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“border crisis...they are low-risk, high-yield opportunities to profit from nationalism”

Let’s see, what are the ingredients to this stew? India weak in conventional forces...India nuclear power...India’s current leader possibly less predictable than ever.

Everybody seems to think that going nuclear is never an option. Well, it depends on how threatened the guy with the button feels. China is extremely aggressive and they need control of the Indian Ocean to guarantee oil shipments from the Persian Gulf. Their strategy all along has been to establish a position from which they can split India into little pieces. This is a conflict that India can’t afford to lose. To lose up in the mountains is to lose all of India.

I wonder if China has ever considered being such a good neighbor that it doesn’t need to destroy a country in order to safely transit goods through that nation’s border. Also, China has threatened practically all of the countries it shares a border with. What will they do if they perceive that China’s attention is suddenly elsewhere?

Too many Chinese in China. Now there are 30+ million males with no marriage prospects. China is prepared to lose a whole lot of their people. I just wish India would understand they have a common issue with Taiwan, japan, P.I. and a few other countries. Stop depending on the U.S.

“Everybody seems to think that going nuclear is never an option.”

Going nuclear is never going to be an option right up to the point that a nuclear capable country is about to lose a war on their own territory. Then it will be the only option.

[Everybody seems to think that going nuclear is never an option. ]

It’s never an option against nuclear power with 2nd strike capability. The logic of nuclear weapons use dictates that any strike be an all-out attack to destroy the enemy’s command and control as well as its 2nd strike capabilities. That means cities and rocket bases. If you are going to kill millions of the enemy, you’d better kill them all. Because nuclear retaliation is guaranteed if you fail.

If India does a first strike, it needs to ensure that China’s SLBM’s are taken care of. That means its short-legged Kilo subs need to know where China’s SLBM-carrying subs are, and take them out before Beijing can get in touch with those subs with targeting information. Bottom line is that even if Modi kills a few hundred million Chinese, he risks tens of millions of Indian dead. Seems like a huge price to pay for a parcel of uninhabitable wasteland.