India & Pakistan On The Edge

"Withdraw or we will all die here" - Baldwin IV

There’s a famous (but entirely fictional) scene in Kingdom of Heaven where Baldwin is talking to Saladin, seeking peace on the field at Kerak. This is very much the vibe for what is happening between India and Pakistan.

There was an attack, two dozen tourists were slaughtered. There is often some trouble in Jammu & Kashmir, this time it’s different. A water treaty that has held up since 1960, even during the war in 1971, is perhaps going to be violated.

This video is objectively just terrible but the underlying science is sound. I recall first reading about the effect of a “limited” exchange between the two countries in Scientific American a quarter century ago. If each country only uses a third of their arsenal the effect will match that of an asteroid that breaks up in the atmosphere, creating effects similar to the Tunguska impact of 1908 across a broad area. There won’t be rock dust, it’s the soot from fires that will get us.

A normal United States would be all over both parties. Our president would have a call with China and Russia, the entire world would lean on them until they figured out how to back away from the crisis. The simulations in the original article indicated maybe a billion dead due to the limited global winter.

And today it’s not hard to imagine this getting fumbled …