Quote:
Originally Posted by Officer of Engineers
Law of Unitended Consequences.
The Chinese bomb was definetely not India centric. It was anti-West and anti-Soviet centric. So, you cannot blame China for starting that race. However, the issue of Pakistan is much more muddied.
Do recall that India was considered part of the Soviet camp and especially part of the Soviet Eastern strategy. Whether true or not does not change the perception. In 1974, India exploded her bomb and in defacto confronting China with a two front nuclear situation. Since China relies on Pakistan to check India while she concentrated her tactical attentions up north, then unless China shifts some nukes south (given her limited numbers and technological and technical inferiority vis-a-vi Moscow would make it unlikely), then the only way to check India's nukes were to use Pakistan nukes.
The AQ Khan got dreams of grandeur and bastardized that Chinese dream into a nightmare.
|
It is an explanation for the Chinese, but it does not excuse the Chinese. Law of Unintended Consequences cuts both ways: Chinese meddled in an ancient struggle whose rules they don't understand, now they have to own up to that one way or another. India is building its ABM program with the Pakistanis in mind; the fact that is scalable to jeopardize the China-India balance is also the Law of Unintended Consequences. The Chinese, of course, have the choice of cleaning up the mess they made in India's west and Indian politicians will be more than happy to scrap the ABM program...