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Pakistan leaves arms calling
card
By Kaushik Kapisthalam
Non-proliferation experts and anti-nuclear
activists have long highlighted South Asia as a
"hot" theater insofar as a potential nuclear war
is concerned. With both India and Pakistan armed
with nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them,
and the added threat of a simmering Kashmir
dispute between the two countries, it is no
surprise that world leaders such as former US
president Bill Clinton have referred to the region
as a "nuclear flashpoint".
Think-tanks in the United
States, both private and government-funded, have
long been a place for Indian and Pakistani retired
officials, as well as Western experts on South
Asia, to raise issues and discuss potential
solutions, or at least a modus vivendi for
doing so. Some known discussion centers include
the Stimson Center in Washington, Sandia Labs in
New Mexico and the Center for Contemporary
Conflict in Monterey, California. However, it is
interesting to note that within the past few
months, many Pakistani military officials and
government-affiliated specialists have made a
series of public and private presentations and
studies highlighting the potential nuclear dangers
in South Asia. The sequence and timing of these
presentations may suggest a coordinated approach
by Pakistani strategists to win over American
opinion makers.
In this context, a senior Pakistani
military official made a presentation to a
Washington-based think-tank on this very topic a few
days ago. The audience included some influential
US government officials and prominent academics.
The study by the official, who wished to
remain anonymous, in essence made a case that
there is no scenario in South Asia where a
conventional war would not turn nuclear.
To
understand the possible reasons behind the sudden
and seemingly coordinated Pakistani effort to
raise the nuclear bogey in the United States, one
must consider past Pakistani nuclear postures and
their evolution, and set them against recent
developments in the subcontinent.
Pakistan's thresholds
While
India has a stated policy of not using nuclear
weapons first, Pakistan has deliberately
maintained an opaque nuclear posture for a long
time, which in essence seeks to keep India off
balance and confused with regard to when and
under what conditions Pakistan might choose to use
nuclear weapons.
In
January 2002, General Khalid Kidwai, the head of
the Pakistani army's Strategic Plans
Division, which oversees nuclear-weapons development
and deployment, gave an interview to
Paolo Cotta-Ramusino and Maurizio Martellini of
the Landau Network, an Italian arms-control
organization. It has since then become apparent
that the Pakistani establishment felt the need to
clarify its position given the concern expressed
in Western circles since September 11, 2001, about
the safety of Pakistan's nuclear estate, and used
the Landau interview for that purpose.
Among other things, Kidwai gave the
possible conditions under which Pakistan could use
nuclear weapons against an adversary. Stating that
Pakistan would use atomic weapons only "if the
very existence of Pakistan as a state is at
stake", Kidwai proceeded to give details.
Pakistan's nuclear weapons are aimed
solely at India. In case that deterrence fails,
they will be used if:
India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large
part of its territory (space threshold).
India destroys a large part either of its
land or air forces (military threshold).
India proceeds to the economic strangling of
Pakistan (economic strangling).
India pushes Pakistan into political
destabilization or creates a large-scale
internal subversion in Pakistan (domestic
destabilization). The context in
which Kidwai made these proclamations was the 2002
border crisis with India. After the December 13,
2001, attack on India's parliament by militant
groups that the Pakistani government later accepted
as originating from Pakistan, India started a
military mobilization titled "Operation Parakram"
(Operation Valor).
Studies
hence have stated that during Parakram, India
was considering "hot pursuit" of militant groups
into Pakistani territory, thereby raising the prospect
of at least temporarily capturing
territory. Indian officials also spoke of surgical air
strikes on jihadi training camps
in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and Pakistan. There was even talk
of an Indian naval blockade of Karachi,
Pakistan's only functioning port, thereby threatening
an economic chokepoint. It is clear that all of the
above options bore a significant risk of breaching
the explicitly stated Pakistani nuclear "red
lines".
Cold start
India ended
Operation Parakram in 2003 soon after the assembly
elections in Jammu and Kashmir. However, the
Indian buildup and the Pakistani reaction showed
the Indian brain trust that similar maneuvers in
the future were only likely to yield diminishing
results.
In the 1990s, Pakistan's
army created a strong centralized corps of reserves
for its formations in the critical semi-desert
and desert sectors in southern Punjab and
Sindh provinces, and rapidly equipped them with
assets needed for mechanized capability. These
reserve formations are dual-capable, meaning they can
be used for offensive as well as defensive
purposes, and some analyses say that they even give
Pakistan an edge at the theater level. When one adds
the fact that Pakistan has smaller lines
of communication and can mobilize its formations
in less than 96 hours, as opposed to 10 days
for India, it was clear that Indian strategists had
to think of an alternative military doctrine that
was both credible and did not cross the nuclear
threshold.
To this end, Indian military
circles recently revealed a new doctrine, "Cold
Start". According to knowledgeable Indian observers,
Cold Start reorients the Indian focus away
from attrition-based operations, and instead talks
about "maneuver-based warfare". In other words,
Cold Start in essence envisages the use of
all service arms to launch punitive strikes,
rather than looking to gain the opponent's
territory or threatening their national survival,
with the aim of avoiding nuclear escalation.
