Gives a whole new meaning to “Threads”

Human stories from a world in conflict. No Images? [Click here]( March 1, 2019 Editor’s note: We are trying some new features this week in our Global Security newsletter and would like to know what you think. Please [take our survey](. Introducing Critical State (Beta), a partnership between The World and Inkstick Media. If you read just one thing ... ...make it this: When nuclear powers square off, things get philosophical fast. Perceptions can be as important as actions when the threat of total annihilation hangs over your head. Growing tensions between India and Pakistan this week show what that contest for meaning looks like in the 21st century. And the answer is: [tweets](, mostly. India’s airstrike in Pakistan, in retaliation for a suicide attack in Kashmir, was met with tweets from Pakistani military leaders claiming to show that the strike did no real damage. Later, after an Indian pilot was shot down over Pakistan, Pakistani security forces [tweeted]( a video of him being served tea in captivity. Media in each country has also been [drafted]( into the narrative fight, insisting that their country has the upper hand. If India and Pakistan make it out of the current crisis without a nuclear exchange, scholars will likely study these new social media narrative strategies as a novel form of nuclear de-escalation. Until then, we all just have to [grit our teeth]( and watch as this nuclear contest for meaning takes place in real time. ## ... if you read more than one thing Keystone Kops, but for hire Five Americans, along with three Serbians and a Haitian man, were [arrested]( in Port-au-Prince last Sunday for driving around in vehicles that lacked license plates but held automatic weapons, pistols, drones, and basically, a set of nametags reading “Hello, my name is: A Mercenary.” The Americans and Serbians were shortly bailed out by the US embassy and returned to Miami, but their reason for being in Haiti remains a mystery. The men claim they were on private security detail for a businessman, but their vehicles have been [connected]( to Haitian President Jovenel Moïse. - This is just the latest in a [string]( of [stories]( about American “security” abroad getting caught doing things that range from the questionable to the outright criminal. The security team is almost all veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom have aged out of active service. It seems that 18 years of war has created a buyer’s market for American violence specialists. - These particular men, however, are no great advertisement for American operational ingenuity. They got discovered because police stopped them for driving without license plates, and when cops finished digging through the piles of ammunition the men were carrying, what did they find? Some license plates that the guys had forgotten to put on their cars. ## Felt cut out, might delete later Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who played a crucial role in negotiating Iran’s nuclear deal, [caused a stir]( this week when he submitted his resignation on Instagram. Zarif was apparently angered by not being invited into high-level meetings between Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Rouhani rejected Zarif’s resignation, and he has since returned to work, but the post was a rare instance of the Iranian government’s internal political divisions expressing themselves in the international sphere. - That Zarif chose Instagram to make his case is ironic because the service is [slated]( to be banned in Iran soon. Instagram is hugely popular in Iran, and the resignation [post]( demonstrates Zarif’s mastery of the form — easy-to-read yellow text over eerie, dark art that would not be out of place on a Led Zeppelin album cover. The text itself is melodramatic enough to be easily adapted for your next breakup post: “I apologize for not continuing to serve and [for] each and every shortcoming during my sincere years of service.” - As with so many Instagram posts, Zarif’s resignation was [likely]( a plea for popularity. He is a well-liked figure in Iran, and his post brought his grievances to the court of public opinion, where he was likely to win — 170,000 likes and a rejected resignation later, it seems like he wasn’t wrong. ## Deep Dive The proliferation of conflict hotspots around the world in the past few years has drawn some attention away from a fundamental fact of international security: the most contentious, volatile relationship between nuclear powers is India and Pakistan. Last week’s suicide attack in Kashmir by a Pakistani terrorist group and the subsequent airstrikes by India into Pakistan has refocused on South Asian security issues in a big way. For some researchers, however, tensions between India and Pakistan have been a career-long preoccupation. This month on Deep Dive, we’ll delve into recent studies to understand the state of the art in South Asian security studies. The current issue of "International Security" contains a [terrifyingly relevant article]( from SUNY-Albany political scientist Christopher Clary and MIT political scientist Vipin Narang about the recent evolution of India’s nuclear strategy for countering Pakistan. Historically, India’s nuclear approach has been fairly clear cut: a strong, credible pledge to never use nuclear weapons first in a conflict, but a commitment to launch on enemy cities in response to a nuclear attack. This approach is known as “countervalue” — if you nuke me, I’ll destroy your most valuable stuff (i.e., industrial centers and millions of human beings). In a vacuum, a countervalue strategy is stable, because if both sides know that attacking the other with nuclear weapons will bring an unimaginably costly response, then neither side should want to attack. South Asia is many things, but it is not a vacuum. