Editorial Other wars
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
Editorials Other wars Hypnotized by the impasse the United States faces between starting a war with Iraq and dampening the one in the Middle East, we easily overlook the other wars that are...
...Once again, world leaders are rushing to calm the belligerents, as they should...
...Back then, the United States, Britain, and others intervened and the two countries backed off...
...This has happened before-most recently, in January after Islamic militants from Pakistan attacked the Indian parliament...
...India promises no "first use...
...Maybe the two are once again, "crying wolf...
...Can they again...
...Today, the quiescence of massive numbers of "peaceniks," above all in the current standoff, is hard to fathom...
...During the cold war, the world also benefited from millions of people terrified at the prospect, if not of nuclear annihilation, then of another Hiroshima...
...But should hostilities break out and either side falter, there are no guarantees that President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan or Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India would not reach into his nuclear arsenal or be compelled to do so by militants and nationalists to whom each is beholden...
...or Soviet leader with his nuclear weapons had threatened a decisive battle back in the sixties or seventies...
...More recently the Indian prime minister has threatened a "decisive battle" to end Pakistani incursions into Kashmir, while Musharraf promises that if attacked, his country "will unleash a storm and nobody will be able to stop it...
...But "crying wolf" doesn't mean that the wolf isn't there...
...Significantly, or symbolically, the Department of Defense compares Pakistan's nuclear warheads to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima...
...The United States, Britain, Russia, and China all have a heightened interest and potential influence in easing the forty-seven year conflict over Kashmir, which is seeing incursions of militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda...
...Editorials Other wars Hypnotized by the impasse the United States faces between starting a war with Iraq and dampening the one in the Middle East, we easily overlook the other wars that are brewing...
...The most alarming and dangerous is the continuing confrontation between Pakistan and India...
...In the current state of belligerence, Pakistan's provocative missile "tests" serve to remind the world that two nuclear powers are on the brink of a major and catastrophic war...
...With U.S...
...Provocations are exchanged, resources marshaled, civilians evacuated, and armies massed at their borders...
...Ironically, it is the Pentagon in a recent intelligence assessment that has raised the alarm bells of catastrophe, once the mainstay of antinuke movements...
...Movements for peace and nuclear disarmament (including in India) did not end the cold war or halt nuclear proliferation, but they reminded political leaders that the world was wary and watching...
...Even worse, the military in one country or the other might act on its own...
...Imagine the reaction if a U.S...
...Pakistan fudges the issue...
...A full-scale nuclear exchange, the Pentagon report predicts, would kill 12 million people immediately, and injure 7 million others, to be followed by widespread radioactive contamination and radiation sickness...
...As a result of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union benefited from a number of built-in safeguards, perhaps the most important, the "hot line," a dedicated phone line by which two leaders could speak directly if nuclear attack threatened...
...A consistent and vigorous international effort must bring the two nuclear nations to accept the responsibilities of their foolish weapons buildup: to start with, promises from both sides of no first use and then safeguards to prevent an accidental attack...
...Now is the time to act...
...Will they again...
...attention focused on Southeast Asia, both Musharraf and Vajpayee may be using this long-standing conflict and the threat of nuclear war to draw the international community into negotiations over a Kashmiri settlement...
...But this time more than placating two leaders is required...
...The trouble, as usual, is focused on Kashmir where both countries are poised for a conventional war (a million soldiers are said to be facing one another across a porous line of control...
...June 4, 2002e 4, 2002...
...Not that the war would necessarily start with nuclear weapons landing on Islamabad or New Delhi...
...Not only are there no guarantees against nuclear use, there are no safety measures either...
Vol. 129 • June 2002 • No. 12
