For all who have opposed Pakistan’s nuclear program over the years – including myself – the US-India nuclear agreement may probably be the worst thing that has happened in a long time.
Post agreement:
Pakistan’s ruling elite is confused and bitter. They know that India has overtaken Pakistan in far too many areas for there to be any reasonable basis for symmetry. They see the US is now interested in reconstructing the geopolitics of South Asia and in repairing relations with India, not in mollifying Pakistani grievances. Nevertheless, there were lingering hopes of a sweetener during President George W. Bush’s furtive and unwelcome visit in March 2006 to Islamabad. There was none.
This change in US policy thrilled many in India. Many enjoyed President Musharraf’s discomfiture. But they would do well to restrain their exuberance. The nuclear deal, even if ratified, will not dramatically increase nuclear power production – currently this stands at only 3% of the total production, and can at most double to 6% if currently planned reactors are built and made operational over the next decade. On the other hand, Pakistan is bound to react – and react badly – once US nuclear materials and equipment starting rolling into India.
One certain consequence will be more bombs on both sides of the border. The deal is widely seen in Pakistan as signaling America’s support or acquiescence, or perhaps even surrender, to India’s nuclear ambitions. India will be freely able to import uranium fuel for its safeguarded civilian reactors. This will free up the remainder of its scarce uranium resources for making plutonium. Further, when India’s thorium-fuelled breeder reactors are fully operational, India will be able to produce more bombs in one year than in the last 30.
Not surprisingly, important voices in Pakistan have started to demand that Pakistan match India bomb-for-bomb. Abdus Sattar, ex-foreign minister of Pakistan, advocates “replication of the Kahuta plant to produce more fissile uranium…. to rationalize and upgrade Pakistan’s minimum deterrence capability”. He has also written about the need to “accelerate its [Pakistan’s] missile development programme”.
This is a prescription for unlimited nuclear racing, given that “minimum deterrence” is essentially an open-ended concept. Pakistan has mastered centrifuge technology, and giving birth to more Kahutas would require only a political decision. Moreover, unlike India, Pakistan is not constrained by supplies of natural uranium. Thus, at least in principle, Pakistan can increase its bomb production considerably.
Although nuclear hawks in India and Pakistan had once pooh-poohed the notion of an arms race, there is little doubt that India and Pakistan are solidly placed on a Cold War trajectory. As more bombs are added to the inventory every year, and intermediate range ballistic missiles steadily roll off the production lines, both countries seek ever more potent weaponry.
Many years ago, all three countries crossed the point where they could lay cities to waste and kill millions in a matter of minutes. The fantastically cruel logic, known as nuclear deterrence, requires only the certainty that one nuclear bomb will be able to penetrate the adversary’s defences and land in the heart of a city. No one has the slightest doubt that this capability was crossed multiple times over during the past few decades.
What action would best serve the interest of the peoples of India and Pakistan, as well as of China?
A fissile material cutoff is the easiest and most straightforward way to ease nuclear tensions. It offers the best hope to limit the upwards spiral in warhead numbers. Instead of threatening to create more Kahutas, Pakistan should offer to stop production of highly enriched uranium while India should respond by ceasing to reprocess its reactor wastes. Previous stockpiles possessed by either country should not be brought into issue because their credible verification is extremely difficult and would inevitably derail an agreement. Years of negotiation at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva came to naught for this very reason. A series of “Nuclear Risk Reduction” talks between Pakistan and India have also produced zero results. The cessation of fissile material production is completely absent from the agenda; it must be made a central item now.
If a Pakistan-India bilateral agreement could somehow come through, it would have fantastically positive effects elsewhere. China – which is the major target of US nuclear weapons – may not have enough warheads to match the US but has more than a sufficient number to constitute a nuclear deterrent. Inspired by an Indian cutoff, it could formally declare a moratorium on fissile material production. The US, which no longer produces fissile materials because it has a huge excess, could encourage the Chinese action by offering to suspend work on its Nuclear Missile Defence (NMD) system.
Unfortunately the United States is not acting as a force for peace in South Asia. Confronted by the accusation that it is pumping arms into a region that some of its leaders had once described as a “nuclear tinder box”, US officials have responded defensively with answers such as: you have to deal with the world as it is and the Indian program cannot be rolled back; India is a democracy; India needs to import nuclear fuel and technology and we need to sell them. But such lame replies sweep under the carpet the disturbing history of near-nuclear conflict on the subcontinent for which the US has often taken credit for defusing.
