PURPOSE:

This lesson provides a quick look at domestic concerns in India and Pakistan and how it relates to this fragile regions nuclear weapons concern. The assigned readings focus on two regional adversaries and de facto nuclear powers, India and Pakistan, and how their nuclear programs give dimension to the strategic environment.

LESSON OUTLINE:

Thesis: The Asian Subcontinent is home to over 1.3 billion people, and increasing. The incredibly daunting issues of population growth, economic modernization, and social fragmentation combine with the issue of nuclear proliferation to give the strategic environment a character unique to the region.

Main Point I: India and Pakistan face tremendous social, political, and economic problems, but their security concerns and regional rivalry over issues like the Kashmir region complicate efforts to deal with these larger issues.

a. Consider the current Indian attitude towards security concerns and the nuclear question in light of current internal politics.

India faces serious social, economic and political problems

• Security concerns:
  • Growing economic and military threat/influence of China
  • Ongoing conflict with Pakistan as nuclear rival, Muslim-Hindu ideology, Kashmir conflict
  • Nuclear weapons provide measure of stability; use "vague" stand on use for deterrence
  • India-Pakistan Past Wars; Continued Distrust
  • Both nations Refuse to Sign Non Proliferation Treaty
• Implemented relatively successful economic liberalization program to avert economic collapse
• Hindu fundamentalists and "hawks" push for tougher, self-sufficient India

b. Consider the current Pakistani attitude towards security concerns and the nuclear question in light of current internal politics.

• Pakistan confronts host of domestic problems as well
• Secessionist movements, Islamic fundamentalism, economic recession, rising debt, falling revenues, widening gap between rich and poor, and widespread corruption
• Cold War Exists Between India & Pakistan
  • India & Pakistan both have Nuclear Capability to Enhance their Security & Deter the Other
  • India's Conventional Forces are Superior
  • India-Pakistan Past Wars; Continued Distrust
  • Pakistan Growing Relationship with China; tied to Islam
  • Pakistan's Support for Kashmir Insurgency
  • Indian SR Missiles along the Pakistani Border
• Both nations Refuse to Sign Non Proliferation Treaty
• The nuclear question will undoubtedly persist as a contentious issue in India's/Pakistan's relations with many of the advanced industrial states and the US in particular.

Main Point II: The regional rivalry between Pakistan and India has dominated the strategic environment of the region.

a. The pursuit of nuclear weapons by India and Pakistan has complicated the rivalry.

• Both Nations Rely on Nukes to Deter the Other
• Pakistan's Conventional Weaknesses May Prompt Early Use of Nukes in War

b. The nuclear policies of both India and Pakistan have caused problems with the greater international community.

• US non-proliferation efforts: froze Pakistan military arms support
• Any Nuclear Attack May Bring China into Conflict
• Risk of Inadvertent Nuclear Detonation or Nukes Falling into Hands of Terrorists
• Concerns Over the Strategic Impact of Nuclear Capable Ballistic Missiles
• Both nations Refuse to Sign Non Proliferation Treaty

LESSON OBJECTIVES:

524.1 Understand how the issue of nuclear proliferation interacts with state, regional and international forces to affect the strategic environment of South Asia.

524.11 Compare how the Asian view of nuclear proliferation issues differs from that of the West (particularly the United States).

India/Pakistan:

- India and Pakistan are in their own "Cold War", even if world cold war is over

- Nuclear weapons raise national power and regional position. For India and Pakistan, as for all nuclear powers, maintaining the nuclear option is the ultimate insurance policy in an unpredictable international system

- Paksistan and India not in arms race or trying to distribute nuclear technology

US:

- Stop all proliferation

- Maintain or reduce number of existing nuclear states

- Prevent threats to US regional interests and national security

- Prevent threats to regional/international stability from aggressor states/terrorists with nukes

524.12 Recognize the real nuclear dangers associated with some countries having nuclear weapons.

- May throw off regional power balance

- May cause other neighbors to pursue nuclear arms development

- Tough to control use, strategy, safety in unstable developing countries

- Greater access by terrorists

- May draw confrontation from other nuclear power; wider conflict

READING RATIONALE:

The articles by Ganguly and Rashid examine the internal politics of Indian and Pakistan and how this influences their attitude towards each other, their many internal problems, and the nuclear question.

