[nblgbg]

I believe it's mostly overstated. Pakistan is not economically strong enough to participate in a war, and India is not interested either. However, the Modi government wants to project strength. They were unable to locate the terrorists even after two or three weeks and needed a distraction. So, they targeted some areas in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK). In response, Pakistan claimed to have shot down four Indian aircraft and a drone. However, so far, they haven't provided any pictures or locations to support these claims. Both sides will likely exchange fire along the border, and the situation will eventually calm down. Each side will claim victory in its own way.

[enugu]

> They were unable to locate the terrorists even after two or three weeks and needed a distraction.

This does not make sense. When France attacked Daesh in 2015 after the terrorist attacks in Paris or when the US attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, the objective wasn't to target the exact people who carried out the attacks, but the organization behind the attacks. People can always be found as long as the organization remains.

The goal of the attacks would be to make any future terrorist attack an expensive option for the Pakistani military as opposed to something which can be done routinely. There was a sharp drop in the terrorist attacks in Kashmir after the 2019 confrontation.

[whatshisface]

>when the US attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, the objective wasn't to target the exact people who carried out the attacks, but the organization behind the attacks

The mission in Afghanistan was very much to find Bin Laden. It was changed after he escaped.

[pwthornton]

It was very much to dismantle Al Qaeda and senior leadership. Just killing Bin Laden wouldn’t have done that much.

[SauciestGNU]

Apropos of this conflict, to where did Bin Laden escape?

[profsummergig]

I hope it wasn't to a military cantonment in Pakistan. That would be wild.

[lazide]

1) Pakistan is a lot less stable right now than 2019 (as is the world).

2) The putative organization is in Pakistan, and likely supported by the military.

The biggest threat India is doing (IMO) is threatening the water supply. That is getting everyone in Pakistan’s attention.

These strikes are more about managing the local political situation in India, which requires some degree of obvious violent retribution.

[enugu]

The incentives of the Pakistani generals to permit organizations like LeT to commit further terrorist attacks is a different domain from whatever the local political situation is like in India. There has been a past regime where Pakistani generals were able to train and send militants regularly to conduct terror attacks in India. Without an effective response from India putting pressure on these generals, that can easily become the new normal again.

[lazide]

Do you think (plausibly) threatening to cut off water to large swathes of Pakistan, or blowing up some random terrorist camps, is the bigger actual threat?

[enugu]

Cutting off water supply is clearly the bigger threat. However, it involves a longer time frame - building infrastructure which one expects not to use in a normal situation.

Importantly, even once built, it selects the wrong targets, not terrorists or military bases - but regular people who will be faced with scarcity of water and food, as the crops use Indus water. This would be something highly unethical, and also not something sustainable - once visuals of hunger start reaching screens across the world, the force to restart the supply would be strong.

[int_19h]

What force, though? Israel does something similar, and how much actual pushback (as opposed to sternly worded statements) did it actually get?

Even if it were to translate to sanctions, I'm not so sure BJP wouldn't welcome it. "The Fatherland is besieged, let's unite together around Dear Leader and fight back like one" tends to be a very popular take in authoritarian countries for a reason, and it's that much easier to pull off when you can actually point at some way in which your country is targeted.

[rendang]

Can India build new aqueducts/pipelines to divert water from the headwaters they control? Dams only have finite capacity after all

[lazide]

Yes, albeit they would be susceptible to being shelled. With, uh, unpredictable but likely bad consequences if they happens.

[m0llusk]

"less stable" === yikes

[reverendsteveii]

We could have gone after the people who actually did 9/11 but that was a bit of a non-starter. Also I think you're equivocating between multiple interpretations of "the terrorists" when most people absolutely wouldn't draw a distinguishing line between, using 9/11 as an example again, the actual hijackers and Osama bin Laden. There's absolutely no question that any time the phrase "the 9/11 terrorists" is used it means both the actual perpetrators and the people who planned and supported the attack.

[enugu]

The context was a reply to an assertion that the terrorists in Pahalgam were not found by Indian security. I interpreted this as people who physically did the attack.

