Exactly eight years after Pakistan barged into the nuclear club on May 28, 1998, the debate has not moved forward an inch. We have nuclear weapons, yet we are stockpiling conventional weapons. We have talk of new nuclear power generation plants coming up, wrapped in the same old cover of secrecy that discourages the most relevant of inquiries. Are those who living around such installations safe? The question is met with a shield of silence that makes the inquirer even as edgy as does the prospect of a nuclear weapon falling into the hands of a private army.

A few things have however moved forward, hardly in the 'right  direction'. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is no more valid in the wake of fresh deals and old ambitions. The United States pats itself on the back for having found un-identical sets of terms to deal with India and Pakistan. Iran meanwhile is painted as the spoilt little boy threatening to trespass the faked privacy of the so called nuclear club.

Change or no change, eventually what we find missing is answers to the emerging scenario where a lot many of the states are going to possess nuclear arms through 'fair' or 'unfair' means. It raises an equally horrifying spectre of the powerful going one up on the others.

Eight years after the nuclear test, a lot many promises remain unfulfilled and costs unacknowledged

By Pervez Hoodbhoy

On the eighth 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, simple-minded, 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 monopolised 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 round. Their argument was so seductive and simple that even well-meaning people were taken for a ride. They said acquiring the bomb would ensure 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 after it, 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 need for 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 Cold War racing has been followed to the letter 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 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 could no longer 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 Bharatiya Janata Party that, by ordering Pokhran-II, fathered Kargil.

Second, Pakistan's acquisition of nuclear weapons has made it effectively a less independent state, rather than it being the other way round. 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 shake their heads in mild disapproval. The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline provides yet another example of weakness.

Although nukes have pushed up Pakistan's rental value for fighting the wars of other nations, the constraints on its behaviour 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 Pervez 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 shortlived. Many gaming scenarios played in the US strategic war planning institutions indicate there are well-rehearsed contingency plans if Pakistan's political situation changes radically in the event of General Musharraf's departure. 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 disappeared. The tumultuous, officially inspired, 1999 celebrations of 'yaum-e-takbir' all over the country were supposed to infuse a new sense of national spirit in Pakistanis. Bomb and missile models were installed at every other street corner; many still survive. But instead of love for the centralised Islamabad-based Pakistani state, the ongoing widespread insurgency in Balochistan and rising bitterness in Sindh are sending clear messages of a dangerous disaffection. Nuclear weapons cannot compensate 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 Balochistan protests it. It resents the fact that the nuclear test site -- now radioactive and put out of bounds -- is located on Baloch soil. Accused of dumping nuclear wastes, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission is now being increasingly targeted by Baloch nationalists as an instrument of foreign domination. On May 15, 2006, Baloch 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 industrialised 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 programme. In fact it had transferred this technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and other countries. While Pakistani and Indian weapons programmes 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 author is professor of nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.

Dr. A. H. Nayyar is a prominent Pakistani physicist who recently retired from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, after teaching there for over 30 years. He is currently a visiting research scholar in the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, a position he has held since 1998. At Princeton, he works on technical issues related to nuclear disarmament.

Dr. Nayyar also actively participates in the peace movement. He is  President of Pakistan Peace Coalition The News on Sunday interviewed Dr. A H Nayyar in Islamabad last week. Excerpts:

By Noreen Haider

The News on Sunday: Why is the world again moving towards nuclear power generation? Is it because of rising oil prices and increasing instability in oil production?

Dr A.H. Nayyar: It still is a big question if the world is in fact moving towards nuclear power generation. The largest number of nuclear power stations is in the US although the proportion of energy generated through nuclear reactors is higher in France and Belgium. But there has been no new nuclear reactor built in those countries since 1979.

In fact there are countries in which the erected power plants are being dismantled and decommissioned. Although there are countries which have nuclear energy sources near industrial estates, like China and Korea, yet this impression is not true that nuclear power is staging a comeback. Indian nuclear energy has different dynamics and Pakistani nuclear energy has different dynamics from the rest of the world.

