Who benefits from a large-scale conventional war between nuclear-armed Pakistan and nuclear-armed India?
For starters, anyone who sells ‘em weapons.
Fun Fact: Over the last five years, China has sold Pakistan 81% of its weapons.
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Fun Fact, Part II: Since 2008, 59% of India’s weapons have come from Russia.
Regional rivals would also benefit, especially if it weakens a rival’s capacity to project power or influence. Other than Pakistan, India’s biggest regional rival is now China:
Competing regional giants and nuclear powers, India and China are widely seen as long-term strategic rivals, sharing a 3,800 (2,400 mile) Himalayan border that has been disputed since the 1950s and sparked a brief war in 1962.
Right now, tensions between India and Pakistan are sky-high. Those DEFCON warnings are blinking awfully fast. With distrust at a fever-pitch, it wouldn’t take much for a third party’s black ops mission to push India and/or Pakistan over the edge.
Whereas the “who benefits” question is clearer in a conventional war, it’s far fuzzier when we factor in nukes. Large clouds of nuclear radiation don’t care too much about international borders; playing with fire is one thing, but playing with fusion is something else entirely.
Still, we can’t rule it out — and thus, we must prepare accordingly. Here are the three most plausible ways a black ops agent could exploit India-Pakistan tensions to trigger a larger war:
A “false flag” terrorist attack in Kashmir or a bordering city. Terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which was founded in Pakistan nearly 40 years ago, have long waged an Islamic “holy war” against the Hindu infidels of India. It was responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. It’s widely assumed that it still receives (discreet) assistance from the Pakistani government:
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From the very beginning, LeT became a favoured ward of the Pakistani state because its local interests — fighting in Afghanistan and warring against India – dovetailed with the Pakistan army’s own ambitions: controlling Afghanistan in the west while keeping India off balance in the east.
For over two decades … the ISI [Pakistan’s military intelligence agency] maintained strong institutional, albeit subterranean, links with LeT and has supported its operations through generous financing and, as required, combat training.
If India suffers another terrorist attack that looks like the handiwork of Lashkar-e-Taiba, it would be highly incentivized to shoot first and ask questions later. It probably wouldn’t be too tricky for Russian or Chinese agents to mimic LeT tactics.
The assassination of a political leader. (And not just a political leader: a religious or military one would work, too.) This is something both India and Pakistan have in common: Assassinations have a horrible track record of success. In India, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated in 1948, Indira Gandhi in 1984, and Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. In Pakistan, ex-prime ministers Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated in 1951 and Benazir Bhutto in 2007.
With tensions so taut, assassinating a popular leader would outrage the Pakistani and/or Indian people. They’d take to the streets, pounding the drums for retribution, thus making an all-out war far more likely.
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Violating the airspace between their borders. With all the advances in drone technology during the Russia-Ukraine conflict, weaponized drones have emerged as the go-to tactic for both sides. They’re cheap, powerful, and can cause lots of problems.
They’re also transportable. Some weaponized drones are small enough to be delivered on the back of a pickup truck.
Given the vastness of the India-Pakistan border, it would be impossible for either side to monitor everything.
Just a few million bucks worth of weaponized drones entering Indian or Pakistani airspace would surely solicit a powerful response. (Which would make it a highly cost-effective black ops mission to fund.)
There’s precedent, too: In 1999, India shot down a Pakistani patrol aircraft.
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