Scenario: World War III
From Future
In 2080, growing tensions between India and Pakistan finally flared into war. While India possessed a higher population and greater resources than their smaller neighbor, the Pakistanis were better prepared and made significant advances during the opening clashes of the war.India though had developed an airforce ages ahead of the pakistani airforce; however, the front quickly stabilized and all hopes for a swift resolution began to wane, forcing both countries to call upon their allies for support. The United Nations once again proved unable to exert any influence of significance, and proved little more than a central location where diplomats could spout rhetoric and argue with each other.
At the end of the first year, no less than twelve different nations were involved in the hostilities in one form or another. Pakistan was at the forefront of a powerfull trade alliance between many of the former Russian states that earned independence after the breakup of the Soviet Union in the late 20th Century. Without exception, these countries - Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Tazikstan, Azerbaijan, and Armenia, with the notable exception of Georgia - began to send troops and equipment into Pakistan to replace losses that nation's industry could not quickly construct. While individually their military power was limited, they proved quite effective when united. In response, India called upon its friends in Bangladesh and Nepal to join the fight, and began to put pressure on the Chinese to intervene.
China had no great desire to get involved in the conflict. Their economy was stretched to its limit with the task of supporting its nation's swollen population of over three billion citizens, many of whom were growing increasingly dissatisfied with their way of life. The vast majority of China's people were, effectively peasants who watched from poverty while the rest of the world lived in ever-increasing health and comfort, particularly in the United States, European Union, and most infuriatingly, India. However, China's economy depended entirely upon trade with those very nations they looked upon with a jealous eye. Without the steady flow of outgoing goods that provided the foreign currency needed to support its internal expense, China would quickly slip to the brink of collapse.
The United Nations urged China not to get involved, and indeed, the government in Beijing knew full well they could not afford it, but in the end several factors convinced them to fight. First and foremost, they could not let India lose, or the interruption of trade would weaken their economy to the point of no return. Secondly, the promise of victory would provide a morale boost to China's population, and allow for further suppression of dissenters among the citizenry - anyone who complained would be labelled a traitor and eliminated. Finally, a quick success in the conflict would give China the opportunity to seize some of the assets of the defeated enemy, as well as drain Pakistan's treasury to pay for any war reparations. In fact, if things went perfectly, China might even annex certain resource-rich areas of territory as spoils of war. The United Nations might complain, but what could they do?
To this end, China began pouring troops across the Pakistani border in early 2082. Pakistan had no chance to stop these advancing armies - if they pulled troops away from the Indian front, that line would shatter and all would be lost. In desperation, and indeed with no other choice available to them, Pakistani aircraft dropped three low-yield nuclear bombs atop the advancing Chinese spearheads, utterly annihilating them.
Reaction from the world was one of immediate outrage and panic. Global stock markets collapsed overnight as the threat of nuclear annihilation loomed. Fearing further strikes on Chinese territory, the government in Beijing ordered the launch of twelve nuclear missiles into Pakistan, but these never reached their targets. Instead, all of them mysteriously exploded at the highest point of their ballistic trajectory. A second strike also failed, as did a counterattack by Pakistan's few existing ballistic missiles.
Although long-range attacks were somehow rendered impotent, cruise missiles and tactical artillery shells were successfully exchanged, leaving the border between Pakistan and China a devastated wasteland. Limited nuke strikes also occured within India itself, on or near the front lines, but both sides resisted the temptation to start destroying each other's cities.
Within the United Nations, the use of nuclear weapons by the warring powers was the object of heated debate. The Security Council produced a resolution condemning further use of such weapons, but this was summarily ignored. In response, the United States, Britain, and Russia unilaterally cut off all trade and financial support to the entire area. China's government collapsed within days, and its people exploded into a long-smouldering revolution. With no central command left to guide China's vast armies, each field commander took the opportunity to proceed as they felt necessary to suppress the revolt. The resulting civil war was incredibly bloody, and several parts of China broke into separate nations that would not be reunited for decades, or, in the case of Taiwan, over a century.
What remained of the Chinese military blamed the UN - and particularly Russia - for the disaster, which, for all intents and purposes, was probably inevitable anyway. The generals commanding China's remaining forces came together in mid-2082 and agreed, after examining intelligence reports gathered from dubious sources, that Russia had set the whole thing up as a prelude to invasion. Thus, in a move that totally surprised nearly everyone, Chinese forces began streaming across the broad Russian border, capturing everything they could and destroying whatever they could not hold.
