Wow, InstaCommentage!

Regarding Glenn's suggestion that a nuclear exchange in South Asia might lead to a "lower threshold" for use, thereby in some sense freeing the U.S. to use nukes and suffer less international condemnation: I suspect the opposite would actually prove true.

What we are discussing here is the deaths of millions of people. Live on CNN, worldwide. I think the unimaginably horrific nature of such a catastrophe would lead to a huge backlash against the use of such weapons ever again, rather than making them more accepted.

One of the greatest nuclear risks the world faces today is that the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has grown dim. Let us all hope that it does not prove necessary for India and Pakistan to remind the world that we now possess weapons that genuinely are too terrible to use.

I'm with Mr. Bear on this one. Insofar as an Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange might make future nukings more possible I would say that the mechanism is less that it will lower the threshhold for use than that the choas it produces might let some Pakistani nuclear material slip through the cracks.The modern world isn't used to casualties on any kind of large scale. Remember the initial burst of horror and outrage that the death of several thousand civilians on September 11 caused. Imagine that multiplied by a factor of several thousand.

I'm in complete agreement with the first two comments. While it's entirely possible that a nuclear exchange will occur, it's aftermath (in an age of instant communication) will have an immense impact on public opinion worldwide. None of us can imagine the actual impact of atomic weapons, live in colour on our TV screens, with people dying of radiation poisoning in the Punjab being interviewed by Larry King in a studio.

It'll be a flicker of hell, and no one who witnesses it (which these days means all of us) will EVER want a repeat performance.

I think N.Z. has a good point that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are, in fact, growing dim in our country's memory. Another factor may be that, even when it happened, images from the scene were not immediately transmitted to our living rooms, making the action seem somehow less immediate. Every moderately industrialized nation in the world being able to see the mushroom cloud just hours (maybe minutes) later might very well promote a renewed sense of immediacy in the need to curb nuclear weapons.

What I have to wonder about, though, are the less developed nations. As the Professor points out, India and Pakistan are still barely out of 3rd world classification (straddling it, with some trenchant issues). And even with huge single industries in the Arab world, they're still largely underdeveloped, with a huge portion of the population not havng the kind of news access the rest of the world does. Right now Saudi Arabia televises shows on how to build bombs from household materials, imams doing "sunday morning services" about the glorious day when all the Jews are gone from the face of the earth. Iran's titular leadership is beholden to clerics that still advocate the public stoning to death of women in mass viewings at soccer stadiums.

By now we all know the litany of conditions in these countries, so I dont mean to sound pedantic. I just wonder what kind of effect the use of nuclear weapons will have on these countries. With their lack of interest in larger human rights issues, and their struggle to develop WMD, would they view a nuclear escalation as a model? Would it increase their resolve to build and deploy them? There are, of course, the usual problems with these countries getting ahold of appropriate materials, but we've seen what happens when terrorists concentrate enough on a single action.

Don't really know, but it's something I wonder about...

What makes you so sure that the US is doing its best to prevent a nuclear war?

I would be more concerned about the loser in the nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan. Assuming it is Pakistan, I am sure the ISI has one or two nuclear bombs ready to give to the US most likely via a shipping container.

You will no longer have a country to punish once Pakistan is nuked. The military/ISI will run for the Afgan hills with gloves off and ready for bear. There is nothing like a little schadenfreude.

In 1891, Alfred Nobel thought dynamite was too terrible to use:
"Perhaps my factories will put an end to war sooner than your
congresses: on the day that two army corps can mutually annihilate
each other in a second, all civilised nations will surely recoil
with horror and disband their troops."

After WWI, Guilio Douhet, advocating bombing population centers
with a mix of high explosive, incendiary, and poison gas thought:
"The time would soon come when, to put an end to horror and
suffering, the people themselves, driven by the instinct of self-
preservation, would rise up and demand an end to the war."

International opinion has historically been a poor check on
military technology. In a war with national survival at stake,
one would expect use of all effective weapons. Conversely,
first use (and possible retaliation) is a national survival decision.
Previous use in another theater or possible perception issues
among foreign diplomats is unlikely to affect the calculus of
national leaders in a decision to determine the fate of their nation.

I have to substantially disagree with Mr. Hill. Not everybody who witnesses a modern nuclear war will be horrified. I doubt Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, etc. will be very dour afterwards. It may very well be that rational actors will rightly be appalled, but irrational actors will perhaps be encouraged -- and sadly, the only proportionate discouragement we have will be devaluated in our minds at the same time.

