This is the premise of a book I read.  Assume a few years of build up.  Also the war is preceded by India taking out Pakistan in a nuclear war, due to Pakistan's internal problems.  No nukes in the beginning, but maybe if one side is desperate.

14 Answers

 

Satadru Das, Perpetually out of credit.

This is a highly unlikely scenario. I don't know which book talks about such a situation but the idea that India and China can join together to go to a war against the US is as unlikely as the EU joining together to go to a war against the US. Whatever book suggests this must be doing fearmongering.


But since it is a hypothetical question I will give a hypothetical answer.


The first thing is who is playing the role of the aggressor? 

This is the most important question because it is very different to defend your own country than projecting power from thousands of miles away. The latter requires exponentially more resources and willingness. You have to mobilize huge number of troops, vehicles and jets to do it while the defending country simply digs deep and defend. Also the home advantage is the biggest advantage in a war. You know your own backyard, you know how much time and resource it will take to defend a particular area. It is extremely difficult to overcome this logistical advantage. The morale of the soldiers is also a big issue. Fighting in an alien inhospitable country, far from your family is different from defending your own family. The former requires huge motivation while the latter comes naturally. We have witnessed that armies which comes nowhere close to the aggressor in terms of strength can defend their country successfully because of the home advantage. This has been amply displayed in the Vietnam War and the Afghan War.

So the first thing is that whoever plays the role of the aggressor will be at a distinct disadvantage. There are three likely scenarios:

 

India-China-Russia plays the role of the aggressor

This is the unlikeliest of the cases. India, China and Russia have no reason to believe that they can conquer Europe or the US. Their military strategy is not geared to doing that, they don't buy or develop weapons which can project power far away from their boundary. They don't have military bases far away from their countries. But still if for the sake of assumption we assume that such a thing does happen they will be stopped on their track. US will be impossible to reach across the ocean, even west Europe will be unreachable. Eastern European countries which are part of NATO may be captured temporarily by Russian forces but they will be beaten back within a month. The NATO will destroy all aggressive capabilities of the three countries, that is it will bomb all the airports and ports and will probably stop at that. They will not try to send their troops and infrastrcuture to India, China or Russia. I will give the reason for that in the 3rd scenario.

 

War takes place in a third country

This is perhaps the likeliest of all the scenarios. India can attack Pakistan for some reason, China can attack Taiwan, South Korea or Japan and Russia can attack any of the East European countries. Since China is an ally of Pakistan, an attack by India on Pakistan will see China and India on opposing sides instead of in alliance but for argument's sake let us assume that China and Russia supports India and vice versa on its aggression on a another country X and NATO takes the side of X. 
This can  have two outcomes depending on what the popular sentiment of X is regarding the aggressors. If it is a country where the popular sentiment is against the West then it will be very difficult for NATO to get rid  of the I-C-R alliance. For example, suppose there is a war between South and North Korea and fearing a defeat China decides to annex NK, NATO sends its troops to NK to free it from China and India and Russia joins China to defend its position in NK. It is likely that the people of NK will be against NATO because they have lived all their lives under anti-West propaganda. In such a case we will have a Vietnam like situation with unifromless Chinese soldiers fighting alongside North Koreans and I-C-R provides air as well as missile support. I think that will end pretty badly for NATO. Not only will they not be able to get rid of China from Korea, they may end up losing huge man and material power. A similar situation can happen in case Russia sends its troops in parts of East Ukraine where a large section of the people are pro-Russian and the NATO intervenes to get rid of Russians. Even in case of India a similar thing happened during Bangladesh War. Fearing a Pakistani defeat the US sent its 7th fleet to the Bay of Bengal and threatened to intervene militarily. But better sense prevailed and they didn't do it. Bangladeshi popular sentiments were against Pakistan at that time and saw Indian soldiers as liberators, if US had intervened they would have again had a Vietnam like situation in their hands.

But if the aggression is on a country where popular sentiment is hostile towards the aggressor then NATO will have an advantage and can defeat and get rid of I-C-R forces from the country without too much difficulty. For example, if India attacks Pakistan or China attacks Philippines/South Korea or  Russia attacks Poland then people of these countries with the backing of NATO will be able to destroy the aggressors.

In all of these cases both NATO and I-C-R will be careful enough not to take the war oustide the periphery of country X. Both the sides know that they will reduce their own chances if they take the war to the other side's home country.

 

NATO attacks I-C-R

This is again a very unlikely scenario. But suppose NATO attacks any of the three countries and the other two join in to show solidarity. This situation is actually the most dangerous of all the three and has the potential to turn towards a global apocalypse.
First of all, it is unlikely that it will be an Operation Barbarossa kind of situation with hundreds of thousands of NATO troops landing on Russia, or China or India. The biggest reason is that all the three countries are nuclear powers and will porbably wipe out any such large mobilization with a single shot. But let us for agrument's sake assume that no one uses nuclear weapons or other WMDs. Even then such a large military aggression is unlikely because of the simple reason that they will be counterproductive. India, China and Russia are all huge countries both in terms of geography and population. They have strategic depth because of their size. It will require close to a million troops with tens of thousands of tanks and thousands of jets to start a meaningful aggression. Before moving in by land the NATO forces will have to destroy as much as possible I-C-R' s defense infrastructure by bombing from air. Now these countries have decent air defense systems so it will not be like Iraq or Afghanistan which did not even have a radar. I-C-R have immense fire power and can stop such an aggression singularly without alliance simply because of the home advantage. And if there is an alliance then NATO has little chance of victory. 

It will be very long and costly affair to do it with conventional weapons. The country on which the aggression takes place will be destroyed but the aggressing countries will not be spared either. Besides suffering massive loss in manpower and material they will also have missile attacks on their home as well. 

So it is common sense to drop the assumption that WMDs will not be used.

 

Things change from here onwards. If WMDs are to be eventually used then game theory says that they they will be used at the very beginning rather than at the end of the war.  If it is I-C-R which uses them first then most of the world will be destroyed. To be frank the NATO does not yet have the kind of anti-ICBM defense system which is needed to stop Chinese, Russian or even Indian ICBMs. They can work against NK missiles but we must remember that both Russia and China have Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles which can launch up to 50 nuclear warheads at a time. The problem with MIRVs is that a lot of these warheads can be dummies which creates confusion and it is impossible to neutralize so many warheads simultaneously. As a result most of the targets will be hit. India's MIRV is in  developmental stage still but India has Maneuverable reentry vehicles which can dodge missile defense systems. However, once these NATO countries are hit with hundreds of millions of deaths, they will retaliate. US definitely has second strike capabilities and even France and UK too have it upto an extent. They will wipe out I-C-R and again hundreds of millions will die. It will be the end of Modern Age as we know it.

On the other hand if NATO uses ICBMs first we may have a lesser loss of life. They can wipe out I-C-R's nuclear as well as conventional defense capabilities, hundreds of millions will die and the three countries will become nuclear wasteland. 

BUT, and there is a big but, does I-C-R have second strike capabilities? 

The answer to this is not clear. They may or may not. Many in the west, especially those who are too confident about the West's military might thinks that I-C-R lacks second strike capabilities. But ask a defense expert and you may get a different opinion. You see both Russia and China have developed Nuclear submarines long ago and now even India has developed them and all the three countries have Submarine-launched ballistic missiles. Many think that US can keep track of nuclear submarines all across the planet but that is not true. It is impossible to keep track of submarines which are below the polar ice caps. The global sonar monitoring system, which keeps track of nuclear submarines do not work when submarines are hidden under ice caps. It is because the continuous movement of  glaciers and breaking of ice caps makes too much "noise" and the submarines can hide behind these noise, the sonars cannot detect them. These submarines can break out of the ice caps and launch a second strike. But the ferocity of the strike will be lesser. Millions will still die and most of the major western cities will be dust but still the countries may not be completely destroyed.

The first thing to remember here is that China, India and Russia aren’t exactly allies. They are members of the BRICS, and there are some issues — mostly financial ones — where they hang together. But China and India have a very tense relationship, one that includes episodic military clashes along their contested border in the Himalayas. Russia and China don’t trust each other much either, though they occasionally band together to limit their vulnerability to the West. If events caused them to join forces — which I very much doubt — they’d still be far, far weaker than the West. But a war of that type would be a disaster in every sense, and we should work incredibly hard to avoid great power war.

This is an intriguing scenario war....
Firstly ...
India is friends with USA as well as Russia ...
So it is very unlikely that these three nations will go against each other ( in case of Russia it won't dare to go against USA) ....
This leaves China ...
Now my scenario is that ....
Tensions have built up at the aksai chin border ....
This time India feels enough is enough with China's bullying ...
So India now threatens China to use force....
After a few weeks China too grows bold and attacks northeast part of Kashmir .... India somehow holds its lines against the chinese advances ... But secretly after the downfall of Pakistan, China was sending arms and ammunition to aid rebel groups. These rebel groups sabotage the Indian forces in kashmir.... The Indian army is now fighting a guerilla war against Pakistani insurgents in Kashmir and Chinese regulars on the border ...
The Indian army unable to fight this war loses much of Kashmir and sets up a defensive line from north south ie kargil to Jammu and another defensive line west to east from Jammu till the himachal Pradesh trying to contain Chinese advance.... Also India send a division to Nepal to protect its flank.... Seeing a stalemate China sends a division of troops through arunachal Pradesh ... Initially Chinese were able to penetrate into Indian territory ... But the Indian troops now reorganize and stop the Chinese forces from advancing by constant guerilla war breaking Chinese morale .... So Chinese now again used insurgency ... I.e. 'klf' 'klna' and many such insurgent groups harrased the Indian forces from inside... India now desperately asks for help .... Meanwhile Indian envoys were sent to other south east countries like Philippines and Vietnam as China had disputes with them too ... And of course Japan too...
Along with these, secretly envoys were sent to Russia too asking them to attack through Manchuria with the help of the Japanese ...  China saw this and immediately attacked and in a Swift conflict signed an agreement with Vietnam and Philippines to stay out of the war after defeating them ...
USA now concerned started sending aid as Indian economy had started to crumble due to war ... India by now had lost half of Kashmir and most parts of east and north east India and establishes a defensive line throughout the borderlands of assam and Nagaland.... 
Seeing these developments Japan refuses to attack unless NATO sends in troops to participate In the war.....
USA seeing the aid insuffiscient ... To contain the rise of the dragon USA sends a stern warning ... Chinese who is much powerful than they used to be became arrogant and ignored USA ... USA then sent 5,000 marines to help India to contain China and urges other NATO members to send help ... Seeing this Russia attacks Manchuria from north with 2 divisions .... On the other hand Japan too steps in and attacks China from the south China sea with the help of the Indian fleet which was mobilized to defend Japan in case of any similar attacks by China that were carried on Philippines and Vietnam .... India mobilizes nearly 200,000 troops in the northern Indian theater(Kashmir) and north eastern Indian theatre(arunachal Pradesh) .... China whose economy was showing signs of fatigue was now unable to support troops on most fronts ... The Chinese were overwhelmed at their Indian front after Indians bolstering their ranks and pushed the Chinese back from not just Kashmir but also aksai chin ... India took back arunachal Pradesh and now had started to prepare for an invasion with the help of american troops ... The american pacific fleet too had reached by now to give support to the advancing Indian troops ... A huge naval battle ensued near Taiwan between american and Chinese navy who outnumbered the american pacific fleet 2 to 1 in the battle ... With last minute arrival of the Indian and Japanese navy ... The Chinese lost the battle ... Russia had penetrated deep into Manchuria and the NATO troops(around 35000 anglo-french and 15000 Japanese) had laid siege to shanghai ... Indian troops liberated Tibet from Chinese occupation and indo-american forces had captured chengdu ... China lost the war on all sides ... Desperately China attempted to nuke India Russia and Japan ... But CIA and RAW(Indian secret service) along with american SEALs and Indian Garuda commandos had carried out covert ops to disable Chinese missile silos ... China unconditionally surrendered signing a the Treaty of Taiwan that China won't ever increase its troop count to more than 50,000, freed Tibet  ,Manchuria was split between Russia and Japan, aksai chin was surrendered to India and chengdu was split between India and USA ....



So this was just a scenario ... Where China is twice as strong as it is today(strong enough to challenge USA) which is the reason an all out wat broke out .... 
P.S. sorry if I hurt any sentiments .....

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