India and Pakistan in nuclear dead
heat By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - A new assessment by a Washington
think-tank released on Monday claiming that Pakistan's
nuclear-weapons arsenal "now appears large enough to rival that
of India" has revived the controversies and debates
surrounding India's nuclear policy and its objectives.
In a paper on the world's fissile-material stocks,
David Albright and Kimberly Kramer of the Institute
for Science and International Security (ISIS) estimate
that Pakistan now has between 55 and 90 nuclear weapons
compared with 55 and 110 in India. Israel and North Korea,
listed among other current de facto weapons states, have
between 110 and 190 weapons and between two and nine weapons
respectively.
ISIS's
estimates, published in the latest issue of
the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, are based on
the production of fissile material in "nuclear" countries. India,
whose nuclear-weapons program is mostly plutonium-based,
is estimated to have between 300 and 470
kilograms of plutonium stocks. Having clearly ramped
up its plutonium production, Pakistan is believed to
have been producing more plutonium per year than India
for several years, and now has between 20kg and 60kg
of plutonium. But Pakistan, whose weapons program
is mostly uranium-based, has between 1,200kg and
1,250kg of highly enriched uranium. Though a
smaller arsenal does not matter much in the case of
nuclear deterrence, Pakistan, being in possession of more
atomic bombs, will make it that much more difficult for
India to negotiate a fissile-materials cutoff treaty.
To add to India's
dismay, Pakistan test-fired an intermediate-range, nuclear-capable
ballistic missile on Tuesday as part of its efforts to
boost defenses against India, in spite of recent peace talks.
The test came just ahead of two days of talks between
Pakistani and Indian border officials in the Indian city
of Chandigarh, their second meeting this year since
regular contacts were revived to discuss frontier
issues.
The Pakistani military said
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz witnessed the test of
the surface-to-surface Hatf V, a type of Ghauri missile
with a range of 1,500 kilometers - capable of hitting
most Indian cities and carrying a nuclear payload of
900kg. It said the test had been successful.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan conducts regular missile
tests. The last time it test-fired a similar missile was
on June 4. India did not immediately comment on the
firing of the Pakistani missile this week, but both
countries follow a policy of informing each other in
advance of such tests.
The ISIS assessment
seems to confirm a similar presentation made recently
in Washington by well-known Pakistani physicist
and anti-nuclear peace activist Pervez Hoodbhoy. He
claimed that Pakistan is producing and stocking up
weapons-grade nuclear material "as fast as the centrifuges would
operate". India, too, is producing bombs as fast as it
was humanly possible, he said. Albright and Kramer have
also concluded that "nuclear military stocks in India,
Pakistan and Israel are continuing to grow".
Pakistan was already known to have been moving
fervently to outmatch India's nuclear weapons and
missile capacity. Today it has five functional ballistic
missiles, while India has a single Prithvi battlefield
ballistic missile. Pakistan also has a defined nuclear
command authority, while India is still groping to
define its slogan of "minimum nuclear deterrence".
The question India must now answer is whether it
should be satisfied with its conventional military
superiority and allow Pakistan to maintain the parity it
has achieved in the nuclear field or instead raise its
nuclear and missile capacity citing a threat from China
as the major justification. (India had claimed it was
trying to counter the Chinese threat when it tested its
weapons in May 1998.)
But several strategic
analysts, particularly those with a military background,
dispute the ISIS assessment and say that India has not
been building bombs since the 1998 tests and has been
practicing a moratorium not only on testing weapons, but
also on building them, though they are not happy with
the situation. Indeed, in their view, New Delhi allowed
itself to be persuaded by the US to practice "strategic
restraint", though under another name, "defense
posture".
These analysts go to the extent of
saying that under the previous administration of former
prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, India mortgaged its
national security interests vis-a-vis China to the US in
return for empty promises of the transfer of sensitive
dual-use technology. They think that the idea of
developing a "strategic partnership" between two
"natural allies" by virtue of both being democracies is
just a delusion. India needs to be far stronger
militarily and economically for it to start dreaming of
becoming a "strategic partner" of the US.
These US
promises, they say, simply cannot be realized. Under
the present circumstances, the United States cannot allow the
balance of power in South Asia to be disturbed. The US
cannot transfer to India any weapons technology that it
is not giving simultaneously to Pakistan, which was
recently granted major non-North Atlantic Treaty
Organization ally status and remains a front-line state
in Washington's "war on terror".
To buttress
their point, analysts cite a strong demand for "an
intense engagement of Pakistan" made in the bipartisan,
consensual and hence authoritative report of the
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the US,
commonly known as the 9-11 Report. It was compiled by
five senior congressional members from the Republican
and Democratic parties. The report has found that there
is a constant refrain among Pakistanis that the "United
States long treated them as allies of convenience".
Thus these senators strongly recommend that "as the
United States makes fresh commitments now, it should
make promises it is prepared to keep, for years to
come".