If by terrorists, we mean the planners of the operation, that trail leads directly to Pakistan. Musharraf, the ex-army chief, is on record saying that the military has funded several militant organizations in Kashmir including LeT. (Osama's haveli in Abbotabad was incidentally also very close to the Pakistan Military Academy). The permission for the operations probably came all the way from the top as the attack came right after a strong statement on Kashmir by the army chief.

[dmurray]

"funding militant organizations" isn't the same as committing acts of terrorism. Nobody would have said the US should have responded to the 9/11 attacks with airstrikes on the CIA headquarters.

[enugu]

We are not talking about re-targeting of training and weapons from Afghanistan to Manhattan, but direct planning of an attack with ability to restrain and release the groups on demand. Contra the truthers, even the CIA wouldn't go that far. Musharraf explicitly mentioned the groups operating in Kashmir. He wasn't talking about fighters in Afghanistan.

[somenameforme]

The CIA wouldn't go that far? Operation Northwoods [1] is obvious evidence to the contrary. The one and only reason that that operation wasn't carried out is because of a President who refused to sign on to it, who would shortly thereafter be assassinated by a 'deluded gunman.' [2]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods

[2] - https://youtu.be/MdejNPSuKek?t=62

[nindalf]

> There was a sharp drop in the terrorist attacks in Kashmir after the 2019 confrontation.

There were fewer terrorist attacks, certainly. I'm sure the Indian government would like to believe that the 2019 strike had an effect, but far more likely causes are

- Money. Pakistan's economy has stagnated and the country has lurched from one IMF bailout to the next (2019, 2023, 2024). It got so bad at one point that politicians were asking people to drink less tea so they could conserve foreign currency.

- Covid. Affected everything, but certainly harder to think about waging conflict when such a massive problem is affecting the country.

- Internal political instability, especially when Imran Khan took on the military and lost. The military was actually in danger of losing their primacy for the first time in decades.

- Conflict with the Taliban and Pakistani Taliban. The ISI had nurtured the Taliban to be tame pets and it turned out not to be the case. Crushing these was the highest priority, not least because it made their policy of nurturing terrorists look idiotic.

All of these factors meant Pakistan wasn't and isn't in the best shape to wage war overtly or covertly with India. India's economy has continued to grow, in contrast to Pakistan. The official Indian policy of "benign neglect" towards Pakistan appeared to work well.

I'm sure these attacks will be spun as a success in the future. Safe to say a Bollywood movie dramatising the events is already in the works. But Pakistan's own economic and political problems are far more likely to influence its decisions to engage in this sort of behaviour.

[enugu]

If you are actually arguing that a country targeted by a terrorist attack does not gain deterrence with a counterstrike relative to letting things go on, then how uniform do you consider this prescription? Should the terror attacks in the US or France not have had a military response?

What happens to the incentives of terror groups in response to such a policy?

---

The role of money only becomes an issue when conducting a terrorist attack becomes expensive. Missiles and jets consume much more money in comparison to training recruits via an intermediary organization like LeT and sending them across the border to carry out attacks.

A regime in which a terror attack leads to a high pressure, expensive situation for the Pakistani military is completely different from regularly scheduled, train and deploy terror attacks from militants which used to happen earlier.

In that situation, the military has to respond to economic pressure, pressure from allies and pressure from its own people.

[nindalf]

The Pakistani military cares about itself, above all. It wants to maintain its role as the primary protector of the Pakistani people, answerable to no one but themselves. As long as the threat of India looms large, their primacy is guaranteed. As a reward generals are allowed to grow filthy rich.

Support for the Pakistani military was at its nadir during the era of benign neglect because there wasn't an Indian boogeyman to justify their interference in politics and economic exploitation. But now that India has attacked Pakistani targets this will quiet any internal criticism of the Pakistani Army.

In other words, the military absolutely loves it when India engages in so-called deterrence. No Pakistani army soldier died (according to both sides). Pakistani people support the Pakistani Army more strongly than ever. It's absolutely perfect for the Army. I fully expect that they'll fund more terrorists, leading to a constant cycle of violence.

[spwa4]

> I fully expect that they'll fund more terrorists, leading to a constant cycle of violence.

Yes, that's the defining characteristic of all terrorist organizations. Get money, not through politics or production or economy, but by damaging others. Then get paid for not doing quite as much damage. This model has spread quite a bit in the past 5 years.

