By Praful Bidwai
It should now be clear that neither India nor Pakistan will be a
willing participant in the near future in any initiative for
nuclear restraint, leave alone nuclear disarmament. New Delhi's
and Islamabad's firm refusal to sign the comprehensive test ban
treaty (CTBT), and India's strong condemnation of it as a
"charade", is only the most obvious indication of this. The trend
in the domestic debate on the issue of an international or
regional agreement concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMDs)
is an important factor too.
A strongly negativist attitude towards WMD restraint among Indian
and Pakistani policy-makers, their cynicism about the possibility
of progress on the part of the nuclear-weapons states (NWSs)
towards disarmament, and domestic political equations, all play a
major part in reinforcing the two governments' refusal to be
drawn into a process of achieving nuclear restraint. Regrettably,
the countervailing forces may be far too weak to alter this in
the short run.
This paper argues that India and Pakistan represent a unique case
of (rapidly deteriorating) nuclear ambiguity, and that it would
be virtually impossible to rope them into a process of accepting
even non-discriminatory forms of nuclear constraint, in the
absence of real, tangible, genuine progress on the part of the
NWSs towards nuclear disarmament, in the form of deep reductions
in nuclear weapons arsenals and a series of restraint agreements.
There are few pressures, domestic or international, on New Delhi
and Islamabad to change their cynical and negative attitudes.
Genuine considerations of security are unlikely to alter them
either.
India and Pakistan represent a different case of ambiguity from
Israel. The motivation behind Israel's pursuit of a nuclear
capability is relatively clear: the drive to retain a position of
strategic superiority in the West Asian-North African region by
compensating for its lack of strategic depth through nuclear
weapons, and also to create a deterrent to the use of
conventional weapons and other WMDs such as chemical and
biological armaments. It is also relatively easy to identify the
conditions under which Israel could move from nuclear ambiguity
to abstinence: a larger Middle Eastern peace, and elimination of
the potential for acquisition of a WMD capability in the region.
In the Indian and Pakistani case, considerations of security are
far from clearly visible. In the Indian case, the acquisition of
a nuclear weapons capability has had more to do with notions of
national pride and prestige than with actual or perceived threats
to national security. While Pakistani policy has been more
reactive than India's, it is hard to argue that it has really
been driven by a half-way coherent strategic calculation,
although ex post rationalisations can be made for it. It is thus
wholly unsurprising that India and Pakistan do not have any
strategic doctrines or philosophies for the threat of use, or
use, of their nuclear weapons capabilities.
India's ambiguity is much deeper and more basic or foundational
than Pakistan's. While it is reasonable to assume that Islamabad
can be persuaded to give up ambiguity in case India embraces
nuclear abstinence, the obverse cannot be said. It is hard to
predict under what circumstances New Delhi will roll back its
nuclear weapons capability--short of substantial progress
towards, if not the imminence of, global nuclear disarmament.
When the rationale for such a capability is somewhat intangible
and not strongly rooted in national security considerations, it
is difficult to revise policy pertaining to that capability.
India's stand on restraint in respect of WMDs has hardened in
recent years, in conjunction with, and under pressure from, a
rightward shift in domestic politics. This in part is a
reflection of a deeply insecure nationalism, which feels
frustrated at India's social and economic failures or poor
performance, and fuels aspirations for a Great Power status, even
when it might mean acquisition of WMDs. Thus, New Delhi, which
had championed the chemical weapons convention (CWC) as a model
non-discriminatory international treaty, and signed it
enthusiastically, started getting jittery over the process of
ratification. It formally ratified the treaty in October 1995--in
India, this only needs a Cabinet resolution of the Central
government, and not parliamentary approval--but delayed
depositing the instrument of ratification till September 1996.
More important, under hawkish pressure, it virtually threatened
to withdraw from the treaty only weeks before it entered into
effect in April 1997, citing the extraordinary argument that
unless the treaty had universal adherence, it would be
"discriminatory". Pressure for withdrawing from the CWC was to an
extent internally generated within the foreign ministry by those
who had earlier launched a campaign to oppose and block the CTBT
and who have now fashioned a whole pro-active diplomacy based on
opposing any restraint on India's WMD capabilities. Newspapers
stories were systematically planted about the non-universal and
partial character of the CWC, about how its regime of
verification is intrusive and open to abuse, how it is
`meaningless' for India to join the Convention unless both China
and Pakistan ratify it, and so on.
