I screwed that up. Apparently retracted doesn’t delete, and if you keep typing it retracts all of it.
Here’s what I wrote, it should be easier to read:
I apologize for misinterpreting your first paragraph, however the wiki links you refer to were posted after I responded.
I may be over-worried about the actual fallout from an exchange in the range we’re talking here. Most of my understanding comes from military training in the context of a US/USSR exchange in the late 80s, and doctrine that weren’t re-written after that stopped being a concern.
However, I do think that political ramifications and third and forth order effects will be MUCH worse than you write about. Yes, in a certain sense nuclear weapons have saved millions of lives by lowering the intensity of conflicts, by making massing of troops dangerous, forcing people to the table rather than continuing to press the fight etc.
But all that happened after a VERY limited and one way nuclear exchange.
I think that the possibilities of a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India are vanishingly small, but if the world winds up structured more than that becomes likely, then there have been significant changes in the geopolitical arena. We have no precedent for what happens when you get bombs going in both directions, and especially when you get a large quantity of bombs in both directions.
You have to be completely delusional or under immense pressure to order a launch of nuclear weapons. This means once it happens history is pretty much not a good guide to what comes next.
The Middle East is going to bear the brunt of the fallout, if not radiological then politically and economically. If the factories of India go offline, then they neither have the need for, nor the revenue to pay for the oil they buy from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries. Those countries no longer get the revenue they need to buy food, mostly from India, Pakistan and China. India will have a HECK of a time producing enough food to feed itself, Pakistan might simply cease to exist as a nation (depending on how good our intel is about India’s nukes. Even 60 or 80 KT of nukes spread out properly in a country the size of Pakistan, and with it’s concentration of industry and agriculture might simple render it like Somalia was for much of hte last 2 decades—or worse. China, being an immediate neighbor, will wind up with the worst of the shadow effect trashing their agriculture (this could be good for the US, but only if we do the right thing and fast).
These are destabilizing forces, and they will happen at a time when the world will have more on it’s plate than it can really deal with.
I hope I’m wrong, and that you are right in that players in that region are more rational and thoughtful, but I don’t think our leaders are sufficiently rational and we at least make a passing attempt at vetting them for psychological problems other than narcissism (which seems to be a requirement of the job). Heck in the last decade we had a member of the House of Representatives that denied the existence of compound interest, a minor party candidate (libertarian) who was blue from drinking colloidal silver (no, really http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111101004.html). Given the rather common beliefs in that area of the world, I don’t think it’s safe to assume de-escalation.
I screwed that up. Apparently retracted doesn’t delete, and if you keep typing it retracts all of it.
Have you tried retracting then following a link to your ‘retracted’ comment then clicking delete? Kind of annoying but it seems to work. I’m not sure if there are any limitations on it.
I screwed that up. Apparently retracted doesn’t delete, and if you keep typing it retracts all of it.
Here’s what I wrote, it should be easier to read:
I apologize for misinterpreting your first paragraph, however the wiki links you refer to were posted after I responded.
I may be over-worried about the actual fallout from an exchange in the range we’re talking here. Most of my understanding comes from military training in the context of a US/USSR exchange in the late 80s, and doctrine that weren’t re-written after that stopped being a concern.
However, I do think that political ramifications and third and forth order effects will be MUCH worse than you write about. Yes, in a certain sense nuclear weapons have saved millions of lives by lowering the intensity of conflicts, by making massing of troops dangerous, forcing people to the table rather than continuing to press the fight etc.
But all that happened after a VERY limited and one way nuclear exchange.
I think that the possibilities of a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India are vanishingly small, but if the world winds up structured more than that becomes likely, then there have been significant changes in the geopolitical arena. We have no precedent for what happens when you get bombs going in both directions, and especially when you get a large quantity of bombs in both directions.
You have to be completely delusional or under immense pressure to order a launch of nuclear weapons. This means once it happens history is pretty much not a good guide to what comes next.
The Middle East is going to bear the brunt of the fallout, if not radiological then politically and economically. If the factories of India go offline, then they neither have the need for, nor the revenue to pay for the oil they buy from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries. Those countries no longer get the revenue they need to buy food, mostly from India, Pakistan and China. India will have a HECK of a time producing enough food to feed itself, Pakistan might simply cease to exist as a nation (depending on how good our intel is about India’s nukes. Even 60 or 80 KT of nukes spread out properly in a country the size of Pakistan, and with it’s concentration of industry and agriculture might simple render it like Somalia was for much of hte last 2 decades—or worse. China, being an immediate neighbor, will wind up with the worst of the shadow effect trashing their agriculture (this could be good for the US, but only if we do the right thing and fast).
These are destabilizing forces, and they will happen at a time when the world will have more on it’s plate than it can really deal with.
I hope I’m wrong, and that you are right in that players in that region are more rational and thoughtful, but I don’t think our leaders are sufficiently rational and we at least make a passing attempt at vetting them for psychological problems other than narcissism (which seems to be a requirement of the job). Heck in the last decade we had a member of the House of Representatives that denied the existence of compound interest, a minor party candidate (libertarian) who was blue from drinking colloidal silver (no, really http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/11/AR2006111101004.html). Given the rather common beliefs in that area of the world, I don’t think it’s safe to assume de-escalation.
Have you tried retracting then following a link to your ‘retracted’ comment then clicking delete? Kind of annoying but it seems to work. I’m not sure if there are any limitations on it.
No, but I will keep that in mind.
Thanks.