The nuclear equation

Published : May 07, 2004 00:00 IST

The March 9 launch of Pakistan's intermediate-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile Shaheen II, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead deep into India. - AFP

The March 9 launch of Pakistan's intermediate-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile Shaheen II, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead deep into India. - AFP

SOONER or later India and Pakistan will have to come to an understanding on the fundamentals of a relationship, which assures security for both. Conventional arms and nuclear weapons will be an integral part of the understanding. This will not be easy given the mindset in some quarters in India and Pakistan, within the governments and "the strategic community" in the two countries. Once one of India's leading lights scornfully ridiculed suggestions even for a dialogue with Pakistan. "Does the United States discuss the military balance with Cuba?" For very many in India, the problem is not India's security; it is projection of its power.

Commitment to a dialogue is futile unless there is a willingness to arrive at a modus vivendi. A memorandum of understanding signed in Lahore on February 21, 1999, binds the two countries to a few confidence-building measures (CBMs) and to "bilateral consultations on security concepts and nuclear doctrines, with a view to developing measures for confidence-building in the nuclear and conventional fields aimed at avoidance of conflict". Such a dialogue, although aimed at CBMs, would necessarily involve issues far more fundamental. The Joint Statement of February 18, 2004, envisaged "expert-level talks on nuclear CBMs in the latter half of May 2004". On April 4, Pakistan proposed that those talks be held on May 25 and 26.

What are we going to propose in this series of parleys? Delivering the P.C. Lal Memorial Lecture on February 19, 2004, Defence Minister George Fernandes said: "History has shown that when states become visibly prosperous, there is a pattern wherein they invest in trans-border military capability... . Objectively assessed, China and India will both follow this trajectory. We must ensure that whatever be the nature for the military profile that China and India acquire in the near future. This must be managed in such a way that there is no mistrust or needless anxiety. Individually and together, such capability must be seen as contributing to regional and global stability." This, surely, cannot be a purely bilateral affair between India and China. The smaller states, who are directly affected by the growing power of both, are entitled to have their say and to have their concerns addressed. Foremost among them must be the third nuclear-weapons state in the region, Pakistan. The world is quietly watching the nuclear scene here.

In a brilliant analysis, Dr. T. Jayaraman points out that "neither the United States nor world public opinion is likely to buy the official Indian line that its nuclear weapons are not Pakistan-centric and that, therefore, there is no need for any bilateral nuclear restraint regime between India and Pakistan. Despite the distinction that official India will seek to make between its own nuclear weapons and Pakistan's, India's drive to acquire nuclear weapons will be seen as one of the prime motivations for Pakistan's obsessions with achieving nuclear parity by whatever means it has at its disposal."

What he proceeds to add is as relevant: "The ideological and political obsession with nuclear weapons has led the current dispensation in New Delhi to appease Washington on a broad range of issues, while periodically exchanging nuclear threats with its neighbour and exposing its population to the attendant dangers. The Indian government has nothing at all to show in return, in terms of winning recognition of the legitimacy of India's nuclear power status (emphasis added throughout). Ending this obsession and removing the nuclear shackles on India's foreign policy while paying heed to the genuine anti-super power tradition in India's political culture would be a progressive and liberating step forward" (The Hindu, February 28, 2004). Judging by the recent comments in New Delhi by former U.S. interlocutor in the post-1998 nuclear talks, Strobe Talbott, the U.S. is none too impressed with India's stand.

Bharat Karnad's book draws on ancient Indian tradition, censures Nehru's record and projects his own thesis as one based on "realism" in the manner strikingly reminiscent of Defending India by Jaswant Singh whom he hugely admires. The current buzzword is "realism". Superficial American analysts hail them as such. Common to both is a dislike of Nehru. Unlike Jaswant Singh, however, Bharat Karnad is a scholar. He has consulted the archives. Unfortunately, the book falls between the stools of diplomatic history and strategic analysis. Archival research is helpful only when one has mastered the published record and seeks answers to the questions they raise. But, of what relevance is Nehru's poor opinion of Third World leaders, set out at length, to the issues he discusses? A source must be evaluated. Badruddin Tyabji's notoriously egotistic outpourings in private and after retirement from the Indian Foreign Service should be weighed against his record in service and public life.