Such irrational actors could very likely take Western revulsion to such an exchange as free liscence to deploy such weapons against us at a lower cost -- the same way al Queda was made more bold by Clinton's Sudan asprin factory bombing fiasco. It would probably be as large a miscalculation of our desire to respond to nuke the U.S., but the damage would have already been done. Therefore, in a nuclear exchange in Pakistan and India, our response could very well determine the lives of Americans to be lost or saved.

As far as the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- not only are they receeded in our consciousness, but I don't think they would serve us well in this debate if they were fresh in our mind. I recently spoke to a survivor of the Hiroshima bombing at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and her story was wrenching, almost unbearable -- but given modern nuclear payloads, it's doubtful I would have had the chance to speak to her if one of those bombs had been dropped instead of the first, crude models that were lobbed into Hiroshima. And, in Doctor Strangelove-calculus, the only limit on bombs dropped once a country made that decision would be number available, the better to cause damage to retaliatory capability. The combined damage of the two previous nuclear bomb drops, while horrendous, probably would not compare to the sheer inhumanity of the potential Indian-Pakistani conflict.

India and Pakistan will probably go to war. (See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/05/21/wkash21.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/05/21/ixnewstop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=361177) The question then becomes, how do we keep it from escalating from convential war to theater nuclear warfare? And are we doing that?

This has the potential to get terribly ugly. But it might just help those that want these for national pride step back and think, by demonstration that in a regional nuclear conflict, there are no winners. It will encourage the radical elements to try and obtain such weapons, so that the WTC can be made to pale into insignificance... In the chaos that would follow such a event, particullary between these 2, control of existing stockpiles would most certainly be lost.
As far a Hiroshima and Nagasaki goes, I'm sorry the alternative was lots worse, and many more would had to die than did to end the war.

I have to agree with Mr Turner on this one. Also, many cultures have not been the least bit afraid of genocide, whether it was Nazi Germany, Socialist USSR, Pol Pot, or the Rwandans. And if we go back a bit more, we can always cite the USA's own near-genocide of Native Americans or Australians' near-genocide of native Australians. There is no lack of examples.
I fear the only thing preventing the use of these munitions is sufficient cause, *not* world opinion. Once one country finds itself on the defensive, out will come the nukes.

The presumption of the first two comments is that "there are no winners in a nuclear war", and presumably the sight/knowledge of lots of deaths and even more suffering survivors will somehow dissuade others from following in their footsteps.

But what happens if there is a winner? Posit, for example, that the Indians successfully destroy most of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal in a preemptive strike, and are prepared to accept a handful (say, ~5) nuclear hits on their own territory. Since the Pakistanis (and Indians) are talking Hiroshima-type weapons, we're not looking at the vaporization of an entire city, but "only" several square miles, if the weapon is sufficiently accurate to land in that area (and Pakistan's nuclear weapons are delivered by relatively inaccurate missile). India could easily trumpet that, in exchange for the unfortunate loss of several dozen square miles of cities and suburbs, it had permanent ended the threat of Pakistani violence, etc.

Are we so sure that such an outcome would deter future use? Or that most leaders would conclude that this wasn't worth it? (I'm not even thinking a Saddam or an Osama, here.) The lesson may well instead be to get your licks in first.

You get atomic war on CNN and you'll have people all over the world storming their capitals to dismantle these weapons.

That said, I doubt it would come to that. While it's possible a war will break out between the two sides, I believe it will stay conventional... as long as the victor does not overplay his hand, like, say, march on the loser's capital, and since they have already fought a couple of wars over the region without doing anything like that it's unlikely they will do it now.

Nuclear weapons are the weapons of last resort, and I'm pretty sure the people in power on both sides still believe that.

I'm convinced the biggest threat of nuclear war will come from our (U.S.) policies in the Middle East. It's pure economics. The billions of dollars we've given to Israel bought us the WTC disaster; billions more to israel will buy us worse, and since Israel is not a viable state without our generous hand outs we will be the target.

That is, unless we go after Saddam, corner him, and he figures he's got nothing to lose by going out an arab hero and launching nukes on Tel Aviv.

