The two gruesome attacks in Kashmir within the space
of 2 weeks have, once again, brought India and Pakistan to the brink of
full-scale war. It is with some trepidation that the term “brink” is used
here – by the time this article appears, it is quite possible that actual
war may start. Though India and Pakistan have fought wars in the past,
this one would be different, for it will be fought under a nuclear
shadow.
War is hugely destructive even in the absence of nuclear
weapons. South Asia has been witness to this more than once in the past.
But nuclear weapons immensely raise the level of destruction. The use of
just one nuclear bomb can kill hundreds of thousands of people, not to
mention the resulting disruption of society. Under such circumstances, war
between nuclear weapon states like India and Pakistan is, as the recent
statement by the Indian Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace
calling for a halt to the preparations for war puts it, not an “acceptable
option”. What has been happening in South Asia points even more
directly to the imprudence of depending on nuclear weapons for security
through the deterrence argument. Deterrence is a problematic concept at
best. But even if India and Pakistan were to meet the postulated
conditions for deterrence to work, the potential for large-scale war would
not vanish.
The standard model for deterrence talks about rational
and unitary actors weighing the devastating consequences of nuclear
weapons use and deciding not to go to war. Even accepting the patently
unrealistic descriptions of countries as single-minded objects (When was
the last time the PPP and the Muslim League, or the BJP and the Congress,
saw eye-to-eye on the full details of any issue?) the South Asian
situation is different because there are other players in the game.
This is borne out by the recent history of previous agreements
that the two governments have come to. It has usually been a case of one
step forward, two steps backward. After the nuclear tests and much muscle
flexing came the Lahore agreement where the two governments decided to
have limited transparency on their nuclear programmes and settle their
disputes peacefully. Shortly thereafter was the Kargil conflict, which
effectively buried the Lahore agreement. Similarly, there was the attempt
at Agra towards establishing better diplomatic relations but events
post-9/11 and the December 13 attack on the Indian Parliament brought
things back to the brink of war.
What is common to both of the
above-mentioned disruptions is that they were not the result of publicly
stated official Pakistani policy, but were carried out by militants. The
relationship of the militants to the Pakistani military, or whether
President Pervez Musharraf can indeed exert greater control over them, is
irrelevant to this argument. If the government controls the militants,
then for the attacks of December 13 or the more recent ones to have gone
forward represents the height of bravado and brinkmanship. Certainly not
the kind of behaviour that is indispensable for stable deterrence. If
there is no direct control, as the official claim goes, then the
operations of militant groups that carry out attacks of such magnitude
that they may well provoke an Indian counter-attack, possibly leading to
full-scale war, is proof that they are important enough players to affect
the calculations of India and Pakistan. There can be no stability as long
as they are in the picture.
In the context of deterrence the recent
report by Bruce Riedel, American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at
Blair House, is revealing. Riedel discloses that the US detected evidence
that “Pakistan were preparing their nuclear arsenals for possible
deployment.” This is disturbing in itself. But what is much more
disturbing is that during the meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
and President Bill Clinton, Sharif seemed “taken aback” when confronted
with this fact.
Though it is quite possible that these
preparations constituted mere posturing and only intended to attract
American attention, the fact that the Prime Minister of the country did
not know about plans for use is alarming. It is clearly extremely
dangerous if in a country possessing a nuclear arsenal, the leader loses
control over the actions of military, especially its nuclear armed
sections. One cannot be completely confident of President Musharraf’s
control over the entire army either, especially given his professed lack
of control in the border areas in the Kashmir region.
Riedel’s
report also demonstrates something else that goes in the face of the
often-parroted claim that nuclear weapons protected Pakistan and kept the
war from escalating. What comes through in the report is the sense that
India, and Prime Minister Vajpayee, did not stop the war fearing Pakistani
nuclear weapons. It was reassurance from the US that Prime Minister Sharif
would behave himself and order Pakistani troops back from the Line of
Control that set the conditions for the cease-fire.
There are
multiple lessons to be learnt here. First, that nuclear weapons are not to
be relied on to keep the peace. Instead they offer the threat that on top
of the devastation from war would be that of nuclear destruction. The
second is that the ongoing militancy is extremely dangerous and
detrimental to both countries, bleeding them slowly to death. Nuclear
weapons add to this problem by allowing political leaders to assume that
their nuclear arsenals provide a cover that would prevent the conflict
from escalating. Such an assumption is unwarranted; by increasing the
number of small-scale conflicts, nuclear weapons only amplify the
probability of large-scale conflict.
Finally, it underscores the
importance of genuine and honest negotiations towards solving the problems
between the two countries politically, getting rid of nuclear weapons in
the region and establishing a lasting peace. But such negotiations cannot
be carried out with any confidence unless actors on both sides can be made
to see the futility of holding on to extreme positions which has set the
action-reaction dynamics in the region.
