Mushroom clouds still hover

Last week (Sept 3) both India and Pakistan reviewed each other's military plans and capabilities and evolved the strategy to meet the threat from the other. Here, Indian confabulations merely provide the context. One is really concerned with the decisions of Pakistan's National Command Authority. Fortunately, these are available in non-quantitative general terms. These are: (i) 'the nuclear programme has matured over the years and would continue to receive top national priority'; (b) "Pakistan will continue to consolidate its minimum deterrence needs"; (c) 'there is going to be no let up in qualitative upgradation of the nuclear deterrent which would fortify national security'; (d) 'therefore there can be no freeze or rollback of the nuclear programme and all talk of it has been termed by President Gen. Musharraf as "irrelevant, outdated and totally false"'; and (e) NCA reviewed progress of the strategic programme and 'expressed complete satisfaction with the "operational readiness of Strategic Forces and the pace of development work"'.

There is no reason to doubt that Indian Army's ISPR -- whatever it's called -- would say quite similar things with regard to India's triad of nuclear deterrent and in much the same terms. Indians too would say that they have no intention of running an arms race. They would also echo the Pakistani statement, virtually in these very words, about their 'strong non-proliferation record and would reaffirm their commitment to universal non-proliferation goals'. And yet it is all about fighting a possible nuclear war on both sides.

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No point in blaming the designated authorities for preparing for war. After all India and Pakistan are still in a state when a hot war begins, not to mention 56 years of cold war. No peace has been made in the current 13 years old phase of relationship. The two are not talking. Driven by arrogance of power India demands -- and gets Americans to support their demand -- that Pakistan should give up its trump card (stoppage of Jihad) before it will talk. For the rest, it has been ready to fight it out and remains prepared. Pakistanis propose to give better than they get: their doctrine for atomic weapons is First Use. The assessment one has made of the results of 10 months long military stand-off (2002) is that Indians were daring Pakistan to use its atomic weapons first -- so that they can, after absorbing Pakistan's first strike, unleash a massive nuclear strike that will reduce it to stone age conditions.

Both are still improving (increasing really) their nuclear deterrent and call it updating or consolidating. That is what the NCA has said. Pakistan is not overawed by numerical superiority of India's atomic arsenals and is going ahead with its Kashmir policy with suitable changes. These will arguably absolve it (in American eyes) of the charge that Pakistan is sending insurgents into Kashmir, even if the Indians continue to cry foul.

Generally, India's gaze is fixed on National Greatness (conceived primarily in military terms) and a role that goes with it. Pakistan also aims at power to lead Islamic World. Although living in two different worlds, they collide every day over Kashmir's violent insurgency. Indians have concluded that this insurgency could not have been sustained except with Pakistan's help. And hence it is the casus belli for India. Both continue preparing for the inevitable war. Hence those mushroom clouds may lower again.

The two have either not learnt any lesson from the military deadlock of 2002 or have learnt the wrong ones. Let's spell out the lessons as objectively as possible. But a few of one's assumptions need being made plain: suffering an attack by atomic weapons equals defeat; for, that means one or more cities destroyed with horrible human and material losses. Secondly, if both sides are hit with such weapons -- almost a certainty -- it is defeat for both. Now, let us assess the experience of 2002. India was credibly threatening to invade Pakistan. The latter was threatening, from day one, that it will use its nuclear weapons first so that Indians do not overrun a Pakistan that is weaker in conventional armaments.

By the middle of that year the Indians made as if they are ready to let Pakistan use its atomic weapons in reply to their invasion. Should Pakistan actually do so, the Indians said they would give a riposte that will send Pakistan back to the stone age; all its industrial-urban centres would suffer a nuclear death for God knows how long. None of it was empty rhetoric. At this point the US strongly intervened. Two things happened as a result: Indians did not mount the invasion. Secondly, Gen. Musharraf blinked in June and promised to stop the infiltration of insurgents into Indian-controlled Kashmir, if it was (still) taking place. By October Indians recalled their troops from the borders and the threat of war receded. By April next, Indian PM again extended a hand of friendship to Pakistan. This was grabbled with pleasure by Pakistan.

The two governments appear to have been greatly impressed by the fact that no war took place. As Gen. Musharraf claimed, and Indian President Abdul Kalam conceded, that the war did not take place because of the presence of nuclear weapons on both sides. It is impossible to deny a kernel of truth in the statement. But it is not the whole truth. India surely knew Pakistan possessed a nuclear deterrent when it mobilised for war and was on the brink of starting the war by about May, June; it was touch and go for all the world. India was, as noted, daring Pakistan to use its atomic weapons first. That would provide excuse for India to wipe it out altogether by a massive atomic counter strike.

Conclusions to emerge from 2002 experience are several. Some of these are: if both sides get to employ their nuclear deterrent, that will mean a defeat in human and moral terms for both. Secondly, the only case of victory with atomic weapons in South Asia can be if the very first strike should be (i) a surprise (preemptive) one; and (ii) it should be so massive as to totally cripple the victim so that it cannot retaliate in kind. One's assessment of current conditions is that neither side is as yet able to mount such a massive preemptive attack that by its massiveness will end the war. One's basis is not a fact that happened but it is a subjective judgement of what seems likely. For, if either side is able to absorb the first strike and remains capable of a second or even third strike through dispersal, all the proceedings become idiotic and both sides will suffer utterly unacceptable destruction. As of now neither side seems capable of such a massive strike. How true this statement is? It is at least as true as the one about peace being kept by the presence of nuclear weapons.

There is another conclusion. All this talk of India abstaining from starting an atomic war while being ready to make a terrible riposte is fanciful. No military commander, or his government, with nuclear capability, can wait patiently for the enemy to make the first strike -- which is a defeat by virtue of the nature and scale of destruction -- and then he will bestire and order a counter-strike. War fighting is all about avoiding horrible losses on one's side and inflicting them on the enemy. Just as 1960s Flexible Response idea of Robert McNamara was nonsense, this sequence of first stoically waiting for the other to start atomic destruction and later to cause much more of that destruction on the other is unrealistic. The fact is that real nuclear doctrines on both sides now can only be to rush to be the first: cripple the other at the very start by preemption, if possible. It is a terrifying prospect.

What of the future? Can India and Pakistan remain at peace, with their two nuclear deterrents being continually modernised (updated)? This is another name for a non-stop nuclear arms race. Atomic weapons on both sides are being actually increased and kept ready to destroy the other. Both sides remain afraid that the other might leapfrog to a higher level of preparedness. Hence the race. If so, where is the basis for peace? No government can trust its rival where such weapons are concerned. Being morally abhorrent, these weapons are inherently destabilising because they are conceived, brought into being and become a deterrent in secrecy, deceit and lies. Just look at the statements in 1980s and 1990s of both sides. Misuse of language apart, both are busy getting the better of the other's designs. These weapons begin by destroying trust and lead to continuous destability next.

So long as there are so many atomic weapons and missiles around -- with both sides updating (proliferating) them upward -- there can be no peace or cooperation between India and Pakistan. Left alone, human error, cupidity, communal politics or accidents will some day cause a war that neither side really wanted. If peace and people's material progress is desired, the two peoples have to get rid of these weapons somehow and regain each other's trust to become friends.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.