4 Plans For Syria

The administration says the strategy remains to end the war through diplomatic means, but insists it is keeping military options on the table.

Here are four possible options the administration could be weighing.

No-fly zone 
The U.S. military, along with other partners, could impose a no-fly zone over Syria, or a large portion of the country. That would mean no aircraft would be able to fly in the area without permission, or risk being shot down. 

Enforcing a no-fly zone or safe zone would require a number of aircraft to monitor and patrol the skies, take out threats or violators, conduct refueling and search and rescue missions. 
A no-fly zone could also mean preemptively taking out regime systems that could pose potential threats, such as surface-to-air missile systems. 

“You could do it with four or you might need 40 [aircraft],” said Ret. Air Force Lt. Gen. Ralph Jodice, who served as the air component commander for the 2011 NATO operation over Libya. “It depends on the size, it depends on what the potential threat is."

Critics of establishing a no-fly zone say it is too resource intensive, and that it would take away from the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. 

They also say it could risk bringing the U.S. into war with Russia or Syria, if they were to violate the no-fly zone and spark a confrontation.

But supporters of the zone argue that Russia would not risk war with the U.S. And they say a no-fly zone is better than the current situation, where the Syrian regime and Russian forces are bombing indiscriminately. 

Safe zones
The U.S. military could also impose a safe zone, which would be a designated area where civilians can take refuge from military threats. That could help alleviate the flood of Syrian refugees flowing into surrounding countries and Europe.

Ret. Army Gen. Jack Keane, board chairman at the Institute for the Study of War and a former Army vice chief of staff, recommends forming two separate safe zones for displaced Syrians near the Turkish and Jordanian borders in Syria.

The zones could be protected on the ground by an international coalition of forces from the region, and possibly some from NATO, as well as from the air by U.S. Patriot missile systems in Jordan and Turkey, he told The Hill. The safe zones in effect would be no-fly zones, he said.

David Petraeus, the former CIA director and former head of U.S. Central Command, on Wednesday said "it's not too late" for such no-fly or safe zones.

"You can do that. That is very, very straightforward. Very, very quickly. And you don't even have to enter their airspace. You could do it with cruise missiles, air-launched, sea-launched and others," he said on PBS’s “Charlie Rose.” 

Critics of the idea argue that a safe zone would require a lot of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets to detect violations, and ground forces to protect the zone. 

But Petraeus said the U.S. now has local forces on the ground who could monitor the safe zones.
Michele Flournoy, who is widely expected to be Defense secretary if Hillary Clinton is elected president, also expressed support for the idea of “no-bomb zones” in an interview earlier this year. 

Target Assad’s air force
Another potential option would be grounding the air force of Syrian leader Bashar Assad.

Ret. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said this option would be the easiest, cheapest way to get Syria to stop bombing civilians. 

“In a general sense, the simplest, least expensive and most direct way would be to take out [Syria’s] delivery capacity... and that can be done very, very quickly,” said Deptula, who commanded no-fly-zone operations over Iraq in the late 1990s and directed the air campaign over Afghanistan in 2001. 

He said grounding the air force would take far fewer resources than implementing a no-fly zone, and could be done within 24 hours.  

He said this option, however, could cross over into “acts of war” against Syria -- something the administration has wanted to avoid thus far. 

The U.S. military has already identified a number of Syrian military targets to hit, when it prepared for strikes after the regime used chemical weapons against civilians in the town of Ghouta in 2013. President Obama ultimately called off those strikes. 

New weapons for rebels 
Another option could be providing anti-aircraft systems to the rebels fighting the regime. That could help them take down Russian and regime aircraft, particularly low flying military helicopters dropping barrel bombs. 

Those weapons could include man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS) — shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles, which the U.S. has currently kept from the rebels.

The U.S. could use the same process it’s using now to supply vetted groups of Syrian rebels under a covert program with tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided (TOW) anti-tank guided missiles. 
That program “has had a positive impact,” Keane said. 

The administration has had concerns antiaircraft weapons would fall into terrorists’ hands and be smuggled into the U.S. or used against U.S. air assets. However, supporters of supplying MANPADS say their use could be safeguarded, much like the TOW missile program.  

Keane said the anti-aircraft weapons could be supplied by the U.S. as well as allies. 
“It’s still a worthwhile endeavor to attempt to shift the momentum against the Assad regime in an attempt to force a political solution which is not possible now under the current stalemate," he said. 