The Pakistanis think they can provide sanctuary for the Islamists with impunity thanks to their nuclear alliance with the Chinese (not only do they stand together shoulder to shoulder along the eastern Line of Control, the Chinese transferred the nuclear technology that gave the Paks the bomb). The Indians provoke the Islamists because they continue letting the decision of an unelected Kashmir Hindu prince overrule the democratic desires of an Islamic-majority population.

Terrorism and authoritarianism are equally unpalatable, but nuclear war is even less palatable. Still, as long as the Indians are unwilling to have a plebiscite, the Paks are unlikely to restrain the Islamists. This makes war the eventual outcome -- not today, not tomorrow, but eventually.

A successful Indian invasion of Pakistan will drop the Paks' nuclear theshold. Once they go nuclear against the Indian army, an Indian response would not only raise the stakes from tactical to strategic, it would invite the Chinese to come to the aid of their allies. An Indian/Chinese exchange would really lower the threshold to nuclear war -- perhaps leading to a nuclear attack on Taiwan as well.

So, the Chinese have a crucial role to play in deterring or escalating a nuclear war in the region. We haven't heard much about that in the media or blogsphere, but we can hope that the diplomatic initiatives underway will include the other crucial nuclear player in the region.

There's another angle to this - a bitter, cold-blooded one. What's the nightmare outcome of the war against al-Qaeda? Pakistan falls and al-Qaeda gets ahold of some number of their nukes.

Now, suppose India and Pakistan go to war, at the end of which all of Pakistan's nukes are destroyed or, well, used.

That could be disquietingly good for us...

To put my Dr. Strangelove hat on, it would be, from strictly academic standpoint, a really fascinating empirical test of all the theoretical work done on nuclear war theory. All those smart guys like Kahn and Kissinger spent the 50's and 60's working out deterrence and escalation strategies. Now we get to test! The exchange of papers in the literature will be stimulating!

The assumption so far is that a nuclear war would immediately or inevitably lead to attacks against cities. This of course ignores lots of other possiblities:

1. A demonstration explosion
2. A counter-force attack aimed at eliminating the other side's ability to respond to a nuclear attack
3. A decapitating attack aimed at the leadership (military or political)
4. Attacks on cities

The last optioni has its own escalation strategies; it wouldn't necessarily be a spasmodic and all-out attack. You can think of Pakistan, on the losing end of the conventional war, nuking an Indian city as a demonstration and warning, and India responding by nuking a similar sized city as a counter-demonstration, after which things settle down. Or an increasing tit-for-tat exchange. Or maybe all the theoretical work is bunk, and things really will deteriorate to a city-busting strategy right off the bat.

The US might actually become involved in some way to prevent any excess nukes from falling into Islamacist hands. Last winter during the Afghanistan campaign here were rumors the Marines were ready to seize the Pakistani nuclear stockpile if the Pakistani government collapsed.

As Dean suggested in an earlier post, it is not a given that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan would lack a winner. Besides the "succesfull first-strike" scenario he described, another possibility is that the weapons could be used tactically in a manner that would produce something that might be called "victory".

For example, suppose a conventional war between India and Pakistan begins to tilt against Pakistan. The Pakistanis then nuke Indian troops in Kashmir with 10+ weapons. The Indians either can't continue operations given the damage they've suffered or fear further escalation, so they retreat or cease offensive operations (probably after conducting some equivalent strikes against Pakistani troops).

End result: casualties are bad, but not as bad as a war in which cities are targeted. Also, since the primary targets of the bombs were enemy troops, there would be a tendency to see these attacks as being more... well, "correct" than city-busting.

By the way, a lot of villages and small towns would no longer exist in Kashmir. This would _not_ be an event free of major civilian casualties. However, in this scenario, the Pakistanis have gotten what they wanted -- the Indians off their backs. That's enough of a win that it would effect strategic thinking all over the world in favor of using nuclear weapons.

In many ways, a "win" with nuclear weapons used in a tactical role would be far, far worse than a city-busting bloodbath since it would have the effect of legitimizing their use.

To follow up on Patrick Phillips' (and Blofeld's) point: In such a scenario, it would suggest that, in fact, it is possible to fight a nuclear war.

The presumption of many disarmament and peace groups during the Cold War was that ANY use of nuclear weapons would lead to escalation, which would in turn lead to city-busting, etc. This, despite at least some theoretical arguments that, in fact, this was not necessarily the case (Kahn's On Escalation being the most notable).

IF an Indo-Pakistani war saw nuclear use but NOT city-busting, then it would make limited nuclear use far more viable, which might also mean, in turn, more likely.