India:

• THE POST-COLD WAR THAW
  • With the collapse of the Soviet empire and the subsequent end of the Indo-Soviet security and arms transfer relationship, India moved to repair its relations with the US and China.
  • Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government could imperil the economic liberalization program, and would certainly damage relations with Pakistan and the Arab world. The BJP has promoted a brand of xenophobic nationalism with two important components: strong anti-Muslim (and therefore anti-Pakistani) rhetoric, and a militaristic, belligerent international image.
• Liberalization and Its Discontents
  • push toward economic liberalization may well become its most important liability as elections approach.
  • The BJP's strategy of casting aspersions on economic liberalization notwithstanding, India cannot afford to retreat from liberalization
• THE KASHMIR QUESTION
  • Insurgency result of rapid political mobilization and institutional decay. New Delhi misread Kashmiri demands for greater autonomy and federalism as incipient secessionism and systematically tampered with democratic process in the state. With all avenues of legitimate political dissent blocked, Kashmiris turned to violence. And once the rebellion ensued, India's longtime adversary, Pakistan, stepped in to provide sanctuaries, training, organization, and weaponry to the insurgents.
  • the government has yet to hold concerted, organized, and extensive negotiations with the insurgents
• And the Nuclear Question
  • India is, along with Israel and Pakistan, one of the three countries believed to have nuclear weapons outside the NPT framework. It has come under considerable pressure from the US and other major powers, such as Japan and Germany, to forswear the nuclear weapons option
  • Given the degree of popular support that exists within India for maintaining the status quo, it is doubtful that there will be significant shifts in Indian nuclear policy in the foreseeable future.

Pakistan: the rift between rich and poor is widening, a trend that in turn fuels fundamentalist fervor. The debate over whether the state should be secular or Islamic has only intensified in the past decade

• THE TENUOUS TROIKA
  • Since 1988, power has been divided among the president, the prime minister, and the military. Tensions between the three, however, have led to 8 changes of government and three elections. No elected leader has ever completed a full term in office.
  • Much of Pakistan's intransigence stems from a legacy of rule by a small coterie of perhaps 300 families. Through blood ties, marriage, and business they have dominated the military, the bureaucracy, and the still largely feudal political elite
  • Since 1993 the country has undergone the deepest economic recession in its history, with high unemployment and inflation (officially set at 13 percent but independent economists and bankers put it at over 25 percent). The economy grew only 4.7 percent between 1994 and 1995, compared to a thirty-year average of 6 percent.
• Hostage to Anarchy
  • Bhutto's promises to reform the judiciary, the bureaucracy, and the police-an institutional framework that has survived from the British Raj-have not materialized. Instead, she has further politicized these institutions by making arbitrary appointments based on favoritism and loyalty.
  • By posing as a political alternative to the feudal elite, Islamic fundamentalists have become a major factor in destabilizing both the military and the political system
• Islam Rising
  • Western diplomats admit that Pakistan is high on the list of those countries where an Islamic movement and resulting anti-Americanism is possible in the near future unless the country's ruling elite mends its ways. As in other parts of the Muslim world, Pakistan's Islamic movement is being driven more by poor social conditions and a break down of law and order than by pure ideology
• The Wages of War
  • Islamic fundamentalism, smuggling, and the breakdown of law and order in the NWFP and Baluchistan province are part of the backlash from the fifteen-year civil war in Afghanistan
  • Government's attempts to curb fundamentalism and terrorism halfhearted, intermittent, and controversial.
  • Western strategic concerns about fundamentalism in Pakistan center on the fact it is already the epicenter of three civil wars raging around it-in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Indian Kashmir. All three wars involve the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and have been clandestinely fueled by Pakistan's Islamic parties and sometimes by the army's Interservices Intelligence.
• Revitalizing Relations
  • The Bhutto government scored a major success by improving relations with Washington. When Bhutto became prime minister in 1993, US-Pakistan relations were at rock bottom because of the cutoff of all US aid to Pakistan in 1990 after the US determined that Pakistan possessed a "nuclear explosive device
  • American and Pakistani analysts warn that renewed US support is not sufficient to keep Bhutto in power. She must tackle the problems at home
• The Military Factor
  • Pakistan's right-wing politicians and some sections of public increasingly looking to the military for solutions.
  • Fears about a possible Indian nuclear test or the deployment of India's short-range Prithvi missiles on the Pakistan border have led to an unprecedented growth in tension with Pakistan's main rival. If India tests a nuclear device, Pakistan will quickly follow suit, further escalating arms race in region and destabilizing the global effort to limit nuclear weapons.
• Forecasting Forbearance
  • Pakistan's survival into next century depends on a greater devolution of political and economic power from the center to the provinces and cities; the pull of ethnic and sectarian conflict cannot be resolved unless this happens.
  • The election commission should also he empowered to ensure that the government does not pressure the bureaucracy to favor its candidates

