India tests nuke-capable missile able to hit China

[BQZip01]

http://news.yahoo.co...-034308390.html

Well, there goes the neighborhood...

[Stretch]

The "Not if, but When" clock on nukes keeps on ticking...

[Guest]

Ugh.

[kchsload]

Ehh, doesn't change anything.

[kchsload]

Three of the four emerging advanced economies (BRIC) are all sharing the same real estate, competing for resources, and all have nukes. Russia and China aren't saying "Eh, doesn't change anything".

Three of the four emerging advanced economies (BRIC) are all sharing the same real estate, competing for resources, and all have nukes. Russia and China aren't saying "Eh, doesn't change anything".

Sharing the same real estate? China shares a common border with the two countries but that's about it. Russia is a European/North Asian country, India is a South West/Central Asian country while China is a North/South East Asian country. Not geographically the same real estate. Russia isn't competing for resources, they have tons and export tons as its a major part of the Russian GDP.

As this is a platform designed to "counter China," Russia is not worried. India and Russia have a decent relationship that goes back decades, Moscow is comfortable enough with an emerging New Delhi be selling large weapons to and conducting joint research and development with them. It wouldn't surprise me if they had a hand in the rocket launch in some way or another.

New Delhi is doing this to pacify its people and show them they could put up a fight with Beijing if need be (they can't). Both nations have a public role to fill: New Delhi is looking proud and flipping the bird while Beijing is doing it's "we condemn the launch, we're still a bigger bad ass then them" speech, everyone will have a role to play to the masses and then get on with business as normal. If a conflict is to break out between China and India it will be in the Indian Ocean over oil deposits or trade routes; the land disputes are more of an issue for India than China and a have cooled off significantly, neither nation wants to fight over it and haven't done so since 1962; it would distract them from their primary focus of economic development.

Just because they all have nukes doesn't mean they can or will use them, people tend freak out over this as if nukes are the first thing to be used in a crisis. Further, China has a "no fist use policy," and India's are geared toward Pakistan. While this is a pretty new toy to have in the arsenal, it's not going to change much in the grand scheme of things.