The arms race directly benefits Indian and Pakistan elites. Hence they are tacit collaborators as they woo the US and prove that their states belong to the community of “responsible nuclear states” that are worthy of military and nuclear assistance. The past has been banished by an unwritten agreement. Retired Pakistani and Indian generals and leaders meet cordially at conferences around the world and happily clink glasses together. They emphatically deny that the two countries had even come close to a nuclear crisis in the past. Being now charged with the mission of projecting an image of “responsibility” abroad, none amongst them wants to bring back the memory of South Asian leaders hurling ugly nuclear threats against each other.
But instances of criminal nuclear behaviour are to be found even in the very recent past. For example, India’s Defence Minister George Fernandes told the International Herald Tribune on June 3, 2002 that “India can survive a nuclear attack, but Pakistan cannot.” Indian Defence Secretary Yogendra Narain had taken things a step further in an interview with Outlook Magazine: “A surgical strike is the answer,” adding that if this failed to resolve things, “We must be prepared for total mutual destruction.” On the Pakistani side, at the peak of the 2002 crisis, General Musharraf had threatened that Pakistan would use “unconventional means” against India if necessary.
Tense times may return at some point in the in the future. But Indian and Pakistani leaders are likely to once again abdicate from their own responsibilities whenever that happens. Instead, they will again entrust disaster prevention to the US.
Of course, it would be absurd to lay the blame on the US for all that has gone wrong between the two countries. Surely the US does not want to destabilize the subcontinent, and it does not want a South Asian holocaust. But one must be aware that for the US this is only a peripheral interest – the core of its interest in South Asian nuclear issues stems from the need to limit Chinese power and influence, fear of Al-Qaida and Muslim extremism, and the associated threat of nuclear terrorism.
The Americans will sort out their business and priorities as they see fit. But it is unwise to participate in a plan that leaves South Asian neighbours at each others throats while benefiting a power that sits on the other side of the globe.
Regional tensions will increase because of the deal. Given that the motivation for the US-India nuclear agreement comes partly from the US’s desire to contain China, the Pakistan-China strategic relationship will be considerably strengthened. In practical terms, this may amount to enhanced support for Pakistan’s missile program, or even its military nuclear program. Speaking at Pakistan’s National Defense College in Islamabad a day before Bush’s arrival there, Musharraf declared that “My recent trip to China was part of my effort to keep Pakistan’s strategic options open.”
By proceeding with the nuclear deal with India the US may destabilize South Asia. It will also wreck the NPT, take the heat off Iran and North Korea, open the door for Japan to convert its plutonium stocks into bombs, and bring about global nuclear anarchy.
This articles was published in Economic and Political Weekly (India) and The Friday Times (Pakistan), week of 17 April, 2006.
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Thursday, July 1, 2010
What Pakistan’s Bomb Could Not Buy
On the eight anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests, there is little point in debating whether we should have followed India down the nuclear gutter. But there is need for a sober stock-taking that moves us away from the still rampant, chest-thumping, nuclear triumphalism. So far the region’s nuclear “experts” and “strategists”, actively assisted on both sides of the border by their respective states, have effectively monopolized discussion on nuclear policy. But many promises remain unfulfilled and various political and social costs for Pakistan are barely acknowledged. What are these?
The most obvious fact is that testing the Bomb speeded up the subcontinent’s arms race, rather than slowing it down. If you had believed what the nuclear pundits used to say, it should have been the other way around. Their argument was so seductive and simple that even well-meaning people were taken for a ride. They said acquiring the Bomb would assure national security into eternity – the threat of a nuclear response would deter territorial violations by the other, and hence the need for conventional arms would evaporate. Just a few bombs would do. Before the May 1998 tests, and even for several months later, some Pakistanis cheerfully wrote that after going nuclear, little more than salaries for soldiers would be needed. Defence budgets could be slashed, and (at last) funds would go into development and education.
