ashish raval wrote:If Bharat is attacked with nukes
that will be a mass suicide for Pakistan
Ashish, that could well be true. However. . .let's see why Pakistan may go ahead with an attack on us.
Pakistan's propensity to misread Indian intentions is legendary. Again, there are countless examples for this tendency. Since, the nation state (nominal !) of Pakistan is founded on myth-making by Jinnah and his band of Muslim Leaguers, that legacy has been found in abundant measure in succeeding leaders as well. Once a myth is created, the closed mindset of most Pakistanis (a signal contribution by the way Islam is practised in that country)would not let that myth to be disturbed by reality. The myth not only survives but also grows in size.
We know that Pakistan feels that it operates with impunity as far as its terrorism against us goes because it is not punished enough for its misadventures even after the greatest provocations. Within the PA, the same feeling extends to its military operations against us too, thanks to the same myth-making, in spite of increasingly massive defeats since 1947. Among many other reasons for attacking us, I consider two as important. Pakistan Army has internalized these two things in its institutional memory and it has not refined or corrected these two in spite of reverses and defeats in its wars and skirmishes with us.
One is, crudely put, that India lacks the will and guts to go after Pakistan. Two is, international intervention would stop India in its tracks and save Pakistan. That is, there is time and space for Pakistan to escape serious punishment from India after it provokes even a docile India into action.
Many examples could be given to prove this. The latest is the series of events that followed the December 13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament by JeM & LeT with the backing of the ISI. Unlike 1993 or Mumbai commuter train attacks or serial attacks thereafter across many Indian cities or even the 26/11 carnage, the Indian Parliament attack resulted in mobilization by the IA. There was an event within the event when Kaluchak also happened in May 2002.
From initial accounts by various American personnel on the ground in Islamabad/Rawalpindi in connection with the on-going Operation Enduring Freedom, the PA believed that Indian mobilization was not something to be concerned about. The full enormity of Op Parakram dawned on them only when they realized that IA units from the east were moving in too. Now, look at the nonchalance of the PA. It planned the worst attack on the symbol of Indian sovereignty and democracy in a decapitation attack (which failed partly because of the inexplicable failure of the car-bomb to explode, something which Afzal Guru continues to rue, and partly because of the bravery of the security guards there) and yet was confident that there would not be any massive retaliation from India. PA had committed two corps in the NWFP during this period. The initial reaction of the GHQ was that the Indian mobilization was small, something similar to Kargil in 1999. Substantial troops from the Eastern Command took PA by surprise, by all accounts. The British Ambassador in Islamabad, Sir Hilary Synnot, has reported Musharraf's misreading of the situation that India would not go to war. I consider this as coming out of Pakistani assessment that India would not escalate under any provocation. Again, after the January 12 speech by Musharraf, the PA assessed that the IA would no longer attack them as the window of opportunity has passed. The then US Ambassador to Pakistan Ms. Wendy Chamberlain reported that her meeting with the Pakistani CJCSC Gen. Aziz and a group of senior PA officers on May 25, eleven days after the horrendous Kaluchak massacre, indicated that only 50% PA officers thought that India would attack. She recalls that one Major General said, "Sometimes, you get so fed up with the Indians that you just want to say 'go to Hell, let's go for India'". Later, PA officers openly derided what they considered as ' India's failure of will to follow through with military action'. They felt that India was bluffing and Pakistan had successfully called its bluff.
As for the other, namely international intervention, not only Pakistan but also the US and the UK had laboured under the impression that India would not attack Pakistan when some high ranking American or British official was present in the Indian subcontinent. Definitely, this was how they operated during the twin successive standoffs of December 13, 2001 (Parliament) and May 14, 2002 (Kaluchak). The two countries made sure that some significant American or British presence was there until the situation was defused. Again, many more examples can be given for this assumption too.