[silk] Re: Avoid hard targets tomorrow (fwd)

[Rishab Aiyer Ghosh]

hey tim,

maybe you remember me from the early days of cypherpunks at toad.com. just
wanted to butt in here and reply to your post which i saw forwarded to
some other list... it beats me why americans and the western media generally
likes to get worried about the "most dangerous spot in the world" and "next
nuclear warzone" that is south asia, given that everyone in  india and pakistan
knows neither country will use any nuclear weapons. the border population
density is too great in both countries and population centres close enough
that any major attack by one country on the other will have a direct fallout
on both (taking delivery range into account). besides, neither govt is or has
been remotely close to dreaming of nuclear attacks, though pakistan 
occasionally talks about them in the hope of getting america worried enough to
get involved in the dispute over kashmir.

indians and pakistanis don't worry about nuclear war because we know that 
the nuclear tests were for attention - india has had the Bomb since 1974, and
pakistan has been known  to have it for a decade. india carried out the tests
because it felt the us was ignoring india (media coverage of "asia" typically
limited itself to east asia) and wanted more attention. obviously pakistan had
to show that it was as good as its neighbour. that's it.

india's govt has been quietly (and cynically) satisfied at these events, 
because now, as some people have said, "the US finally wants to do something
about the terrorists and training camps India's been complaining  about for
years." india won't get involved in pakistan's troubles. rather, it hopes the 
US will somehow manage to shut down the training camps and networks which
harbour groups that attack india... and if that puts pakistan's govt in a
tight situation, well that's just a nice little bonus isn't it.

-rishab

> From: Tim May <tcmay at got.net>
> To: cypherpunks at lne.com
> Subject: Re: Avoid hard targets tomorrow
> If the growing street protests/riots in Pakistan (Pesawar, Karachi,
> Islamabad) trend toward a new ultra-Islamic, pro-Taliban government, I
> expect India to strike first. India cannot allow a nuclear state on its
> border with Taliban leanings. India will knock out Pakistan's nuclear
> capabilities if it can.
> A nuclear war between India and Pakistan will utterly dwarf recent
> events, will crash the Dow to 1000, and will have other profound
> consequences.