The article by Devin Hagerty examines the nuclear equation in the subcontinent and the complicated questions this potential proliferation raises.

• OPACITY WITHOUT APOLOGY
  • Indian and Pakistani leaders stridently deny their countries are nuclear weapons states, but do admit they can produce nuclear weapons. Each nation derives deterrent security from this "opaque" nuclear posture
  • neither country feels secure enough to reverse its nuclear course. For India and Pakistan, maintaining the nuclear option is the ultimate insurance policy in an unpredictable international system
  • New Delhi and Islamabad have refused to sign the NPT
• Between Deterrence and Disaster
  • per most analysts in the United States: the three Indo-Pakistani wars, the festering Kashmir conflict, and India's and Pakistan's small, technologically unsophisticated nuclear weapon capabilities are a recipe for nuclear disaster on the subcontinent
  • This "first strike uncertainty" bolsters mutual deterrence
  • the main nuclear danger in South Asia today-involves nuclear accidents and the unauthorized use of nuclear weapons or material, perhaps by terrorists
  • deploying reasonably accurate invulnerable missiles would increase the likelihood of India and Pakistan adopting preemptive nuclear doctrines in the future
• The United States: Tactics But No Strategy
  • Pressler Amendment: Non-proliferation law lifted on Pakistan during Afgan-Soviet war then reinstated at war's end. F-16 sale situation - Pakistan paid and didn't receive aircraft. Pressler waiver (Brown Ammendment) in 1994 opens door to US arms support but may create false hopes in Pakistan of an ongoing military supply relationship with the United States. Brown Amendment's main effect may be to inhibit Indian concessions on nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation
• Outlining an American Role
  • Issues America must consider:
    • First, India and Pakistan are not nuclear outlaws.
    • Second, India and Pakistan derive deterrent security from their nuclear capabilities, and are as unlikely to give them up as were Washington and Moscow at the height of the Cold War.
    • Third, American policymakers should recognize and help to build on the arms control measures that have already evolved between India and Pakistan
  • Washington's overall goal should be to help stabilize the subcontinent's nuclear status quo by maintaining regional nuclear deterrence and preventing nuclear accidents and unauthorized nuclear use
  • Finally, American policymakers should work to scrap the Pressler Amendment, a Cold War anachronism

Ashley Tellis' article provides interesting analysis on role nuclear weapons might play in easing each nations security concerns and helping to militarily stabilize region.

• India sought to transform a multicultural empire into a unified secular state governed by liberal principles, while Pakistan attempted to consolidate linguistically and ethnically disparate groups into a single state based on a common religion, Islam.
• disappearance of U.S.-Soviet competition, which both India and Pakistan exploited.
• Both states have begun to decontrol the internal economy and to increase linkages with the global economy in the hope of securing both capital and high technology for civilian and military purposes
• Toward that end, India has sought to position itself as a buffer against rising Islamic "fundamentalism;" a constraint on Chinese hegemonic aspirations; a source of support toward those of America's Southeast Asian allies potentially threatened by China; and a satiated "status quo" power that seeks to defuse the global problems of nuclear addiction and proliferation, terrorism, and diffusion of weapons of mass destruction.
• It (Pakistan) still seeks the best of both worlds-continued American assistance in maintaining robust conventional capabilities while pursuing its nuclear option-even though this is impossible to obtain
• First, the use of nuclear weapons would provide increased incentives for expanded Chinese involvement in South Asia, possibly including a Chinese military intervention of some kind or another. Further, it would make U.S. allies in Southwest and Southeast Asia more insecure, simultaneously providing additional incentives to Iran and the Central Asian republics to nuclearize. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it would break the taboo against nuclear use and encourage other states to acquire, deploy, and contemplate using the only class of weapons that could threaten U.S. security on a large scale