Instead, what have we seen? Today the acquisition of battle tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, surface ships, submarines, anti-ballistic missile systems, early warning aircraft, and space-based surveillance systems is now claimed – by many of the same people – to be more urgent than ever before. The US-India nuclear deal, if ratified by Congress, will add fuel to the fire. After India’s breeder reactors come on line, it will be able to produce as many nuclear warheads in just one year as it had in the previous 30. Pakistan is sure to react in various ways.
The once-popular concept of “minimal deterrence” died after India’s firm statement that the requirements for a deterrent force will be “dynamically determined” and cannot be explicitly stated. In other words, it will never say how many bombs are enough. That is not how it used to be. I well remember my intervention during a conference in Chicago (1992) which provoked the Indian strategist K. Subramanyam to angrily protest that “arms racing is a Cold War concept invented by the western powers and totally alien to sub-continental thinking”. We Pakistanis and Indians were supposed to be infinitely wiser than the compulsive Americans and Soviets. But one sees that every aspect of Cold War racing has been punctiliously followed on the subcontinent. Tactical nuclear war-fighting, once considered escalatory, is reported to be incorporated into current Indian and Pakistani military doctrines.
The fact is that nuclear racing and doctrines is everywhere and always driven by the same implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be the slightest danger of the race slackening, a nuclear “expert” will point to the other side’s latest acquisition and shout wolf. With every passing decade, advances in technology make it easier and cheaper to create ever more deadly nuclear weapons, buy or make longer range and more effective missiles, and go for various hi-tech weapon systems that could not have been imagined just a while ago.
For Pakistan, the nuclear cost – political and social – has been even higher than for India.
First, nuclear weapons led to Pakistan’s Kargil debacle. The 1998 tests gave to the country’s leaders a false sense of security. This was the direct cause of a misadventure that ended in a stunning political and diplomatic defeat for Pakistan. If anything, it made clear that Pakistan can now never hope for a military victory in Kashmir.
The Kargil episode offers the very first example in history where nuclear weapons, by dint of creating a presumed shield for launching conventional covert operations, were responsible for having brought about a war. The unrestrained propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a full-blown confrontation that could well have been the very last one. Arguably it was the BJP that, by ordering Pokhran-II, fathered Kargil.
Second, Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons has made it effectively a less independent state, rather than the other way around. While Pakistan became popular in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries after testing, its inability to stand up for real Muslim interests remains as chronically weak as ever. Unlike many European and non-aligned countries – which were vociferous in their opposition to the US war upon Iraq – Pakistan chose the side of pragmatism. One can also be sure that if Iran’s nuclear facilities are bombed by the US, Pakistan’s leaders will do no more than cluck their tongues and shake their heads in mild disapproval. The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline provides yet another example of nuclear Pakistan unable to assert even its trade preferences.
Although nukes have pushed up Pakistan’s rental value for fighting the wars of other nations, the constraints put upon its behavior have also greatly increased. The danger that our nukes may turn loose is a source of deep discomfort to Pakistan’s chief patron and paymaster, the United States of America. The fiery rhetoric of religious parties, who claim the Bomb for the entire Muslim Ummah rather than just for Pakistan, understandably terrifies many in the West. Moreover, the A.Q.Khan episode – in spite of Pakistan’s repeated assertions that the matter has now closed – is still very much on the minds of the US establishment and media. These reasons account for the US’s flat rejection of any kind of nuclear deal with Pakistan along the lines that it had proposed to India.
For the time being, with General Musharraf in power, the US is willing to tolerate Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – and may even satisfy some of its needs for advanced conventional weaponry. But this could be short lived. Many gaming scenarios played in the US strategic war planning institutions indicate that there are well-rehearsed contingency plans if Pakistan’s political situation changes radically after General Musharraf’s departure, planned or otherwise. Clearly, Pakistan is a country that is closely watched and monitored.
Third, and finally, while a connection is sometimes alleged, in fact nuclear weapons have been irrelevant to two of Pakistan’s critical needs – national integration and high technology. If anything, the effect has gone the other way.
National integration remains a distant goal, and the hope that the Bomb would be a rallying call for all Pakistanis has essentially disappeared. The tumultuous, officially inspired, 1999 celebrations of “youm-e-takbir” in all four provinces and dozens of cities were supposed to infuse a new sense of national spirit. Bomb and missile replicas were installed at every other street corner; many still survive. But love for the centralized Islamabad-based Pakistani state, run by military generals with a passion for real-estate and wealth, is conspicuously absent. The ongoing widespread insurgency in Baluchistan and rising bitterness in Sind are sending clear messages of a dangerous disaffection. Nuclear weapons cannot compensate for the absence of a democratic process, which alone can weld Pakistan’s disparate people into a nation.
