3 Ctbt And South Asia

12 Emporium Current Essays If IT t MUCLlll BAL&HCE IH The United States is determined to get the CTBT concluded before the end of 1996. Pakistan's muddled financial and economic position and its heavy indebtedness to international financial institutions, is most likely to be used as one of the levers to oblige it to sign the CTBT. Statements emanating from the Foreign Minister to the effect that Pakistan will not block this treaty or will even sign it, are a source of great concern. Almost all the US government, since the end of the Afghan war, have been pressurising Pakistan to roll back in nuclear programme and sign the nuclear NonProliferation Treaty. Pressure on India on this count has been lukewarm. A section of the US foreign policy plan'ners has been of the view that possession of nuclear weapons by both India and Pakistan has helped in keeping peace in the Sub-Continent. Both India and Pakistan are believed to be de facto nuclear powers; each is believed capable of assembling and delivering nuclear weapons in a matter of days. Though Indian and Pakistani leaders stridently deny that their countries are nuclear weapons states, but'they do admit that they can produce nuclear weapons. Each nation thus derives deterrence from this 'opaque' nuclear posture. Despite the fact that each side seems to appreciate the probable cost of forging ahead with advert nuclear stance, neither feels secure enough to reverse its nuclear course. For India and Pakistan, as for all nuclear powers, maintaining the nuclear option is the ultimate insurance policy in an unpredictable international system. India's substantially superior conventional military forces would still give Pakistan reason to maintairt a nuclear deterrent even without an Indian nuclear threat. For most analysts in the United States, the three Indo-Pak wars, the festering Kashmir conflict and India's and Pakistan's nuclear weapons capabilities are a recipe for nuclear disaster in the Sub-Continent. Two aspects of this view stand out. One suggests that the insurgency in Kashmir may escalate to a direct conventional war between India and Pakistan, and Islamabad may. Emporium Current Essays 13 then use nuclear weapons to forestall another national humiliation like the Bangladesh war of 1971. The second holds that the purposive use of nuclear weapons is unlikely, but warns that the grinding Kashmir struggle may eventually lead to an inadvertent nuclear war as Indian and Pakistan leaders fall prey to their own worst case perceptions and the notoriously unreliable estimates of their intelligence agencies.

A dissenting minority of American analysts believe that Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapon capabilities stabilise South Asia by making war less likely. India and Pakistan fought three wars in the first 24 years of independence, but have not fought in the last 24. Nuclear-capable India and Pakistan have weathered several serious crisis during the last decade, including one over Kashmir in whkh it appears that both sides were deterred from aggression by the prospect of a military encounter escalating lo a riudear level. The least likely scenario for South Asia's strategic future is a major, premeditated attack by one side. At the nuclear level, the opportunity for an Indian preventive strike against Pakistan nuclear facilities has long passed. Pre-emptive nuclear strikes are also extremely unlikely since neither side is confident that it could destroy all the opponent's nuclear potential in a first strike; failing to do so would mean that heavily-populated areas on the attacker's own territory would be subject to nuclear devastation. This 'firststrike uncertainty' bolsters mutual deterrence. At the conventional level, a full-blown invasion across established borders is also difficult to imagine. It would be almost impossible for Pakistan to inflict total defeat in a conventional war on India. While India could possibly prevail over Pakistan is a ground war, it would, in the process, have to worry about the possibility of a last resort Pakistani nuclear reprisal. No political objective would be worth the risk of such an outcome. Balanced against incentives to lash out at Pakistan is the disincentive of Islamabad's nuclear muscle. This Is best illustrated by comparing New Delhi's restraint since 1990 with its more aggressive behaviour in South Asia's pre-nuclear era. In 1965, Pakistani support for rebellion in the Indian-held Kashmir was met by Indian counter-attacks aimed at insurgent supply and assembly points in the Pakistani part of the disputed territory as well as across14 Emporium Current Essavs Emporium Current Essays 15 A related danger American analysts often cite in an inadvertent nuclear war, implying that in a future crisis, India and Pakistan might stumble into a war that neither side actually wants. From this perspective, miscalculation of the enemy's designs by one side or both sides could possibly end in a shooting war. As the fighting progress, both sides might ready nuclear weapons for use as a last resort. At this point, a nuclear war might become a distinct possibility. Fortunately, this logic does not stand up to a close examination. None of the Indo-Pak wars began inadvertently. It is most unlikely that two nuclear powers would step into an inadvertent war, given the additional margin of caution induced by nuclear weapons. Those who hold this view, say that in devising policies to help contain South Asia's nuclear dangers, the US will do well to remember the following factors: First, India and Pakistan are not nuclear outlaws. As sovereign states, they have the right to pursue whatever nuclear and conventional capabilities they believe are

