I know we are all caught up in the aftermath of the Trumpocalypse, and who is to blame for the non-election of the first female president, but I urge you take a moment and step away from that essentially useless and futile debate, because very serious and disturbing news came out of India last week.

On November 10th, India's Defense Minister, Manohar Parrikar, in the middle of a military border conflict with Pakistan, issued the following inflammatory "private remarks" that the head of his party and the Government has yet to disavow. Namely, that India should no longer pledge to not make first use of its nuclear weapons.

At a time when a large section of the Indian media has spoken about hyper-nationalism while another section is guilty of it, when relations between India and Pakistan are already tense, and merely a day before a special meeting to consider the criterion for India's entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Thursday expressed his 'personal opinion' that India should not bind itself a 'no first use policy' on nuclear weapons.

Explaining the need to be unpredictable in warfare strategy, Parrikar had said, "Why should I bind myself? I should say I am a responsible nuclear power and I will not use it irresponsibly. This is my (personal) thinking."

Let that sink in for a moment. India's Defense Minister is floating a trial balloon, and not a very subtle one, that he believes India should abandon the policy of not being the first party in any military conflict to use nukes. It seems to me his comments were aimed directly at Pakistan, India's neighbor with whom it has engaged in numerous wars and other military conflicts practically from the day the two nations were granted independence. Even more frightening is that three days later, India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, openly praised Parrikar as one of the jewels in his cabinet, and did not once mention the controversy Parrikar ignited with his statements on November 10th, which I view as a tacit endorsement of Parrikar's comments on the use of India's nuclear arsenal.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Akbar, the third Mughal emperor had only nine jewels in his court but that he has more and one of them is defence minister Manohar Parrikar. [...]

Commenting on Parrikar's style of explaining things, Modi said Parrikar will explain the concept in just one sentence, for which others take ten sentences.

This is just not my personal speculation, but also that of many other commenters, including the editors of The Deccan Times, whom issued this op-ed two days ago:

[Defense Minister Parrikar], and the defence ministry ... hastily clarified that the [no first strike] doctrine hadn’t changed, and that Mr Parrikar was only expressing his personal view. But doubts persist that the minister may have been deployed by his party, the government or RSS to send up a trial balloon. Quite apart from the fact that in our system a minister can’t express an individual opinion on an important public issue, particularly one so sensitive as the nuclear question, there are other reasons why Mr Parrikar’s comment can’t be taken to be in the nature of an Upanishadic speculation or thinking aloud by an inquisitive soul.

On his return from Japan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly extolled his defence minister as “one of the brightest jewels” in his government. The commentariat thought Mr Parrikar had done enough to earn a censure. [...]

But none of this mattered to Mr Modi, who publicly praised his defence minister. Besides, the BJP's [India's ruling party] 2014 manifesto had appeared to openly question the nuclear doctrine, and this had been commented on then. The document made plain its intention to “study in detail India’s nuclear doctrine, and revise and update it to make it relevant to the challenges of current times”. From its early Jan Sangh days, the saffron party has been in favour of India being a robust nuclear-capable nation.

Guess who else has refused to adopt a no first strike policy? Israel. And, we also know that then Vice President Cheney openly advocated for the first strike use of nuclear weapons against Iran as a means of destroying it's nuclear program, after a proposed revision of the Defense Department's own doctrine for the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons. The United States currently has not adopted a "no first strike" nuclear weapons policy, though President Obama reportedly was considering such a change as reported in August, 2016 by The Washington Times.

Pakistan is a long standing ally of the United States, or at least some factions of it's ruling elite have had a long relationship with the US, and Pakistan has been the recipient of massive amounts of military aid by our government. Indeed, in 1999, during the Clinton administration, the US used it's influence to narrowly avert a nuclear confrontation between the two antagonists in what is now referred to as the Kargil Crisis.

The intelligence community has a name for the risk of nuclear war, such as might occur on the Indian subcontinent. They call it a a "Pink Flamingo" event. From a November 5, 2015 article, "Nuclear war between India and Pakistan not as unlikely as you think," in The Express Tribune.

A “pink flamingo” is a term recently coined by Frank Hoffman to describe predictable but ignored events that can yield disastrous results. Hoffman argues that these situations are fully visible, but almost entirely ignored by policymakers. [...]

The Indian subcontinent—home to both India and Pakistan—remains among the most dangerous corners of the world, and continues to pose a deep threat to global stability and the current world order. Their 1,800-mile border is the only place in the world where two hostile, nuclear-armed states face off every day. And the risk of nuclear conflict has only continued to rise in the past few years, to the point that it is now a very real possibility. [...]

It is quite possible that the Obama administration's obsession with the general election this year, coupled with our government's foreign policy focus on the war in Syria, emboldened India's right wing nationalistic government to take the opportunity to dramatically increase the risk of a nuclear confrontation with Pakistan by authorizing Defense Minister Parrikar to make these not so veiled threats to its neighbor. It's doubtful Obama, as a lame duck President, will be able to do anything about this international security problem in the time left to him.

Instead, this will be one of the major foreign policy issues that President Trump will have to address when he takes office. Ignoring the problem will only increase the danger. I can't say I'm feeling optimistic about his ability, or those of his advisers (to the extent we even know who they will be after his inauguration) to lead a coordinated international intervention to lessen this real and present danger. I can only hope whoever he puts in charge of foreign policy doesn't make a bad situation even worse.