On Wednesday midnight, Indian Armed Forces launched Operation Sindoor, a series of deadly, precision missile strikes on terror infrastructures deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), raising the fears of a full-blown India-Pakistan war, which could escalate into an India-Pakistan nuclear war.
India-Pakistan war: The threat of a full-scale India-Pakistan war which could escalate into a nuclear conflict, has risen exponentially post India’s Operation Sindoor, especially as Pakistani leaders, experts and politicians openly threatening to use the nuclear option against India if the conflict escalates to that point.
However, military experts have called out Pakistan’s nuclear bluff, dismissing Islamabad’s nuclear threats as nothing more than wartime rhetoric because the enemy country does not have the capacity to withstand a nuclear retaliation by India, and also lacks a second-strike capability.
‘Pakistan will cease to exist’
Talking to news agency ANI, Lieutenant General KJS Dhillon (Retd), former commander of the Kashmir-based Chinar Corps, said that Pakistan will be wiped off the map if it decides to launch a nuclear attack on India. “If Pakistan ever uses the nuclear option against India, it will cease to exist as a country. It does not have enough strategic depth to respond or withstand a nuclear response from India,” he said.
Addressing the possibility of the current conflict escalating into an India-Pakistan nuclear war, Dhillon stressed that while India has a no first use (NFU) nuclear policy, but any nuclear attack will be met with a much larger nuclear response which obliterate a small country like Pakistan.
“As far as nuclear policy is concerned, Pakistan has no policy. India has a declared no first use policy and will not use the nuclear option against any non-nuclear country. But in case of a nuclear attack, we will retaliate massively with unacceptable damage,” the Indian Army veteran said.
India can withstand any nuclear attack
The former Chinar Corps commander noted that India, due to its sheer size, can withstand any nuclear attack from Pakistan, but the latter will be obliterated in a retaliatory nuclear response. “If you look at Pakistan, from north-east to south-east, the depth of their east-west region starts from our Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat and ends at their western border with Balochistan. Compared to India, it starts from Gujarat and goes up to Arunachal Pradesh,” Dhillon said.
“Their north-south starts from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and goes up to PoK, Sindh or Gwadar. Whereas, ours starts from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. They (Pakistan) do not have the strategic depth to withstand our attacks. All their major populated 6-7 cities are within this small strip of land. Our cities start from Jaipur, Ahmedabad and go beyond Kolkata and Guwahati. Our geographic depth is huge, and can withstand any nuclear attack,” he noted.
The retired Indian Army officer noted that if India launches a retaliatory nuclear strike, “Pakistan will cease to exist”.
NFU doesn’t mean no pre-emptive strikes
KJS Dhillon also clarified that NFU policy does not essentially mean that India won’t launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike if there are credible inputs that Pakistan is preparing to launch a nuclear strike of its own. “No first use does not mean that we will wait for them to launch a nuclear attack. If our agencies feel that Pakistan is about to launch a nuclear attack, then we will stop them from doing so.
Lt Gen KJS Dhillon’s (Retd) remarks come amidst threats made by top Pakistani leadership, including the country’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif, who have hinted at the possibility of using the nuclear option against India. “If they (India) impose a full-blown war on the region and if such threats arise that lead to a stalemate, then a nuclear war could break out at any time,” Asif was quoted as saying by Pakistani media.
Operation Sindoor
On Wednesday midnight, Indian Armed Forces launched Operation Sindoor, a series of deadly, precision missile strikes on terror infrastructures deep inside Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), raising the fears of a full-blown India-Pakistan war as Islamabad has vowed to issue a strong response to “India’s aggression”.
The missile strikes on terror camps were carried out to avenge last month’s heinous Pahalgam terror attack in which terrorists gunned down 26 civilians, mostly Indian Hindu tourists in Kashmir valley.
In a press briefing in national capital New Delhi Delhi hours after the military strikes, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri, Colonel Sofiya Qureshi and Wing Commander Vyomika Singh revealed the details and objectives of Operation Sindoor. They said that a total of nine terror camps of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and Hizbul Mujahideen, were targeted by Indian forces, four of which are in mainland Pakistan while the remaining in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK).