Re: Can Pak ever catch up to India Militarily?
alternatively, pak could just polish and shine its nukes every other week so that india doesnt go too big brotherly on it, 9% economic growth or not.
once this truth dawns on the cow-belt indians, they would realize that peace with pakistan is the only real option.
Nuclear weapons are proven not to be an effective deterrent, particularly should Pakistan ever become a liberal democracy.
In 1982 Argentinia attacked the United Kingdom without provocation, despite the fact that the UK had enough enough nuclear and thermonuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles to turn every population centre in Argentina into smoking glassland. Sometimes, countries gamble that a nuclear power won't use its weapons because of the consequences.
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At any rate, Pakistan gave up on trying to stay equal with India a long time ago. Pakistan's military policy is about maintaining minimum credible deterrence - keeping the minimum amount of military force in service to convince India that at attack on Pakistan would be so difficult as to be a hollow victory at best, in terms of human and material losses to India.
For over 2 decades pakistan has been resigned to inevitable Indian victory using conventional weapons. The point of Pakistan's military is to make sure that this Indian victory would come only at such a high price that no Indian would want to pay it.