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Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

Doctrine is just a paper. It's not even constitution. It could be changed in a minute if necessary (or even post-factum or some sketchy justifications could be made up).

It surprises me sometimes, how much value people put in some documents, disregarding those who can change or ignore those documents.

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Credibility matters. One of the important aspects of having nuclear weapons is laying out the conditions in which you expect to use them, and a lot of international relations theory, especially in the military sphere, is about trying to analyze how you would expect states to respond to different situations.

I don't think anyone seriously expects a nuclear state threatened with imminent destruction to forgo use of nuclear weapons (even in the presence of a non-first use statement). The question is how close to that condition does a state have to be in before it decides to use nuclear weapons. For the states with explicit non-first use policies, the expectation is that it is very close indeed. By contrast, Pakistan has effectively an explicit first use policy: it will resort to nuclear weapons very early in a war. The US has a particularly mealy-mouthed policy, saying that it will only use nuclear weapons against nuclear states, but heavy vacillation on the threshold of their use in such conflicts. All of the other nuclear states basically state that their nuclear weapons are solely a defensive measure.

Everything is just paper or words. The constitution? Words. Only power is power. Only shackles constrain. Even computer code is just code. But in my experience, documents count for something because of the result of violating the documents. If your experience is that nothing you've said or written holds water, then so be it. We will see, in time, whose approach leads whom to a better life.

The constitution holds power because the judiciary is independent from the executive and congress. This friendly adversarial tension creates belief in the constitution (similar to social belief in currency) which makes it harder to dislodge. That goes out the window in a dictatorship. It becomes more about the self interest of one person, and if the piece of paper is against that then they'll throw it out.

It's just words. If the President marched the army into the court, the judiciary would capitulate. Books won't protect them.

Not in Pakistan. Pakistan has had 40 years of direct marshal laws, 35 years of indirect marshal laws since 1947. Pakistan Army operate a state within the state. Where what constitution says matters less than what an army chief says. They control the judiciary by blackmailing them by their corruption charges or recording them necked, whom they can't control are forced to resign, who do not comply to pressure they storm the courts with the militant wings. They change sentiments and spread fear but using them for a suicide attack.

But this time, things changed. Public get to know what has been happening to their country since last 75 years.

> But in my experience, documents count for something because of the result of violating the documents.

I'll bite - what's the "result" of violating a "no first use of nuclear weapons" statement?

There are two cases. In one case, you got nuked back. In the other, the folks that you nuked aren't in much of a position to do anything, having been nuked and all.

What is the "result" in both cases? (If said result requires someone doing something, who is that said someone and why/how are they going to act against an entity that has used nukes recently?)

The result is that no one else can tolerate your nuclear ability after that. You don't become just an enemy of the guys you nuked, but everyone else as well. And nuclear weapons are far more capable than conventional weapons but you can survive being nuked. It's not the end of the world.

The problem follows after, when India can no longer convince America, Russia, or China that they can be trusted with nuclear weapons.

Economic sanctions would be devastating. India has limited fossil fuels and as of now a not yet fully indigenous defence industry. Being irresponsible nuclear users means all major powers will cut them off because they're a danger to all.

It isn't even clear that other world powers will settle for isolation. They may well require disarmament.

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