Once again intercontinental nuclear missiles were launched, but not a single one ever struck any target. It was at this point that the United States revealed a previously unknown array of automated global defense satellites capable of tracking and knocking down any ballistic missile within minutes of launch. This system, known as EarthShield, put the United Nations into an uproar. Every country, with the exception of Britain and Australia, argued bitterly. It was their contention that the use of such a system against active military forces was an act of war. America argued that had they not utilized EarthShield, most of Pakistan, India, and China, if not the whole of Asia, would be a devasted zone of radioactive slag. In response, Russia and China withdrew from the United Nations, effectively causing that organization to cease to exist.
Over the course of the ensuing year, the ongoing war spread throughout Asia. Chinese armies rampaged through eastern Russia, but stalled as they approached Moscow. The winter of that year, heightened by nuclear-driven dust in the upper atmosphere, was one of the worst on record. Millions of Chinese and Russians died on the steppes. Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia all became involved in the fighting to one degree or another. The United States and European Union, suffering economically under the collapse of the world's stock markets, sent in troops to try to halt the fighting, but were fired upon by the very people they were trying to help. In the end, the military might of the two superpowers remained idle, waiting in offshore task forces or within neutral countries for the fighting to die down.
World War III, as it was now known, did not officially end until 2084, although scattered fighting continued between India and Pakistan until the middle of 2085.The Indian defence ,working as a unit with its intelligence proved to be too big a hindrance for invading Pakistani troops,who eventually began retreiving despite orders to continue attacking. Much of the Pakistani region was devastated or entirely destroyed. The world markets gradually stabilized as China's armies retreated and resumed the goal of suppressing the revolution. Most of Pakistan's allies, their resources depleted by punishing Indian air strikes, pulled out of the war one by one. India seemed to be emerging as the clear winner admist all the chaos having suffered least damage on its land.India eventually drove Pakistan back to its own border, but made no effort to advance further, fearing additional nuclear bombardment or, more likely, intervention by the United States, which was by then threatening to begin bombing both sides if the war did not come to an immediate halt.This perhaps a precautionary measure by the United States fearing India's eminent rise as a dominant super power. When all was said and done, very few borders changed, but over a dozen nations were left in ruins.
The world would never be the same.
<< Argument against this scenario.
Firstly, while China is set to become India's largest trade partner by 2014, neither India nor Pakistan are in China's top ten for import or export. India may be wholly reliant on China in the future, but China simply does not need India's trade to prosper, much less survive.
As for population growth, the minimum fertility rate of 2.1 is required for population replacement. China's fertility rate is currently 1.77 and decreasing, while India's fertility rate is reported at 2.76, with a population of over 1.1 billion and no cohesive policy for population regulation. Currently, India's literacy rate dawdles at 73.4% for males and a shocking 47.8% for females, when those of China are 95.1% and 86.5% for males and females respectively. At these current rates and accompanied by the current trend of mass Chinese economic expatriation to Africa, it is more plausible that in 2080, China's population will have returned to its 1950 level of 500 million, while it is India's population that has ballooned to 3 billion, compounding the abject poverty of the majority of the Indian population.
Most importantly, what makes you so certain that China would ever side with India against Pakistan in a war, when China has poured so much money, technology, and diplomatic effort into Pakistan ever since its inception? China actively courts the cooperation of Pakistan and other neighboring Muslim nations so that subversives separatist movements by ethnic Muslims may be brought under control. What political advantages does India offer? The only dissident group that India could have a bearing on are the Tibetan lamas, but India has a history of harboring them and antagonizing the Chinese government rather than furthering Sino-Indian ties. Effectively, China has invested in Pakistan as a strategic regional partner to control India, even going so far as to provide Pakistan with nuclear technology when India proved its nuclear capacity to the world.
Finally, offensive capabilities will always surpass defensive capabilities. A functional missile shield has been called for since the Cold War, and has never been achieved, because any advance in missile technology would render it obsolete. For example, modern Russian and Chinese long range warheads now have such innovations as randomized, changing flight paths, and delivery systems that can separate one missile into several warheads with different trajectories at any given time. Besides, modern strategic missile scenarios do not rely on long range missiles but short range tactical nuclear weapons, especially with such a close target as the India subcontinent. Chinese SAMS have been mass produced since the 1980s in anticipation for the Taiwan strait scenario and have a delivery time of under 4 minutes. Together with the sheer number of China's short range tactical nukes, the speed of delivery and low trajectories of the short range ballistic missiles ensures that they would be impossible to intercept.
Next time, please read a book before you start espousing nonsense.>>