“It’s still a worthwhile endeavor to attempt to shift the stalemate that currently exists,” he said. 
Reuters recently reported that the U.S.’s Gulf allies are considering providing the anti-regime rebels with MANPADS, with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) also expressing support. 

“It’s about time,” he told The Hill on Wednesday. “Because 44 is not going to do it.”

North Korea's Air Force

Marty F over at Aviation Week scored a cool coup about NoKo's Air Force... 

For decades, the Korean People’s Army Air Force (KPAAF) has only been seen through an opaque haze of fuzzy, blurred photos and occasional propaganda images with the party elite posing in front of a fighter jet. So secretive is the state that few outsiders catch a glimpse of its military capability.

That is, until now. North Korea held its first-ever public airshow, the Wonsan Air Festival, on Sept. 24 and 25 at Kalma Airport, a newly rebuilt facility that the North Korean government hopes will be a gateway for tourism to the region.

Limited Resources

North Korea’s premier fighter is the Mikoyan MiG-29 Fulcrum, a type tasked with the air defense of the country. These are the most common aircraft type in pictures released by the North Korean government of exercises. While most reports suggest that the air force took delivery of 40 MiG-29s, other analysts say it could be half that number. 

Korean Classic

Large numbers of Mikoyan MiG-21s remain in service in a number of different versions, indicative perhaps of the variety of countries from which they have been sourced. More telling was perhaps the number of aircraft types not on display, including F-6s, a Chinese-built version of the MiG-19, and also MiG-23s. North Korea is also believed to be one of the last military operators of the MiG-15, used in its two-seat variant as a trainer. 

Korean Close-Air Support

The Sukhoi Su-25, known to NATO as the Frogfoot, is North Korea’s primary close-air support aircraft. Along with the other fighters appearing at the air show, the fast jets were in immaculate condition and had been recently painted in this new gray/blue scheme. The Su-25s show no evidence of local upgrades or modernization. According to Jane’s World Air Forces, around 34 were delivered, but it is unclear how many are operational. 

Sneaky Biplanes

Among the most interesting types on display at Wonsan were several Nanchang/Shijiazhuang Y-5s, a Chinese license-built derivative of the Antonov An-2 biplane. These aircraft are in widespread use with the KPAAF and appear to have undergone some modification, with a large blade antenna on top of the fuselage and what could be a sensor or antenna beneath the rear fuselage. These aircraft could be used for special missions and are widely believed to be designated to carry special-forces troops behind enemy lines in any conflict with South Korea. 

Sanction-Busting Helos

The appearance of the U.S.-made Hughes (now MD Helicopters) MD500D light turbine helicopter in North Korea may come as a surprise to many. But dozens of these machines were illegally exported into the country during the 1980s, and the images from Wonsan are among the first clear photographs of these machines. It is believed that some have been converted into light-attack helicopters equipped with a Russian-made, wire-guided, anti-tank missile. 

Familiar Sight

The Mil Mi-8 Hip transport helicopter is a common sight in countries with a lean to Moscow, and a large fleet remains in operation in North Korea. This camouflaged example is one of several Mi-8s at the airshow.

No word on Noko's allegedly formidable Air Defense SAMs...

Naval Advice

GsGf's Seapower Expert and Former Navy Officer Provides Unsolicited Advice to the Navy About its Upcoming Military and Resource Challenges. 

Great Power Competition is Central.

The degree to which the Navy focuses its narrative on lesser threats is the degree to which its force structure will be optimized to meet them. While Carrier Strike Groups (CSG) are being employed in current operations against ISIS and other associated terror groups, this is a useful by-product of being prepared for great power competition and not the raison d'etre for that power. 

The U.S. Navy Exists to Ensure Freedom of the Seas.

 Freedom of the seas is the irreducible minimum condition for world trade, the vast majority of which moves by sea. The Navy must be capable of ensuring that our economic interests are not damaged by a rising great power’s desire to impose regional dominance over resources and markets. Over a quarter of this nation’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) is directly associated with seaborne trade, and ensuring that such trade continues unmolested is essential to our prosperity. 

Partner with the Marine Corps. 

The American public must be better informed as to the importance of robust American Seapower to the nation’s security and prosperity. Within the Department of the Navy resides the world’s most powerful Navy, the world’s most feared middleweight land force, and the world’s most mobile and lethal air arm. The efficiency and effectiveness of forward deployed naval power in the guise of an integrated war deterring/waging force from the sea should be touted as an asymmetric advantage that enables the U.S.—uniquely among nations—to exploit the simple fact that the world is mostly water, and most of that water is not claimed as territorial seas.

Do Not Negotiate with Yourself.

 The Navy is vastly under-resourced for what this nation currently asks it to do, let alone for the rigors of growing great power dynamics. When the Navy goes forward with its plan, it should couch it in the language of requirements. State what the force is designed to do, where it is designed to do it, against whom is it arrayed, and the likely operational objectives of those potential adversaries. Make the case that the fleet architecture and its dependent force structure is the requirement to achieve these ends, and state the resulting requirement unequivocally. It is the job of the Congress to balance those requirements against other important needs, and Navy planners should get out of the business of shaping their force around an anticipated level of funding. 

 Put the Admirals to Work.

The Navy has hundreds of Admirals—active and reserve—on the payroll. They reached the positions they occupy on the basis of professional competence and leadership, and there are few better to explain the importance of American Seapower to a general public grown detached from its centrality. The CNO should energize the flag community and require his Admirals to schedule and conduct at least one public outreach event every month solely for the purpose of reinforcing the importance of American Seapower. The Navy Chief of Information (CHINFO) should create a twenty-minute presentation suitable for delivery to civic groups across the country, and provide it to Navy flag officers for their own tailoring. 

Additionally, CHINFO should maintain a master schedule of these presentations and work to coordinate local press coverage both before and after the event to amplify its impact. Finally, individual flag officers should be required to submit to CHINFO a brief post-event summary to include insights gained and their general observations on the receptivity of the audience to the message. This effort is about information and education, not advocacy, a distinction that the CNO should ensure his acolytes understand. Past suggestions of the value of such an effort have gotten hung up on the fear that outreach to those the Navy serves could run afoul of Defense Department guidelines on policy advocacy. A clear statement of intent from the CNO, followed by his personal interest in the program would go a long way toward its effectiveness.

The world is changing around the Navy, and the demands placed on it require it to think differently about how it is organized, trained, equipped, and postured. If it is to make progress in meeting those demands, it must also communicate its requirements with clarity, completeness, honesty, and relentlessness. Such is the burden of the world’s most powerful and consequential Navy.

Merkel über Alles?

"Merkel ist Deutschland, Deutschland Merkel ist"

Maybe not as catchy as when Deputy Führer Hess proclaimed it,  yet Deutsch Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to hanging on by her fingernails.

The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” said De Gaulle, or his predecessor Georges Clemenceau, or New York publisher Elbert Hubbard, or one of several other less famous people with a good turn of phrase, according to the scrupulously careful online Quote Investigator. Be that as it may, it’s looking increasingly likely that the (political) graveyard will soon be welcoming an “indispensable” woman, recently sanctified as such on the cover of The Economist, namely German chancellor Angela Merkel.

 Her Christian Democrat party fell to third place in Berlin’s local elections last week and may not stay long in the city’s governing coalition. Two thirds of German voters now want her gone. And the names of successors are being freely canvassed.

By any respectable criterion, she is a klutz on a heroic scale.

Merkel’s energy policy was based upon a combination of nuclear power and “renewables” in order to close down power stations dependent on fossil fuels, and help Germany lead the European Union and the world toward a carbon-free future. She had been a strong defender of nuclear energy against SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s attempts to phase it out. Within a few weeks of the Japanese nuclear disaster at Fukushima, though, she panicked, reversed herself, and closed down Germany’s entire nuclear program. Her Energiewende since then has led to a massive increase in power bills for consumers and industry, the movement abroad of German companies heavily reliant on energy, and, more recently, a phasing out of the phasing out of coal-fired power stations.

 Merkel and the nuclear companies are still haggling over how much the German government will pay for the estimated €23 billion cost of shutting down their plants. Meanwhile, no one believes that Germany and Europe will meet their official goal of reducing carbon emissions 80-95 percent from their 1990 levels by the year 2050.

The refugee crisis is all too plainly a vast mistake, as Merkel herself has admitted. But some of its side-effects have produced other crises almost as severe. Example one: though Merkel welcomed “Syrian refugees” without consulting even her colleagues in the German government, she immediately demanded that other European states within the then-borderless Schengen Zone should accept them as well. That demand was resisted (and still is) by other governments, and there’s been a long-running “existential” (Jean-Claude Juncker’s word, not mine) crisis in the EU ever since.

