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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (4932)	7/6/1999 5:47:00 PM
From: Shivram Hala	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

> Now, several Indian political hawks believe that > Pakistan's doctrine of first-use is a strategy of bluff > and bluster; first-use, as the argument goes, is the > high road to national suicide. But it is impossible to > determine whether Pakistan is bluffing because no > rational Indian leader is likely to risk a nuclear war. Gaurav Kampani forgets it isn't a question of 'a rational india leader' but rather how irrational pakistan becomes. Look at all the statements arising from pakistan during the kargil crisis. Who has been threatening to use nuclear weapons. Who has been threatening a civil war if the militants are asked to retreat. The humiliating defeats at the hands of their sworn enemy keeps on coming and coming and coming like the energizer bunny. Beating India is what keeps pakistan alive. Whatever india does pakistan has to do better. The standard line of pakistan is that only when india signs a treaty/agreement (chemical/biologival weapons, mines, CTBT, MRT..) will pakistan sign. Progress for pakistan is always a matter of following india. Does a hike in the defence budget make sense when the country is on the threshold of a default ? Does the cost of financing a blunder known as kargil be justified. > And btw, if a nuclear war can obliterate Pakistan, it is still > no comfort to the > "survivor", i.e. India. It would have been devastated so much > that it will slip from the > Third World into the "Seventh World" or the "Eighth World". > Even Haiti will begin > to look like paradise when compared to India then. Again, the reality and occurrence of a nuclear war depends on how irrational the pakistani leadership gets.