RAND Corp: ‘India must Prepare for Conventional Wars with Pakistan, China’

India must prepare itself for future conventional wars with Pakistan and China since nuclear deterrence is not a panacea as demonstrated by the 1999 Kargil War, says a new report by a US think tank.

“On a strategic level, the Kargil War vividly demonstrated that a stable bilateral nuclear deterrence relationship can markedly inhibit such regional conflicts in intensity and scale-if not preclude them altogether,” says the report on the role of the Indian Air Force by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“In the absence of the nuclear stabilising factor, those flash points could erupt into open-ended conventional showdowns for the highest stakes,” says the report by Benjamin S. Lambeth, a senior research associate at the RAND Corporation.

[link to stratrisks.com]