There has been much speculation since Israel started bombarding the Hamas, questions have been asked as to why India does not follow suite and take it to Pakistan, I have asked my question myself but found it a bit difficult to understand, below is an article I found on Forbes which gives 5 reasons for a War agains Pakistan not being possible from an Indian perspective.
1. India is not a military Goliath in relation to Pakistan in the way Israel is to the Palestinian territories. India does not have the immunity, the confidence and the military free hand that result from an overwhelming military superiority over an opponent. Israel’s foe is a non-sovereign entity that enjoys the most precarious form of self-governance. Pakistan, for all its dysfunction, is a proper country with a proper army, superior by far to the tin-pot Arab forces that Israel has had to combat over time. Pakistan has nukes, to boot. Any assault on Pakistani territory carries with it an apocalyptic risk for India. This is, in fact, Pakistan’s trump card. (This explains, also, why Israel is determined to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran.)
2. Even if India could attack Pakistan without fear of nuclear retaliation, the rationale for “doing a Gaza” is, arguably, not fully present: Israel had been attacked consistently by the very force–Hamas–that was in political control of the territory from which the attacks occurred. By contrast, terrorist attacks on India, while originating in Pakistan, are not authored by the Pakistani government. India can– and does–contend that Pakistan’s government should shut down the terrorist training camps on Pakistani soil. (In this insistence, India has unequivocal support from Washington.) Yet only a consistent and demonstrable pattern of dereliction by Pakistani authorities– which would need to be dereliction verging on complicity with the terrorists–would furnish India with sufficient grounds to hold the Pakistani state culpable.
3. As our columnist, Karlyn Bowman, writes, Israel enjoys impressive support from the American people, in contrast to the Palestinians. No other state–apart, perhaps, from Britain–evokes as much favor in American public opinion as does Israel. This is not merely the result of the much-vaunted “Israel lobby” (to use a label deployed by its detractors), but also because of the very real depth of cultural interpenetration between American and Israeli society. This fraternal feeling buys Israel an enviable immunity in the conduct of its strategic defense. India, by contrast–while considerably more admired and favored in American public opinion than Pakistan–enjoys scarcely a fraction of Israel’s “pull” in Washington when it comes to questions of the use of force beyond its borders.
4. Pakistan is strategically significant to the United States; the Palestinians are not. This gives Washington scant incentive to rein in the Israelis, but a major incentive to rein in any Indian impulse to strike at Pakistan. However justified the Indian anger against Pakistan over the recent invasion of Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists, the last thing that the U.S. wants right now is an attack–no matter how surgical–by India against Pakistan-based terror camps. This would almost certainly result in a wholesale shift of Pakistani troops away from their western, Afghan front toward the eastern boundary with India–and would leave the American Afghan campaign in some considerable disarray, at least in the short term. So Washington has asked for, and received, the gift of Indian patience. And although India recognizes that it is not wholly without options to mobilize quickly for punitive, surgical strikes in a “strategic space,” it would–right now–settle for a trial of the accused terrorist leaders in U.S. courts. (Seven U.S. citizens were killed in Mumbai: Under U.S. law, those responsible–and this should include Pakistani intelligence masterminds–have to be brought to justice.)
5. My last, and meta-, point: Israel has the privilege of an international pariah to ignore international public opinion in its use of force against the Palestinians. A state with which few others have diplomatic relations can turn the tables on those that would anathematize it by saying, Hang diplomacy. India, by contrast, has no such luxury. It is a prisoner of its own global aspirations–and pretensions.
Article Source Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at the Stern Business School at NYU and research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, is opinions editor at Forbes.com, where he writes a weekly column.
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Pakistan would have attacked India in 1998
Pakistan would have launched a full-fledged air attack on India in 1998 if India had tried to stop the Pakistani nuclear test.
Gen Pervez Musharraf was appointed the Army chief because he was a Muhajir and thus would not stage a coup and Aimal Kasi, who attacked the CIA headquarters, was arrested by the CIA inside Pakistan and taken to Washington and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan handled his case.
These and some other interesting facts about the Pakistani politics and the government have been revealed by former foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan in his latest book titled ‘Testing Times as Foreign Minister’.
It reveals in the event of an attack on the test site at Chagai by India, attack by the PAF would have been launched on pre-selected targets in India. Pakistan had information and blueprints of the Indian nuclear projects given gratis after the 1984 attack on the Golden Temple, the book said.
Foreign intelligence agents were successful in placing an electronic sensing device shaped like a boulder with fibre covering close to the perimeter fence of Kahuta nuclear site, reveals the just launched book.
