shiv wrote:nakul wrote:Sorry to butt in, but these nos are meaningless as the person who orders the firing of missiles will not know how powerful the retaliation will be. He can only guess.
Excellent point IMO.
That is why India cannot stop at nuking 2 Chinese cities. If India or Indian forces are nuked , India is bound to launch all 75 or 100 "puny" 20 kiloton nukes at selected Chinese targets. That means - for example - 30 to 50 Chinese cities will get one or more 20 kiloton hits each.
Let's say China responds with 300 nukes on 150 cities/towns.
Has China won?
I think that depends on what you mean by "won".
If you define "victory" as improving upon the status quo ante bellum, or at least retaining that status quo while the adversary is diminished from it, then no, China has not "won". That sort of "victory" is unavailable to any power through the use of nukes, and has always been, with the single exception of the US in WW2.
However, once the deterrence threshold is crossed the definition of victory itself changes. As you said in another post, there will be a lot of pain and suffering caused to both sides from using nukes, but no "glass parking lot". There will be a certain end state reached by each side of the conflict, that each side must subsequently recover from. Both sides (India and China) will be unable to carry on a conventional conflict in the immediate aftermath of an exchange such as you describe above; in that sense, any conventional conflict between them will end at the point when the first nuclear exchange takes place. But which will get back on its feet, and be able to restore governance, services, conventional defense, economic stability etc. sooner? If at all?
In the above-described exchange, China clearly has a far better chance of recovering in a shorter time than India does. Recovery to status quo ante bellum may take a very long time, and yes, they will be left in the dust by their erstwhile competitors such as the US, EU and Japan. It's not an attractive proposition...but still, the proposition faced by the adversary (India) is far less attractive. 30 Chinese cities taking a 20kT hit each is a very long way from 150 Indian cities taking a 200kT plus hit each. Given the present state of both parties, I think it's a fair bet the Chinese could possibly recover from such an exchange, but the current Indian union may never recover.
So yes, a China with the capacity to hit 150 Indian cities with 200 kT plus weapons establishes a stronger deterrence threshold than an India with the capacity to hit 30 Chinese cities with 20 kT weapons.
Deterrence then becomes a question not of winning, but of having the ability to present the enemy with more to lose.
Deterrence is a mind-game, and with respect to China and India, it's hard to say whether our nuke tests have achieved anything at all. When we had a recessed deterrent, in fact, the Chinese behaved better towards us. After Sumdorong Chu in 1987 they became quite conciliatory in terms of direct confrontation (they were contributing to Pakistan's nuclear program at this time, but did not engage in any more direct conventional adventurism and provocation for 17 or 18 years.) In fact, it was only after the 1998 tests... starting from 2004 or so... that the PLA resumed border transgressions, building helipads and structures on our sides of the LAC, and began to deploy in POK even as Beijing resurrected the Tawang issue. Clearly the 1998 nuclear tests did not add to our deterrence vis-a-vis China, because Chinese actions since 2004 have shown more (not less) confidence that India would not risk being provoked into a conventional war that might go nuclear.
Why was this? Two explanations. One, the Chinese came to believe that the Indian nukes and/or delivery systems tested to date do not pose a serious enough threat to them. Two, they believe that our nukes and/or delivery systems may technically pose a serious threat to them, but they are convinced that India is
even more deterred by far greater threat posed by China's own arsenal, so that we would never risk escalating a conventional war to the point of nuclear weapons use. Either way the Chinese have decided that they still have control over the escalation ladder.
No India-China, India-Pakistan or India-China-Pakistan war is going to start with a nuking match; that is a key differentiating factor between the deterrence paradigm that applies here, and the deterrence paradigm that existed between the US and USSR (which expected to be nuking each other very soon after open, direct war broke out between their two countries.) Our wars are going to begin with conventional (border territory grab) or sub-conventional (terrorist attack) provocations, and escalation to the point where one side is feeling enough pressure to consider nuclear weapons use will occur over a time-frame of weeks rather than hours or days (I believe this is true even for the Pakis, much as they might bluster otherwise.)
Thus, the conventional and subconventional path to war is of utmost importance in modeling any evaluation of deterrence in our context; war in our neighbourhood was never going to start with ICBMs flying at each others' cities or pitched tank battles in the Fulda Gap, but with 26/11s and border units taking fire from enemy positions in newly-contested slices of land. China has indicated its full confidence in being able to offer those types of provocations; Pakistan has been otherwise occupied on its western flank over the last decade, but apart from that, it has only increased the extent and intensity of its subconventional war against India since our 1998 tests.
To say that our 20kT arsenal gives us "deterrence" against our two primary adversaries is, therefore, an instance of specious reasoning. Between point (A): exercising options that concretely damage India, such as Pakistani sponsored terrorism and PLA salami-slicing; and point (B): India escalating conventional retaliation to the point where nuclear weapons use is likely; there is a certain distance. The Chinese/Paki estimate of that distance, is sufficiently comfortable for them to continue exercising the options at point A, while remaining confident that India will not move the needle significantly towards point B. In truth, our nuclear arsenal gives us deterrence against notional threats of pre-emptive first-strike by China or Pakistan, which may or may not have ever been real threats; but it doesn't offer any deterrence at all against the threats we actually face from China and Pakistan.
This has nothing to do with the idea that China would "win" a nuclear exchange; it has to do with the belief that India will not start one, and thus affords a wide margin of opportunity to damage and contest and contain India without risking one.
Would that belief, in Chinese minds, be changed by the existence of a far larger and far more high-yield Indian arsenal? If so, then the need for further testing becomes a key component of achieving deterrence in our context.
