Scary Armageddon estimates

Island Daily Editorial

Thursday 28th February, 2019

 

Gripped by a gnawing fear of being blown up anytime, thanks to the nuke stockpiles at the disposal of belligerent nations, the world must have heaved a sigh of relief when US President Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart Kim Jon-un agreed to have a second round of talks. It is a pleasant sight to see the volatile duo talk peace instead of bellowing rhetoric and threatening to push nuclear buttons on their desks; they have certain traits in common such as the volatility of their tempers and sartorial elegance despite their tonsorial peculiarities and ideological differences.

Alas, the relief that the world felt was short-lived. Hours before Trump and Kim met in Hanoi, Vietnam, to avert a nuclear war, India and Pakistan, two rival nuclear powers, started clashing once again. In retaliation for the killing of 40 of Jawans in a terrorist blast in Kashmir, the Indian Air Force pounded targets inside Pakistan after 48 years, and Pakistan responded in a similar manner. It was a terrible loss for India, but New Delhi should have acted with restraint. (After all, that is what Sri Lanka was asked to do while it was suffering heavy losses at the hands of the LTTE.) Heavy shelling across the Line of Control was reported at the time of writing.

Clashes between India and Pakistan erupted while Trump and Kim were reportedly getting ready to declare an end to the frozen war between their countries, which agreed to a truce in 1953. Kim seems to be the least of Trump’s problems, at present, given the prospect of the Indo-Pakistan clashes escalating into a full-blown war—absit omen! Perhaps, Trump should fly to New Delhi and Islamabad straight from Hanoi to help bring the situation under control.

Mutually assured destruction (MAD) is generally thought to act as a deterrent anent nuclear capable nations in spite of their belligerence and, therefore, border disputes among them may not invariably reach the level of nukes being fired. But the escalation of such clashes has to be prevented at all costs in that the Armageddon estimates are chillingly scary.

Experts fear that more than 20 million people would immediately perish in a nuclear war in this region. Researchers at Rutgers, the University of Colorado-Boulder, and the University of California-Los Angeles have warned that if India and Pakistan happened to explode 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, their impact, within less than 10 days, would cause temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere to get too cold for food production in countries like Canada and Russia. ‘The resulting 10 percent drop in rainfall — especially in Asian locales that rely on monsoons — would exhaust worldwide food supplies, leading to the starvation of up to 100 million or more people.' Experts also warn that aside from the food crisis, a nuclear war in South Asia would destroy between 25 to 70 percent of the Northern Hemisphere’s ozone layer. This is a frightening proposition for the whole of the human race.

The United Nations has to swing into action to prevent conflicts like the current one between India and Pakistan before they develop into wars, without limiting its role to taking punitive action against only smaller member states embroiled in conflicts, championing human rights selectively and peacekeeping in countries which powerful nations plunge into chaos.

Beijing was the first to call upon both India and Pakistan to act with restraint though whether the two rivals will heed its call remains to be seen. China can play a pivotal role in defusing tensions in the region. However, no détente will be possible unless the vexed issue of cross-border terrorism is tackled effectively and the Kashmir problem resolved once and for all. Easier said than done, but the nettle has to be grasped if two traditionally hostile nuclear powers are to be reconciled and peace restored.