Example two: Merkel reduced the flow of Middle Eastern migrants into the EU through a deal with Turkish strongman Recep Tayyik Erdogan to control the border. But the price was high: the EU’s silence over Erdogan’s arbitrary arrest of thousands of soldiers, police, lawyers, and journalists, and visa-free entry into the EU for 80 million Turks, which could mean another migrant crisis down the road. There’s no guarantee that Erdogan — who’s skilled at selling the same horse twice — won’t ask for additional concessions from a desperate Merkel and EU, either.

Whether Brexit is a good idea for Britain, Merkel and her EU colleagues all devoutly believe that it’s bad for Europe. But she helped to create the circumstances that made it happen by rejecting all of PM David Cameron’s demands except for the most trivial — and even then the concessions the EU offered were legally reversible. It was a serious setback for her and for her lodestar of European unity. And it came about because at a time when populist parties were rising throughout Europe, including the AFD in Germany, she complacently assumed that the risk of Brexit was not a serious one. She had confidence that Cameron would win but gave him no real help in doing so. He resigned; she was further weakened.

When Merkel won her first election in 2004, she represented a more general shift to the liberal economic right in German politics. Chancellor Schröder — the SPD leader she narrowly defeated — had ushered in some market-friendly economic reforms that many now credit for making the German economy more dynamic. Indeed, Merkel herself praised him for doing so. Since then, however, she has presided over a shift back to the Left. By blocking the demands of the CDU’s traditional coalition partner, the Free Democrats, for tax cuts and a more market-friendly approach, she made them look weak and ineffective.

As a result, they fell below the 5 percent threshold for entry into the Bundestag for the first time since 1945. Though the 2013 election was generally reported as a victory for Merkel and the CDU, in fact it ushered in a small parliamentary majority for the Left.

That had consequences. To retain the coalition and her chancellorship, Merkel had to agree to a series of small socialist reforms required by the SPD — notably, a quite generous minimum wage and a reduction in the pension age. Judged by results, Merkel looks more and more East German with every passing election. (Incidentally, the Free Democrats now favor some restrictions on immigration.)

Merkel’s Euro policy has proved — astounding though it sounds — even more destructive than her immigration policy. By insisting that Germany had to prove its loyalty to Europe by ruling out any reform of the Euro’s structure, she imprisoned Southern European countries in an over-valued exchange rate that inflicted recession, unemployment, and a debt crisis on them indefinitely.

It’s hard to express the damage this has done to millions of human lives, but here’s one measure: Though the average unemployment rate for the Eurozone hovered between 10 and 12 percent from 2010 to 2016 and the Eurozone youth-unemployment rate hovered between 20 and 22 percent over the same period, the youth-unemployment rate in Mediterranean Europe has generally been around the 50 percent mark. (There have been corresponding problems for northern Europe in the subsidies their taxpayers have had to pay to keep Greece, Spain, and Portugal solvent and inside the straitjacket.)

Political instability has accordingly flourished in the South, with successive governments losing elections and extreme Marxist parties coming to or near power. Relations between different European countries — above all, Greece and Germany — have been permanently poisoned. Democracy itself has been sidelined by Brussels as it replaced elected prime ministers with its own favored technocrats. In short, nothing has damaged European unity more than Merkel’s blindly unreasoning insistence on an un-reformed Euro.

  As a result of these and other blunders by the “indispensable” Merkel, Europe is facing a series of disabling crises.

Russia's Aleppo Raid

Bombs Away!

The recent mystery air raid on a bona fide UN aid convoy near Aleppo isn't really a mystery at all...

The Russians are denying that their aircraft were operating above Aleppo during the strike, but they know the U.S. government quickly figured out that they were responsible. After all, every time the Russians or Syrians launch jets, U.S. radar and intelligence assets carefully monitor them, warning U.S. forces of any deliberate Russian or Syrian air strike. The monitoring also provided valuable intelligence on where Russian military attention is focused. Regardless, Putin knows the U.S. employs these capabilities and that we would have been focused on Russia’s heavy air coverage of Aleppo.

And that leads to the key takeaway: Putin just doesn’t care that he’s been caught. On the contrary, his strategy is actually served by his lack of concern.

In destroying the humanitarian convoy, Putin has simply reinforced his longstanding message to the West. In many ways, it is pitch-perfect. An aid convoy is not off-limits, Putin is telling President Obama — which means that we should expect worse to come. In other words, unless the United States accepts keeping Bashar al-Assad in power, Putin will continue to burn Syria. And Assad — totally undeterred by the pathetic weakness of U.S. deterrent power — revels in this longstanding slaughter strategy. Russia might hint that this attack is retaliation for the accidental U.S. bombing of Syrian soldiers, but it wasn’t. Instead, it was pure Putin: deliberate and brutal application of force in the service of a long-term strategy.

Of course, this raises another question: If Putin’s interests are served by this strike, why is Russia denying involvement? The answer is simple: Putin knows that 44 knows, and that’s all that counts. To preserve a pretense of moral credibility, Russia is employing its familiar disinformation strategy to deny responsibility. These denials will cool or distract some of the international public anger against him. But Putin also predicts that two developments will now follow.

 

 First, the U.S. won’t provide evidence of Russian culpability. Second, the U.S. will continue dancing Russia’s diplomatic waltz by redeploying John Kerry into another round of pointless negotiations. 

 

The U.S should defy Putin’s expectations in both cases. We should use the U.N. Security Council to confront the Russians with evidence of their culpability. The U.S. should also suspend all cabinet-level discussions with Russia on Syria’s future. Instead, we should escalate our support to moderate rebel factions. For some groups, that support should include the provision of man-portable surface-to-air missile systems.

The whys behind this latest Russian aggression are not complicated. In the end, it’s just another product of 44’s foreign-policy lethargy. As in the Baltics, Putin continues to hold the reins. And so, Assad’s confidence — and the fuel his regime gives ISIS — grows ever stronger. And U.S. credibility — moral and strategic — grows ever weaker. And the overflowing morgue that is Syria grows ever more desperate.

The Sino - US Conflict of 2017

A recently published study of four ways that the U.S. and China may engage in war seems at first to warn against the high human and economic costs of all four kinds of engagement. The study by RAND Corporation, sponsored by the U.S. Army, does state that it “reinforce[s] the widely held view that a Sino-U.S. war would be so harmful that both states should place a very high priority on avoiding one.” And it does repeatedly warn that various prevailing conditions are pressuring both sides to rush and strike first, fearing that if it delays initiating war, they would lose much of their capacity to strike, a highly destabilizing configuration.


A reading of the study, however, is likely to leave readers with the sense that the U.S. will fare much better than China in whatever form the war takes. This observation, which runs throughout the report, is likely to embolden those in the U.S. who believe that a Sino-U.S. war is inevitable, and hence call for more preparations for such a confrontation, and – in some cases – for the U.S. to strike first. This side effect is deeply regrettable, given that this favorable (at least for Americans) assessment of the results of the war, as we shall see shortly, is based on rather dubious assumptions.

The study compares four kinds of war:

1. A Brief but Severe war would last “a week or so” and would involve selective U.S. strikes on China. In this scenario, military-operational exigencies necessitate a fast-paced, intense conflict. Such a conflict would asymmetrically harm China, because China’s economy would be severely disrupted, with significant aftershocks, and U.S. counterforce capabilities would steadily degrade China’s anti-access, area denial (A2AD) capabilities, while U.S. losses would drop off as China’s A2AD suffered.
2. A Long and Severe war, the authors estimate that the conflict would last “a year or so,” and it would likely involve Japan and other U.S. allies. In this war, the losses suffered by both sides make compromises harder than in the brief war. They add that the mounting military losses would weaken the legitimacy of the Chinese state and China’s economy would be harmed “disproportionately and badly.” The authors hence conclude that “the economic, domestic, and international effects of a long, severe conflict work against China.” 
3. In a Brief and Mild conflict, hostilities might be triggered by a miscalculation or an incident involving a third party, but political leaders would withhold authorization for major attacks on opposing forces. The authors conclude that the conflict could be ended before causing major damage, and that there would be only minor losses on each side. A critical distinction between the “Intense” and “Mild” scenarios is that the former involves U.S. strikes on Chinese soil, whereas the latter does not. 
4. In a Long but Mild conflict, the leaders of each country might agree to contain the fighting, but not to end the conflict. If the losses remained low on each side, the conflict could drag on for a year or so, as each side’s leaders decide that the conflict is “politically sustainable” and don’t want to lose domestic legitimacy by conceding. The authors believe that “even with fighting limited, economic losses would grow, especially for China.” Separatist movements within China might try to exploit the ongoing interstate conflict to advance their aims.

