VersusAllOdds
Regular Member
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2010
- Messages
- 63
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- 7
You are very wrong when mentioning the aid workers thesis. I doubt that Americans gave a rats ass about them, they only care about them as long as it serves a national interest. Just look at the Korean and Vietnam war. You have losses of Soviet personnel in both (20+ thousand in the Korean war), and nothing happened directly between the US and USSR, because noone wants to destroy the world because of some petty troops (the way they see them). I think that in general, no powerful nation is actually going to do anything serious (take direct military action) because it lost a few hundred troops/aidworkers or whatever to a rival.Who says the USSR didn't strike back! i bet the KGB had more than a peripheral role in the death of GEn. Zia and the american ambassador(remember the C-130 crash)! Anyhoo coming back on topic the one reason the Soviets could not carpet bomb pakistan into submission(i would personally love to see balckjacks dropping bombs on islamabad one day) was the sheer no of westerners in the nation(albeit in the guise of aid workers)! any assault on pakistan would endenger these lives as well giving the americans a legal pretext to checkmate the USSR, hence the restraint!
Civfanatic, of course I understood you didn't mean the entire Pakistan. But even disecting it is hard enough! To be honest, I don't know how would the Soviets get there in the first place (by getting there I mean litterally that - how would they go throught the guerilla infested mountainous Afghanistan healthy enough to attack Pakistan which is stronger?). Also, the US would certainly involve - they've had a history of not allowing even smaller and less serious incursions. This Indo-Soviet invasion would mean the complete annihilation of all American South-Asian interests, and great danger of the red tide sweeping over Iran, and even Middle East... Imagine a Communist Middle East + India! I doubt the world would be the same today!
Just as the Soviets replied with SSBN deployment, so would Americans reply with deployment of their Navy (well, we all know how badass is US Navy).
You might've noticed that I didn't mention the India factor at all. That's because I think India was way more less capable militarily than the Soviet Union, and more importantly because opposition to India's troops would be as fierce as it gets. Not to mention the Saudi + Emirates funding, China involvement...
I can go on like forever. I just don't think invasion of Pakistan was possible by the Indo-Soviet anywhere near possible.