Our spiralling deterrence

It's our misfortune to be located next to a blundering nuclear power that does not know what to do with its strength.

When India and Pakistan became overt nuclear powers in May 1998, it was widely believed that an effective and stable deterrence had been established between the two countries, neutralising the conventional superiority of India over Pakistan and thus reducing the danger of armed conflict between them. Deterrence has been defined as “a strategy intended to dissuade an adversary from undertaking an action not yet started, or to prevent it from doing something that another state desires”. It is this factor that is at play between India and Pakistan and has rendered us subject to a spiralling deterrence that continues unchecked.

A former Indian diplomat and one of the architects of the Indo-US nuclear deal, Shyam Saran, has deemed it fit to expound an approach that has raised the spiral another turn upwards. In a speech delivered in a Delhi forum recently, Saran dilated upon India’s security outlook, arguing that its nuclear programme was not driven by considerations of national pride. Saran’s contention was that India’s nuclear programme was created and is maintained due to “a state of permanent strategic vulnerability to nuclear threat and blackmail”. Then, he goes on to illustrate this “permanent strategic vulnerability” by citing Indo-Pakistan tensions in 1990, alleged US pressure on Russia to deny India the “cryogenic engine technology that it needed to upgrade its civilian space capabilities” and again, alleged US pressure in 1996 “to push through a discriminatory Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would have permanently foreclosed India’s option to develop a credible and fully tested nuclear deterrent”.

It is not clear how India felt strategically vulnerable vis-a-vis Pakistan, when Pakistan had not yet become an overt nuclear power. Secondly, diplomatic pressure of the kind that Saran alleges the US to have exerted goes on all the time, but countries do not resort to doing a nuclear test in response. Saran’s justification for India’s nuclear test can only be explained in psychological terms — either India is in a state of perpetual paranoia, or it suffers from aggravated delusion, resulting from a desire for “prestige”. Interestingly enough, Saran does not mention India’s obsession with China as a source of its strategic vulnerability. Incredible as the Saran narrative is in regard to the justification for India’s nuclear weapons capability, it is as unbelievable in regard to Chinese designs against India. Saran also launches a diatribe against Pakistan and casts aspersions on Pakistan’s National Command Authority, which is a model command and control structure, headed by the prime minister, who is a civilian.

The strategic environment in South Asia has been repeatedly vitiated by Indian actions. Going back to the rudimentary Indian nuclear test of 1974, to its militarily significant nuclear tests of 1998, to the enunciation of an aggressive nuclear doctrine in 2002 and the arrogant Cold Start doctrine of 2004, we now have Saran’s threat of  “massive retaliation” against Pakistan. Pakistan advocated a nuclear weapons free zone in South Asia following the 1974 Indian test. When India tested again in 1998, it merely matched the provocation by nuclear tests of its own. In response to Cold Start, Pakistan has developed a broad spectrum comprehensive deterrence capability, which includes tactical nuclear weapons. It is this response that has drawn Saran’s ire.

The question that needs to be asked is where this spiralling deterrence likely to take us. India’s disingenuous argument that it is faced with permanent strategic vulnerability is not taken seriously by the world at large. The Economist attributes it to a “lack of strategic culture” in India. It is Pakistan’s misfortune that it is located next to a big blundering nuclear power that does not know what to do with its excessive strength and size and brandishes its nuclear prowess for mere pride and prestige. This would not have mattered too much if it did not carry with it the risk of a nuclear holocaust. The establishment of a nuclear restraint regime in our region is perhaps the only rational solution for stemming the spiralling of our nuclear deterrence.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2013.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.