{"id":32613,"date":"2013-05-10T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/top-indian-official-threatens-pakistan-with-nuclear-annihilation\/32613\/"},"modified":"2013-05-10T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-10T04:00:00","slug":"top-indian-official-threatens-pakistan-with-nuclear-annihilation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/top-indian-official-threatens-pakistan-with-nuclear-annihilation\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Indian official threatens Pakistan with nuclear annihilation"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h5>\n      By<br \/>\n      Deepal Jayasekera<br \/>\n      <br \/>10 May 2013<br \/>\n  <\/h5>\n<p>The chairman of India\u2019s National Security Advisory Board, Shayam Saran, has warned Pakistan that if it ever uses tactical, i.e. battlefield, nuclear weapons against Indian forces, it will be the target of an all-out Indian nuclear attack.<\/p>\n<p>In an April 24 lecture titled \u201cIs India\u2019s nuclear deterrent credible?,\u201d Saran declared, \u201c[I]f [India] is attacked with such [tactical nuclear] weapons, it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage on its adversary.\u201d He continues, \u201cFrom the Indian perspective\u2026the label on a nuclear weapon used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A former Foreign Secretary and India\u2019s chief negotiator during the Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear treaty talks, Shayam is an authoritative spokesman on India\u2019s military-strategic and nuclear policy. He would not have made such a bald, significant, and blood-chilling statement without having received the go-ahead from the highest levels of India\u2019s government and military.<\/p>\n<p>In his speech, Saram claimed Pakistan is developing tactical nuclear weapons so as to \u201cdissuade India from contemplating conventional punitive retaliation to sub-conventional but highly destructive and disruptive cross-border terrorist strikes.\u201d Terming this \u201cnuclear blackmail,\u201d Saran countered it by threatening Pakistan with nuclear annihilation should it ever try to halt a conventional Indian military attack with tactical nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Declaring \u201ca limited nuclear war \u2026 a contradiction in terms,\u201d Saram said that any use of nuclear weapons \u201cwould swiftly and inexorably escalate to the strategic level.\u201d To emphasize the point, he then added, \u201cPakistan would be prudent not to assume otherwise as it sometimes appears to do, most recently by developing and perhaps deploying [battle] theatre nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the past, India has proclaimed its adherence to a \u201cno first-strike\u201d nuclear policy. While Saran claimed this remains India\u2019s policy, his statement dramatically lowers the bar for the use of India\u2019s strategic nuclear arsenal and the possibility of all-out nuclear war in South Asia\u2013a war that would result in the deaths of tens if not hundreds of millions of people and potentially have catastrophic impact on life around the world.<\/p>\n<p>Saram\u2019s denunciations of Pakistani nuclear blackmail are entirely self-serving. Since their establishment through the 1947 communal partition  <\/p>\n<p>This article originally appeared on : <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2013\/05\/10\/shay-m10.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Top Indian official threatens Pakistan with nuclear annihilation\">World Socialist Web Site<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 By Deepal Jayasekera 10 May 2013 The chairman of India\u2019s National Security Advisory Board, Shayam Saran, has warned Pakistan that if it ever uses tactical, i.e. battlefield, nuclear weapons against Indian forces, it will be the target of an all-out Indian nuclear attack. In an April 24 lecture titled \u201cIs India\u2019s nuclear deterrent credible?,\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32613","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32613\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}