M B Naqvi

The writer is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist

mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk

Although a nuclear weapons and missiles race is still intensifying between Pakistan and India, as shown by the clamour to give a tit for tat reply to the Agni test on Friday (January 25), President and Chief Executive is said to be reluctant to do so. Instead, he has suggested a series of treaties to India with a view to radically improve the relations between the two nuclear neighbours in the security field. He thinks the two should sign a No War pact. And insofar as nuclear weapons are concerned, Pakistan would like to go much further than India's mere no-first-use treaty idea. It is instead proposing the denuclearisation of South Asia by working out a phased but simultaneous nuclear disarmament by both India and Pakistan. There is however nothing new in either Indian thinking or in the Pakistani response. Both know the other will reject the idea; the aim is to score points. The two have gone round this mulberry bush many times since 1980s while cynically proliferating atomic weaponry.

Several near war tensions and the quasi war of Kargil, not to mention the current Crisis, all in a space of 15 years, should occasion unease about the future. Islamabad needs to do a deeper and realistic thinking on the nukes as the ultimate guarantee of Pakistan's national security. The reason is that both India and Pakistan now have had a vicarious experience of a nuclear war in real life South Asian conditions after Kargil's half war. In point of fact, India is threatening an invasion with conventional weapons, if Pakistan went on doing what it says is doing in Kashmir, while supporting the Jihad there. Pakistan's realpolitik reply is: 'go ahead, try; we will nuke you'. Arguably, India stayed deterred but just --- until December 13 incident took place in New Delhi. India, acting on its new doctrine --- that 'nuclear weapons deter only nuclear weapons and a conventional war is possible between India and Pakistan' --- has massed the bulk of its Army on the borders with Pakistan in an attack mode. Pakistan has mobilised likewise and both feel to be in a state of war in which shooting is being held up.

Some analysts think that thanks to the mistrust generated by the nuclear weapons what might be at stake is a true 'necessity' by both sides to make a pre-emptive nuclear strike - the only thing that is logical in the circumstances - if either can get away with it. That a shooting war has not happened is due more to the heavy US pressures than to the good sense of either.

Psychologically, the current phase has been a real war situation; even at this writing a war can be set off through an accident's escalation or miscalculation. No doubt the generals on both sides have gone through all the possibilities; in other words, the Indian General Staff has either taken the possibility of Pakistan's pre-emptive nuclear strike in their stride and still think that the war made some sense or means to nuke Pakistan first in a massive way. We in Pakistan have to tarry here and think deep. How could the Indian generals go as far as they have done, taking the obvious risks of (a) an all out war breaking out; (b) Pakistan crossing the threshold in the easily possible war and nuking a few targets in India. How could the Indian generals take these two initial risks?

No great expertise is needed to see the reason why. Since they possess, and the world knows, a far bigger arsenal of nuclear weapons - which must do its own deterring, if Pakistan's smaller stockpile can be said to do any deterring - their calculation is obvious: In view of the fact that India can absorb Pakistan's first strike and still give a bigger riposte in kind - the second strike capability - no Pakistani commander can afford to take out two or three Indian cities, knowing that the India's counterpunch can wipe out all major urban-industrial centres in Pakistan. Or else they think that their massive pre-emptive strike can cripple the deterrent. Former Foreign Minister Agha Shahi's assessment, published by a contemporary tallies with the former view, though he has not drawn any conclusion from it vis-a-vis the efficacy or utility of nuclear armaments.

Needless to say no one has any defence against a nuclear attack; the result is sure destruction of a profound kind. It just kills men, women and children, burn the earth, destroy both the flora and fauna, poison the air and water resources in the target area and beyond. Above all, it maims the generation to come. That sort of death and destruction on either side is totally unacceptable. When in history did a man want his enemy's grand children to be born diseased and disabled? Having calculated all that, India has pressed the threat of a conventional war that can graduate into a nuclear war while toying with the idea of a pre-emptive nuclear strike. The kind of concern the BJP regime has of humanity and future of South Asian people has been brought in sharp relief by what it is threatening to do. At least Pakistan's military regime has shown a distaste for war for whatever reason. Pakistan acknowledged it when it authoritatively declared that Pakistan was too responsible a country to use nuclear weapons - at the height of the Crisis. That underlines the need for a more purposeful review of the policy concerning nuclear weapons.

