India and the threat of nuclear war

By Jonathan Power

ISLAMABAD (JP): India's general election will probably determine whether India is going to concentrate its post-Fabian mind on completing its economic take-off and racing China for the prize of being the world's largest economy by mid-next century, or whether it is going to burn itself up in needless military confrontation with its powerful neighbor, Pakistan, with the very real danger of, sooner or later, going over the political edge into nuclear war.

If the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party wins, India could become even more provocative over Kashmir than it traditionally has been. If Congress wins another term with only a small majority, the present uneasy and very unsatisfactory saber rattling will continue. But if Congress wins a decent majority, then perhaps there is a chance of a break-out -- India will continue the transforming economic reforms of its sagacious finance minister, Manmohan Singh, and the political leadership will have the courage and the flexibility to respond to some of the interesting overtures coming from influential voices in Pakistan.

Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, probably should never have become part of India when the British upped and divided the sub-continent in 1947. But it had an Indian ruler and India wanted it, not least because it was the home of what was to become India's dominant political dynasty, the Nehru family.

The Indian constitution guarantees Kashmir a degree of autonomy. The UN Security Council has demanded a free vote in Kashmir on to whom it wishes to belong. Neither are honored by New Delhi. Since 1987, following an Indian-rigged state election, Kashmir has been in a continuous state of insurrection.

Since Independence India and Pakistan have gone to war three times over Kashmir. Another war could easily turn nuclear. In every war so far India, superior in numbers and equipment, has trounced Pakistan. But since Pakistan developed its own nuclear bomb -- sometime around the late 1980s -- Pakistan has been able to neutralize India's classical doctrine for the defense of Kashmir -- replying to Pakistani pressure in the valley by punching it with armored columns in the plain. Thus Pakistan has safely been able to keep up the level of aggro. in Kashmir by gradually stepping up its support for anti-Indian guerrillas.

It is nothing less than a dangerous game of chicken--a more nationalistic government in India might respond more aggressively by, for example, eliminating the provision for special status for Janunu and Kashmir in the Indian constitution or by testing a nuclear device close to the border with Pakistan (which Pakistan would immediately reciprocate).

In Pakistan it is well-nigh impossible to find anyone who doesn't believe the country should own its own bomb--and arguably it has as good a case as Israel -- but there are a few who realize that India and Pakistan are edging too perilously close to the abyss, both militaristic and economic.

One of these is Mahbub ul Haq, Pakistan's former minister of finance. "The economic costs of confrontation," he says, "are becoming prohibitively high for both India and Pakistan. Despite their crushing poverty both countries are buying twice as many arms as Saudi Arabia which is 25 times richer. Both countries have six times as many soldiers as doctors. Modern arms are being procured when human lives are shriveling."

Haq is one of those convinced that Soviet communism dug its own grave by overspending on military prowess at the expense of social progress, a mistake repeated by three other countries with the world's highest ratio of military to social spending--Iraq, Somalia and Nicaragua.

Haq's bold suggestion is a UN trusteeship for the next 10 or 15 years over both Indian-held and Pakistani-held Kashmir. "Why not withdraw armed forces completely from inside Kashmir to near the border belt, withdraw all administrative machinery, open the border between the two parts of Kashmir and give the Kashmiris themselves a chance for self-government and peaceful development?"

In February, Dr. Haq presented his ideas to an informal Indo- Pakistan dialogue organized by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and found a surprising degree of consensus on many of the issues. At home there has been rather less enthusiasm. India is going to have to make the running on this.

For many non-proliferators like myself, who want to go even further than Dr. Haq and find a way to get nuclear arms removed altogether from the volatile sub-continent, even if the hot issue of Kashmir were doused, the answer lies in persuading India not just to quieten its obsession with Pakistan but also with China. China did not develop its nuclear arsenal to confront India. This is a side issue. For Beijing, Russia and America come first on the target list.

Here is an opening for American diplomacy. Washington needs to move to break the impasse--give India a carrot to lure it away from its nuclear policy (for sure, Pakistan would follow). It should use its influence to offer India a veto-wielding place on the UN Security Council if it agrees to give up its bomb. India's numbers, a population that is one- sixth of the planet, in fairness, demand it. Politically, the reward would be a denuclearized sub-continent and ridding the world of its more active nuclear flashpoint.