The book, however, said how long the device continued to work was unknown. But a young shepherd, who was grazing his sheep and goats in the area, while passing by this boulder gave it a hard knock with the back of his axe. A chunk of the disguised boulder fell and inside he found wiring.
It was reported and the device was removed. Whoever placed this device must have been very impressed by countermeasures Pakistan was taking for the security of Kahuta as their device was picked up, not knowing it was just a young shepherd boy whose axe did the trick, the book said.It added since Pakistan became a nuclear state, the chances of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan seem to be a very remote possibility but a localised conflict, which is maintained within a certain threshold and does not lead to an open war, cannot be ruled out in future. Tactical nuclear weapons could be used on a formation, which is poised to cut some vital area and has entered Pakistan.
The Americans and some other countries were aware of Pakistan’s determination to be a nuclear state.All efforts by us, saying our programme was for peaceful purposes, were not believed. The Americans would say that the Pakis were lying through their teeth. Foreign agents were very active during the mid-80s to get information on Kahuta and they placed the electronic device.
Yet another episode noted in the book is that India had four MIG-25Rs for high altitude reconnaissance. These aircraft could climb up to 81,000 ft. Pakistan had no fighter interceptor to climb to such height nor any ground-to- air anti-aircraft missiles to shoot such a plane down. These MIG-25Rs had a free run over Pakistan’s vital installations. The PAF had the F-104 Star Fighter which were designed to intercept high-flying Soviet bombers. They could go up to a height of 81,000 ft. These fighters had been phased out some years ago. The PAF knew that the Indian Air Force (IAF) had the MIG-25Rs and as such should have maintained some F-104 Star Fighter to be used as interceptors. The high-cost to maintain them should have been overruled as some could have been cannibalized for parts. In any case, spare parts for the F104 were easily available from some friendly countries.
Pakistan would have launched a full-fledged air attack on India in 1998 if India had tried to stop the Pakistani nuclear test.Gen Pervez Musharraf was appointed the Army chief because he was a Muhajir and thus would not stage a coup and Aimal Kasi, who attacked the CIA headquarters, was arrested by the CIA inside Pakistan and taken to Washington and Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan handled his case.
These and some other interesting facts about the Pakistani politics and the government have been revealed by former foreign minister Gohar Ayub Khan in his latest book titled ‘Testing Times as Foreign Minister’.
It reveals in the event of an attack on the test site at Chagai by India, attack by the PAF would have been launched on pre-selected targets in India. Pakistan had information and blueprints of the Indian nuclear projects given gratis after the 1984 attack on the Golden Temple, the book said.
Foreign intelligence agents were successful in placing an electronic sensing device shaped like a boulder with fibre covering close to the perimeter fence of Kahuta nuclear site, reveals the just launched book.
The book, however, said how long the device continued to work was unknown. But a young shepherd, who was grazing his sheep and goats in the area, while passing by this boulder gave it a hard knock with the back of his axe. A chunk of the disguised boulder fell and inside he found wiring.
It was reported and the device was removed. Whoever placed this device must have been very impressed by countermeasures Pakistan was taking for the security of Kahuta as their device was picked up, not knowing it was just a young shepherd boy whose axe did the trick, the book said.It added since Pakistan became a nuclear state, the chances of a nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan seem to be a very remote possibility but a localised conflict, which is maintained within a certain threshold and does not lead to an open war, cannot be ruled out in future. Tactical nuclear weapons could be used on a formation, which is poised to cut some vital area and has entered Pakistan.
The Americans and some other countries were aware of Pakistan’s determination to be a nuclear state.All efforts by us, saying our programme was for peaceful purposes, were not believed. The Americans would say that the Pakis were lying through their teeth. Foreign agents were very active during the mid-80s to get information on Kahuta and they placed the electronic device.
Yet another episode noted in the book is that India had four MIG-25Rs for high altitude reconnaissance. These aircraft could climb up to 81,000 ft. Pakistan had no fighter interceptor to climb to such height nor any ground-to- air anti-aircraft missiles to shoot such a plane down. These MIG-25Rs had a free run over Pakistan’s vital installations. The PAF had the F-104 Star Fighter which were designed to intercept high-flying Soviet bombers. They could go up to a height of 81,000 ft. These fighters had been phased out some years ago. The PAF knew that the Indian Air Force (IAF) had the MIG-25Rs and as such should have maintained some F-104 Star Fighter to be used as interceptors. The high-cost to maintain them should have been overruled as some could have been cannibalized for parts. In any case, spare parts for the F104 were easily available from some friendly countries.
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