Analysts cite
another reason for their pessimism: the presence of
restrictive US laws. Certain US laws would block
any significant transfer of technology, even if
a future US administration were well disposed toward India and
wanted to change the present equation under a
set of different circumstances. These restrictive laws
can be changed, but for that to happen the situation
would have to be vastly different. A major country with
a billion-plus population, and a confirmed democracy
at that, India does not have the flexibility either to
obey or defy the US diktat in the way that, say, a small
and vulnerable country such as Pakistan under a military
dictatorship can.
One can cite in this context a
report making waves in strategic circles in New Delhi in
which Timesofindia.com claims to be in possession of
documents "detailing the unshakable grip of a million
American tentacles that have an all pervading grip on
Pakistan's present and future". According to the
newspaper, these documents reveal how the US has mapped
Pakistan's year-wise targets and details of various
schemes that would give the global superpower an
unhindered influence over Pakistan. "Put together, they
read like the British crown's annual plans for one of
its colonies from a bygone era," Timesofindia.com
comments.
The website claims that its
investigations reveal that the US has free run over
almost every aspect of Pakistan's national life,
including sensitive national records and data.The US is
said to have Pakistan wired up in a highly sophisticated
network of software systems, with direct access to
information, including that of everyone entering or
leaving Pakistan.
The Personal Identification Secure
Comparison Evaluation System (PISCES), an automated
border control system, is being implemented in 20
ports of immigration in Pakistan. According to the latest
information, all points of entry and exit in Pakistan
would have a PISCES system installed by December
31. Believed to have been developed by Virginia-based
consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton for the
US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) before
September 11, 2001, PISCES uses biometric details to
match facial images, fingerprints and biographical
descriptions with the CIA's data bank in the United States.
PISCES at Pakistani ports is believed to be linked to a
central server in the US through a high-speed network
where US officials monitor and analyze details of
passengers, comparing them with suspects' data.
Timesofindia.com claims
to be in possession of detailed US plans showing that
PISCES is being linked up to Pakistan's
internal national information, making the situation much more complex.
According to the mission performance plan set by the
US Embassy in Islamabad, the United States is currently
involved deeply in prodding and forcing Pakistani
authorities to develop national intelligence and criminal
databases that did not exist until 2001. Surprisingly, this database
is linked to the PISCES border-control system, which is in
the hands of US officials. Among the mission document
targets is an aim that by 2004 end the PISCES system
would be "fully operational and integrated with National
Crisis Management Cell's intelligence and investigative
database".
Only in 2005 will Pakistan
assume "responsibility for continued operation of
PISCES system". Until then, the US counter-terrorism
officials will have control over the sophisticated system that
not only records details of every person leaving or
entering Pakistan, but will also transmit these details to
the central servers of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the CIA back in the US. Timesofindia.com also
claims to have the mission-performance plan for 2004, prepared
about a year after September 11, 2001, that contains
details of the PISCES installation.
While Pakistan can on the one hand be servile enough, if
the price is right, to hand over the running of its
border security to a superpower, it can also defy the
same power's threats and ignore its blandishments and
go ahead with testing nuclear weapons under
watchful US satellites, and indeed sell nuclear technology
to enemies of the same superpower. Former Pakistani army
chief General Jahangir Karamat told his then US
interlocutor, an astonished deputy secretary of state
Strobe Talbott, in 1998: "Pakistan would look out for its
own defense." He had been apparently asked to do
something that would in his view compromise his
country's national interest without bringing in
sufficient dividends for the Pakistani security forces.
India
cannot afford either to defy or kowtow to the
US in the manner that Pakistan has. It can also not be a
full partner until it is strong enough to command US
respect. If it decides to let go of its US-dictated
"strategic restraint", if indeed it was practicing it in
the first place, it will have to cite a reason for that.
Now, officially, India has stopped citing China as a
nuclear threat, even though it feels that Beijing is
doing everything in its power to keep India boxed in as
a mere South Asian power at par with Pakistan. Even the
US, which was at one time thought to want to use India
as a counterpoint to China, has also started playing the
same game. The hyphenation is back, if indeed it had
ever gone away.
India is impatient to break out
of this paradigm. The relatively new Congress-led United
Progressive Alliance government is being advised by
strategic analysts not to compromise India's national
security in the same manner the previous government had
and balance its relations with the US, the implication
being that it should revive its nuclear program and
develop minimum deterrence vis-a-vis China rather than
merely competing with Pakistan. But New Delhi would also
not like to jeopardize the ongoing peace talks,
including negotiations for resolving territorial and
other disputes with both China and Pakistan. Not
everyone in the government, in any case, equates
national security with more nuclear bombs and missiles -
or for that matter conventional military hardware,
though that is the dominant trend.
It will be
interesting to watch how New Delhi reacts and which way
it turns. But the indications available from Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh's formulations in the past four
months of his governance suggest that India will, at
least for the moment, focus on setting its own house in
order while normalizing relations and developing better
trade ties with its neighbors.
Sultan
Shahin is a New Delhi-based writer.
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