[mistrial9]

5 million years

[enugu]

Yes, an outside target can be used to tackle internal strife. But, there is no sign that the Pakistani army is actually in any danger of being removed from power, barring a major military defeat, nor that it will lose its autonomy over military policy.

If say, India were to let this slide, the default outcome is another such attack. Given the above motivation of the military to create a conflict and the ideological bent seen in Gen.Munir's speech, the expected outcome would be to repeat till this they get a conflict.

Yes, the deterrence won't be perfect. The Pakistan Army might end up repeating an attack whenever there is a relief from economic constraints(it doesn't have money for frequent purchases of expensive weapons) or from pressure from its allies (who dont want their oil trade or pipelines to suffer). But this means that what India has to do to minimize the number of attacks is to not let an attack slide by with low cost for the army.

The best case scenario would be a peace deal, as was arrived in Vajpayee and Sharif's time, but it was sabotaged by the Kargil operation, for exactly the reason you mentioned - a peace deal marginalises the army.

[intended]

No, the default outcome is not another attack.

This action guarantees another attack, because it has paid of in the actual PR dividends the ruling forces of both sides desired.

This has zip to do with the citizens, and everything to do with party / power bloc legitimacy.

Winning on economics and good governance is hard.

[lmm]

> Should the terror attacks in the US or France not have had a military response?

Probably, yes. Military responses to terrorism are almost always counterproductive. I don't know which specific attacks you're talking about, but the ones I can think of the US did far more damage to itself with the blowback than the original attack ever achieved.

[enugu]

Note that I am not referring to the prolonged occupation of Afghanistan, much less of Iraq here. Rather, something like a strike which targets bin Laden and other organizers of the terrorist attack.

[lmm]

So it doesn't matter that military responses that have actually been tried in the real world have been counterproductive, because you can imagine other kinds of military responses and you imagine that those kinds of military responses would have gone better?

[ashoeafoot]

we wenr green and attacked oil revenues that financed terror.

[nitwit005]

> What happens to the incentives of terror groups in response to such a policy?

You're imagining these people to be some sort of loyalists, rather than something closer to anarchists. Triggering military responses is going to be viewed as a bonus.

I'll note people rather frequently claimed Bin Laden wanted the US to be tied up in the military quagmire that their terror attacks produced. There's certainly some logic to that idea. His organization was too small to do much direct damage.

[selimthegrim]

They were also suggesting that they should import less foreign expensive cheeses

[krisoft]

> Pakistan is not economically strong enough to participate in a war

They have nukes. They don't need to be rich to do massive damage. Sure doing so would have terrible consequences, but cooler heads sometimes don't prevail. Or only prevail after much suffering and pain.

[prmph]

They are not going to use nukes.

I always wonder at the people who have this idea that states are going to use nukes on a whim. The taboo against the use of nukes is very strong, so strong that I believe nuclear armed nations would rather wage conventional warfare even at great cost, and consider nukes only in the extreme situation where the very survival of the state is seriously threatened (and even then I'm doubtful nukes would be used). The only other realistic situation where nukes are used is in an accidental scenario.

That is why conventional military strength is still very much important in the world now. The Europeans are finding this out a bit late.

It's also why Putin is a great actor and bluffer. Trust me, he's the last person who would think of using nukes, despite appearances to the contrary. Now, if he were to somehow use nukes on an actual populated area, I believe the western powers would NOT use nukes in retaliation, so it seems like he would have a found a way out of MAD. But, the conventional response (likely a containment rather than an attack on Russia, e.g., a no fly zone and destruction of military assets, with the threat of nuclear retaliation backing it up) would be so strong that the Russia would be effectively neutralized. If they persist in nuking, then all bets are off, WW3 begins, and civilization could end.

[ashoeafoot]

They did transport those nukes in unmarked army trucks in normal traffic with only light guard , out of fear other nations (like the us) could step in to take the toys away, which was a constant background noise during the Afghanistan war. This nations secret service (ISI) has trained,armed and send terrorist groups into other nations. Bin Laden was found in a compound in a garrison city. Those djihadis do believe in that paradise afterlife of theirs no matter how much you belittle their faith. They say how little they value lifes proud and openly . Please stop projecting western sentiments on another culture for once and listen, just listen to what they say. I dont want to eat closed loop greenhouse produce for the rest of my halflife just because somebody who grew up in a golden surplus time is unwilling to engage in grim realities, to prevent them .