The so-called "realists", in common with Nehru's professional admirers, know little of his China policy, for instance, and understand it less. A.B. Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, Lohia and his acolytes such as Fernandes accused Nehru of appeasement of China when in fact he was shutting the doors to negotiations. Karnad's language is appropriate to polemics, not scholarship. India must protect itself against "the sustained, if opportunistic, belligerence of China"; "Nehru's spoutings (sic) on non-alignment"; and the Indian leadership is "pickled in self-doubt".

The book is neither a piece of lively polemics nor sound analysis. It is noteworthy only because it is a good specimen of the mindset that prevails today in many a place; especially, but not exclusively, in the BJP. "Realists" all, who would act like George W. Bush & Co. if only they had the power to do so.

Bharat Karnad's lament is as noteworthy as his recipe. Both reflect the outlook of the "realist" school now in power. "The Hinduism of the Vedas - the ancient Sanskrit texts that are the wellsprings of the Indic religion and culture, far from inculcating passivity, is suffused with the spirit of adventure and daring, of flamboyance and vigour, and of uninhibited use of force to overcome any resistance or obstacles. It says something about that outlook on life and approach to the world that these texts even ordain the use of horrific `weapons of mass destruction', whose, albeit imagined, lethality seems akin to present day thermonuclear bombs and chemical and biological warfare paraphernalia. Furthermore, these texts also conceptualise a Hindu machtpolitik that is at once intolerant of any opposition, driven to realise the goal of supremacy for the nation and state by means fair and foul, and is breathtaking in its amorality. How did such an aggressive, ultra-realist religion and culture get reduced to the bovine pacifism of the latter day Indian society and the self-abnegating policies of the government, so much so, that India now evokes in the West a `rather patronising attitude' and from China `a mixture of arrogance and condescension'? It is a mystery this study will try to plumb." Karnad is frank. But others in our "strategic community" are no less "flamboyant".

His prescription? "In a patently asymmetric nuclear war situation, the only way to stifle the urge of a superior power to mount what President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski called a `designed' attack that would leave the victim `crippled, capable of only spasmodic, disorganised and strategically aimless response - or even none at all' using precision-guided low-yield nuclear weapons that President George W. Bush's Pentagon plans to unleash against troublesome countries (including Russia and China), is to deter the U.S. with massively and indiscriminately destructive megaton thermonuclear bombs, that will also compensate for intercontinental ballistic missile inaccuracies at extreme range. There is no other way... . The current warmth in Indo-U.S. relations cannot hide the fact that the growth of the Indian deterrent is seen as threatening by the United States."

The view, it seems, is shared by some like the former Army Chief General S. Padmanabhan, the title of whose book sums up his fears and his recipe. The U.S. invasion of Iraq alarmed him and, more so, the boasts of its "military officers in their daily briefings". He projects "the events of 2003 some 15 years into the future" and seeks to demonstrate that "it is not impossible to resist even the mightiest, if we have the will to do so". He also pleads for "a stronger United Nations". This is not futurology. It is something else. This highly decorated soldier would render high service were he to write his memoirs of the days of Operation Parakram, on which politicians in power take the Army for a bumpy and futile ride to subserve their own interests.

But, to resume with Karnad, "if the U.S. poses a latent threat to India, the more immediate and principal threat is and will continue to be China, which presents as great a danger because of its strategically inimical policies, as because of the possibility of its disintegration and collapse. Leading to a host of nuclear-armed `warlord states' on India's periphery."