necessary to ensure their security. Islamabad and New Delhi are also entitled not to sign treaties that they view detrimental to their national interests. Israel deploys nuclearweapons and is not a NPT signatory, yet barely a word of protest is heard from Washington. Second, India and Pakistan derive deterrent security from their nuclear capabilities and are as unlikely to give them up as were Washington and Moscow at the height of the Cold War. There is an unfortunate tendency in US foreign policy formulating circles to equate the end of the .Cold War with a generally more benign international order. US officials should remember that the Cold War in South Asia is as intense as ever and that New Delhi and Islamabad cannot base their national security decisions on an intangible 'global' trend that may actually have made their own defence problems more challenging, not less. Third, US policy-makers should recognise and help to build on the arms control measures that have already evolved between India and Pakistan, some formally but most tacitly. The list is impressive: an agreement not to attack each other's nuclear installations, no deployment of operational nuclear weapons, no deployment of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, no nuclear testing since India's 1974 blast, no transfers of nuclear weapon technology to other states, and, so far as is knows, no development of strategies that make it easier to conceive of using nuclear weapons. In terms of specific policies, the holders of this view stress that Washington's overall goal should be to help stabilise the SubContinent's nuclear status quo by maintaining regional nuclear deterrence and preventing nuclear accidents and unauthorised nuclear use. As a crisis stability measure, US officials should continued to press India and Pakistan not to deploy nuclearcapable ballistic missiles. The holders of this view advocate that both Islamabad and New Delhi should agree to a progressive moratorium on missile ,/ deployment. Both sides should agree to an initial delay of perhaps three years, thereby formalising policies they have already chosen themselves. Missile testing might still be allowed in this period. The United States could help to verify a missile moratorium, thereby easing each side's fear of being surprised by the other. Assuming that both countries find this arrangement reassuring, it could then be extended perhaps with an additional agreement and to test the missiles. Eventually, Indian and Pakistani officials might conclude that their nuclear arms competition is more stable in the absence of ballistic missiles deployments. Islamabad and New Delhi also be encouraged to continue their apparent practice of not maintaining assembled nuclear weapons. This tacit threshold is superb crisis stability and nuclear security measure. Complicating the issue of nuclear weapons in South Asia is a thicket of American nonproliferation laws that affect Pakistan but not India. Pakistanis do rightly fee! aggrieved for several reasons. They believe they were 'used'. From their perspective, Washington

kept the aid flowing as long as Pakistan was fighting the good war in Afghanistan, but closed the tap after the Red Army retreated across the Amu Darya in 1989. The US policy-makers should, therefore, give a serious thought to scrapping the Pressler Amendment, a Cold War anachronism. Though on the books for a decade, this Amendment has failed to achieve its purpose. Repealing this law would neutralise Islamabad's charge that the United States discriminates against Pakistan while imposing to nuclear restraints against India (and Israel). This would level policy playing field. In view of the overwhelming numerical and qualitative superiority of the Indian armed forces and their weaponry (even if India agrees to a rollback of its nuclear programme), Pakistan's security and integrity demand that India reduces the strength of its armed forces to a size which would not be a source of threat to Pakistan. In the absence of such an agreement, and India's refusal to sign the CTBT, Pakistan's security requirements demand that Pakistan should not accede to this treaty. international frontiers. New Delhi has refrained from a similar strategy in the 1990s, at least in part because any major military engagement could end in nuclear conflagration.