[int_19h]

Europe doesn't have the capacity to impose a no-fly zone on Russia. I doubt even US could pull that off.

Anyway, the real concern wrt nukes is that they require people in government who are at least marginally sane and care about self-preservation. The problem with countries like Russia and Pakistan is that it's one coup away from being run by people who genuinely believe that they are fighting a holy war against some kind of worldwide Satanic conspiracy. Such people are unlikely to hold power for long, but with nukes, they don't have to.

[tobir]

IDK Man. There was no institutional power in the US that seemed to make a serious effort when a known international pe*o peddler mysteriously unalived himeself. Somone with direct personal relationships with British Royalty, US Presidents (among other Gov Officials), and some of the richest men in the western world (eg Bill Gates). Apparently terabytes of video tapes gone.

Also note his island has a full on Egyptian Temple on it, and no-one has any idea what's underground.

None of these things are disputed. Sounds pretty Satanic and International to me.

[freilanzer]

> Europe doesn't have the capacity to impose a no-fly zone on Russia. I doubt even US could pull that off.

I'm not sure about that.

[int_19h]

Let me put it this way. US has a strong enough military that it could do so if it really wanted, but it would involve a lot of casualties. I doubt that the American public would be willing to sustain the amount it would require.

[badc0ffee]

Does this hold even for North Korea?

[ponector]

No one is going to deploy nukes. They have no use against the troops. To level enemy city? Mass casualties, but would not help to win the modern war.

That's why there was no sense for Ukraine to keep nukes. They should have kept strategic bombers, though.

[selivanovp]

They had neither money nor ability to support their bombers. And that’s why they happily cut them to pieces for US dollars. Russia managed to get just a part of the fleet thanks to massive gas debt already accumulated by Ukraine back then.

[stuckinhell]

my worry is the nukes too

[karaterobot]

There aren't a lot of examples of a country being unwilling or unable to fight in a full-scale war, and instead launching nukes at their next door neighbor. I don't think this is part of the playbook, or based on evidence, I think it's coming from anxiety.

[jncfhnb]

There aren’t a lot of examples of nuclear states being attacked by a stronger military power

[nine_k]

Consider: willing but unable to fight any more, overpowered, and unwilling to surrender. That's where launching nukes, the ultimate weapon of retaliation, could look very enticing.

[ashoeafoot]

More important ,ever since the multipolar great games resumed , they will have customers for nukes. Trump really was the final nail on deterence reliance ..

[ben_w]

That may be a long-term problem, but right now it's like worrying about high cholesterol during a knife fight.

[ashoeafoot]

Its not, you goto look at how the actors in the region act and invest. Some of the regions rich seem remarkable calm towards a muklear armed iran.

[ben_w]

Can Pakistan can ship nukes to Iran fast enough for the Iranian economy to supply in return a militarily useful quantity of anti-air and anti-missile defence systems? On a timescale of "shooting currently happening"? If not, that's a problem for the rest of the decade, whereas an escalating situation on this border could've already evaporated a few cities between me having read the headline 20 minutes ago and pressing the [reply] button now.

[ivell]

It is not that they didn't try supplying Iran with nuclear tech.

https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/pakistan/nytimes0...

[dani__german]

Its ok, most of pakistan moved to London anyway so we dont have much to worry about.

[th3iedkid]

Looks like some of the locations were deep within Pakistan and were targeted precision strikes. They have also released video footage of many of the strikes https://idrw.org/indian-airstrikes-target-terror-infrastruct...

[datadrivenangel]

Massive misinformation out there, so be skeptical of anything that flatters anybody.

[aprilthird2021]

I think you're mostly correct. This does mirror the 2019 flare up, and yeah ultimately neither side wants their populace to figure out they're not as strong or prepared as they claim. For Pakistan after squashing the democratically popular leader, they can't afford to appear weak (the only thing they can lean on is strength to explain to the populace why they are better than a democratically elected leader). For India, also, the BJP has been waning in popularity after almost a decade of incumbency, this could be the straw that loses them their major support.

[conradfr]

Yet people died.

