After Pakistan,
US Will De-nuke New Delhi
Special
SAT Report
NEW
DELHI: Indian military experts are worried that the US will not
allow India to continue with its nuclear program if Washington
decided that Pakistani nukes should be taken out or neutralized.
This view is gaining ground among Indian strategists with profound
seriousness.
According
to Indian media reports although India is quietly self-satisfied
that Pakistani nukes have come under the US scanner, the shadows
are definitely going to fall on the Indians as well.
Since 11 September, America has been terrified that Pakistan’s
insecure nuclear weapons will fall into terrorist hands. It threatened
to destroy them when Pakistan demurred support for the Afghan
war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. And with the “consent”
of General Pervez Musharraf and his corps commanders, it may have
acquired their partial control and marked them down (Intelligence,
"US to supervise Pak N-weapons,” 22 December 2001,
and “US marks down Pak nukes,” 14 June 2002).
To
that extent, a report in Jane’s may not be giving the full
story. Jane’s magazine on intelligence says the US has a
contingency plan to prevent Pakistani nuclear weapons and technology
from falling into Islamist hands. But it leaves the Pakistanis
with two distinct threats.
After Saddam Hussein, Pakistani nukes and Pakistani terrorists
will engage US attention – and probably nukes will invite
first notice. America can hardly leave Pakistan with them –
when it is committed to cleaning the Islamic world of WMDs. Pakistan
and Iran follow in natural succession to Iraq – while North
Korea’s time will come.
According
to a report in Newsinsight, a web magazine, India cannot be smug.
General Musharraf or his military or civilian successor will resist
Pakistani denuclearisation if India is allowed to keep nukes.
It will result in such military asymmetry that India will attack
Pakistan at the slightest provocation in Jammu and Kashmir.
The
threat of pre-emption that Yashwant Sinha hurls at Pakistan every
other day will be all too real – and the Pakistan army will
not stand for it. The US could choose to maintain the status quo
– controlling Pakistani nukes but allowing Islamabad to
maintain the fiction of sovereign deterrence. But the threat of
nuclear theft or terrorist control of nukes will not go away –
which is why the US may plump for staunching Pakistani fears by
asking India to dismantle its nuclear and missile programmes as
well.
From
the UN Security Council standpoint, India and Pakistan’s
nuclear programs are illegal. Despite its distaste for the Security
Council, the Bush administration may seek its backing to denuke
India – giving its guarantee to the other four permanent
members, China, Russia, France and UK, that Pakistan is already
amenable, and that it is defanged for all purposes.
China
will jump at the proposal because Indian nukes are, theoretically
so far, directed at it (it may even be a joint US-China campaign
at the UN at Pakistani prodding). The UK will agree to anything
the US proposes, and France will have no reason to object –
seeing it as an opportunity to crush India’s tiny chance
to replace it in the Security Council.
Russia
will not hold back – especially when the other four powers
agree, and there is a chance to enforce the nuclear non-proliferation
treaty finally. That will be India’s testing time –
because it will never agree to roll back its nuclear and missile
programs. If it leads to sanctions on India and hard cash rewards,
trade concessions, and aid to Pakistan – India could be
in serious trouble. It could face isolation as never before.
Experts
say the problem is India’s deterrence strategy which has
lacked purpose and direction – and convinces few outside
the country, fewer, at any rate, than Pakistan’s does. No
one understands why Indira Gandhi ordered the first Pokhran blast
in 1974 – when she herself chose to call it a “peaceful
nuclear explosion”. It was the result of the US refusal
to give deterrence protection to India following the first Chinese
atomic test in 1964 – but there was no recorded Chinese
nuclear blackmail in the succeeding decade that warranted the
test. It had occupied Indian territory in Ladakh in 1962, but
Pakistan was the more immediate enemy – after India created
Bangladesh in 1971.
Still,
Mrs Gandhi missed the opportunity to settle the Kashmir issue
with ZA Bhutto in Simla in 1972 – and proceeded with a nuclear
test two years later whose strategic thrust is still fuzzy. It
alarmed both China and Pakistan – and without blackmailing
India directly, China proliferated nuclear technology to Pakistan,
creating its first tested deterrence against India in 1986-87.
Indian
experts believe Israel offered to blast Kahuta Research Laboratories
in 1982 – after striking Iraq’s Osirak reactor in
1981, but Mrs Gandhi said no. It would have delayed the course
of the Pakistani bomb, but not stopped it, since Chinese interests
were tied to it. So, at final count, India was trapped by events
of its own making. The US ambassador to India then, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, told Mrs Gandhi presciently she had opened the way for
Pakistani generals to demand Kashmir on the strength of nuclear
weapons.
The
second Pokhran explosions have also ill-served the country. Rather
than controlling the insurgency in J & K, they increased it,
and under the nuclear overhang, Musharraf attacked Kargil one
year later. Indo-Pak tensions have grown incrementally since –
and most of last year, its armies were in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation
on the western border. At least in cross-border rhetoric, deterrence
has failed. While Pakistan talks of a nuclear first-strike against
Indian pre-emption, India warns of Pakistan’s annihilation.
Forgotten
in this war cry is China – ostensibly the target of the
Pokhran-II explosions. Five years since, India has no credible
deterrence against it – and no naval platform to sustain
it in the endgame. Calling the May-1998 blasts “Shakti”
may have satisfied deep-rooted Hindutva urges – but they
have not landed India in a higher geo-political orbit. It remains
a second power – whose 50 per cent population is desperately
poor.
Experts
say if India cannot match its nuclear policy to its known and
perceived enemies, its national interests (including Kashmir),
and its vision for itself – it may be unable to withstand
the coming pressure to denuclearize with Pakistan.
