By Ali Ahmed
The road from Kashmir to catastrophe is a worryingly short one.
In his book, The Future of Land Warfare, Brookings’ expert, Michael O’Hanlon uses an illustrative scenario to argue for maintaining a U.S. land warfare capability. To O’Hanlon, one utility of land forces would be in “handling the aftermath of a major and complex humanitarian disaster superimposed on a security crisis – perhaps in South Asia.”
In O’Hanlon’s scenario, India and Pakistan come to the threshold of all-out nuclear war. He considers this scenario “all too plausible” and a “real possibility today.” O’Hanlon is right that a nuclear confrontation would be devastating to South Asia, for the global economy and environment, and for “loose nukes.” While its probability is an open question, O’Hanlon presents the threat for his own purposes: to get the U.S. to maintain a large standing army.
Of consequence for South Asia is O’Hanlon’s belief that a nuclear exchange would result in a changed political scenario in which international intervention, with U.S. participation, will be eminently justifiable and therefore is well nigh plausible. A nuclear conflict could trigger external intervention in the form of a UN mandated international force to help stabilize the situation, being deployed in Kashmir. To him, India may be amenable to this if it “seemed the only way to reverse the momentum toward all-out nuclear war in South Asia.”
What this suggests is that a war would bring Kashmir center stage as nothing else would. This brings into question why India is leveraging hard power – intelligence and military – in its Pakistan strategy.
Read the full story at The Diplomat