[jjude]

> Pakistan is not economically strong enough to participate in a war,

Pakistan has nothing to lose. So there are lots of incentives for Pakistan army to go rogue.

[pm90]

This isn’t how anything works. Both India and Pakistan depend on imported military hardware. Every time they’ve fought each other they’ve been embargoed. So every kind of engagement has an implicit timer before the military literally runs out of munitions to continue any kind of serious war.

[jjude]

This is what then PM Nawaz Sharif said about Kargil war:

> After the war, Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan during the Kargil conflict, claimed that he was unaware of the plans, and that he first learned about the situation when he received an urgent phone call from Atal Bihari Vajpayee, his counterpart in India. Sharif attributed the plan to Musharraf and "just two or three of his cronies", a view shared by some Pakistani writers who have stated that only four generals, including Musharraf, knew of the plan.

Possible he was lying. But this is an accepted view even in the Pakistan.

[saagarjha]

Pakistan has a population of 250 million people. But, of course, an army can go rogue regardless; they have no need to follow the words of economists (or anyone, really).

[impossiblefork]

Pakistan has everything to lose. They are totally dependent on India for reliable water supply, i.e. for getting something other thana drought-flood cycle.

Military action is only going to lead to India being less willing to give them an even supply. They are totally dependent on keeping India happy, and now of course, they've failed to do that by allowing these recent murders.

[conradfr]

Pakistan is irrelevant, what do the people in charge have to lose (or win)?

[Guptos]

I hope this is true

[tonyhart7]

so its saving face attack??? idk about that

[pokstad]

Thanks for stating these forecasts so authoritatively. Or maybe we should admit this is uncharted waters and we shouldn't downplay what is possible?

[tomjen3]

Its not the first time these two have been at war.

[ivape]

It's also worth pointing out that whatever nonsense the terrorists were on about will now just get reinforced. You could be talking about a more agitated situation with even more terror attacks. This is how bullshit like this escalates. They should have coordinated with Pakistan to run the strikes.

I also thought the Ukraine war wasn't "really" going to happen. Humans will human.

[bluefirebrand]

> They should have coordinated with Pakistan to run the strikes.

I think the past 30 years have demonstrated enough that Pakistan is only paying lip service when they denounce attacks like this

At best they don't care, and at worst they sponsor the terrorists directly, but they definitely are not trying to help anyone stop attacks like this or root out their extremists

[cheema33]

You may not be aware of this, but terrorists inside Pakistan kill Pakistani military servicemen on a weekly basis.

India's attack on Pakistan are counterproductive. It will fuel the fire and the crazies will kill more Indians and Pakistanis as a result.

[ivell]

Pakistan has a concept of good terrorists and bad terrorists. Terrorists against India (JeM, LeT) are good terrorists. They are protected and trained by Pakistan army (e.g. protection given to JeM leader). Good terrorists are sometimes declared dead to avoid international scrutiny while protected clandestinely (Sajid Mir).

Bad terrorists are of course that attack Pakistani Army (e.g. Baloch Liberation Army).

Notable is how Osama was protected by Pakistan army as he was a useful indirect source of income (war on terror)

Indias attack was aimed at the Good Terrorists of Pakistan. The hope is to reduce their capabilities. Not sure how much successful they have been though.

[cheema33]

> Notable is how Osama was protected by Pakistan army as he was a useful indirect source of income (war on terror)

Do you have any evidence of any of these claims or are you parroting what you heard someone else say?

[lenkite]

LeT is a state sponsored terrorist organization. It was founded by General Zia as he proudly declaimed that he would "Bleed India with a Thousand Cuts". I suggest reading the books written by Pak Generals to know that they fully believe in investing in militant/terror organizations - it is a firm and unalienable part of their military culture. Such a culture was actually encouraged by the US initially before the 9/11 blow-back.

[lazide]

Geopolitical decisions like this are always ‘least bad’. The Modi gov’t in India is not as strong as it looks, and they couldn’t continue to function if they let such a high profile and obviously religiously motivated terrorist attack go ‘unanswered’.

The water threats are the real leverage, but without some obvious military action they’d be skinned alive by the Hindu hardliners (Hindutvas).

[ignoramous]

> root out their extremists

Pakistanis themselves are subject to numerous terror incidents. I'm not sure what causes folks to automatically assume Muslim nations support "extremists" as a policy. Sure, there may be power brokers who do, but that's the case for any country, democratic or not.