However, there are circumstances through which nuclear power can come back at some later stage. One reason is of course the depletion of fossil fuel reserves and rising oil prices and the second is the experiences in the running of the power plants itself. As the last accident around a nuclear power plant was Chernobyl which was 20 years back and there has not been an accident of such nature since, this proves that new plants can have better safety and security assurances. But still nuclear power plants are complex and if anything goes wrong it can lead to a catastrophe.

TNS: Has advancement in technology brought down the cost of power plants or the energy generated?

AHN: Nuclear power plants are extremely expensive and cost of setting up and running these plants is excruciatingly high if all the variables are considered in comparison to the amount of energy produced. For one thing, setting up and running the power plant costs a great deal, and for another, the dismantling or decommissioning of a unit costs just the same if not more. If you include the cost of controlling a disaster like Chernobyl then certainly it can be called anything but cost effective. The economic costs of Chernobyl have been estimated at $ 200 billion.

TNS: Has there been any advancement in the setting up of power plants?

AHN: There are indeed newer models of power plants which are an advancement on the earlier models but they are in no way cheaper or cost efficient than the earlier models. One such model is the Pebble Bed Design where there are pebbles laid on the bed of the plant for improved safety. It has been claimed that this design cannot have a nuclear accident. It is said that nuclear energy does not give out any of the greenhouse gases which in fact are emitted by all kinds of fossil fuels. So in this way the energy generated through nuclear power plants can be called clean.

TNS: Is nuclear power a viable option for a poor country like Pakistan?

AHN: Although Pakistan already has nuclear power plants and planning to enhance its capacity in this regard further in coming years, yet this is not at all a viable option in the present circumstances

The current estimated total power generation of Pakistan from all sources is around 20,000 megawatts out of which only 425 megawatts is being generated through nuclear power plants. Pakistan is erecting another power plant at Chashma II which will produce another 300 megawatts but by the time that plant comes to full capacity the Karachi Nuclear Power Plant will be close to completing its term so again the total amount of energy generated would be not more than 600 megawatts.

In the NEP (nuclear energy planning) it is articulated that Pakistan is to go for 8000 megawatts of energy in the next 15 to 20 years. It is a very tall order because Pakistan will need to import eight 1000 megawatt reactors for this much power generation and each reactor costs around $2 billion. In this way Pakistan is planning to build nuclear power plants worth $10 to 20 billion in the next 15 years.

TNS: Is there a safe way to dispose nuclear waste generated by these plants?

AHN: Nobody in the world knows the method of safe disposal of spent fuel and nuclear spent fuel is accumulating day by day all over the world. This spent fuel is just sitting in ponds or special caskets and it is extremely radioactive and very dangerous. If released in the atmosphere by accident it could result in death and destruction on a massive scale. According to independent sources the death toll after the Chernobyl disaster has been estimated at 60,000, and that was because of the damage to only one core in the spent fuel pond where there were 29 other cores also lying.

TNS: As a scientist are you in favour of nuclear power generation?

AHN: I am a strong opponent of energy generation through nuclear power plants. They are expensive, not needed, dangerous and not worth it. Unless some of the key issues are addressed, i.e. accident resistant plants, safe ways for the disposal of spent fuel, all the radioactivity to be controlled including in the nuclear cycle like uranium mining, milling and enrichment.

TNS: As an advocate of safe methods of energy generation have you made any efforts for advocating against nuclear energy generation to the government of Pakistan?

AHN: In India and Pakistan the issue of nuclear energy is closely linked with nuclear weapons programme. In fact it is inextricably lined with the weapons programme. Since the nuclear programme is considered to be of strategic importance so it has sanctity in the country. Nuclear power generation is in reality a facade for the nuclear weapons programme.

Before 1998 both India and Pakistan claimed that their nuclear programme was for peaceful purposes but as it turned out it was in fact not entirely for peaceful purposes and indeed it had military aspects to it.

It is indeed very difficult to argue with the nuclear industry in Pakistan because their main work is around weapons. It is very difficult to question the nuclear programme.