That being said, I think the safest guess about Chinese reactions to an Indo-Pakistani nuclear exchange is that they would keep their own counsel. China has consistently refused to allow its nuclear arsenal to be linked to Pakistan's security; similarly, despite a long-standing military relationship, China has never made any kind of political linkage between Islamabad and Beijing, i.e., there is no formal mutual defense treaty between the two.

(Note that in the 1962 Sino-Indian War, Pakistan played no part. Similarly, China has not played a part in any of the three Indo-Pakistani Wars, nor in the Kargil business.)

Certainly, this does not rule out the possibility of Chinese intervention, but it does make an automatic entry or involvement that much less likely.

Some of the above posters have opined that watching the results of nuclear war on CNN would cause hordes to storm their capitals in an attempt to make their governments unilaterally disarm. I do not know - but I do know this - unilateral disarmament at a time of external threat, for whatever reason, is defeatism pure and simple.

In an increasingly dangerous and restive world, defeatism is a philosophy that will lead to defeat. Is there anyone trying to put paid to the American way these days? Want to save it?

After a nuclear exchange involving (big surprise here) an Islamic nation in consequence of Islamic fundamentalist expansionism, defeatist unilateral disarmament would be particularly dangerous. What better way to encourage your blooded and fanatical enemies than by laying down your arms?

There is nothing new about "city busting". It has been going on for millenia. From Ghengis Kahn and before, through the Roman destruction of Carthage and on up into modern times, cities have been savagely attacked and their populations extinguished in brief orgies of slaughter. The side doing the slaughtering is always the side that ends up ruling. Who, for example, dictated the terms of the peace after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Civilized societies have often been knocked off by savage barbarians on the warpath because the civilized societies cannot bear to contemplate that they have to abandon their ordered and safe ways of life and become more barbaric themselves in order to survive. A willingness to become more barbaric in order to defend your way of life is precisely what is required. Laying down your weapons when everyone else is taking them up is the best route if you want to ensure that the values treasured by your society are replaced by those of your worst enemies.

Tom Cohoe

>> You get atomic war on CNN and you'll have people all over the world storming their capitals to dismantle these weapons.

Really?

You might have lots of people storming capitals in countries that don't have nukes, but what is that likely to accomplish? Remember, they've stormed before.

Wrt the capitals of countries that have nukes, I think that it's safe to say that there won't be any "storming" in China or Russia. I doubt that we'd see any in Israel. There'd be some in the US, but I don't see it making a difference. I'd guess that France is in the same category.

I suspect that there'd be effective "storming" in the UK, but that's a close one.

Since we assume that the nuke war is between India and Pakistan, I don't think that we'll see storming there.

Who is left?

Even a city-trading nuclear strategy in a India-Pakistan war will probably lower the threshold for future nuclear use. Between the two countries, there are probably somehwere between 75 and 100 nukes of roughly Hiroshima level (20 kilotons), with India holding roughly twice as many as Pakistan.

Assuming the worst-case escalation scenarios, this will lead to probably 30 or so Pakistan cities and 15-20 Indian cities being bombed. Civilian casualties on both sides would probably be equivalent, since India has a far higher population density, probably several million on each side (death toll at Hiroshima was ~40,000 immediate casualties and ~140,000 casualties by December 1945; 20 similar sized devices gives us a death toll of 2.8 million; however, this figure can probably be reduced due to better understanding and medical treatment of radiation burns).

IIRC, this is less (or roughly equivalent) to the civilian casualties incured in Germany due to allied bombing during WWII. Include all civilian casualties (including the Holocaust), and the number falls short by an order of magnitude. And, when compared to the total population of India (1 Billion as of the 2001 census), this is a drop in the bucket.

Also, remember - much is made of the Hiroshima bombing; however, during March 1945, the US firebombed Tokyo, resulting in 100,000 direct casualties of the attack (roughly 2.5 times the immediate casualties of the Hiroshima bomb).

So, while the US and Russia, with our 100 megaton MIRV warhead, might potentially consider MAD as an effective deterent, this simply isn't the case in Pakistan, or India. For a regional conflict, the casualties will be attrocious - but India WILL survive the bombing. So will Pakistan. The encounter then boils down to a conventional war heavily favoring India.

So, even in a worst case scenario nuclear conflict, India comes out the "victor."

