with fire", India would merely need to withdraw it's stated "no first use of nukes" policy?

All you're doing is legitimizing a rouge state's rouge excuses for threats of nuclear war. Pakistani army has NO excuse to use nuclear weapons, unless they've been at the receiving end of a nuclear attack

I know this won't happen (well, I'm fairly positive, I should say), but what is foreign response if two, close set nations, such as India and Pakistan should choose to use a nuclear option on each other. Or North Korea and South Korea. Not on anyone else, but just on each other. I realize this is a bit of a naive question, before the criticisms come in, but I'm more curious about answers rather than insults, if you don't mind.

They'd both be pariahs for a considerable amount of time (decades possibly), in fact from a global point of view it might actually be better to not fire back after a limited (theatre) level attack, your opponent would destroy any credibility they had entirely.

Just the optics of the US or EU doing business with a country that lobbed a nuke at a democracy (I'm assuming it's Pakistan that fires in this scenario because honestly that is the more likely first strike, India has a firmly stated policy of no first use).

The Pakistani system is considerably more fractured and much less under control with almost parallel systems of government between the military leaders and civilian leaders.

They are pretty much the worst case scenario after NK having nukes and in some ways worse, NK doesn't have an ongoing relationship with religious fundamentalists at every level.

It could be interesting to speculate what would happen in response to the fallout drifting over China & southern Russia. I could see both nations start raiding India/Pakistan with conventional forces just out of spite

I don't know about Pakistan, but the Indian military is not a trivial adversary for China/Russia to "raid". Russia also sees no benefit to raiding India, as the two have historically been closely allied.

Also, how practical is unprovokedly "raiding" a nuclear power that has shown a willingness to use nukes? Are you assuming the nukes get spent in one conflict? The stockpiles held by either probably suffices multiple wars.

The Korean Peninsula conflict is different. The US keeps soldiers there to make sure that any conflict started by N. Korea is also an explicit attack on the US. So nuking US soldiers would likely mean getting nuked in return.

On a side note, this agreement is likely all that keeps S. Korea, Japan, and Taiwan from deploying their own nuclear weapons.

The key is to read up on something called "Nuclear Winter". The impact of the next nuclear conflict is likely to be felt much more broadly than just across a single border.

A few dozen air bursts over India and Pakistan would not start any sort of nuclear winter. It would kill hundreds of millions directly and indirectly and crush the global economy, and cause immeasurable suffering. But global temps would likely be barely affected.

One thing that may have changed the calculus for India being more aggressive in it's bombing is that US backing of Pakistan in a conflict with India is no longer a given. Given the covert if not overt Pakistani support for Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, as well as that Bin Laden was found hiding in Pakistan, I doubt there is any substantial support in the US population for Pakistan over against India. Many Americans have a much higher affinity toward India (world's largest democracy, a modernizing economy, home to many tech companies) and than toward Pakistan. In addition, it seems that Modi and Trump have a much better relationship, and probably have a similar view of the world, than Trump and Pakistan's president.

Seems interesting, but I got paywalled. :(

Disabling JS did the trick for me.

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