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Why is this concern not valid for China or Russia ?
India is a cat still in the bag. China and Russia are already cats out of the bag. Other more sophisticated means are required where they are concerned
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> By assisting India you're paying for their ICBM development India is now part of MCTR (Missile Control Technology Regime) that limits ICBM development. So that's no longer a valid concern. Also, India has done well without the assistance of the US in space technology and will continue to do so. So if the US doesn't want to assist in technology, it's not going to be a show stopper for India. It will continue to eat…
They're also one of the two countries still in a nuclear deadlock with their fingers on the "button". Lets be realistic about this.
Neither adhere to a no-first-use doctrine. That means that they reserve the right to scorch the world with nuclear fire, in response to an attack by conventional weapons.
It's hard to pin down exactly how disproportionate this level of hubris is.
On the one hand, its rather interesting to see the US, champion of free and open markets, enforce a policy so against that very principle. If I'm not mistaken, not only is US policy meant to assist the private space industry in the US, but to also avoid indirectly assisting the Indian missile/ballistic missile program. Although in India's defense the agency that develops/manages/deploys satellites (ISRO) is separate…
This is because any mature rocket technology can trivially be adjusted to be a nuclear weapons delivery platform. By assisting India you're paying for their ICBM development. Maybe the line shouldn't be drawn at rockets, but unless you think we should have free & open markets for nuclear weapons I daresay you think the line should be drawn somewhere.
On the one hand, its rather interesting to see the US, champion of free and open markets, enforce a policy so against that very principle. If I'm not mistaken, not only is US policy meant to assist the private space industry in the US, but to also avoid indirectly assisting the Indian missile/ballistic missile program. Although in India's defense the agency that develops/manages/deploys satellites (ISRO) is separate…
This is because any mature rocket technology can trivially be adjusted to be a nuclear weapons delivery platform. By assisting India you're paying for their ICBM development. Maybe the line shouldn't be drawn at rockets, but unless you think we should have free & open markets for nuclear weapons I daresay you think the line should be drawn somewhere.
India will build any technology that it needs given sufficient time and money. Time is not something that USA has anymore. It's global influence is only going go down with time.
At least in my opinion it makes lot more sense for USA to see India as a potential borrowed knife/insurance against China and help her have good defense capabilities as well as build strong economic ties across all possible avenues.
It appears that trade and economic exchange is a much more important factor to avoid full scale war than anything else.
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> Also in all the wars in which India was involved, it was never the aggressor. That's a bit of rewriting of history right there. I suppose you will claim that India's involvement in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Dadra_and_Nagar_... was simply connivance and instigation by the government, not active participation by the Indian military? But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Portuguese_India wa…
You really need to read up on Indian history my friend. The first and second article you link to is Indian territory that was re-acquired after India's Independence. At that time, India was not even a nuclear power. The third article (about Bangladesh liberation) was not because "India was actively arming and training insurgents inside what was at the time Pakistan". Are you seriously so naive to buy into Pakistani p…
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> By assisting India you're paying for their ICBM development India is now part of MCTR (Missile Control Technology Regime) that limits ICBM development. So that's no longer a valid concern. Also, India has done well without the assistance of the US in space technology and will continue to do so. So if the US doesn't want to assist in technology, it's not going to be a show stopper for India. It will continue to eat…
> India is now part of MCTR (Missile Control Technology Regime) that limits ICBM development. So that's no longer a valid concern. That's regime sounds like a great intent, but the simple fact is that taking a satellite launching rocket, replacing the satellite with a nuke, and aiming it back at the ground somewhere is trivial.
The point of MCTR is to prevent a nation from openly admitting they have such a weapon and hence it can not be used as an argument in any future negotiations.
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They're also one of the two countries still in a nuclear deadlock with their fingers on the "button". Lets be realistic about this.
The United States and Russia have been in a nuclear deadlock since both sides got their hands on ICBMs. Neither adhere to a no-first-use doctrine. That means that they reserve the right to scorch the world with nuclear fire, in response to an attack by conventional weapons. It's hard to pin down exactly how disproportionate this level of hubris is.
But no... it must just be a double standard... if you squint hard enough.
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I don't know on what you are basing the destabilization threat on. India has a no first usage policy on nuclear weapons [1] and has shown no intent of using the weapons. Also in all the wars in which India was involved, it was never the aggressor. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_and_weapons_of_mass_dest...