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal includes a number of smaller, “tactical” nuclear weapons, which aren’t very useful for countervalue attacks, but might come in handy if Pakistan wanted to wipe out an invading Indian armored division. To Pakistan, a tactical capability is a large part of the point of having nukes in the first place. It can never hope to compete with the size or industrial capacity of India’s conventional force, so it needs tactical nuclear weapons to even the odds. As Cleary and Narang write, though, the development of Pakistani tactical nukes prompted “strategic paralysis” in India. Is it really credible to think that, if Pakistan detonates a tactical weapon that kills, say, 10,000 soldiers, India will respond by launching on Islamabad, killing a million civilians? Not credible enough, Cleary and Narang argue. Yet it also doesn’t make sense for India to respond in kind because that would invite escalation from Pakistan, which still has the capability to do countervalue strikes of its own. Cleary and Narang trace the history of India’s move since 2003 toward a more attractive option — “counterforce." In a counterforce approach, the targets aren’t cities or tank columns but un-launched nuclear weapons. The goal is to nuke your enemies’ nukes before they can nuke you. In principle, this sounds — well, not great, but certainly an improvement on millions of civilian deaths. In reality, however, Cleary and Narang point out that a credible counterforce capability creates some perverse incentives. If Pakistan believes that India could wipe out its second strike capability, then it's in a position the great nuclear theorist Judd Apatow [described]( as “use it or lose it.” Rather than launch one weapon at an oncoming Indian division, it would have an incentive to launch all its weapons, before those weapons are destroyed in a counterforce strike. You may, like the school counselor in “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” wonder if the “use it or lose it” scenario is a serious question to consider, given that even in the current crisis we’re still a few steps on the escalation ladder down from Pakistan considering a nuclear launch. Cleary and Narang contend that’s because it calls into question one of the fundamental principles we started with: that India will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict. If India is producing a credible counterforce capability (and Cleary and Narang make a strong case that it is), then Indian leaders have to make a choice: be hit by all of Pakistan’s arsenal or order a preemptive counterforce strike, and be hit by none. Odds are, they’ll choose none. You can see how this thinking can spiral. If Pakistani leaders know that India has the incentive to break its no-first-use pledge and strike Pakistan’s nuclear sites preemptively, then Pakistan, if it wants to launch, has an incentive to do so earlier than India would predict. In peacetime, counterforce approaches can lead to a mad dash arms race to make enough warheads and delivery systems to survive a counterforce strike. In a crisis, like the one we’re in now, they are simply destabilizing. Show me the receipts How Hollywood skews our understanding of AI Erin Connolly [explained]( how Hollywood’s imagination has shaped — and constrained — the Pentagon’s pursuit of artificial intelligence technology. The recently-released Defense Department AI Strategy summary promises “guiding principles for AI ethics and safety in defense” in an effort to dampen fears over the rise of Skynet. At the same time, Siri and Alexa, “friendly” AIs that call to mind KITT or Star Trek’s Data, are finding their way into the Pentagon’s research and development plans. Hollywood, it seems, plays as much of a role as Congress in determining what forms of AI are acceptable for military use. Learn more >]( A Trump travel guide: Hanoi As President Donald Trump continued his contentious bromance with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi this week, Jamie Withorne [offered]( the president a travel guide to the Vietnamese capital. Her recommendations included the Thang Long Water Puppet Theater, for a reminder to avoid being manipulated in negotiations, and Obama’s Restaurant for as good an approximation as Hanoi has to offer of the president’s preferred fast food options. [Learn more >]( [A Pershing II battlefield support missile is fired through the middle of Henri Matisse's "Dance (I)."] North Korea could be the big winner from a formal peace agreement with the South Carol Hills [interviewed]( Tufts University Korean studies professor Sung-Yoon Lee about prospects for a formal end to the Korean War during the Hanoi summit. Lee argued that a peace deal would only benefit North Korea, “because under the rubric of peace and reconciliation, North Korea would be able to compel the United States to downgrade its support for South Korea.” Lee also took the time to scold South Korean millennials, calling them “apathetic” about their country’s long-running confrontation with the North. [Learn more >]( The death of a black man in Brazil parallels Eric Garner, sparking BLM protests Rupa Shenoy [reported]( on the fallout from the killing of Pedro Henrique Gonzaga, a black man who died of a heart attack after being smothered by a security guard in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Cellphone video of the security guard atop Gonzaga, which bears a striking resemblance to videos of police violence that sparked the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the US, drove thousands of Brazilians to the streets in protest. [Learn more >]( Why US-backed aid to Venezuela harkens back to a dark history of covert operations Kelsey Gilman placed this week’s failed US-backed attempt to bring food aid to Venezuela in the [context]( of America’s fraught recent history in Latin America, in which aid has served as a stalking horse for future military intervention. Looking back at events during the 1980s in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere, Gilman argues, it makes sense that Venezuelans today would look at this latest aid shipment and wonder if it is more an ill omen than a welcome gift. [Learn more >]( Well played [This]( is a first-ballot entrant into the Redaction Hall of Fame. ## Some 90,000 bottles of vodka were [seized]( in Rotterdam this week when it came to light they were being sent to the world’s only nuclear-armed millennial, Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un. No other seizures were reported, so presumably, he now has 90,000 Red Bulls and nothing to mix them with. ## At the Oscars, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga created a moment of such exquisite sexual tension that a friend of Critical State reported covering their dog’s eyes during the telecast to protect the poor pup’s innocence. What became of that moment when national security twitter got ahold of it? [Budgeting memes, of course](. Thanks for reading. 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