Abstract
As I write in early June, India and Pakistan are issuing those disingenuous expressions of the desire for peace that often prove to be the prelude to war. With both countries rattling their new-found nuclear sabers, one can only hope that the annual summer firefight across the Line of Control in Kashmir can be contained.
Pakistan insists that the jihadi fighters who infiltrate Kashmir are interested only in freeing it from the Indian yoke; India calls these “freedom fighters” terrorists—no different from those who have slaughtered civilians in both India and the United States. India further complains that the United States, having itself been a target, should no longer show so little sympathy for what India has had to endure.
If war comes, it will not matter that in Kashmir neither India nor Pakistan has acted with honor. The idea that either the jihadis or the Indian army have been fighting for anyone's freedom is tragically laughable. For decades both countries have refused to allow Kashmiris the referendum of self-determination they were promised—knowing full well that it is freedom from both their bellicose neighbors that the people of Kashmir want most.
The past year's events, and especially the crisis on the Subcontinent, have transformed the thinking of “the unthinkable,” as Herman Kahn called it in 1962, from the arcane province of Bulletin writers and their ilk to a popular pastime that gets star billing in the major media. Experts' dueling estimates of mega-deaths are everywhere, their calculations based on the number of nuclear weapons an Indo-Pak conflagration might involve and whether they include only immediate or longer-term lethal effects. According to a Pentagon assessment completed on May 23, 12 million people might die on the first day of nuclear war. This is based, officials say, on each side hitting the other with everything they've got—but it doesn't include fatalities caused by firestorms or fallout.
By May 30, R. R. Subramaniam of India's Institute of Defense Studies had criticized U.S. nuclear expert and frequent Bulletin contributor David Albright, for making a similar estimate, claiming Albright was exaggerating the size of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Pakistan, said Subramaniam, did not worry him: “While a nuclear strike by them against India could cause havoc, our country will survive despite the terrible costs. But if we were to retaliate — Pakistan stands to be wiped out.”
Researchers at Princeton University counted a little differently, putting the number of immediate casualties at 3 million. They based their toll on the premise that each side would drop a single Hiroshima-sized bomb on their neighbor's five largest cities.
In the Princeton scheme, 2.3 million would be seriously injured compared to between 2 and 7 million in the Pentagon estimate. They add that prevailing winds would make it likely that India would suffer more than Pakistan from the ensuing fallout.
The latest estimates now stand at 30 million casualties, with perhaps 17 million dead. An Indian-Pakistani war may be averted this time, but unless a solution to the Kashmir problem can be found, “unthinkable” talk could become a predictable feature of the summer season.