The Pakistani study was especially
scathing on Cold Start. The unnamed Pakistani
official stated that for Pakistan, Cold Start
"will be a full-scale war, and Pakistan will
respond with full resources, and if we fail to
contain the Indians, the nuclear factor will
definitely come in".
The conventional
'imbalance'
It can be discerned that
the various Pakistani studies mentioned above have
a common theme of highlighting a
dangerous conventional-weapons "imbalance" that Pakistan
faces vis-a-vis India. Retired Pakistani army
Brigadier Feroz Hassan Khan recently told the US
publication Defense News that the Pentagon and
others should "realize that Pakistan's main threat
remains India", adding that "the immediate problem
is the imbalance, particularly in the air force".
Khan also wrote an essay in a widely circulated
book by the Stimson Center highlighting the
"structural imbalances" in South Asia and its
effect on nuclear "escalation control".
Retired Pakistani air force Commodore Tariq
Mahmud Ashraf recently made a presentation titled
"Air Power Imbalance and Strategic Instability in
South Asia" to the US Naval Postgraduate School,
highlighting the supposed Pakistani inferiority in
terms of aviation assets. Ashraf followed up with
a paper at the US Army's Combined Arms Center at
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, on the need for Pakistan to
respond to Cold Start by waking up from a
"doctrinal slumber".
Another well-circulated study is by retired Pakistani
army Major-General Mahmud Ali Durrani, titled
"Pakistan's Strategic Thinking and the Role of
Nuclear Weapons". Durrani wrote this study for the
US government-affiliated Sandia National Labs in
New Mexico and presented it in Washington as well.
While the primary aim of this study was to assuage US
concerns about Pakistan's nuclear assets, Durrani
left subtle hints about the need to lower Pakistan's
nuclear threshold. The underlying thread
in all these studies is to support the Pakistani
government's position that the United States should
supply major weapons to Pakistan, similar to the
1980s.
Kargil echoes
Some experts point out that
instead of maintaining stability, major weapons
sales could encourage Pakistan to try another
military operation like the one in the Kargil area of Kashmir in 1999.
A former State Department official dealing
with South Asia, Ambassador Teresita Schaffer, told
the US Senate that it would be inadvisable to
sell major weapons such as F-16s to Pakistan for this
very reason.
As if to highlight the
concern that Pakistan still does not rule out a
military maneuver in Kashmir, the unnamed
Pakistani study, while highlighting potential
Indian attacks on Pakistan, actually brushed aside
Pakistan's aggression in Kargil by stating that
the war in 1999 was a continuation of the
"skirmishes" in the Siachen Glacier region. It
must be noted that while as many as 3,000
Pakistani soldiers were killed in Kargil, Pakistan
still does not officially accept its role in the
operation.
While Cold Start has become the
latest bogey for Pakistan to raise with the US, it
is worth noting that even Pakistani experts have
called into question the idea that Cold Start
poses a major threat to Pakistan. For instance, to
achieve success in a Cold Start-like operation,
India would have to improve rapidly its military
command and control, communications, computers and
intelligence (C4I), merge all its operational
assets into a "network-centric warfare" ambit and
gain lethal precision-guided strike capabilities,
both in the air and on the ground (see Asia Times
Online, India
makes a play for F-16 fighters
, February 9).
Retired Pakistani Brigadier Shaukat Qadir
openly questioned whether the Indian army had the
assets to achieve this and whether the Indian
political leadership had the will to take the
risk. Many Indian experts have also raised
questions about the current Indian capability in
the context of Cold Start. It is therefore
reasonable to wonder whether Pakistan faces an
imminent threat because of Cold Start.
Arms bonanza
It appears that
the well-coordinated Pakistani studies are aimed
at creating a sense of acceptance in US
strategic circles that Pakistan needs to be given
advanced weapons to maintain strategic stability in
South Asia. A US Department of Defense official
revealed to this correspondent, on the condition
of anonymity, that official circles in Washington
are coming around to accepting this line of
thinking. The upshot may be a massive US rearming
of Pakistan. The designation of Pakistan as a
major non-NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)
ally of the United States last year only makes this easier for the
US government.
Last
November 16, the US Defense Security and Cooperation
Agency sent notifications to Congress of
a US$1.3 billion arms package for Pakistan. This
includes eight P-3C Orion naval reconnaissance planes,
possibly with anti-ship and anti-submarine missiles,
2,000 TOW-2A anti-tank guided missiles,
and the PHALANX Close-In Weapon Systems for
ships. Washington sources indicate that even
as the F-16 request is being considered, another mega-deal
for E-2C AWACS (airborne warning and control
system) planes to Pakistan is close to fruition.
It now appears that Pakistan's "nuclear
war" scare tactic is yielding great results.
Kaushik Kapisthalam is a
freelance analyst on South Asia affairs.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd.
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