  On 16 December 2014, six gunmen affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan [attacked] the Army Public School in Peshawar. The terrorists ... [a Chechen, 3 Arabs and 2 Afghans] opened fire ... killing 149 people including 132 school children, making it the world's fifth deadliest school massacre ... led to Pakistan establishing the National Action Plan to crack down on terrorism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Peshawar_school_massacre

[nindalf]

> They should have coordinated with Pakistan to run the strikes.

Like when America coordinated with Pakistan to grab Osama? Actually no, they didn't coordinate with Pakistan because the terrorist was being harboured by the Pakistani military. Coordinating would have had the same effect as tipping the terrorist off and letting him escape.

Your comment assumes that Pakistan doesn't view harbouring and training terrorists as a legitimate way to conduct their foreign policy.

[dd_xplore]

Like US co-ordinated with Paxtan to destroy laden? The laden who was hiding near a military base in Paxtan?

[aprilthird2021]

This always seems really disingenuous to me. He was hiding in an extremely concealed manner. Never ever went outside, and it's not as if the Pakistani military can just break into every house nearby and search for him everywhere.

How they caught him was crazy in and of itself, and required fake vaccination drives, another thing no military can do to its own people to catch terrorists.

I really don't think they are blameless at all, at all, but this kind of stuff feels conspiracy-level to me. This was the most wanted guy in the world, no country, no army could plausibly have concealed him and coordinated that effort to keep him hidden. Someone along the chain would have given him up

[Brigand]

They absolutely covered Bin Laden. The intelligence agencies are not of your opinion:

„Counterterrorism officials told Logan that there is no way the Pakistanis didn't know about this.“

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/did-pakistan-know-where-bin-lad...

[aprilthird2021]

I mean, there is a way they didn't know it though. There aren't any hard evidences available today that prove this happened. Imo, it's pretty unlikely. Like I said, he never left the compound or ever got any sunlight. He didn't even have internet access. He passed all his messages through couriers to other people. When he was found, out of his enormous trove of documents, not a single one indicated any kind of coordination with any intelligence service.

I also don't get what Pakistan gains from sheltering him. Turning him into the US aids them tremendously, and Al Qaeda was not a valuable or useful asset for years before Bin Laden was found. New groups were forming at the time as well, so they could have easily turned him and handed the money over to those groups which had beef with him anyways. Again, it's all assuming they were sheltering him knowingly.

Like I said before. He was very close by, but he was locked down in a compound. How many people here on HN know anything about the people or activities going on in the house 2 blocks away from them? The army also cannot just search everyone's house randomly.

Consider India, they equally have pretty poor competence with catching terrorists. Many of the biggest terrorist attacks in India were not caught and evaded detection. Even the latest terrorists seem to have evaded detection. Pakistan doesn't have a far more advanced security service. Isn't it far more likely they are incompetent? Idk, the harboring Bin Laden claim never made much sense and Occam's Razor always told me the most likely option is probably the real one, in the absence of any hard evidence.

[legolas2412]

Please read about Dr. Shakil Afridi. The doctor who helped CIA find Laden has been in Pakistani prison for a decade plus now, on false drummed up charges.

Why are you sure that Pakistan is not supporting terrorists now, after decades and decades of evidence otherwise?

[aprilthird2021]

I know about him. Idk, if you ever lived in India, you'd know the govt puts people in jail on trumped up charges all the time. Pakistan is probably the same. And this guy did do a fake vaccination drive for a foreign power. Indian police would have dealt with him the same probably...

As for evidence, there isn't hard evidence that Pakistan supported Bin Laden. And I'd expect that after he was caught. The US, where many ministers and army personnel and intelligence chiefs were skeptical when he was found, eventually said there was no hard evidence linking Pakistan secret services to Bin Laden. They were so skeptical of this link that they didn't tell them the nature of the raid which found him, for fear of tipping him off.

I think it's just what it looks like on the surface. It looks suspicious, so that's why everyone was suspicious. But when we looked into it, it wasn't what it looked like.