Will this horrify us (as in, the West)? Yes, of course it will. Will it convince the world (and, more importantly, the third world) that nuclear war is an unviable option? Probably not. Will it, therefore, lower the threshold for similar future encounters? Try as I might, I cannot come up with a reason to disagree with the professor.

For as long as there has been an India and a Pakistan (fifty years!) they have been at each other's throats. Along the way they have figured out how to be at permanent war without actually destroying each other. So, no nuclear war here folks, nothing to see, move along.

Irrational actors, a dozen nuclear missiles in the air, and we in the West are powerless to stop it...

Too bad America doesn't have Reagan's SDI, or even BushII's less ambitious missile defense scheme. We might stand a chance of intervening and cooling off such an incident.

The reason we don't have Reagan's SDI is that it is technologically unfeasible. Billions of dollars worth of new research can be defeated by such low-tech means as adding chaff to a warhead, and giving it side-thrusters.

The money spent on such research is a technological blunder equivalent to Sony's copy-protection scheme.

Notwithstanding India and Pakistan, we have to look at some near certain probabilities: 1.Recall Teller's remark "It's almost impossible to make a bomb that doesn't work. It's only difficult to get the fuel." The fissile metals are becoming more abundant as reactors proliferate and bureaucracies fail. 2. Lots of countries and many groups will have them. 3. Crazy and angry people are certain to eventually get control of some of these entities. 4. Sooner or later they will be used. 5. Once they are used LTP (long term potentiation) of our world brain will occur and it will be easier to use them in the future. 6. They will be used on us. 7. 'Piling on' by nuclear states--with advanced weapons and missiles--will be much easier. 8. We can deter a state much easier than a terroist group, as we may lack good targets for the latter. 9. This makes our asymmetrical foe almost as strong, or as strong, as us.10. We must realize that the age of nuclear terror is imminent and begin thinking in this way. 11. We could lose such a war because free societies have so many choke points in their networks that are accessible, e.g. water, banking, food, communication.

We will have to use our nukes if we are nuked by terrorists. I suggest that we let the Arab world know that America will retaliate immediately by vaporizing Mecca, I don't think we have an option.

Jason Bates: "The reason we don't have Reagan's SDI is that it is technologically unfeasible. Billions of dollars worth of new research can be defeated by such low-tech means as adding chaff to a warhead, and giving it side-thrusters."

Fine, then I wish we had W's more modest missile defense system. I wish we had something.

My point is that we're at the brink of a holocaust and we have ONE option to defuse a situation like this: diplomacy. Wouldn't it be nice if we also had other options?

"The reason we don't have Reagan's SDI is that it is technologically unfeasible. Billions of dollars worth of new research can be defeated by such low-tech means as adding chaff to a warhead, and giving it side-thrusters.
The money spent on such research is a technological blunder equivalent to Sony's copy-protection scheme."

Warheads have been fitted with "penetration aids" like decoys, chaff, and jammers since at least the 1980's. (Even if the DoD euphemisim makes them sound like K-Y Jelly... Von Braun's Atomic Lube?) As it is, we can hit manuvering targets, and we can hit very fast targets. Believe me, we'll soon be able to hit very fast manuvering targets.

Starting with Mr. Palmer's 11 points, a nuclear exchange now between two countries with weak ties to the United States, while obviously being very bad for India and Pakistan, could remotely possibly be beneficial to the United States. The concept is given that "4. Sooner or later they [nukes] will be used" and that technology will increase the power and availability of weapons of mass destruction as time marches forward, it might well be better that we collectively conclude "10. We must realize that the age of nuclear terror is imminent and begin thinking this way" sooner rather than later. A nuclear war would probably help us and much of the rest of the world reach that conclusion. In addition, it would be hard to imagine a nuclear war with less direct impact on the United States than one now between India and Pakistan. So if a nuclear war is going to happen before we are willing or able to do anything about all weapons of mass destruction, it might as well be this one.

Once we realize that the age of nuclear terror is imminent and we see the horrors of nuclear war in graphic detail brought live to our living room by CNN, we might be willing to take much higher risks and bear much higher costs than what we're currently willing to bear to prevent nuclear terrorism and future nuclear wars. What could we do? Well, I'm not sure (not being a pundit), but perhaps we could do something like the following:

The five permanent members of the UN security council (i.e., US, Russia, China, Britain, France) could get together and unilaterily decide to take away all weapons of mass destruction from every other country. Perhaps they could guarentee all current borders as well. Perhaps they could also set up joint control of all of their own weapons of mass destruction. Certainly they should demand that they all account for every last kilogram of weapons grade material.