There has been a report in the newspaper that people who claimed that they have been affected by radioactivity from the mining in DG Khan have gone to court.

The matter came to the notice of Supreme Court but it has decided to hold the proceeding in camera rather than in public as the Atomic Energy Commission has told the court that the matter is of strategic importance.

There are other people who claim that their animals, lands and environment is being affected by the nuclear activity particularly around the mining and milling and production of uranium.

Once I asked the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission if the radioactivity around the populated areas of D.G. Khan could be measured just to make sure that the population was safe. We were refused point blank by the chairman of the PAEC on the pretext that anything to do with uranium was strategic and hence off limits.

When Chashma II was being installed, Sustainable Development Policy Institute and Princeton University conducted research questioning the appropriateness of the design and the site of the power plant. The plant was the first plant of its kind built by the Chinese and it had obvious flaws and the site too was questionable. The report was published and the PAEC was forced to come and discuss some of the findings on a public forum. There was also a hearing on the report in the Ministry of Environment and that was a means to show the PAEC that there were people who could challenge them on technical grounds although they considered themselves to be the know all.

Pakistan Nuclear Regulatory Authority was set up as 'independent' regulatory body but it mostly comprises of the former employees of PAEC or people who were transferred there so it is not at all independent of the operators but follows the same ideologies and is in no way effective as a regulator. Had it been independent regulator it would have jumped at the complaint of the people in DG Khan and sent teams to ensure the safety and well being of the people.

I would like to see Pakistani public asking questions on the safety and security around nuclear installations. In the developed countries , civil society organisations have been very active. They have the technical expertise and they have questioned their governments. I think it's about time we did the same in Pakistan.

Responsibility is an ambiguous term where the powerful can have different reference points to deal with different countries and where a smiling Buddha can turn out to be a nuclear device

By Beena Sarwar

It is ironic that the only country to ever have used nuclear weapons feels it can bestow on others the status of being a 'responsible nuclear state' or not.  And it is also the country with the most nuclear weapons, its active nuclear warheads estimated at between 5,735 and 9,960.

In my admittedly biased view against nuclear weapons, given what we know about them, it is irresponsible to possess and continue to develop them. The leaders of 'nuclear countries' could not resist entering the competition -- like small boys having meaningless contests just to see who can get ahead.  A cartoon in Himal Southasia published soon after Pakistan followed India's lead in testing nuclear weapons in May 1998 showed two small, skinny boys having a peeing competition, with a small nuclear mushroom cloud rising out of the 'finish line'.  Of course it is not so simple -- yet at one level, it is.

India began the nuclear race in South Asia back in May 1974 with the innocuously named 'Smiling Buddha' that it called a 'peaceful nuclear device'. In Pakistan, Z.A. Bhutto reacted furiously with his famous statement about defending Pakistan using any means necessary and building "a nuclear capability second to none. We will eat grass for 1000 years, if we have to, but we will get there." 

New Delhi's choice of name for its nuclear weapon was ironic -- and irresponsible -- for Buddha symbolises peace. The USA also invoked religion by naming its first nuclear test 'Trinity' in 1945, and used innocuous terms like 'Fat Man' and 'Little Boy' to name the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

There was nothing responsible about India's unprovoked second nuclear test, on May 11, 1998. Religion was again invoked when this operation was code-named 'Shakti' (the Goddess of Strength); no surprise that the subsequent celebrations fused a distinctly religious flavour with ostentatious national pride. A similar pattern was evident in Pakistan when, despite great pressure to not follow suit, the Nawaz Sharif government went ahead with 'tit for tat' tests and the news of the 'Islamic bomb' became public.

Several countries imposed severe economic and technology related sanctions on New Delhi, and Islamabad. But once a country has 'come out' with its nuclear weapons, there's little that onlookers can do, as is becoming obvious with the case of North Korea which has declared it possesses nuclear weapons. The 'nuclear club' wants to stay exclusive, but eventually has to accept obstinate gate crashers -- and even if they are undeclared possessors of nuclear weapons, like Israel.