> Also in all the wars in which India was involved, it was never the aggressor. That's a bit of rewriting of history right there. I suppose you will claim that India's involvement in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Dadra_and_Nagar_... was simply connivance and instigation by the government, not active participation by the Indian military? But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Portuguese_India wa…
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You make a lot of sweeping disdainful generalization and I don't have time to correct all of them. However, I can speak about DRDO-- I began my s/w career as a student intern in DRDO -- I worked in a lab that was developing Nag anti tank missiles. This was a hard and complex undertaking and we had very few resources. TCS etc have better computers than DRDO . And yet the people I worked were dedicated professionals an…
Weirdly, I had an opposite experience as an intern in DRDO. I found the employees wasting enormous amount of time on tea/lunch breaks and waiting at the swipe gate 15 min in advance in the evenings to bug out. The low level cadre are the worst in this. Scientists (regardless of their level) seem to be passionate about their work but the support personnel assigned to them hinder a lot. A lot of manufacturing (and desi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Also in all the wars in which India was involved, it was never the aggressor. That's a bit of rewriting of history right there. I suppose you will claim that India's involvement in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Dadra_and_Nagar_... was simply connivance and instigation by the government, not active participation by the Indian military? But https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Portuguese_India wa…
You really need to read up on Indian history my friend. The first and second article you link to is Indian territory that was re-acquired after India's Independence. At that time, India was not even a nuclear power. The third article (about Bangladesh liberation) was not because "India was actively arming and training insurgents inside what was at the time Pakistan". Are you seriously so naive to buy into Pakistani p…
Probably true. I need to read up on almost every topic in existence.
> Indian territory that was re-acquired after India's Independence
Please see my response to AkshayGenius at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12866503
> At that time, India was not even a nuclear power
That's not relevant to the veracity of the "was never the aggressor" claim, which was not conditioned on nuclear anything.
> Are you seriously so naive to buy into Pakistani propaganda?
It's possible that the sources cited in Wikipedia for this claim are all Pakistani propaganda, though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukti_Bahini#cite_note-47 doesn't obviously look like it to me.
> With a massive influx of East Pakistani's into Indian soil, India had no choice but to get involved in the conflict.
Now we are back to deciding at what point national interest justifies military action, yes?
I'm not claiming the action was not justified, because I do not have sufficient knowledge to make that determination. But the original post I replied to wasn't talking about "justified" aggression either.
> What part of the conflict do you think India was an aggressor?
If Wikipedia is to be believed, and maybe in this case it's not, then the situation here was as follows:
1) The territory in question was disputed, and not generally permanently occupied by either side.
2) Pakistan was granting permission to mountaineering expeditions into the territory, based on various maps claiming that parts of the territory were in Pakistan as opposed to correctly showing that the border was not agreed on.
3) India responded by sending a military-sponsored (but not clear whether "military" in the sense of "armed") expedition .
4) Pakistan decided to establish a more permanent military presence in the area.
5) India found out about this plan and acted first to move its military into the area.
6) Pakistan attempted to dislodge the Indian troops.
etc. As I said, hard to decide who exactly is the aggressor here, as in most slowly-escalating disputed-area conflicts.
> I can counter all your points with just 1 point
I think you misunderstood my points. You seem to be responding to a strawman "India is an aggressive country out to get its neighbors" claim that I never made. As I said elsewhere in this thread, I think India has done a pretty good job of not being a military aggressor, and I think Pakistan has clearly been the aggressor a number of times in wars with India. I also think the claim that India was _never_ an aggressor is wrong.
> You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lahore_Front
That's about the 1965 war, not the 1971 one. It also says India did not occupy Lahore, though it did get quite close to doing so. But to your larger point....
> Have you ever heard of any country that returned conquered land back, on it's own volition, immediately after occupying it?
Assuming we're still talking about the 1965 war, Wikipedia's article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1965 claims:
"Hostilities between the two countries ended after a United Nations mandated ceasefire was declared following diplomatic intervention by the Soviet Union and the United States, and the subsequent issuance of the Tashkent Declaration."
and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_War_of_1965#Cea... talks about some of the same.
If we're talking about that situation, then the 1956 capture and return of the Gaza Strip and Sinai by Israel is a similar situation.
Going a bit further back in time, Prussia returned almost all of the territory that it controlled at the end of the Franco-Prussian war of 1872, though they extracted a monetary indemnity for doing so. Even further back, in 1814 the Sixth Coalition restored the territorial integrity of France after exiling Napoleon.
Again, India acted honorably here, and such actions are reasonably rare. They're not unique.
> Heard of any country that returned captured war prisoners (especially of that magnitude)?
Sure. At the end of World War I, millions of POWs were released by the various belligerents. Numbers from back then are not very reliable, but http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/prisoners_o... lists somewhere in the 300k-400k range for just German prisoners of war held in France.
Returning prisoners of war at the end of the conflict is the _normal_ thing that happens. Not always, of course; an obvious counterexample is the Soviet Union after World War II, and to a lesser extent the other Allies at the end of that war. But nevertheless, it's the expected behavior. Obviously it's to India's credit that it did that, but it's a much lower bar than the return of territory, in my view.