When Nuclear Powers Fight
Happy Sunday. Hope you're doing well.
I've taken a couple of Sundays off from the newsletter this spring while working on some other writing. Recently, I published two blog posts with my friends at the Open Educational Resources Project (OER Project), a US-based nonprofit co-founded by Bill Gates and historian David Christian. They create standards-aligned, open-source materials for history classrooms—free to use, adapt, and share. It’s one of the Common Core era projects I really rocked with before everyone lost their minds, and the K-12 Culture Wars began in earnest.
The first article explores how the Industrial Revolution shapes modern society. The second, out this week, discusses how we teach the concept of Globalization through a historical lens. If you're a history teacher or just care about how history gets taught, I hope you’ll take a look.
This Week’s Indicator: 29
That’s how many days until I land back in the US. Day one readers know I have complicated feelings about heading home, but I am looking forward to seeing my family, catching a Sounders match, and grabbing a pint at the Red Hot—in roughly that order.
On to this week's topic.
We appear to be (thankfully) in the de-escalation phase of the most intense period of conflict between India and Pakistan since the Kargil War in 1999. This latest round was sparked by an attack on tourists in Kashmir.
One story I came across was astonishing: a tourist, completely unaware of the danger, is midway through a zipline ride. In the background, you can hear gunfire and see people scrambling for cover. The tourist survived, but 27 others were killed that day.
What followed was a tit-for-tat cycle of escalation.
First, the two countries closed their airspace to one another. Then came the reprisals: drone strikes, artillery fire, and—perhaps most notably—an aerial dogfight. Reports say Chinese-made Chengdu J-10 jets flown by Pakistan clashed with Indian-purchased French Dassault Rafale fighters, bringing down two.
Let’s pause on that for a second.
Thanks to Top Gun and decades of mythmaking from the U.S. military-industrial complex, a lot of people assume dogfights are a regular feature of modern warfare. They’re not. They’re extremely rare. So a Chinese jet shooting down a Dassault Rafale—especially at a time when tensions in the Taiwan Strait are rising… that is something.
To be clear, I have no rooting interest in this conflict beyond hoping for peace. Still, for a number of reasons, I’ve tried to follow events closely.
It’s close: Adu Dhabi to Karachi is about the same distance as Seattle is to Bozeman, Montana.
I’ve taught numerous students and worked alongside colleagues from both countries. One co-worker's sister was visiting family in Lahore when the airspace closures went into effect and ended up stranded for a while.
And most importantly, this conflict matters. Both countries are nuclear powers. India detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1974; Pakistan followed in 1999. While a nuclear exchange remains highly unlikely, history tells us that when nuclear-armed states come into direct conflict, the world should pay attention.
There are nine nuclear powers in the world today. In general, they’ve avoided going to war with one another. This ongoing India–Pakistan tension and India’s long-standing friction with China on its eastern front are among the few exceptions.
I listened to a pair of interviews this week that helped me think more deeply about the conflict.
The first was from Angry Planet (see below), co-hosted by Matthew Gault. Gault is the former host of VICE’s technology podcast Cyber, and Angry Planet is his show on geopolitics and the multipolar world we live in.
One moment in that episode stopped me cold.
You’ve probably heard of the Nuclear Football—that briefcase that never leaves the U.S. President’s side. It contains the tools and authentication codes needed to authorize a nuclear launch. Because the US generally faces “transoceanic threats” (think Russia or China), the President would have about 30 minutes to decide whether to retaliate after detecting an incoming ICBM.
But for India and Pakistan, who share a border? That decision window shrinks to two minutes. Two.
In other words: if one side launches, the other has roughly 120 seconds to detect it, verify it’s real, and decide whether to fire back before it’s too late.
The second podcast I listened to was Popular Front, hosted by Jake Hanrahan. He’s another former VICE reporter, though he left the company earlier. His show covers the kinds of conflicts that fall through the cracks: asymmetric wars, local uprisings, and overlooked battlefields most US media never touch.
As I listened to both conversations, I kept thinking about whose voices were present and whose weren’t. Gault had on Sushant Singh an reputable Yale scholar and veteran of the Indian Army. Hanranhan had Uday Bakhshi, who is a Mumbai-based analyst.
Neither can credibly offer the viewpoint from Islamabad.
Some of you might remember (man, there’s a lot of callbacks in this newsletter) that when Hope and I returned from Azerbaijan, I recorded a podcast episode with dissident Azeri journalist, Sevinj Osmanqizi. This was because all the commentary I was hearing in US media about the fight over Nagorno-Karabakh was from an Armenian perspective. That’s not a conspiracy. There’s simply a large, vocal Armenian diaspora in the US, including, yes, the Kardashians, and they’re well represented in media circles.
Similarly, all the commentary I’ve heard on this conflict has come from an Indian perspective. I’m not saying either guest was especially biased but they both approach the conflict from the same perspective.
Here’s where we get to the homework (there’s always homework in this newsletter): If you’ve been following the conflict, I’d love to hear what voices you’re reading and listening to. Share any articles, podcasts, or papers you think might be helpful. And more specifically, if you know or follow a Pakistani journalist or scholar who’d be open to joining me on the podcast, I’d really appreciate a suggestion or introduction.
I want to explore this conflict further.
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Speaking of the podcast, a couple of updates:
On Monday, I’ll release an episode with Melissa Santos of Axios. We discussed the recently concluded Washington State legislative session. I asked her why lawmakers decided to punt on revenue and she had some sharp insights, especially on Governor Ferguson’s first session at the helm.
I’m also working to line up a conversation with a Ukrainian scholar Dianna Kuprych, to talk through Ukraine’s history with Russia, the impact of the ongoing war, and the enormous work of reconstruction and nation-rebuilding that will eventually follow.
I’m excited to share both of these. Keep an eye on the podcast feed.
That’s it for this week. Have a great Sunday, and I’ll see you in seven.
As always, if you have any thoughts or feedback about the newsletter, I welcome it, and I really appreciate it when folks share the newsletter with their friends.