ssu wrote:Smitty-48 wrote:Think of it this way; it's like two gunfighters standing face to face, each with a nuclear gun in their holster. Now, they can start kicking one another in the shins, but that doesn't amount to war, that's just shin kicking, the only way one side or the other sends the message that they've had enough of being kicked in the shins, is to reach for their gun, at which point, any further shin kicking ceases to be relevant, right quick.
As I've said two nuclear powers that are engaged in a military clash will simply limit and compartmentalize the fighting and simply act as if they are not fighting. They'll pretend they are fighting proxies.
Pakistan and India are the perfect example. Heck, they usually don't even call it the Pakistani-Indian war of 1999, but the Kargil war. Both sides had nukes then. They didn't escalate to nukes. They did escalate to using combat aircraft and India mobilized it's Navy and was ready to blockade Pakistan.
Yes, there's not going to be a WW2 type prolonged conventional war, but there can be Limited conventional battles, especially between the forces if they can act as if proxies.
Well you hit the nail on the head with the Kargil War, because that's a perfect example of what I'm saying, because just as you say, after a rather brief period of skirmishing basically, it started to escalate to the high seas.
This is the thing, we haven't been there since 1962, but if there is a direct clash, air/land, it can only go so far before it escalates to the strategic level and the strategic level was where India was going in the maritime approaches.
There is no strategic level on land, strategic is all at sea, and as soon as it goes there, it's nuclear, that is to say, how many ships could you sink before the nuclear deterrent is invoked?
The only grey zone I can think of, is mine warfare, using submarines to mine the maritime approaches and choke points, but there again, how many submarines could you sink before the nuclear deterrent is invoked?
There has literally only been one real naval war involving a nuclear power since the end of the Second World War, the Falkland Islands, and Argentina was not a nuclear power, but even then, the British considered invoking their nuclear deterrent once ships started going down.
A nuclear exchange is not the beginning of a nuclear war, a nuclear exchange is the end of a nuclear war, the maneuver phase is in play the moment the fur starts to fly on the high seas.
The Kargil War was a nuclear war, the Indian blockade was in effect for all intents and purposes, Pakistan only had six hours of fuel left by the end, that's the threshold right there, six hours away from torpedo time, the fact that the Indians risked it coming that close, means the unthinkable was not only being thunk, it was happening.
This is what the public doesn't grasp about 1962, a naval blockade is not a prelude to war, a naval blockade is war, they've crossed the threshold into nuclear war already, full on into the maneuver phase, the public invokes rational arbitrage, but rational arbitrage actually failed, they just got lucky.
As a result, the public has invoked rational arbitrage ever since, as if it worked, when it actually didn't, it's a causation correlation fallacy. The public thinks there is a line, and when you get to that line, rational arbitrage comes into effect, but there's no line, it's a curve, like a gravity well, and they've been much, much further down the into well than the public surmises.
Where the public thinks the line is? They blew right by that, they were down in the undertow fighting to climb out, it wasn't a case of not starting a nuclear war, it was a case of stopping one already in progress.
__________ 