He suggests how this "threat" can be met. "India should, likewise, create precisely the kind of dilemmas for China that Beijing has created for it with respect to a nuclear weapons and missile-equipped Pakistan by arming Vietnam with strategic weapons, establishing a naval presence in Cam Ranh Bay and elsewhere in South-East Asia, to match China's ensconced military positions in Myanmar as also in Gwadar on Pakistan's Makran Coast, cooperating with Taiwan in the nuclear and missile fields, and coordinating its activities in Washington with those of the Taiwan lobby. China's masterful manipulation of the level of support to Pakistan as a means of influencing Indian policy and diluting New Delhi's perception of China as threat has worked, but only because New Delhi seems to lack the nerve to impose heavy strategic costs on China by linking up with Vietnam and Taiwan, and leading the `free Tibet' campaign in a tit-for-tat policy".

Some tit for some tat. China's threat is wildly exaggerated and a reckless answer is propounded heedless of the enormous danger to India's interest, which the new Cold War would pose. The military prescription is as "realistic". He writes: "Prudence, therefore, dictates that India posses a hefty nuclear force boasting of around 350-400 warheads/weapons that can be construed as notional parity with the Chinese strategic forces. India's attaining some kind of nuclear equivalence is essential because this alone will make China's aggressive posturing and threats harder to sustain."

We must not be inhibited by scenarios sketched by some, "Indian policy-makers and the small section of the vocal middle class have proved susceptible to frightening projections about what nuclear war in the subcontinent would mean in terms of cities incinerated and people killed... . The idea has always been to frighten an already feeble-minded Indian political leadership and government into forsaking nuclear forces the country needs to avoid immediate dangers and to settle down as a great power."

This has been an abiding passion. It possessed Nehru and drives his successors mercilessly appalling. Jaswant Singh's vainglorious comments invited ridicule. Not for him the specifics. He painted on a broad canvas in weird colours.

Stereotypes like "hawk" and "dove" or "hardliners" and the rest not only obscure nuances but conceal traces of incompetence as well. Common to both schools is a refusal to think through the consequences of their prescriptions. Will the Chinese, the Pakistanis, and the Americans sit back with folded hands if India embarks on the course the author prescribes? He rightly remarks that Nehru "never bothered to examine the antecedent conditions, which may have prompted Pakistan formally to seek the military protection of Big Powers, and to consider whether such alliances were as great an unmitigated evil as he made them out to be. Some senior members of the foreign service, braver than others, however, tried to probe this mystery. Gundevia, as Ambassador to Switzerland in a letter from Berne, dated March 16, 1954, to the Prime Minister, volunteered that `we have perhaps not fully analysed the causes that may have led' to the U.S. military aid to Pakistan and helpfully attached just such an analysis, titled `Reflections on U.S. Arms Aid to Pakistan' for Nehru to peruse. In a forthright manner, Gundevia argued that New Delhi had goofed up in not anticipating that for geopolitical reasons U.S. aid to Pakistan was `inevitable', and that due to `the undiluted fear complex (of India) of the comparatively less powerful' country. Pakistan would seek such protection and take every opportunity `to throw in her weight' against `whatever line India... might take'." Is Karnad's advice any the better? How will Pakistan respond to the policy he advocates?

Sample this: "Because the mere presence of U.S. military units in Pakistan renders moot any consideration of conventional Indian military action against Pakistan lest American troops become casualties inviting U.S. military units to that country is a ruse de guerre that Islamabad has probably learned, courtesy its experiences in December 2001, works in hollowing out the Indian threat of war. If it is believed that a nuclear flashpoint was on the point of blowing, Washington may, in fact, not hesitate to so deploy its units as a form of military pre-emption to keep the peace. It is a move that New Delhi may second." A footnote adds: "In a conversation, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh told The Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland that the American military presence in Pakistan would help stabilise that country and should continue. See the latter's "India looks with New favour on a `Natural' Ally", International Herald Tribune, January 22, 2002.

Comment is unnecessary.