On April 15, the Indian delegate to the CWC Preparatory Committee
at The Hague said: "We will have to review our options, taking
account of the lack of representative character of the
Convention." An unbalanced CWC would be discriminatory, just like
the CTBT. "Universal adherence (to the CWC) is the only way to
achieve the balance", the leader of the Indian delegation told
the PrepCom, adding "if this is not achieved, we will have to
review our options." This clearly confused universal adherence
with the non-discriminatory character of the CWC and its
imposition of equal, verifiable obligations on all signatories.
In the event, once the U.S. and China ratified the CWC in the
critical few days before the April 29 deadline, New Delhi did not
execute the threat. But that it came pretty close to doing so is
itself noteworthy. Since then, Prime Minister I.K. Gujral has
repeatedly talked, with reference to Pakistan's non-ratification,
of "keeping the option open" of walking out of the CWC if "the
need arises". Domestically, the government has been under
pressure from the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party to
summarily reject all proposals for arms restraint. Given its
minority character, it is hard-placed to resist such pressure.
An example of how pressure against arms restraint measures works
is provided by the change in the government's stand on the
medium-range (1,500 km-2,500 km) Agni missile programme too. A
year ago, Defence Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav announced that the
so-called Agni "technology demonstrator" programme had achieved
its purpose and was being put on hold. However, in the summer of
1997, media stories appeared in the U.S. on "deployment" of
India's short-range Prithvi missile near the Pakistani border.
These were strongly denied. But, as if in retaliation, there were
reports of a "routine test flight" of a Pakistani missile, said
to be a modified version of a Chinese design.
The political response to these reports, whatever their veracity,
was to demand that India revive and resume the Agni programme. In
late August, Yadav declared that the programme would be resumed,
although it is not clear that it will lead to a genuine
battlefield-usable ballistic missile. (The present design uses
cryogenic liquid fuels and needs long preparation time.)
The rationale of New Delhi's opposition to restraint on missile
development in South Asia parallels its rationale for rejecting
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as "discriminatory":
if "they" can have missiles, why can't "we"? However, this wholly
ignores the dangerous bilateral dimensions of a missile race in
South Asia, with its potential for a serious crisis. Missiles
will cut flight time between the two countries to under 10
minutes, justifying a launch-on-warning or quick-retaliation
response. Given lack of transparency between India and Pakistan
about each other's intentions, nuclear preparations or doctrines,
this could have horrifying consequences in case there is a sudden
escalation of skirmishes across the border.
Such fears are not far-fetched. A recent instance is a reported
August 22-23 exchange of fire in the Uri sector of the Kashmir
border, in which India claimed to have killed 70 Pakistani
soldiers. (Pakistan maintained there were no casualties and no
serious exchange of fire). Whatever dispute or issue of conflict
was involved could have been resolved--as it was expected to be--
through a routine "hotline" conversation between the Indian and
Pakistani directors-general of military operations. This line is
meant to be activated every Tuesday. But it was not activated on
August 26 for reasons that remain obscure but are extremely
worrisome.
Beneath all these events and processes, a silent doctrinal divide
is emerging in India. The new doctrinal dividing line is not
between those who believe that nuclear weapons should actually be
used in war, and those who don't, but those who believe in
nuclear deterrence and those who oppose it as the foundation of a
sane defence policy. Indian policy-makers and -shapers have moved
dangerously close to legitimising and internalising nuclear
deterrence which India has all along condemned as an "abhorrent"
and "repugnant" doctrine.
The classical Indian position going back to the Nehru period
opposes even the threat of use of nuclear weapons as a "crime
against humanity". India opposed use or threat of use during the
World Court hearing and argued at Geneva in April 1996 that
nuclear weapons are "not essential to national security"
anywhere. Today, there is a drift away from this stand towards
nuclear deterrence-based thinking.
Indian cycnicism in respect of WMD restraint is duly replicated
in Pakistan. Islamabad refused to sign the CTBT because India did
not sign it, although it would have conceivably gained
considerable political advantage without losing anything much in
strategic terms had it done so. Pakistan has also not ratified
the CWC and continues to be under domestic-political and army
pressure not to do so, despite some recent improvement in
bilateral relations and two rounds of talks at the level of their
foreign secretaries (chiefs of diplomatic service), the first
since January 1994--which were themselves a disaster. The slight
upturn in diplomatic relations since Gujral and Nawaz Sharif's
assumption of office looks vulnerable and could be quickly
reversed in case tension builds up over missile or nuclear
programmes, or Kashmir, or any number of other disputes, coupled
with domestic tub-thumping by jingoists in either country.