The failure is evident. Punjab celebrates the Bomb while Baluchistan protests it. It resents the fact that the nuclear test site – now radioactive and put out of bounds – is located upon Baluch soil. Accused of dumping nuclear wastes, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission is now being increasingly targeted by Baluch nationalists as an instrument of foreign domination. On May 15, 2006 Baluchi insurgents reportedly launched a mortar attack on a Pakistani nuclear establishment controlled by the PAEC in the vicinity of the Dera Ghazi Khan-Quetta highway.
And, what of the Bomb being a technical miracle? Over thirty years ago, fearful of India’s newly acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state. It lacked a strong technological base. But its secret search of the world’s industrialized countries for nuclear weapons technologies was successful. It now advertises itself as a high-tech state.
But in a world where science moves at super-high speeds, nuclear weapons and missile development is today second-rate science. The undeniable fact is that the technology of nuclear bombs is six decades old. Famine-stricken North Korea, with few other achievements, is probably also a nuclear power and clearly has a very advanced missile program. In fact it had transferred this technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and other countries. While Pakistani and Indian weapons programs have diverted substantial financial and material resources away from social and scientific needs, they have merely used scientific principles discovered and developed elsewhere. Not surprisingly, there are no worthwhile spin-offs. Surely it is time to drop the pretence that making nuclear weapons and guided missiles is a wonderful thing.
The article was published in The News (Karachi, Lahore,Islamabad) on 28th May 2006, the eight anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests.
The most obvious fact is that testing the Bomb speeded up the subcontinent’s arms race, rather than slowing it down. If you had believed what the nuclear pundits used to say, it should have been the other way around. Their argument was so seductive and simple that even well-meaning people were taken for a ride. They said acquiring the Bomb would assure national security into eternity – the threat of a nuclear response would deter territorial violations by the other, and hence the need for conventional arms would evaporate. Just a few bombs would do. Before the May 1998 tests, and even for several months later, some Pakistanis cheerfully wrote that after going nuclear, little more than salaries for soldiers would be needed. Defence budgets could be slashed, and (at last) funds would go into development and education.
Instead, what have we seen? Today the acquisition of battle tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, surface ships, submarines, anti-ballistic missile systems, early warning aircraft, and space-based surveillance systems is now claimed – by many of the same people – to be more urgent than ever before. The US-India nuclear deal, if ratified by Congress, will add fuel to the fire. After India’s breeder reactors come on line, it will be able to produce as many nuclear warheads in just one year as it had in the previous 30. Pakistan is sure to react in various ways.
The once-popular concept of “minimal deterrence” died after India’s firm statement that the requirements for a deterrent force will be “dynamically determined” and cannot be explicitly stated. In other words, it will never say how many bombs are enough. That is not how it used to be. I well remember my intervention during a conference in Chicago (1992) which provoked the Indian strategist K. Subramanyam to angrily protest that “arms racing is a Cold War concept invented by the western powers and totally alien to sub-continental thinking”. We Pakistanis and Indians were supposed to be infinitely wiser than the compulsive Americans and Soviets. But one sees that every aspect of Cold War racing has been punctiliously followed on the subcontinent. Tactical nuclear war-fighting, once considered escalatory, is reported to be incorporated into current Indian and Pakistani military doctrines.
The fact is that nuclear racing and doctrines is everywhere and always driven by the same implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be the slightest danger of the race slackening, a nuclear “expert” will point to the other side’s latest acquisition and shout wolf. With every passing decade, advances in technology make it easier and cheaper to create ever more deadly nuclear weapons, buy or make longer range and more effective missiles, and go for various hi-tech weapon systems that could not have been imagined just a while ago.
For Pakistan, the nuclear cost – political and social – has been even higher than for India.
First, nuclear weapons led to Pakistan’s Kargil debacle. The 1998 tests gave to the country’s leaders a false sense of security. This was the direct cause of a misadventure that ended in a stunning political and diplomatic defeat for Pakistan. If anything, it made clear that Pakistan can now never hope for a military victory in Kashmir.
