The four-day Indo-Pak War 2025, was the first war between two nuclear-armed countries. This war was unique for another reason also; troops of no country crossed the borders of the other, and the war was fought entirely with aircraft, missiles and drones. The short duration, and unusual character of hostilities, has resulted in myriad ‘what if’ scenarios being passionately debated; for one, there has been intense speculation whether there would have been a nuclear war had the conflict continued for a few more days. The animosity between India and Pakistan dates back to the time of their creation.

Following Gandhian principles, India trod a peaceful path, and ultimately became a military and economic power; contrarily, Pakistan took the path of militarism and religious extremism, and soon morphed into a rogue state openly sponsoring terrorism, and deploying terrorists as a part of State policy. At the time of the Cold War, Western powers, particularly the USA, viewed Pakistan as a bulwark against Russia, and deliberately shut their eyes to Pakistan’s shenanigans. Taking full advantage of the situation, Pakistan would often strike India directly, or through terrorists, and when India retaliated, like in Kargil, Pakistan would shamelessly play the victim card.

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After the Cold War era, Pakistan has ceased to be a valuable asset for the West. Therefore, Western powers have often left Pakistan to fend for itself; no Western help was forthcoming after the Indian surgical strike, in 2016, or the Balakot airstrike, in 2019. While not abandoning America fully, a miffed Pakistan has wal – ked into the Chinese camp. Sometimes, like the Mumbai bombers of 26/11, Pakistani terrorists have inadvertently, or otherwise, targeted US citizens. In such cases, Pakistan adopted a totally different approach ~ it cooperated fully with US authorities, e.g., in the case of David Headley and Tahawwur Rana.

More recently, Pakistan deported the dreaded terrorist Mohammed Sharifullah who was involved in the Abbey Gate suicide bombing during the 2021 withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan ~ an attack that took the lives of 13 US Army men, and also the suicide bombing at the Canadian embassy in Kabul in 2016. Sharifullah was also involved in the terrorist incident that killed 130 people in Moscow, in 2024. Therefore, Sharifullah was an invaluable asset for Pakistan, and his deportation to US, raises some fundamental questions, both for Pakistan and the US.

On the other hand, no terrorist has ever been deported to India from Pakistan, which always keeps asking for proof. So far as the US is concerned, it deported Tahawwur Rana to India, sixteen years after he was apprehended in the US, but refused to extradite Headley, who was Rana’s handler, and a much more valuable asset. Thus, there is something subterranean to the US-Pakistan relationship ~ which neither side is eager to disclose. In this context, there appears some credibility to a startling claim doing the rounds, that

a) Pakistan is a nuclear base for the US,

b) the nukes allegedly belonging to Pakistan are in reality owned by the US and meant for use against Russia. Ergo, the US halted the Indo-Pak war, because its nukes were under threat from Indian air attacks. India’s nuclear policy was formulated in 2003, by strategic analyst K Subrahmanyam, the father of Foreign Minister S Jaishankar. The policy is centred on four principles:

a) ‘No First Use’ (NFU),

b) Credible Minimum Deterrence, i.e., India’s nuclear arsenal exists, so that other countries do not use nuclear weapons against India,

c) Massive Retaliation, and

d) Nuclear weapons will be used against countries attacking India, with biological or chemical weapons.

Only the Prime Minister, as head of the political council of the Nuclear Command Authority, can authorise a nuclear strike. Pakistan has not spelt out its nuclear policy so far, giving it full flexibility in the deployment of nuclear weapons. However, the country seems to be following the ‘four triggers’ nuclear policy laid out by Lieutenant General Khalid Ahmed Kidwai, in 2001. Briefly put, Pakistan will deploy nuclear weapons on the crossing of

a) Spatial threshold i.e., after the loss of a large part of its territory. Since Pakistan lost East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971, this would justify use of nuclear weapons against India;

b) Military threshold ~ destruction or targeting of a large area of its air or land;

c) Economic threshold ~ an attack that cripples the Pakistan economy, and,

d) Political threshold ~ an attack leading to political destabilisation or large-scale internal disharmony. Later on, in May 2024, Lt. Gen. Kidwai added that Pakistan “does not have a No First Use policy.” Also, Pakistan has developed Tactical Nuclear Weapons, short-range nuclear weapons, specifically designed to be used on the battlefield against an opposing army, read India. As in the present war, after each misadventure vis-à-vis India, Pakistan runs to its patrons, saying that in view of Indian superiority in conventional warfare, it has no option but to deploy nuclear weapons.

To avoid large-scale destruction and deaths, Western powers pressurise India not to retaliate. This was what prevented an Indian strike on Pakistan after the attack on Indian Parliament (2001) and the Mumbai attack (2008). There is also an inherent danger to the entire world if nuclear weapons are used in an Indo-Pak war. According to the Scientific American: “A nuclear war between India and Pakistan would produce smoke from fires in cities and industrial areas. That smoke would rise into the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer above the troposphere where we live, which has no rain to wash out the smoke.

Our research has found that the smoke would block out the sun, making it cold, dark and dry at Earth’s surface, choking agriculture for five years or more around the world. The result would be global famine.” The International Campai – gn to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), winner of Nobel Peace Prize 2017, agrees with this as – ses sment. According to ICAN: “…Even a ‘limited’ nuclear war between the two countries could trigger a nuclear winter, drastically disrupting global agriculture leading to famine that could kill more than two billion people. No country would be spared. No government could protect its people from the consequences.”

No official data is available, but according to the Federation of American Scientists, India has 180 nuclear warheads, ranging between 12 to 40 kilotons of dynamite, deployed on land and sea, while Pakistan has 170 warheads ranging between 5 to 12 kilotons. India, with Agni V, has a greater range of 7,000 to 8,000 km, while Shaheen of Pakistan has a range of 2,750 kms. Also, the K-4 submarine launched ballistic missile of India has a range of 3,500 kms. Thus both countries have the capability to send nuclear warheads deep inside the other’s territory. Even after knowing the ra – bid Islamist leadership of Pakistan fully well, most analysts do not foresee the possibility of an Indo-Pak nuclear war. Rather, they point to the many decades of the Cold War, when nuclear armed US and USSR often confronted each other, but never pressed the nuclear button, because once a nuclear war started, both countries would be totally annihilated.

Military analyst Donald Brennan coined the term “mutual assured destruction,” along with its derisive acronym “MAD,” for this state of affairs. We should remember, that there were moments when the US and USSR came close to an actual war, as at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the sagacity of US President John F. Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrus hchev, saved the day. Acknowledging the close shave humanity had with annihilation, the US, USSR and Britain signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. The present Pakistani leadership boasts of no such astuteness. Rather, its policy of using terrorism as State policy, will bring it again into conflict with India ~ sooner rather than later. Instead of MAD, we will then be looking at SAD ~ self-assured destruction.

Sadly, what the historian and author, William L. Shirer wrote, may come true in our lifetime: “In our new age of terrifying, lethal gadgets, which supplanted so swiftly the old one, the first great aggressive war, if it should come, will be launched by suicidal little madmen pressing an electronic button. Such a war will not last long and none will ever follow it. There will be no conquerors and no conquests, but only the charred bones of the dead, on an uninhabited planet”

(The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany).

(The writer is a retired Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax)