I would guess this received very little attention in the U.S., but India yesterday launched a missile with a range of 3,100 miles.

That means that missiles armed with nuclear devices launched from the north of India could reach Beijing, Moscow and Africa.

North America and even western Europe may not have taken notice of India’s rocket launch, but you can be certain that China certainly did.

If the launch of the “Agni 5” (sanskrit for “ignite”) didn’t break any distance records, the fact that India apparently can now lob a nuke at eastern Europe and Africa means it meets the definition of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile, which is where we get the chilling ICBM acronym.

What are the implications?

Backing up for a minute, it is interesting that the world didn’t get all weird about India joining the small club of nations with long-range missile capability — to go with nuclear weapons.

The group includes the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia and China), and probably Israel, which is assumed to have the capability but has never confirmed it.

Had it been North Korea or Iran successfully blasting off such a big rocket, plenty of people would have been agitated — because those countries are pretty much universally considered to be both unstable and bellicose, and intent on stockpiling nuclear weapons.

India, as Indians are fond of saying, is the “world’s biggest democracy,” with a population of 1.2 billion. It has problems, but the same nutty people running the government for decades at a time is not one of them.

It is fair to suggest that India’s big missile didn’t set off alarm bells around the globe because most of the world has a sense that India has a responsible government hemmed in by its own checks and balances and chosen by the masses in free elections.

However, a subgroup of countries will be concerned, and China is at the top of the list.

China has made big strides in upgrading its military in recent years and, speaking of bellicose, the sense in much of Asia now is that China no longer needs to rely on the “soft power” of buying and selling, and that China is well on its way to “superpower bully” status. (Note to Beijing: “superpower bully status” is less fun than you might think.)

Our story notes an editorial in the Global Times, which is owned by China’s ruling Communist Party. India was warned in the editorial that it was being “swept up by missile delusion” and “should not overestimate its strength”.

The editorial added: “Even if it has missiles that could reach most parts of China, that does not mean it will gain anything from being arrogant during disputes with China.”

India and their eternal enemy next door, Pakistan, both are nuclear armed, and can strike each other. But Pakistan can’t send a nuke long-range, and while the launch of the Agni 5 doesn’t really change the one-to-one threat between the two countries, Pakistan probably was less than enthused by it.

China, however, has for decades had the ability to strike India from long range … and Indians must have felt that amorphous threat hanging over them. Now, they can respond to any provocations China might make, and that changes the dynamics of that relationship.

Broadly, it is never good when another country acquires the ability to drop a nuke on someone 3,100 miles away. Seems like the more countries we have with the ability to vaporize someone at a remove, the more likely it is that it will happen.

That was pretty much the point of the editorial The National ran for the editions of April 20.

But the kids on the editorial board probably were indulging in some virtuous naivete when they suggested that India, the second-most populous nation in the world, with its own growing economy, should not have pursued the creation of a long-range missile with military capabilities.

Saying that India should exist in a perpetual state of strategic military inferiority to a country (China) with which it shares a long border and is still arguing over large tracts of territory … and which was actually shooting at them as recently as 1962 … well, realistically, that was not going to happen.

The U.S. and the Soviets invented the “balance of terror” more than half a century ago, and it is not a fun way to live.

But evidence to date seems to indicate that when both sides know that a general nuclear exchange leaves no winner … it actually seems to keep both sides from reaching for the red button.

India is well on its way to a balance of terror with China, and in India, most people probably consider that an improvement on the former status quo.