Nuclear conundrum still continues in South Asia

M B Naqvi, Inter Press Service, Karachi

India and Pakistan are running a Cold War that is older than the more famous East-West one.

While the latter ended in 1990, the former is still going strong. Nuclear powers India and Pakistan are perpetually at odds with each other, militarily on a hair-trigger alert and politically deadlocked. They constitute a danger to each other and to others in South Asia.

Five years ago this month, India and Pakistan acquired the capability to produce nuclear weapons -- billed as the currency of power and influence. They believed this would make their national defenses invincible.

But someone should compare the stature of India, say in the 1950s, and what it is today. The same query regarding Pakistan is relevant. The stature of both is noticeably lower today than 30, years ago.

Instead of feeling more secure because of these dreaded weapons, both countries are perpetually at the brink of a war that might lead to mutually assured defeat and destruction.

They have been fighting for 55 years over the Kashmir Valley: India says that this largely Muslim area legally joined the country in 1947, and is thus an integral part of the country. Pakistanis insist they were cheated. Being largely Muslim, the state should have become a part of Pakistan under the terms on which the British Indian Empire was divided, they say.

In short, both countries' fond hopes that they became impregnable by crossing the nuclear threshold have been belied.

Meantime, Kashmiris have become alienated from India because of its repressive measures. They are none too happy with the pro- Pakistan insurgents or militants. They are, by all sober accounts, sick of both countries.

India and Pakistan declared themselves nuclear powers in 1998 on the recommendations of the Neemrana Group, which comprises the retired policymakers of both sides under U.S. aegis -- although they did this with reservations.

The basic idea was that once both ended the secrecy of their nuclear capabilities -- their earlier bomb-in-the-basement strategy -- an alluring vista of stable peace would open through nuclear detente or a nuclear restraint regime, based on the doctrine of deterrence.

Events since have dashed that hope. After the May 11 and 13, 1998 test detonations, India thought, and said, that the balance of power in South Asia has finally been tilted in India's favor. It expected Pakistan to stop its cross-border infiltration in Kashmir. But Pakistan nonplused India by detonating six nuclear devices a bare 15 days later.

While Pakistanis became even more gung ho over Kashmir, India took time to digest the changes brought by the 1998 tests. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee symbolically took a bus to Lahore in Pakistan, and visited Minar-e-Pakistan -- the spot where the demand for dividing India was first made -- and talked peace with Pakistan in February 1999.

Vayjapee's purpose was to evolve a mutual detente over nuclear weapons to preserve the peace and status quo. But the lullaby that both countries are civilized, responsible ones that would never use these weapons and would soon agree on ground rules, remained just that. Today, the nightmare of a nuclear war still looms.

What the U.S. gurus of the Neemrana Group did not realize was three factors: South Asia's peculiar geography, the intensity of emotional involvement of the millions on each side that restricted their governments' room for maneuver, and the inherent mischief of nuclear weapons.

Detente based on the deterrence concept assumes that decision makers on both sides would be coldly rational and would not let passions color judgment.

On receiving the first report that the enemy may have launched a nuclear weapon, they would first investigate its veracity, probably by speaking on the hotline. Well, in South Asia a Prithivi or Ghauri missile will take about three minutes to reach its target. No rational decision-making or restraint is feasible: The launch will have to be on first whisper, true or false.

The second key requirement is uncertain: the second-strike capability, the capacity to absorb a sudden nuclear attack and to still be able to deliver a devastating riposte. Given the intensity of the India-Pakistan arms race, it does seem as if both sides pass this test. But not so on other counts.

Other questions arise: Why has India's international stature not risen sky-high since it went nuclear? Why did Pakistan's uppitiness not end with its acceptance of the status quo in South Asia, despite India's nuclear arsenals?

The Pakistani military, instead of grasping Vajpayee's hand of friendship in 1999, cocked a snook on India by occupying high- altitude outposts in Kargil in Kashmir. The standings of both countries stand diminished largely because of their nuclearisation.

India forecloses any dialogue until Pakistan has stopped sustaining the Kashmir insurgency, which supporters in Pakistan call a 'jihad' or religious struggle. Delhi has cut off communication links with Islamabad, reduced embassy size, recalled high commissioners and above all massed the bulk of the Indian army on the border through much of last year.

India was thus daring Pakistan to use its nuclear weapons first in their continually contemplated war.

India's calculation is that its own second-strike capability will paralyze Pakistan into not implementing its proclaimed intent to make the nuclear strike first. This has killed the deterrence idea and greatly devalued the supposed deterrence value of nuclear weapons.

Finally, the conclusion emerges that nuclear weapons do not have any military use, except for countries to try to preempt each other. India and Pakistan are likely to try to preempt the other. Both are likely to end up suffering absolutely unacceptable damage, with unknown collateral damage to others. The whole thing seems insane.

The facts of geography in South Asia have underlined the irrationality of any use of nuclear weapons. Might India and Pakistan not now choose the pathway to peace and more human freedoms?