Both India and Pakistan are important to the sanctions-imposers in one way or another -- economically or strategically -- and most of the sanctions were soon lifted first from India, and then from Pakistan. Washington has since dubbed India a 'responsible nuclear state' which it is trying to bring into the fold of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pakistan is not on that page yet, but Islamabad enjoys a special status as Washington's most trusted ally in the 'war on terror'.

As Condoleeza Rice recently put it, "Pakistan is not in the same place as India. I think everybody understands that. And one of the important contributions, or one of the important achievements I think of the administration is that we've been able to take Pakistan on its own terms and India on its own terms. We have programs and relationships with Pakistan that would not be appropriate with India, and vice versa."

Iran is another story. It is a member of the NPT, and insists that it is developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. The USA and some European Union members dispute this claim but have provided no evidence to the contrary. There is a proposal to have the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitor Iran's nuclear programme to ensure that it does not divert any material towards military use. Tehran seems to want an 'honourable' compromise with the West, as Praful Bidwai wrote after a recent visit there. He found a "strong domestic consensus for a civilian nuclear programme, not for developing nuclear weapons" ('Defusing the N-crisis: a report from Iran', The News, May 13, 2006).

Iranian Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi agrees. When questioned on the US-Iran nuclear stand-off during her current book tour in the USA to promote Iran Awakening, she said the solution to the issue was more democracy for Iran. "For example France has a nuclear bomb but the world is not scared of France because France is a democracy and people supervise what their government is doing. And if the government of Iran wants the world to buy their word and accept their claim they have to move towards an advanced democracy."

This is a valiant attempt to push for more democracy in Iran, but does advanced democracy really equal responsibility.

The world needs a new nuclear weapons control regime that doesn't discriminate between nations

By Ammara Durrani

Since August 1945, when nuclear weapons were used for the first and the only time in human history, the acquisition and spread of the world's most sophisticated, dangerous and therefore most expensive weapons have cut across Great Power politics, often defining its direction. Few, however, would have imagined back then that 21st century's nuclear politics will be played out in the heart of Asia, in three neighbouring countries.

In 1998, India and Pakistan raised new concerns about the future of the global nuclear test ban and non-proliferation regimes that had been put in place in the past four decades and seemed ostensibly effective. The world watched helplessly as the two states defied it in their deadly quest to seek entry into the exclusive Nuclear Weapons States (NWSs) club of five -- US, Russia, UK, France and China.

Both India and Pakistan have refused to enter the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that bans all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes; and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that seeks to control the spread of nuclear technology. Experts had warned at that time that allowing India and Pakistan to remain outside these international frameworks would send a wrong message to countries like Iran, Libya and North Korea -- all signatories to the NPT, but suspected of developing nuclear weapons.

The only non-proliferation 'success story' since then has been Libya's 2003 renouncing of its nuclear weapons programme. Earlier that year, however, North Korea announced its withdrawal from NPT. By the end of 2004, the unearthing of A. Q. Khan network of exporting nuclear weapons technology and know-how caused an international fright of 'nukes falling in the wrong hands'.

In 2005-06, Iran's nuclear standoff with the US, the US-India agreement on nuclear civil energy cooperation and surfacing of the Khan network show three unique aspects of nuclear politics that are influencing its future direction.

First, Iran is a prime example of nuclear aspirations of some countries which is anathema to the US, and which carries the potential of active conflict. Second, the US-India deal -- seen largely as an attempt by the US to contain China and to cut out Iran from the Asian energy complex -- reflects the changing nature of politics within the nuclear 'club'. Third, the A. Q. Khan case has made real the possibility that nuclear weapons may no longer remain in exclusive possession of governments; rather, their availability in the black market could easily find them eager buyers in the form of non-state actors.

Political consequences aside, these developments have also confirmed two important realities about our nuclear world: a) that the non-proliferation regime has failed to put a stop to the spread of nuclear weapons; and b) far from the cherished ideals of nuclear disarmament of the 1980s, WMDs are here to stay.