I don't doubt Pakistan supports some proxy terrorists. That is what nearly every nation-state does these days. I just doubt they sheltered Bin Laden, worth far more to them in US hands than elsewhere, after seeing what they did in Afghanistan to the last group who sheltered him, way past his prime. That too while being good enough to scrub any evidence of the connection? I just don't think there's motive or proof of it

[dd_xplore]

Paxtan has always sheltered terrorists, even now they are providing security to LeT, JeM etc.

[ignoramous]

Hasn't Pak banned both LeT and JeM?

[ganarajpr]

Lol, whats disingenuous is your arguments, honestly. So, either you have to argue that Pakistan's military is extremely idiotic / naive that it could not even detect a known terrorist living just around the corner or you have to argue that they knowingly kept him in their "shadow". The vast majority of the people believe its the latter - you are free to believe that they were idiots.

[aprilthird2021]

I do think the Pakistani intelligence and military are probably as competent as the Indian ones given the money, similar levels of development of state, etc. And Indian intelligences are not Mossad-level in any way. My belief is that they didn't know and were embarrassed. I mean, what would they gain from harboring Bin Laden, so wanted he can barely move anywhere, and Al Qaeda, a group that's basically been useless since way before his capture? There are new groups they could fund and arm all while giving up Bin Laden. They already caught and turned over other AQ figures before, so even if they sponsored other terror groups, why keep him?

[dyauspitr]

Pakistan is not a rational state. The stated sole purpose of their intelligence agency ISI is the destabilization of India. The terrorists are backed, sheltered and armed by the government. There’s a reason bin Laden successfully hid there for so long.

[saagarjha]

India, of course, has a dual focus.

[roenxi]

These are actually well charted waters - people are shooting at each other and some fairly high percentage of the time everything calms down but the rest of the time it escalates crazily with both sides losing control. Situation as old as time, long rich history of provocative military action.

I observe from time to time that Moscow appears to be under fire from the occasional US-sponsored attack for example. So far, so good. Most of the time things don't go terribly wrong, just the worst case scenarios here are quite grim. The India-Pakistan situation is probably a bit safer because anything catastrophic is likely to just kill millions/billions of people in India and Pakistan instead of an entire hemisphere of carnage.

[happyopossum]

> from time to time that Moscow appears to be under fire from the occasional US-sponsored attack for example

Ok, you lost me there..

[brabel]

The US is definitely sponsoring Ukraine in the war together with the EU so when Ukraine attacks Moscow, which it is currently doing regularly, it seems like that’s a fair characterization. If Russia were strong enough they would surely be responding to those attacks not only by hitting Ukraine but their “sponsors” too.

[roenxi]

Things like https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ukraine-drone-attack-moscow-1.....

[pjc50]

Didn't the US sponsorship abruptly terminate?

[xkcd1963]

How is his viewpoint not valid?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Pakistan is not economically strong enough to participate in a war, and India is not interested

Proxy war between U.S. and China. We’re moving the naval assets that were bombing the Houthis. India seizing Pakistan-administered Kashmir cuts Islamabad off from China.

[postingawayonhn]

The US isn't interested in picking sides. Historically it has tried to be friendly with both (though that hasn't always been easy).

[kumarvvr]

> Historically it has tried to be friendly with both

By funding a known miliary dictator (Pervez Musharraf), for decades, helping strengthen the military rule in Pakistan.

So much for "spreading democracy"

[hackandthink]

"However, Pakistan was a valuable diplomatic partner, and its government helped the United States achieve a rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China in the early 1970s."

"U.S. prestige was damaged in both nations, in Pakistan for failing to help prevent the loss of East Pakistan and in India for supporting the brutality of the Pakistani regime’s actions"

https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/south-asia

[ivell]

In context: The Blood Telegram

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blood_Telegram:_Nixon,_K...

It was an active decision by the US.

[Jtsummers]

Historic policies don't apply to the current administration. It's really anybody's guess at this point what the US would do if this conflict ratchets up significantly.

[JumpCrisscross]

> US isn't interested in picking sides. Historically it has tried to be friendly with both

Sure, but one side offers clear benefits over the "ally from hell." (Islamabad, at the very least, has clearly picked a side.)

Also, I'm not arguing what I think will happen. I'm arguing how this could escalate. And the only way I see it doing so is (a) someone bombs the wrong thing or (b) Beijing or Washington see an opportunity to win chips.