This apart, there is a fairly strong domestic consensus in both
India and Pakistan that past attempts by the Great Powers, in
particular, the U.S., to pressurise the two governments to "cap,
roll back and eventually eliminate" their nuclear capabilities
were largely a failure. Most political parties resent such
efforts. The hawks use this sentiment to promote their own
agenda, of going overtly nuclear.
Although there is only limited support for overt nuclearisation,
there is a real danger that some kind of tacit understanding is
crystallising in favour of the nuclear status quo: there must be
no rolling back, no restraint, both counties have become de facto
nuclear states, and this is well-nigh irreversible. This is the
main message emerging from some of the Track II-level discussions
between retired diplomats, generals, political leaders and
journalists from the two countries.
Thus, "non-weaponised", "recessed" or "existential" "deterrence",
which was only a few years ago presented by some arms control
proponents as a positive achievement, could be turning into an
unstoppable, irreversible, nightmare--not as a first step in the
cessation of a nuclear arms race, but as licence to continue
nuclear-military preparations along with nuclear warhead-capable
missile development. There is growing confidence among policy-
makers in both countries that their de facto nuclear weapons-
state status will not be seriously questioned or opposed for some
time to come.
India's "successful" defiance of the CTBT is seen as a victory by
large chunks of the Indian (and Pakistani) media, notwithstanding
India's unprecedented and humiliating defeat last year by 142 to
40 votes at the hands of Japan in a contest for a non-permanent
seat on the Security Council--a circumstance closely related to
her isolation on account of the CTBT stand. (India, a leader of
the Non-Aligned Movement, totally failed to mobilise a
respectable level of support in spite of extremely energetic
efforts, including hectic campaigning by all Indian missions
abroad and Gujral's meetings with more than 70 foreign ministers
during his two-and-a-half-week stay in New York last autumn).
Besides this, a strange overlap has emerged in the Conference on
Disarmament at Geneva between India and Pakistan, on the one
hand, and the Non-Aligned Group of 21, on the other, on the issue
of a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT). The G-21 has taken
the stand that the FMCT talks must be conditional upon the NWSs
agreeing to negotiate complete nuclear disarmament. This position
is worthy of support in itself. But the G-21 stand conceals the
fact that the Indian and Pakistani agendas are different from
just securing a commitment to disarmament from the NWSs. Rather,
they derive from resistance to any and all steps for nuclear
restraint. India and Pakistan, which differ on the scope of an
FMCT--New Delhi does not want existing stockpiles to be included
in the FMCT, but Islamabad does--are able to take shelter behind
the common NAM position.
It might be possible to bring out the real differences between
India-Pakistan and the rest of G-21 by making creative proposals
both within and outside the CD, although care must be taken that
this does not weaken the pressure on the NWSs to put nuclear
disarmament on the table. However, this still might not impel New
Delhi and Islamabad to moderate their stand and adopt a positive
approach.
A far better alternative, which India and Pakistan would find it
difficult to resist, would be solid, tangible progress on the
part of the NWSs towards nuclear disarmament: ratification and
accelerated implementation of START-II, launching of START-III,
deep, class-by-class reductions in nuclear weapons stockpiles,
negotiated decoupling of warheads from delivery systems, a no-
first-use treaty and, equally important, extension of nuclear
weapons-free zones (NWFZs) to include parts of the Global North,
e.g. a Nordic NWFZ and a Central European NWFZ, besides a Central
Asian zone.
These could generate sufficient momentum for disarmament and
hence put pressure on India and Pakistan to stop pretending that
the end of the Cold War means nothing so far as WMDs go, and
impel them to put nuclear restraint on the agenda. Perhaps the
best way of beginning the process is to have bilateral
confidence-building measures and agreements not to use nuclear
weapons capabilities against each other, and to freeze missile
development. With this in place, and once a global momentum is
generated, talks could begin for a South Asian NWFZ.
Such an NWFZ should improve upon some of the existing
arrangements (e.g. in Latin America and Southeast Asia) and must
include strict commitments and guarantees against stationing
nuclear weapons in, targeting them at, or transporting them
through, the South Asian region, including its territorial
waters. A useful contribution at the multilateral level would be
to revive the 1987 Rajiv Gandhi Plan for Nuclear Disarmament.
If this does not happen quickly enough, and if the NWSs do not
move seriously towards disarmament, there is every danger that
South Asia's march towards nuclearisation would become
irreversible, and "existential deterrence" would become a
permanent condition of India and Pakistan's existence. Nothing
could be worse for the security of a restless region with over
1.2 billion people.