Fear and misunderstanding have emerged within the US media as journalist and broadcasters grapple with Kashmir. Kashmir, the disputed land between India and Pakistan has captured nearly all attention from Afghanistan, and has in some respects eclipsed the bloody cyclical coverage of Palestine. There is a great deal of confusion as to the threat of war, of an atomic exchange, and how these possibilities might be averted. Many commentators have come out with harsh criticisms, slandering Pakistan and India as immature and irrational states without the discipline necessary to control their nuclear arsenals. Others have chastised these very critics for what they describe as a racist, and ignorant approach to the conflict. Further responses to both the Kashmir crisis, and its US media coverage attempt to downplay the entire crisis, labling any approach even considering a nuclear war to be vastly overblown. So far, most analyses of the South Asian crisis have failed at any explanation of what the conflict represents, and why it has garnered such a curious blitz of media coverage.
The Kashmir region, which lies between Pakistan and India has been hotly contested by both nations since the British abandoned ship 55 years ago. Since 1947 India and Pakistan have often traded hostilities over the Muslim majority region, and have gone to war at least three times depending on your definition of the word. The first three conflicts, 1947, 1965, and 1990-2000, achieved very little attention in the American media, and even less among the general populace. But something is different this time. There is an urgency, perhaps in denial, nevertheless a massive amount of attention being focused on the developments of what has been transforming into a crisis since December 13, 2001 when Muslim militants attacked India’s Parliament. Why does Kashmir matter now?
The standoff between India and Pakistan represents a significant break in modern history. Warfare has been an irrational pursuit for industrialized nations since the massacres of WWI and WWII, and the development of atomic weapons only served to punctuate this new irrationality with a degree of absurdity. In modern warfare, not only will nations mobilize their entire productive (destructive) forces against one another, but the achievement of total annihilation can be reached in mere minutes with the launch of nuclear tipped missiles. Total war no longer must be the drawn out conflicts of attrition that the first and second world wars were.
Pakistan and India both conducted nuclear test in 1998, both are relatively new to the atom bomb club, but both have developed arsenals capable of killing millions on either side. Furthermore, India, as with other nations, such as China, may now feel compelled to accelerate their nuclear programs in order to keep ahead of US missile defense programs, thereby maintaining their deterrent capabilities. Pakistan, still playing catch-up with India’s missile capabilities is developing new solid fuel rockets which should provide a range of 1000 miles, allowing Pakistan to strike any target in India.
It could be debated whether India and Pakistan, especially the latter represent “industrialized nations”, but to the degree to which both possess societies and governments capable of organizing total war, places them in the league of nations capable of mutual assured genocide; a league which includes all modern industrialized nations, or the alliances they maintain. Total war, the war between entire societies was ended with the atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and has since remained unthinkable because of the capable levels of destruction. Nuclear weapons have served to reinforce total war as unacceptable, primarily because the bomb would be the ultimate arbiter of such a conflict. Nuclear weapons force the user to simultaneously commit suicide, therefore the only rational use of atomic weapons are their non-use.
For the majority of the second half of the 20th century, wars have been restricted to small scale conflicts, wars between nations of the third world, between non-industrial states. War has been relegated to the poor in the form of industrialized nations punishing the third world with saturation bombings and overwhelming military force; in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe. Civil war has been a choice conduit for the aspirations of East vs. West; in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola. Non-nuclear powers have fought drawn out bouts approaching total war: Iran and Iraq. War, since 1945, has found its rational existence in the third world.
Now we have India and Pakistan. Every article considering the two nations opens with the line, “both nuclear armed states.” “Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan.” “Nuclear armed neighbors.” The preoccupation with each state’s arsenal has been derided by some commentators as a mild form of racism among US reporters. Others have objected to the emphasis of each nation’s nuclear weapons programs because they claim, it blows a regional conflict between two rational states completely out of proportion. Both these criticisms are misplaced. The consistency and fear which drives every reporter to focus on the nuclear status of both nations is neither overblown, nor racist.
Pakistan and India’s standoff is one of the few times since the end of WWII that two nations capable of obliterating each other have faced the prospect of war. It is one of the few irrational conflicts of history, and perhaps the first of many to come. The further significance of a war in South Asia is that for the first time since the inception of the atom bomb, neither of the nuclear armed nations threatening a war is the United States. We have lost control of the the bomb. No longer is the worldwide social and ecological devastation which would result from even a small scale nuclear exchange the responsibility of the world’s superpowers. Traditionally, nuclear weapons were the domain of the most advanced nations; the United States, Russia, UK, France, and China. China was the last state in this group to develop a nuclear capacity in 1964. Until recently these nations maintained an armistice of atomic nations based on the irrationality of a nuclear war. But development of nuclear technology has accelerated, aspiring nations have stepped up their programs, and in the face of US attempts to become invulnerable to small scale attacks, it should be expected that more nations will seek large and powerful nuclear arsenals. As the number of nations possessing nuclear weapons increases, so will the likelihood of a conflict breaking out between these states. Pakistan and India will merely prove to be the first such threat.