Bharat Karnad's comments on the Indus Waters Treaty are as jejeune as were those of two writers on strategic affairs and two former High Commissioners to Pakistan who, out of the blue, rushed to urge that India rescind the treaty (December 23 and 25, 2001). The nation lost a lot by their concealment of their undoubted expertise in this subject as a closely guarded secret, in all the years one had heard or read them. Bharat Karnad complains that Indian leadership harbours "misplaced notions about the role of morality in international life, about Gandhian non-violence and about the presumed Indian genius for pacifism, and with a pronounced tendency to compromise national security interests and to buckle under foreign pressure, that has proved the weak link. It is Indian leaders then who have lacked the will to power and constitute the `soft state'. Because the bulk of the people, attuned to the vagaries of machtpolitik depicted in the ancient Hindu texts and conditioned by life-long deprivation, are hard as nails, crave respect for India in the world, and are willing to make whatever sacrifices".

Why "paddle around in the strategic backwaters"? Have a grand vision. "But a grand strategic vision by itself will not mean much if it is not followed up by putting India's nuclear and conventional military muscle where its mouth is. An Indian `Monroe Doctrine' will require putting out the strategic effort militarily to bolster Vietnam and Taiwan and the Asian states as a way to fence in a belligerent China. It will mean cultivating with arms transfers and economic and trade concessions the countries on the Indian Ocean littoral, so as to enlarge and enhance the sphere of Indian influence in the extended region." A few pages later the author asserts: "Realistically speaking, New Delhi may not have a choice other than to brazen it out and secure a thermonuclear arsenal even if it displeases the U.S. The grand strategic plan earlier articulated as the Indian `Monroe Doctrine' will help India to justify and rationalise the building of a big deterrent and, most importantly, have a reassuring effect on prospective Asian security partners. It is because there is little on which the U.S. and Indian interests clash but great many issues on which they dovetail, including in the perception of the meta-strategic threats - terrorism, extremist Islam and China - that there is optimism all round about an entente cordiale being at last established between the two major democracies." Whatever happened to the clash of India-U.S. interests on which he had waxed eloquent earlier?

Gurmeet Kanwal's book is ably documented and is free from polemical excesses. It is a straightforward plea by an experienced soldier for the build up of the nuclear arsenal to support a national security strategy.

A good feature of the book is that the views of those who dissent from his stand are also mentioned. The author goes beyond the desired nuclear arsenal. In his view "the total elimination of all nuclear weapons is the only goal worth striving for".

M.V. Ramana and C. Rammanohar Reddy, members of the Indian Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, have edited a collection of critiques by Indian and Pakistani experts of "nuclear weapons and the modernisation programme by India". Amartya Sen, Jean Dreze and the Chinese scholar-diplomat Ye Zhengjia's essays enhance the value of this excellent collection.

It is not commonly known that there is a powerful and extremely able group of experts in Pakistan who are opposed to the bomb. One of them, Zia Mian, a physicist at Parceta contributes an essay. Ye Zhenghjia corrects some misconceptions in India about China's approach to the boundary question. He pleads "scholars in both countries should work harder in promoting mutual understanding between our people". The best course is to facilitate exchange of scholars and documentation between the two countries on foreign policy and strategic matters. Citing statistics in support, Dreze establishes in his essay "Militarism Development and Democracy" that "if conventional war is disastrous enough for economic development and the quality of life, nuclear war would be an all-round catastrophe".

Chari, Cheema and Cohen's book is by far the most detailed study of the crisis on the subcontinent in 1990 (Frontline, June 13, 1997). They warn that the 1987 and 1990 crises would recur "unless the faltering dialogue between the two states on a wide range of vital issues advances with a greater sense of urgency and responsibility".

Let us hope that the leaders of India and Pakistan will heed these authors' advice and commence a dialogue on the nuclear question in real interest.

Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy

Nuclear Defence: Shaping and Arsenal

Perception, Politics and Security in South Asia: The Compound crisis of 1990

The Writing on the Wall: India Checkmates America 2017

Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream
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