Clearly, no other country could stand up to the big five. They could make examples of a couple of uncooperative countries (e.g., Iraq and North Korea for diversity) and then there probably wouldn't be a whole lot of resistance elsewhere from actual countries (as opposed to terrorist organizations).

The costs would include casualties incurred when having to use force to remove the weapons from uncooperative countries and the cost to maintain enormous weapons inspection and intelligence services.

An approach like this reduces (but certainly does not eliminate) the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons. It would also significantly reduce the likelihood and extent of future nuclear wars. There's probably a better approach, but they probably all involve substantial risk and cost.

Both left wingers and right wingers will be highly motivated by a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India. The left will be "storming their capitals" with the hope of dismantling their own countries' weapons, the right will want to attack Iraq right away. When both the left and the right are highly motivated, new and interesting solutions are sometimes found.

One of the things I’ve been reading in all the news reports is how both sides feel they have no alternative to a massive offensive nuclear force because they can’t strike precisely enough to destroy their opponent’s nukes. In fact, there’s only one nation on the planet that does, and that’s the good old USA.

Now, a nuclear war on the sub-continent, as everyone is aware, is real bad news, regardless of how limited the scenario is. At the very least, our war on the remnant Taliban will be lost as Pakistan looses any cohesion it may have. From a humanitarian point of view, it’s far more drastic.

I disagree with Jason Bates’s casualty estimates above for one simple reason: Population density. 1945 Hiroshima had a population of well under a half million people. Karachi and Delhi, both within striking distance of the others missiles, are sitting at around 11 million each. The Indus River valley has one of the world’s highest population densities. Now, I won’t argue that the initial blast will have a similar casualty rate as the bombs dropped on Japan, but the radiation effects will be much worse, even airbursted. I don’t think anyone can accurately estimate the death toll. The first year will see massive die-offs, the next five years will be dead baby time, and after that the Indus valley settles into the next 50 years as cancer capital of the world.

Now, according to Uncle Joe, a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic, but I’d have to say that 50-100 million deaths is just fucked-up. I don’t think, however, that these grim facts are going to stop either side from launching, so I’m left grasping at straws for a sane ending to the confrontation, and I can only see one. One side has to lose before anything gets launched.

Which brings me back to my initial paragraph on precision strike capability. Do we have the intelligence and attack capability to wipe out one side’s (or both’s) arsenal. I know it sounds far fetched, but could we maybe make some secret deal with the Indians (I assume they would have intelligence on where the weapons are) to take out Pakistan’s weapons before they can be launched? Pakistan’s defeat would certainly make our war on terror more difficult, but not as much as the chaos that would result from even a limited exchange. I don’t think the administration would do it, and it’s doubtful that they could even if they wanted to. But the stakes are pretty freaking high.

Ignoring the direct deaths, I can’t see how a nuclear war, no matter how small this one ends up, won’t ratchet up the level of proliferation even further. Europeans may storm their capitals to dismantle their nukes, but every third world nation will want their own deterrent force, and pronto.

Captain Mojo : I thought of the population density differences, and considered putting it in my post, but honestly, I don't think it will make a considerable difference. The kill range of a Hiroshima level weapon (even judging by fatal but long-term radiation) is still only about a 3 mile radius. Karachi and Dehli might have much more population, but both cities are also far larger (in terms of geographical area) than Hiroshima. And, even in Hiroshima, the bomb only killed a quarter of the population (god, saying that sounds bad ... oh well).

So, yes, direct casualties will be higher, and more will be exposed to radiation. However, as I said, improved medical knowledge will help counter this (remember, in 1945, we didn't even know what radiation burns were).

Cybrludite : Maybe so. I haven't follow that particular technology as closely as I should have. The point is, however, that for every thousand dollars we spend on a strategic defense initiative (or even a theater defense initiative, as Bush proposed), it costs other countries perhaps 1 dollar to defeat it. It is far far far easier to defeat SDI than to build it - so much so that trying to build it is a waste of time.

Jeez, catching up on this discussion is depressing. I'm beginning to wonder if a Jerry-Pournelle-like Codominium structure isn't the only way to keep the carnage down. The trouble with imperialism is that it's a losing proposition for the imperialists. At least, the kind of military imperialism that something like this would take is.