Ever since 1990 when in his ebullience the Pakistani COAS of the day gave on a newer (Jihadi) orientation to the Kashmir policy in the belief that Pakistan's (then) putative nuclear capability was already deterring India. Didn't the threat spelled out by Dr Qadeer Khan stop General Sunderji in his tracks during Operation Brasstacks? Ergo we can safely go on doing what we like in Kashmir and India can do nothing except to writhe in pain. Indians took some beating before realising that they too can play at the same game. Now, they have challenged Pakistan to a war and do its worst. Realising what nuclear weapons can do whether on Indian soil or Pakistan's, the final Pakistani choice, 'peace' needs to be praised for its sanity and commonsense.

The right of first strike gives absolutely no advantage to Pakistan if the enemy possesses a second strike capability. It is hard to believe that Pakistan possesses such an overwhelming advantage that its first massive strike can cripple all of India and for a generation at least.

Otherwise it is pointless. Look closely. In real life conditions, Pakistan's vaunted nuclear deterrent has proved to be a dud. Earlier too, it did not at all deter Bush from forcing General Pervez Musharraf to choose his side rather than go back to the stone age; the darned thing, along with the Kashmir policy - already in tatters after this January 12 - needed to be saved rather than its saving its owners. One does not wish to go on to the larger questioning of the doctrine of deterrence itself, although there is temptation to do so. But the question for Pakistanis is insistent: what has its vaunted nuclear deterrent done for it? Is it worth a tinker's cuss?

Pakistanis need to do deeper thinking after their vicarious experience of war between two competing nuclear powers. Nuclear arsenals have been of no use whatever vis-a-vis India or in pursuit of a basically militaristic Kashmir policy to them. On the contrary, their very presence has been destabilising. Look at Indo-Pakistan relations either since 1980s or after May '98. There has been not a day of real normalcy.

So long as nuclear weapons exist in Pakistan's armouries, no Indian Army Chief can trust that Pakistanis will not, in a fit of anger, nuke them. And vice versa. The mistrust that subsists between India and Pakistan has been magnified by atomic weapons' existence on either side. No positive policy of friendship is compatible with keeping nuclear weapons aimed at - whom? The enemy, who else! What kind of friendship can ever be possible while these evil weapons sit in the respective armouries?

In short, insofar as Pakistan is concerned, - and one is not concerned with India, because there must be some Indians out there to use their own commonsense - nuclear weapons have failed to deter either the US (that wanted us to change our basic foreign policies and succeeded) or India (which is the designated enemy but to which we had to assure that we will not nuke it). To repeat, the Pakistani Bomb has been of no use in sustaining Pakistan's 25-year-old Afghan policy or 12-year-old newer orientation of the Kashmir policy; both had to be changed under external pressure despite the expensive deterrent. It is a painful lesson. But we had better learn it.

A profound change in policy stances is therefore urgent. It is possible that some Smart Alec will argue that the recent changes were due to American power; we cannot disobey it. Therefore recent changes do not disprove their old policies; we have bought American support. Indians were however smarter; they were able to sell their democracy to the Americans as something more valuable. At any rate, America has swallowed the current Indian stance on Kashmir, hook, line and sinker. No matter what the Americans say or do, we need to make policies based on Pakistanis inherent economic and political strength - and not on atomic weapons that proved to be useless. We had better not play the big power. Nor should we seek to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for the US. Let us be concerned only with the well-being and welfare of Pakistan's 140 million persons. As for the ties with the US, we should wake up. Convergences between India and the US are strategic in nature; the US wants to turn India into a counterweight for China in the Asian balance of power. Pakistan is, in terms of great power politics, a second rank developing country - and it is already hooked thanks to its need for periodical bailouts. So, we have to live on the periphery of a strategic partnership between the US and India for as long as can be seen today.

We need to have an India policy of our own. Nuclear weapons stand in the way of a productive normalisation of relations and economic cooperation. Kashmir policy of the future should have no link with military strength, India's or ours. So why should we go on carrying the useless and expensive burden of a nuclear deterrent that does not deter those whom we want to be deterred. If we really believe in a denuclearised South Asia, we had better start building a nuclear weapons free area here ourselves - Pakistan first. What India does, as an adjunct of American supremacy in Asia, is Indians' business. No matter what it says or does, we should start acting on what we say we believe in. The same goes for a No War Pact. If India hedges or puts conditions, ignore it. We enforce our peace policy on India. Let us join 182 other non-nuclear states and gain high the moral ground as Nelson Mandela did. Can we be more insecure than we are today?