Tensions between longtime political, territorial, and ideological foes, India and Pakistan, are escalating.
The current crisis began when Pakistan-based terrorists killed 26 Indian tourists in an April 22 attack in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir region. On Wednesday, India launched retaliatory air strikes against terrorists inside Pakistan that it blames for the attack. Pakistan then appears to have responded with drone attacks on Indian territory on Wednesday. India has subsequently responded with its own counter-retaliation, and both sides are now engaged in limited but growing conflict.
This conflict would only be of relatively mild concern for the international community were it not for one factor: India and Pakistan have around 170-200 nuclear weapons each. In terms of delivery systems, India has intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the United States. Fortunately, U.S.-India relations mean that an Indian nuclear attack on the U.S. is almost (no certainty can be afforded in the nuclear world) inconceivable.
In contrast, U.S.-Pakistan relations are tenuous at the best of times. And while the Pakistani military offers a flawed but functional bulwark against internal Islamist extremist movements, anti-American and anti-Indian extremists also define top ranks of the military. The enduring U.S. fear is that a full-scale war with India might lead to either the seizure of Pakistani nuclear weapons by Islamist extremists or the employment of those weapons by extremist-minded military officers. And that those weapons would then be employed to attack U.S. interests. While Pakistan lacks missiles that could hit the U.S., it is developing them at pace. Pakistan already has a probable ability to strike Israel with nuclear weapons.
The ensuing U.S. priorities in this crisis are threefold.
First, diplomatic action to reduce tensions and prevent the catastrophe of a full-scale India-Pakistan conventional or nuclear war. Second, to detect moves by either side to prepare for nuclear strikes against each other, or U.S./allied interests. Third, to deter and, if necessary, defeat action by Pakistan or external parties such as China to threaten U.S. interests. China is relevant because Pakistan is now a de facto colony of the Chinese Communist Party, and because China has a growing stockpile of nuclear warheads that range the U.S. homeland.
How will the U.S. address these three priority interests?
On the diplomatic side of things, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is playing the key role. Rubio and his foreign allied counterparts are speaking regularly to Indian and Pakistani officials. Behind the scenes, they will offer inducements for a reduction in tensions and warn of costs amid escalation. But crisis diplomacy also requires insight as to what each side is thinking and doing behind closed doors. That leads to the second priority of intelligence activity.
A key responsibility will fall on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Responsible for analyzing imagery from U.S. spy satellites, the NGA will analyze the activities of nuclear forces from both countries. This will provide warnings to the Trump administration if either Pakistan or India appears to be moving closer to the use of nuclear weapons.
Similarly, the National Security Agency will intercept Indian-Pakistani communications to detect any developing plans for nuclear posture changes, or, for example, the movement of senior leaders to nuclear bunkers. The NSA will also develop evolving assessments of who the doves and hawks are on both sides, thus enabling the U.S. and its allies to target varying measures of leverage at those individuals.
Finally, the Central Intelligence Agency will focus on leveraging its influence with its Pakistani and Indian sources, both civilian and military, to understand where things might be headed. One benefit of the War on Terror is that the CIA has developed a number of well-placed Pakistani officials who will have special insight into the current situation. The Defense Intelligence Agency will also play a role here.
That leads us to the final priority: effective deterrence and defense of the U.S.
The U.S. military’s standing, and unilateral, nuclear weapons enabled ability to end Pakistan and China’s sovereign existences is the key source of deterrence. But the U.S. military must also be ready if deterrence fails. And that means providing President Donald Trump with the means of a first-strike surprise attack. This capability could be employed if there were indications that a nuclear attack against U.S. interests was imminent. The mission would fall primarily to the U.S. Navy’s Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, or SSBNs.
One of these submarines may already be operating within the Indian Ocean, or have been ordered to move there. Three to four U.S. SSBNs are operating at any one time, with two normally in the Pacific Ocean, and one in the northern Atlantic Ocean. But were an SSBN now operating in the southern Indian Ocean on an axis west of the India-Pakistan border, it would have a potent first strike capability against Pakistan and land-based ICBM bases in western China. In the scenario of a seizure of nuclear forces by Islamist extremists in Pakistan, an Ohio-class submarine could potentially destroy those forces before they were ready to launch against U.S. interests.
Such a large Indian Ocean patrol area offers a vast amount of deep water to hide in. It would put any SSBNs well within optimal striking range (approximately 7,500 miles) for their Trident D5 nuclear warhead-armed missiles. Russia’s best attack cruise missile submarines and acoustic nets rarely operate in these waters, and PLA submarines lack the meaningful capacity to detect U.S. SSBNs outside of the East and South China Seas. Pakistan’s navy has only a limited, littoral detection capability.
CONGRESS MUST SPEAK OUT AS TRUMP SHREDS US INTERESTS ON GREENLAND
All of this sounds very dark. And it is. But the U.S. has a unique balance of diplomatic, intelligence-related, and military power to bring to bear in the preservation of nuclear peace.
That’s a manifestly good thing. Something we should remember next time someone calls for wholesale diplomatic, intelligence, or defense cuts.