In all four scenarios the report assumes that because China has next to no capabilities to strike the U.S. homeland, and because the war is assumed to be confined to the Western Pacific and to conventional forces, that China will suffer much more from the war than the U.S. The authors add:

“In sum, the economic harm caused by a Sino-U.S. war, unless brief or mild, would be substantially greater to China than to the United States, an asymmetry likely to persist if not grow by 2025.”

The authors explicitly state that they have not included the effects of a possible nuclear war in their analysis [p.29]. They argue that China is unlikely to resort to use of its nuclear arms, even if it will be losing what the RAND authors call a long and severe war, and they describe the possibility of the U.S. initiating a nuclear conflict as “far-fetched” [p.31]. 

The probability of this kind of escalation may indeed be small, but it is certainly not nil, and the disutility is so immense that it merits greater consideration than it is given in this report. One further notes as both sides are developing very high yield conventional explosives and low yield nuclear ones, the line between these two kinds of arms is blurring and the danger that it will crossed is increasing.

Moreover, many who observe that all assumptions and scenarios about how a war will unfold, hold only until the first missile is lobbed.

Nor can one take for granted that the domestic political cost of war will be much higher for China than for the United States. Americans are very war weary, less willing to make sacrifices, and more able to effectively express their opposition to another war in a faraway country than the Chinese people.

The authors’ title for the paper has echoes that may well not have been intended. They argue that one must think more about what kind of war to fight with China, in order to avoid the worst kind. The title though evokes Herman Kahn’s notorious book Thinking about the Unthinkable, which sought to make an all-out nuclear war more acceptable – to Americans. The RAND report’s unintended effect may well make war more likely, given its assumptions that China will be unable to lay a glove on the U.S. homeland , while China would suffer greatly in military, economic, and political terms.

The report does not include even a hint as to what such a war will accomplish, what it will lead to: the U.S. occupying China and “rebuilding it”? 

Introduce a regime change that will end with a government more favorable to the U.S.? 

Given America’s recent nation-building experiences in much smaller states in the Middle East, one cannot but wonder. One may well say, this was not what RAND asked the authors to study. However one cannot assess a war, or compare one kind to another, without discussing what kind of China we will have to contend with once we win (assuming we do). 

If the expected end state is akin to what we now have in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, one may well conclude that we should avoid any and all the wars RAND has laid out.

The Coming Indo - Pak War

Could India and Pakistan really go to war?

 It almost seems an absurd question to ask. After all, both countries have long been nuclear powers -- a deterrent that encompasses the lives of a combined 1.4 billion people. Both nations have also seen some years of relative peace along their border, a break from the wars that pockmarked the 20th Century.

And yet, hours after 18 were killed in an attack on an army base in Indian-administered Kashmir, the director-general of military operations for the Indian Army announced that the terrorists carried gear which had "Pakistani markings."

Arnab Goswami, the host of the country's most-watched English news hour, expressed rage at Pakistan: "We need to cripple them, we need to bring them down on their knees."

One of his guests, a retired army general, went a step further: "We must be seen as inflicting punishment on Pakistan by non-terrorist means ... the nation needs a catharsis!"

But what about the ready nuclear arsenals both countries possessed? Surely that would be a deterrent?

Major General G. D. Bakshi, had a clear answer: "Pakistan is one-fifth the size of India. If we fire even a part of our arsenal, most of it will be on the Pakistani Punjab, from where the Pakistani army comes: Not a crop will grow there for 800 years!"
"Let's stop self-deterring ourselves," he cried.

Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman told CNN that India was "desperately looking for ways to deflect the world's attention from the situation in Indian-administered Kashmir," referring to the protests and unrest there.
And emotions have boiled over on the Pakistani side, too.

Sunday's attack is not the first deadly attack on Indian soil that New Delhi has accused Pakistan of having a hand in.

n January, another Indian military base was attacked in northwestern Punjab, not far from the border with Pakistan. And then there were the Mumbai attacks in 2008 in which 164 people were killed.

While Indian officials continue to link those attacks to the Pakistan government, Islamabad has consistently denied any involvement. In each of these terror attacks, and others like them, there have been calls for a strong Indian response.

The next steps of diplomacy -- or a war of words -- are likely to play out in New York this week on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. New Delhi is expected to call for sanctions on its neighbor, for what it alleges are clear moves to support terrorism.

Islamabad, meanwhile, is expected to highlight unrest in Indian-administered Kashmir, where a two-month-old curfew persists after mass demonstrations and violence.

India's approach will be crucial.