India-Pakistan nuclear war would kill millions, experts say

By Sally Buzbee

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – A war between India and Pakistan could easily go nuclear.

If India, fed up with terror attacks, moves against its smaller and weaker neighbor, Pakistan might view a nuclear missile launch as its only option in response.

India might retaliate with nuclear weapons of its own in a scenario that could kill 8 million to 12 million people and bring radiation fallout to millions more, including thousands of U.S. soldiers in the region.

Even if the two nations’ leaders do not want war, “There is a danger that as tensions escalate, the leaders could find themselves in a situation in which irresponsible elements can spark a conflict,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Wednesday.

If Pakistan wants peace, it must act urgently to stop Islamic militants from infiltrating Indian territory to carry out terror attacks in the dispute over predominantly Muslim Kashmir, India’s foreign minister warned Wednesday.

Of course, a nuclear exchange, or even a conventional war, is not inevitable.

But if India launched a military strike with conventional weapons, even against a small target, Pakistan probably would feel compelled to strike back, said Teresita Schaffer, a South Asia expert in Washington, D.C.

The risk is that fighting would escalate, with attacks back and forth, “until one side or another – probably Pakistan – says, ‘This last attack has put our country in severe danger. We have no choice but to use nuclear weapons,’ ” Schaffer said.

Pakistan, knowing it would lose even a nuclear engagement, might then gamble on a “demonstration” nuclear strike, perhaps on an unpopulated area to try to warn India off, said Anthony Cordesman, a defense analyst in Washington.

Even that would create a “a huge risk of confusion and misunderstanding” and probably cause India to fire nuclear weapons, Cordesman said.

Both countries are thought to have nuclear weapons numbering in the low dozens, said a U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity, with each weapon roughly equivalent in destructive power to the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945.

Eight million to 12 million people could die in the short term if the two countries engaged in a full-scale exchange with both sides successfully using most of their weapons and aiming them at populated areas, according to an analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

That estimate does not include long-term deaths caused by radiation fallout, said the U.S. official. Among those at risk: the 7,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, plus U.S. troops in Pakistan and aboard ships in the northern Arabian Sea.

India has said it would not use a nuclear weapon first. Pakistan might consider using nuclear weapons if India seized a chunk of its land, attacked a major city, or tried to cut Pakistan in two by seizing rail lines and roads, Schaffer believes.

One big risk is that India might believe – wrongly, most U.S. analysts feel – that it can attack Pakistan because the United States will prevent Pakistan from retaliating with nuclear weapons.

But Pakistan almost certainly is moving its missiles around the country in a “shell game” to prevent both the United States and India from knowing exactly what it has, and thus to stop any pre-emptive strikes, said Cordesman.