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Comments, possibly informed.

Tim Wilson
Daytona Beach, Florida, USA
timatollah@mackandtim.net
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Twelve million? Drudge is linking to a Daily Telegraph report (here) claiming that 12 million people could die in an India-Pakistan nuclear war. Ugh.

If they want to kill 12 million of each other, maybe they should use that genocide machine from that episode of Star Trek (original flavor). You remember? Each side computes the names of who's to die, then those folks queue up for termination.

You'd have just as many bodies, but without the fallout!

Seriously, an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange would be a horrible tragedy. Our reactions were it to occur would be sufficiently strong that we would likely question our lack of stronger involvement now. I know we can't dictate to other nations how they should conduct their affairs, but a nuclear exchange anywhere in the world is of sufficient effect from fallout to be at least of serious concern.

Ironically, if India and Pakistan had more nukes, a sufficient number to create a Mutually Assured Destruction case, they'd almost certainly have to be more responsible regarding their use. It seems to me that their each having a fairly small number of fission bombs and somewhat unreliable delivery system (although Pakistan's been making some notable demonstrations of ability with their recent rocket (not nuclear) tests) increases the likelihood that a nuclear exchange would happen should war break out relative to the case where they each have enough weapons to assure that they wipe each other out.

I'm no expert, and I don't know what we're doing behind the scenes, but this seems to be a matter worthy of serious attention. Maybe the negotiation happy Europeans can make magic happen.
posted by Tim Wilson at 1:38 PM