As of 2005, an estimated 29,000 nuclear weapons are said to be held by the seven declared nuclear countries -- US, UK, France, Russia, China, India and Pakistan. 96 per cent of these are in the possession of just two -- US and the Russian Federation. The two nuclear-armed-to-their-teeth Cold Warriors kept the world under a nuclear shadow for half of the last century.

Consequently, they signed six strategic nuclear arms control agreements (these include SALT I & II; START I, II & III; and SORT) from 1969-2002, as a result of which nearly 40 per cent of their nuclear arsenals have been dismantled.

According to Arms Control Association, Washington DC, the total US nuclear stockpile is currently estimated to consist of almost 11,000 warheads, including almost 7,000 deployed strategic warheads; more than 1,000 operational tactical nuclear warheads; and almost 3,000 reserve strategic and tactical warheads. The current Russian nuclear stockpile is estimated to include about 5,000 deployed strategic weapons, about 3,500 operational tactical nuclear weapons, and more than 11,000 stockpiled strategic and tactical warheads, for a total arsenal of about 19,500 nuclear warheads.

Under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) signed in 2001, the two countries are required to reduce their strategic nuclear warheads to a level of 1,700-2,200 by December 31, 2012. But the way to complete disarmament is long and fraught with stated limitations, uncertainty and reluctance on both sides owing to the current environment of insecurity. And as long as the US in particular hangs on to its WMDs, critics say, attempts at global non-proliferation and disarmament will remain ineffective because of the existing nuclear imbalances in the world.

In a commentary released last week and suggestively entitled 'NPT 'RIP'', East West Center (Honolulu) Fellow, Itty Abraham, wrote that in the wake of its standoff over a purported peaceful nuclear programme, if Iran walks away from the 35-year-old treaty citing no benefits, it actually won't be walking away from anything, because NPT is now "effectively dead".

Contacted by TNS through e-mail, Abraham says in principle NPT's first objective may have been preventing nuclear war, but in practice it is all about the US objective of preventing more countries from acquiring nuclear weapons, thus devaluing its existing weapons, and making it more likely that a country other than the US will be the next to use weapons for war.

"[NPT] did nothing for global disarmament; it opened doors to cheating; and it was unequal from the outset," he tells TNS. It continued to acknowledge the power of nuclear weapons by creating a separate category of countries -- a 'club' which only made breaking in more valuable from a prestige standpoint. "In other words," he says, "the NPT itself is now a reason why countries go nuclear."

Zia Mian of the Program on Science and Global Security at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, also lists concerns about the effectiveness of NPT in response to questions from TNS. "It is not clear whether it is NPT or the non-proliferation regime that is holding back the vast majority of countries from rushing out to make, buy, or steal nuclear weapons or nuclear capabilities," he says. "But we should not forget that the eight states with nuclear weapons -- and those with covert nuclear programmes are a small minority. The overwhelming majority of states does not have nuclear weapons and there is no reason to assume they want them."

Rather, Mian adds, since 1946 "they have been supporting and voting at the UN for steps to abolish all nuclear weapons". Last December at the UN, for instance, 166 countries voted for a renewed commitment towards 'total elimination' of nuclear weapons. The US and India were the only two countries to vote against it.

Indeed, the US-India deal has raised new questions on the role played in proliferation by countries already possessing nuclear weapons. Haider Nizamani of Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, notes with satisfaction that the NPT is still abided by 'overwhelming majority' of countries when it comes to horizontal proliferation. "However," he tells TNS in an email message, "the treaty has failed to deliver on putting an end to vertical proliferation, which is essential for disarmament."

This vertical proliferation carries the dangers of being exploited by nuclear powers in pursuit of their interests, especially in Asia. Noting that India and Pakistan have become even more armed, powerful and unaccountable after the 1998 nuclear tests, Zia Mian says the US and China will try and use the two South Asian rivals as "sites for contest for power" in Asia.

"They will find eager supporters in economic and military elites in both India and Pakistan," he says. "This mad pursuit finds no opposition in the mainstream political parties in either India or Pakistan. It will be a hard road to build an anti-nuclear sensibility in such circumstances."

