India-Pakistan hold reins to world's nuclear future

NEW DELHI: Deadly adversaries India and Pakistan hold the key to the world's nuclear or non-nuclear future.

Much of what happens in their inimical relationship, and more important, whether the world can at all be free of these mass-destruction weapons, will become clearer in the coming year than it has been any time in the past decade, even two decades.

If nuclear arms are indeed the horror weapons and instruments of mass destruction they are deemed to be, 1998 will go down as anno horribilis for India and Pakistan.

The decision by India and Pakistan to cross the nuclear threshold in May this year had much more to do with the organic crisis their societies and political systems face than with genuine considerations of security.

The decision came on top of tumultuous developments over the past decade or more: the rise of militant, sectarian nationalism in India; declining legitimacy of the two states as they fail to meet basic obligations to the people; deepening crisis of governability in Pakistan and the failure of democracy to take roots.

In addition with rampant corruption in both countries, along with the persistence of mass poverty, illiteracy and growing hopelessness, the ruling elites' search for shortcuts to high-power status and glory was through military-nuclear routes.

Security concerns were only an excuse for India. In recent years, until May, India's security environment had improved, not deteriorated, thanks to major tension-defusion, peace and cooperation agreements with China, and better relations with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Nothing in the external environment could justify the sudden jettisoning of long-held doctrines and policies, including opposition to nuclear deterrence and a commitment to the idea that nuclear weapons do not produce security.

This disconnect is reflected in the mutually incompatible rationales proffered for the tests by the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition. These have ranged from seeking a shield against nuclear adversaries China and Pakistan, to feigned impatience with the Big Five's reluctance to disarm to simply asserting "the right" of one-sixth of humanity to nuclear arms (although no such right to food or water is asserted).

The same incoherence marks India's post-Pokharan-II strategic thinking. New Delhi took six weeks of fumbling and contradictory posturing before it declared a no-first-use policy. And it was not four months after May that it said it only wants a "credible minimum deterrent."

To many questions, there are no coherent answers still from Indian officials: just what larger diplomatic or political objective do they seek to achieve through the Bomb? What do they understand by a "minimal" deterrent, how is that different from what China or France understands? What measures of nuclear restraint, apart from largely symbolic and quickly reversible ones such as de-alerting of weapons, do they advocate regionally and globally?

Even on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), Indian and Pakistani policy-makers have no categorical answers. Some say they won't sign it in its present form, or unless they get something in return. Some say they will sign the treaty as it stands, by September next, if a "positive" atmosphere is created. But no one quite knows what this means.

More crucially, the Indian establishment is divided on whether to conduct more tests. According to 'Nucleonics Week', India's claimed thermonuclear (H-Bomb) test of May 11 is considered a dud by US weapons designers. It did not produce the designed yield. Some Indian nuclear scientists are pressing for at least one more test.

However, this is sure to be seen as an extremely irresponsible and defiant act and may attract heavy penalties. It is not clear if the government is ready to face the consequences, rather than do with a fairly rudimentary (but highly destructive) nuclear capability.

If the Indian and Pakistani governments thought that nuclearisation would increase their security and add to their diplomatic leverage, at least to their prestige, they have been proved wrong. They have both ended up antagonising their neighbours and friends, losing face in regional and international fora, and attracting flak and admonition from the Non-Aligned tates and UN bodies, as well as the Great Powers.

Both New Delhi and Islamabad have conducted a bilateral dialogue with Washington on the nuclear issue for six months. They have both been told they should expect economic sanctions to be lifted only if they sign the CTBT, and agree to restraint measures such as non-deployment of weapons in the short run, and a unilateral halt to fissile material production.

Besides, they must cooperate with the US and other nuclear weapons-states (NWSs) in limiting global nuclear negotiations to a fissile material cutoff treaty, a minor nuclear restraint measure being discussed in Geneva.

Three months ago, India and Pakistan were drafted in to break the Non-Aligned Group-21 unity on the FMCT, linking the talks' commencement with the NWSs agreeing to discuss complete nuclear disarmament. This signifies a total reversal of India's traditional role as an advocate of disarmament and peace a 50 year-long tradition going back to Mahatma Gandhi. For Pakistan, it has meant a greatly reduced ability to overcome the stigma attached to it on account of its support to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Islamic extremists in Kashmir.

Pakistan is using an astute negotiating tactic, of trying to convert its weakness and its present, grim, economic crisis into a strength: by telling the US that pushing it too hard towards freezing and reducing its nuclear capability and tightening sanctions will lead to its collapse a highly undesirable situation. But there are limits beyond which this cannot work.

India and Pakistan now confront each other without clear strategic doctrines, confidence-building measures or transparency about each other's nuclear capabilities, intentions or plans. They hold an enormous potential for destruction whether by design or through accidental, unauthorised or unintended use of nuclear weapons. Kashmir is only one possible flash point where this could happen.

The two states face a choice: eliminate that potential, or "manage" their rivalry. Serious-minded military experts such as Admiral L Ramdas, former chief of the Indian Navy, believe that such "management" is gravely fraught. "We have too many tensions, suspicions, and too long a history of strategic miscalculation for us to be assured that a nuclear confrontation won't happen," he says. "The only sensible alternative is to defuse the nuclear rivalry and return to the disarmament agenda."

1999 will see India and Pakistan both with unstable, tottering regimes facing a series of critical choices: should they proceed towards full-scale weaponisation, further cutting down on their measly social sector programmes? Where does their real security lie? In the false prestige of nuclear weapons or in feeding and educating their people?

How they make these choices will depend as much on domestic political factors as on the international situation. In India, if a non-BJP party/coalition takes power, as is possible, then a slowing down or nuclear preparations would be likely. This could open up new opportunities to negotiate nuclear restraint and disarmament. Pakistan could then be persuaded to respond favourably.

Equally important would be the shape of the nuclear debate within NATO and in the US government. Already, Germany, now under Social Democrat-Green rule, has proposed a change of NATO nuclear doctrine in favour of no-first-use. Washington is resisting this. But the US elite consensus on nuclear deterrence has been shattered.

If this leads to a re-opening of the nuclear debate, and if a civil society movement for disarmament develops, then there could be a wholly new nuclear ball game at the global level. India and Pakistan could then contribute to the nuclear disarmament momentum in a positive way.

- IPS