[tonyhart7]

"US isn't interested in picking sides"

but you dont want any of them to ally with russia or chinnese, ignoring problem also "problematic"

[smt88]

Nothing about historical US foreign policy can tell us what the current regime wants or will do.

[happyopossum]

Good. HN is full of posts about stupid crap the US govt has done in the past.

[cosmicgadget]

Don't underestimate the stupidity of this administration. History could pale in comparison.

[smt88]

"No the stupid crap of the past" != "smart"

There are countless ways to be stupid and destructive, especially when you're actively trying to destroy your own country's institutions.

[sandspar]

The Pakistan-India conflict is orthogonal to America and China's.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Pakistan-India conflict is orthogonal to America and China's

India is negotiating trade deals and weapons purchases with the West. (Historically, Moscow was its security source.) Pakistan got some F-16s in 2022, but otherwise has been deepending ties with Beijing. It's wild to suggest America's cold war with China is orthogonal to this conflict.

[sandspar]

Ask a random Indian in India whether he'd be willing to die for the US. The US and China have interests in the area, so maybe I shouldn't have said the word "orthogonal". But the original commenter said a conflict between India and Pakistan would be a "US-China proxy war". Come on. India and Pakistan have enough reasons to hate each other. They don't need America or China's goading. And neither India nor Pakistan would accept their conflict being characterized as a US-China war.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Ask a random Indian in India whether he'd be willing to die for the US

Not how proxy wars work.

> India and Pakistan have enough reasons to hate each other. They don't need America or China's goading

Not how proxy wars work. The backers enable. The proxies fight.

> neither India nor Pakistan would accept their conflict being characterized as a US-China war

This is how proxy wars work. They literally don’t if the proxies realise they’re fighting a foreign war on their homeland.

[air3y]

>This is how proxy wars work. They literally don’t if the proxies realise they’re fighting a foreign war on their homeland.

India and pakistan have contested boundaries and their hostilities doesn't depend on foreign powers. Interestingly, when the hostilities between china and india flared up in 2021, and india moved many divisions from its pakistan border to its chinese border, pakistan didn't change its posturing to put pressure on india. This was acknowledged by indian army during a press briefing. Both so far have never fought against each other for foreign powers, but have fought against each other for their own reasons. So no proxy wars so far.

[random42]

It’s not a proxy war. Not every world event is about the US.

Source: I am an Indian.

[slt2021]

It is useful for the US to isolate China from Iranian oil resources. Currently Iranian oil can go via Pakistan to China.

Thats how Us operates: exploits old conflicts for its own immediate benefit, like it did with Ukr-Rus war.

If some people die on both side it is acceptable for the Us, because these are not Us citizens dying

[maxglute]

CPEC isn't viable energy coordidor yet - no completed oil/gas infra from Iran to Pak to PRC. Which only leaves trucks, and the roads not designed to support 5000+ trucks per day for Irans 1m barrels per day.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Thats how Us operates: exploits old conflicts for its own immediate benefit, like it did with Ukr-Rus war.

This is realpolitik 101, and every powerful society does it. Like, India didn't help sever Bangladesh f/k/a East Pakistan from Islamabad because it was being nice. (I'm not saying every society exploits every old conflict. Just that if you need to do something, you start with extant fault lines. Like, if you're going to war with Nazi Germany you don't sideline the Soviets and British because that's mean or whatnot.)

Also, the problem with Pakistan isn't that its ports could be used to import oil. It's that the ports are being configured for Chinese blue-water operations.

[slt2021]

I can understand seizing opportunities in situations like this, however I cannot support instigating and creating these situations in the first place.

https://m.economictimes.com/news/defence/pakistans-defence-m...

[JumpCrisscross]

> cannot support instigating and creating these situations in the first place

With all due respect, what you and I support isn’t super relevant to what will happen over the coming weeks.

[lazyeye]

It doesn't matter what it is, or where it's happening in the world, some people will always make it about the US. Always. It's tiresome.

[shadowgovt]

The US is the third largest country on the planet with the second largest nuclear arsenal and controls the currency that other countries denominate their international debt in.

There's very little that happens in the world that does not touch or get touched by the United States. The USA doesn't have much choice in this.