Asia Times: Hiding behind a nuclear cloud


	January 11, 2002	atimes.com

India/Pakistan

Hiding behind a nuclear cloud
By Nadeem Iqbal

ISLAMABAD - As it has been for the past 10 years, the first day of the new year saw rivals Pakistan and India religiously exchanging a list of nuclear installations and facilities that ought not to be attacked should conflict arise. But in truth, both countries have failed to declare their nuclear doctrines officially, which would clearly say under what circumstances they would be forced to use their nuclear weapons.

Tensions, as well as exchanges of gunfire across their border, have been rising over the past three weeks after the December 13 attack on the Indian parliament, which New Delhi blames on terrorists supported by Pakistani groups.

On January 1, despite the explosive situation between them, the South Asian rivals carried out the same routine, under an agreement on the "Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities". Although both governments know the exact number of each other's nuclear installations, this information is kept from the public. No information is shared, unlike in the past, on whether either country has added new installations to the original list. This is despite the fact that both India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices in May 1998 - and their nuclear status has since added a new fillip to fears of a conflict in the region.

Without the two countries developing their "official" doctrines, as has been done by the other five declared nuclear powers, the circumstances under which they would use nuclear weapons remain ambiguous for their citizens and for much of the rest of the world. This concern about a nuclear war is surfacing again during the present war footing between India and Pakistan, as fears rise about an escalation into nuclear conflict. Similar fears rose during the undeclared war between the two at Kargil in 1999.

It is widely believed that for Pakistan, nuclear weapons are its weapons of "first strike and last resort", and for India they are of "second strike use", meaning that India would first absorb a first strike and then retaliate. These theories are developed on the grounds that Pakistan, with its small land area, has limited strategic depth compared with the much larger India, which has large strategic depth. Pakistan believes that its nuclear weapons essentially make up for the discrepancy in conventional military assets between the two countries.

Zafar Jaspal, a strategic expert, says that Pakistan's nuclear doctrine is like the unwritten British constitution, which lists some broad objectives to be achieved in different situations. "The three main pillars of Pakistan's nuclear doctrine is that it is Indian-specific, it is to make up for asymmetry in conventional arsenal [India has larger forces than Pakistan] and that it would use them if the very survival of the state is threatened," said Jaspal, a senior researcher in the Islamabad Policy Research Institute.

In a recent interview, former foreign minister Sartaj Aziz in fact claimed that if Pakistan did not possess nuclear weapons, India would have attacked it amid the current crises and not just stopped at assembling troops on the border.

Experts believe that nuclear weapons are tools to prevent war. The premises of nuclear deterrence are that the possession of nuclear weapons must prevent a nuclear exchange, that perceptions and psychology play a major role in the logic of deterrence, and that deterrence attempts to create risks to discourage an opponent from pursuing a certain action. This is so that in a crisis - such as exists at present - Pakistan and India would have to consider each other's threats as credible. This credibility message has to be communicated to each other effectively, but the lack of declared nuclear doctrines by the two sides keeps even the threats ambiguous.

Last week, Pakistan military spokesman Major-General Rashid Qureshi created confusion among nuclear experts when he publicly ruled out the country's use of nuclear weapons. "One gets surprised when some people jump into a nuclear situation. Pakistan and India are responsible nations and we cannot think of using nuclear weapons," Qureshi said. "These are deterrents and not meant to be more than that. The use of nuclear weapons is something one should not even consider."

"I hope it was a slip of his tongue. Giving such a statement at a time when India has gathered its forces at our borders is unfortunate," commented a nuclear expert who wanted to remain unidentified. Another ex-government official added that Pakistan needs to spell out a clear "red line" where its survival is under threat from Indian aggression and at which it would be forced to use nuclear weapons.

But M A Niazi, editor of the English-language newspaper The Nation, says that this ambiguity on the part of Pakistani policy makers is deliberate and has led to speculations among Indian officials on how Pakistan might use its nuclear weapons.

In 1999, nuclear experts in both the countries started deliberating the development of a nuclear doctrine. But the process remains unfinished. In India, consensus could not be developed at the time on power-sharing in the control of nuclear weapons among the equally powerful bureaucracy, politicians and the military and its navy, air force and army.

After the military takeover in Pakistan in October 1999, the country's central legislative assembly was dismissed. But Pakistan installed a Nuclear Command and Control Authority headed by the army chief. Indeed, some say Pakistan could develop a nuclear doctrine easily by virtue of the army's undisputed superiority in the control of nuclear weapons over and above politicians, bureaucracy and the other branches of the military.

On India's part, a "Draft Report of National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine", released publicly in August 1999, is considered its unofficial doctrine. It says that "India shall pursue a doctrine of credible minimum nuclear deterrence", and that "in this policy of 'retaliation only', the survivability of our arsenal is critical" - but what this minimum deterrence constituted was a subject of intense debate.

This draft ignited controversy among hawks and doves in India and Pakistan.

Aachin Vanaik, a nuclear policy expert and peace activist with the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament, said in an interview with IPS in New Delhi that India never formalized the 1999 draft because it was "ridiculously ambitious and ruled out nothing". He added that the draft was also not formally adopted because India changed its foreign policy sharply under the right-wing government of the Bharatiya Janata Party, moving from a non-aligned stance to one aiming to be Washington's most trusted ally in the region.

The Pakistani government had criticized the draft Indian doctrine, but three Pakistani former top officials in October 1999 said the response was weak. The three were former foreign minister Agha Shahi, current Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and retired air marshal Zulfiqar Ali Khan. They urged Pakistan to go full steam ahead in beefing up its nuclear forces with more and better types of bombs and missiles, start deployment, and increase defense spending on both nuclear and conventional forces.

In his critique at the time, peace activist Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy wrote that the Indian nuclear draft doctrine was "evil in intent and hypocritical".

"Starting with a preamble that nuclear weapons are 'the gravest threat to humanity', it nevertheless concludes that India needs 'sufficient, survivable and operationally prepared nuclear forces' together with 'the will to employ nuclear forces and weapons'," he argued. At the same time, he said that the Pakistani position appeared to say that "for each one of Pakistan's nuclear weapons that becomes vulnerable to Indian pre-emption, a rule of thumb says that we must have at least one more". This, he had said, meant calling for "open-ended nuclear competition with India".

While some officials argue that Pakistan's nuclear weapons have helped deter an Indian attack, including in Kargil, Hoodbhoy disagreed.

The 1999 release of the draft Indian doctrine coincided with New Delhi scaling up the Kargil war, after it had shot down a Pakistani surveillance aircraft and moved its eastern fleet from the Bay of Bengal into the Arabian Sea.

Later, Washington put pressure on Pakistan to pull back intruders across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir - whose intrusion had provoked that conflict - over fears of an escalated war.

(Inter Press Service)