Let me tell you something Asim Aquil, you do not have the balls to use nuclear weapons. Because if you did, it would mean the end of you as a nation-state. You would be invaded and thrown to the dogs. Not even your bosom pals China would be able to stand up for you. You would be sanctioned beyond recognition and neither do you have the strength or the economic-capacity to withstand sanctions on your own. Lest you want to be turned into another medieval shit hole, with an Afghanistan war on your sidelines and nerve-wracking extremism in your polity, it is not an option you want to contemplate now, or in the future; and, for the above reasons, neither is it an option you have contemplated in the past. We know that; you know we know that. And therefore, there is nothing else to be said. Therefore, your credible nuclear deterrent is neither 'credible' nor 'deterrent'. It is a deterrent only when your political centre is at stake, Islamabad. And when your political leaders, also your military leaders, have no other option but to flee or to press the button, for all figurative intents and purposes. The only reason we've refrained from invading you, post-Mumbai, is because of your puppy dog masters, the United States. And their plans for hegemony for this region. That is a primary reason: alongwith growing integration with the West, that an aggressive, even if -retaliatory, war for us has no longer been possible. Don't flatter or delude yourself into thinking, it had anything to do with your nuclear deterrent. Your nuclear deterrent is an ultimate last strike capability, just as it is for every other state other than the dominant global hegemon. And we have no intent, of occupying Islamabad.
Now, let me tell you what other your nuclear rhetoric has got for you: It has made you a pariah state; a seemingly flagitious one, that talks about or escalates a topographical, conventional war into a nuclear one; coupled with your constant oligarchy of dictatorships and the seemingly unending stream of Islamic extremists- and a dysfunctional polity and bureaucracy, it has also made you a legitimate threat to the world, a bogey-man the West can use to jeopardize the West and justify its next war. It has created incentives for you to adopt non-rational and 'temerarious' policies, reckless adventurism, cementing your place only a notch above North Korea which enjoys its bottom of the dung heap position only because of its isolated, communist polity. It has ensured you increasingly tend to focus on the 'nuclear balance', an irrelevant balance except in the ultimate resort, while neglecting your conventional balance, to juxtapose yourself against India. Even worse, it has ensured that even during times of potential crisis, you focus on your nuclear weapons porgram- ignoring to everything else, the costs of everything that this may involve. Your ambiguous thresholds have never served to deter us, the global community and its reprisals have.