Nizamani agrees the weapons are here to stay for a while. "Given its growing market size, the Western powers will find ways to team up with India in the field of 'civilian' nuclear area, but the process will be complicated," he says.

In the middle of this nuclear power politics, the recent US-India deal, wrote Abraham in his commentary last week, "drove the final nail in the coffin of a treaty that was flawed from the outset and reeling from recent violations: If the spread and possession of nuclear weapons is the primary threat to the international system, and the presence of countries like India, Israel and Pakistan outside the treaty is a significant problem, then the lesson of the Indo-US agreement is that there is no alternative to starting again."

"NPT's death," he wrote, "can actually give birth to a new non-proliferation treaty that is 'truly universal', exempts no one and applies the same conditions to all". Separately Abraham tells TNS: "A new nuclear regime, which does not make exceptions, and which sets out general disarmament as its prime objective, would be in our interest."

Deterrence is an illusion that has occupied the world for the last many decades and as yet there are no signs of an end to this convention

By Muhammad Badar Alam

The world was changed in 1992 as Soviet Union disintegrated. In 1998, it went back to the way it was -- at least in South Asia. In May that year, Pakistan and India conducted nuclear tests, citing a doctrine which many believed had lost relevance amid the ruins of the Soviet-American rivalry. Between Pokhran early that month in India and Chaghai couple of weeks later in Pakistan, nuclear deterrence was resurrected from its American ashes with an ideological vigour only South Asians could have displayed in a world fast becoming devoid of innovative ideas to manage its affairs, especially the military and nuclear ones.

Even when the Soviet Union existed -- that is, during the Carter and Reagan presidencies in the United States -- nuclear deterrence was being rendered ineffective by war strategies that could win nuclear wars or offer invincible defences against a nuclear attack, instead of attempting to avert its likelihood. The doctrine of nuclear deterrence was being buried by its own inventors and at the same place where it first came into being.

Destruction was the operative world in the international nuclear parlance much before the idea of deterrence was moulded into a theory by the then US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as late as 1960s. In fact, even McNamara's idea of deterrence rested on destruction. This is how it went: Because the nuclear arsenals of both the United States and the Soviet Union had reached such a level of sophistication that none of them could survive after attacking the other, they would do well by not fighting and keeping their nuclear arsenal under tight control and command tabs. Before this Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), that is -- when the Soviets did not have nuclear weapons but the Americans had -- the idea was 'assured destruction' if and when they dared attacked the United States or its Western European allies. The nuclearisation of the Soviet Union in 1949 ensured that madness to destroy the other was not one sided. This was also the start of the immaculate conception called 'nuclear deterrence'.

It was immaculate because only one of the two countries -- the United States -- conceived it. As a Western construct built and fine-tuned in Washington's policy and security circles, nuclear deterrence never guaranteed that the ever-increasing ability of the two superpowers to annihilate each other would check them from confronting each other. In Indochina and in Afghanistan they came ever so close to engaging each other that if they had decided to do so they would have done it despite their respective stockpiles of sophisticated nuclear arsenals. "Recent reassessment of the Cuban missile crisis show that the superpowers came much closer to nuclear war than it was once thought, and that nuclear war was avoided less because of deterrence stability than because of sheer luck, or as General Butler puts it, 'only by the grace of God,'" is how Mario E Carranza, an American political scientist, puts it while writing about the nuclearisation of South Asia.

Also, once the two sides had established a credible deterrence, if one ever existed, by achieving a certain technological level in their weapon systems they could have decided to invest no more in them. But they kept building ever more sophisticated nukes fearing getting outdone by the other side and thus putting the concept of deterrence upside down in their search for a technological upper hand which ensured that they had something which the other did not. That a deterrence, which existed more in the breach of the parity it rested on than on its observance, should be credited with avoiding a global war is too much to rest on a single idea. "It was concern for the growing instability of nuclear deterrence to the point where it might break down that led the US and USSR to agree in 1972 to place limits on defensive missile forces in the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. In this treaty each side agreed to limit its defensive forces to no more than two sites of 100 interceptors each. These sites could not provide protection to the entire country," says a 2001 paper by David Krieger, president of the US-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Moreover, nuclear deterrence presumes that the parties involved in it are thinking rationally about the pros and cons of a possible conflict between them and there exists sufficiently reliable information about each other's activities. It goes without saying that not every decision taken during the Cold War was taken after level-headed rational deliberations, otherwise there would have been no invasions of Vietnam and Afghanistan. Also the Cold War was all about secrecy, about an iron curtain that separated the two sides and disallowed information from flowing across to the other side.