The Kargil episode offers the very first example in history where nuclear weapons, by dint of creating a presumed shield for launching conventional covert operations, were responsible for having brought about a war. The unrestrained propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a full-blown confrontation that could well have been the very last one. Arguably it was the BJP that, by ordering Pokhran-II, fathered Kargil.
Second, Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons has made it effectively a less independent state, rather than the other way around. While Pakistan became popular in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries after testing, its inability to stand up for real Muslim interests remains as chronically weak as ever. Unlike many European and non-aligned countries – which were vociferous in their opposition to the US war upon Iraq – Pakistan chose the side of pragmatism. One can also be sure that if Iran’s nuclear facilities are bombed by the US, Pakistan’s leaders will do no more than cluck their tongues and shake their heads in mild disapproval. The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline provides yet another example of nuclear Pakistan unable to assert even its trade preferences.
Although nukes have pushed up Pakistan’s rental value for fighting the wars of other nations, the constraints put upon its behavior have also greatly increased. The danger that our nukes may turn loose is a source of deep discomfort to Pakistan’s chief patron and paymaster, the United States of America. The fiery rhetoric of religious parties, who claim the Bomb for the entire Muslim Ummah rather than just for Pakistan, understandably terrifies many in the West. Moreover, the A.Q.Khan episode – in spite of Pakistan’s repeated assertions that the matter has now closed – is still very much on the minds of the US establishment and media. These reasons account for the US’s flat rejection of any kind of nuclear deal with Pakistan along the lines that it had proposed to India.
For the time being, with General Musharraf in power, the US is willing to tolerate Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – and may even satisfy some of its needs for advanced conventional weaponry. But this could be short lived. Many gaming scenarios played in the US strategic war planning institutions indicate that there are well-rehearsed contingency plans if Pakistan’s political situation changes radically after General Musharraf’s departure, planned or otherwise. Clearly, Pakistan is a country that is closely watched and monitored.
Third, and finally, while a connection is sometimes alleged, in fact nuclear weapons have been irrelevant to two of Pakistan’s critical needs – national integration and high technology. If anything, the effect has gone the other way.
National integration remains a distant goal, and the hope that the Bomb would be a rallying call for all Pakistanis has essentially disappeared. The tumultuous, officially inspired, 1999 celebrations of “youm-e-takbir” in all four provinces and dozens of cities were supposed to infuse a new sense of national spirit. Bomb and missile replicas were installed at every other street corner; many still survive. But love for the centralized Islamabad-based Pakistani state, run by military generals with a passion for real-estate and wealth, is conspicuously absent. The ongoing widespread insurgency in Baluchistan and rising bitterness in Sind are sending clear messages of a dangerous disaffection. Nuclear weapons cannot compensate for the absence of a democratic process, which alone can weld Pakistan’s disparate people into a nation.
The failure is evident. Punjab celebrates the Bomb while Baluchistan protests it. It resents the fact that the nuclear test site – now radioactive and put out of bounds – is located upon Baluch soil. Accused of dumping nuclear wastes, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission is now being increasingly targeted by Baluch nationalists as an instrument of foreign domination. On May 15, 2006 Baluchi insurgents reportedly launched a mortar attack on a Pakistani nuclear establishment controlled by the PAEC in the vicinity of the Dera Ghazi Khan-Quetta highway.
And, what of the Bomb being a technical miracle? Over thirty years ago, fearful of India’s newly acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state. It lacked a strong technological base. But its secret search of the world’s industrialized countries for nuclear weapons technologies was successful. It now advertises itself as a high-tech state.
But in a world where science moves at super-high speeds, nuclear weapons and missile development is today second-rate science. The undeniable fact is that the technology of nuclear bombs is six decades old. Famine-stricken North Korea, with few other achievements, is probably also a nuclear power and clearly has a very advanced missile program. In fact it had transferred this technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and other countries. While Pakistani and Indian weapons programs have diverted substantial financial and material resources away from social and scientific needs, they have merely used scientific principles discovered and developed elsewhere. Not surprisingly, there are no worthwhile spin-offs. Surely it is time to drop the pretence that making nuclear weapons and guided missiles is a wonderful thing.
The article was published in The News (Karachi, Lahore,Islamabad) on 28th May 2006, the eight anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests.
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