Now that Cold War is no more, who the American nuclear deterrence is against? Is it against disparate individuals and groups scattered all over the globe and bent upon destroying the United States? Is it aimed at rogue states trying to confront the sole superpower of the world? Is it against possible threats from countries like China and Russia? The "In place of a threat posed by an adversary commanding superior conventional forces, the United States now faces the prospect of multiple potential opponents with variable motives, shifting sources of conflict, and evolving alliance relationships," writes Daniel Gouré, vice-president of American think tank, Lexington Institute, in an article entitled 'Nuclear Deterrence, Then and Now'. "These new realities dictate a more nuanced role for nuclear weapons, both in terms of the capabilities we pursue and the scenarios governing their use, even as we retain an unmistakably robust, diversified, balanced, and flexible nuclear force structure," he writes.

Ironically as the first and once the foremost proponent of nuclear deterrence moves away from it, governments in South Asia appear infatuated with the idea of using a nuclear deterrence to resolve their regional conflict. "The nuclear weapon is not an offensive weapon. It is a weapon of self-defence. It is the kind of weapon that helps in preserving the peace. If in the days of the Cold War there was no use of force, it was because of the balance of terror." This was then Indian prime minister Vajpayee's defence of India's nuclear tests as he spoke in the parliament in 1999. Pakistan justified its own tests as an attempt to neutralise India's advantage in conventional weapons and create a 'credible minimum deterrence' against a likely attack by its bigger neighbour.

Have the two countries achieved their respective aims? First from an Indian perspective, "nuclear tests favored Pakistan, since India lost the advantage of more or less permanent conventional military superiority," writes Mario E Carranza. At the same time, he notes, "Pakistani test explosions have not eliminated India's inherent strategic superiority, since in any nuclear balance that develops in South Asia, India will be significantly more powerful than Pakistan by a factor of at least three or four in numbers of warheads and bombs. This inequality will be magnified by Pakistan's lack of strategic depth, which compels it to develop ballistic missile technology to counter the vulnerability of its air force to Indian conventional counter-force attacks. Yet to establish its nuclear superiority India will have to fully develop a sizeable nuclear force at the risk of becoming economically bankrupt, like the former Soviet Union."

Mario explains why the nuclear deterrent has never worked in a South Asian context. "Optimists point to the peaceful outcome of two previous crises as evidence that even non-weaponized deterrence works. India's 'Brasstacks' exercises in 1987 and escalating problems in Kashmir in 1990 both resulted in crises that could have led to war. Optimists cite the fact that war did not develop, in contrast to the several wars fought before India and Pakistan had nuclear capabilities, as proof of their position. Pessimists dispute this interpretation of the crises. They have found evidence that the Brasstacks crisis of 1987 had the potential to escalate to a nuclear confrontation, while the Kashmir crisis of May 1990 had a direct nuclear dimension." War around the peaks in Kargil immediately after the two countries had gone nuclear is yet another proof of the inability of the nuclear deterrence to check India and Pakistan from going to war.

In sum, nuclear deterrence has at best a very slim chance of succeeding in South Asia after failing in the Cold War era and becoming irrelevant under the new and changed global realities. What's the alternative then? "The democratic campaign against nuclear weaponisation in India must put up as a key demand on the Government of India the rejection of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence," writes Indian analyst T Jayaraman in article entitled 'Deterrence and Other Myths'. He calls for India to "return to the path of an active advocacy of global nuclear disarmament" as it had done previously. Should Pakistan be far behind, where India leads?