US South Asia Policy More Pragmatic after N-tests
US policy towards South Asia has become more "pragmatic and coherent" after the May nuclear tests of India and Pakistan due to the tough negotiating stance of both New Delhi and Islamabad, according to a leading non-proliferation expert. Tariq Rauf, director of the International Organisations and Non-proliferation Project at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California - a leading arms control research centre - said since last May Washington's South Asia policy, which had till then been a miserable failure, "has been uncharacteristically pragmatic and coherent, focussing on the art of the possible."
Writing in the latest issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a respected repository of non-proliferation experts, Rauf noted that "in recent negotiations with the United States, both South Asian countries have engaged in hard-nosed bargaining," resulting in Washington opting "for a strategy of accommodation."
While acknowledging that the U.S. has been tight-lipped about the status of its dealings with India and Pakistan "to the extent of keeping even its close allies in the dark," Rauf argued that Washington's strategy clearly "recognises that neither India nor Pakistan will give up its nuclear weapons or ballistic missile capabilities in the short to medium term."
It makes sense for the U.S. "to be sympathetic to India and Pakistan's respective security dilemmas" while encouraging both countries to exercise restraint in the development and deployment of nuclear weapons, he said. Rauf said it was imperative for the U.S. "to demonstrate flexibility in sanctions by waiving restrictions on economic assistance and military-to-military contacts; to provide expertise in implementation of export controls on weapons of mass destruction materials and technologies; and to engage in technical discussions on restraints on nuclear weapons, including safety, security and chains of custody."
He said the U.S. could take a lesson from France which is "discussing high-technology cooperation with India in such fields as inertial confinement fusion and advanced laser research." Rauf recommended that India and Pakistan not only be encouraged but assisted to consider a variety of bilateral and multilateral discussions and agreements "to maintain their current tacit non-deployment practices regarding nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles."
They should also be encouraged to agree "on some measure of sufficiency in terms of weapon-usable fissile material stocks, warheads and weapon systems; to negotiate and implement a package of regional confidence-and security-building measures; and to actively contribute to the universalisation of current global non-proliferation norms," he said.
Rauf said to facilitate a short-term focus on South Asian nuclear non-proliferation strategy, the U.S. and the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialised nations "should remove all sanctions, save those directly related to the transfer of weapons of mass destruction technologies and conventional weapons." Rauf said a regionally focussed approach to the proliferation dilemma "lies in resolving or ameliorating the security concerns that have led India and Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons in the first place."
But at the same time, he noted, "the global political currency of nuclear weapons must be devalued" because otherwise it would be quixotic to expect the de facto nuclear weapons states to forswear such weapons when the traditional nuclear weapons powers held on to their arsenal. Rauf declared that "a nuclear South Asia is here to stay. Pragmatic arms control strategies must therefore focus on accommodation, not appeasement or confrontation." His sentiments were echoed in a paper circulated among policymakers here by Andrew Winner, senior associate of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Richard Sokolosky, a fellow at Rand Corporation - considered the Pentagon's private think tank. They argued that Washington should forget about promoting nuclear "abolitionism" in South Asia and get real. The thrust of U.S. policy, they said, should focus on achieving stability "by managing the nuclear competition" between New Delhi and Islamabad. In this regard, they suggested that the U.S. provide assistance to both India and Pakistan to "deploy safe, secure and survivable nuclear forces."
About the Clinton administration's contention that providing such assistance would imply acceptance of India's and Pakistan's nuclear status, unravel the global non-proliferation regime and reward irresponsible behaviour, they said the argument did hold water because New Delhi and Islamabad "were not members of this regime prior to their nuclear testing and it was an open secret that both had covert nuclear capabilities." "Moreover," Winner and Sokolosky added, "virtually all countries around the world have a very strong stake in preserving the effectiveness of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) independent of Pakistani and Indian nuclear behaviour and the American reaction."
Thus, they said, this "one size fits all" response by the U.S. to countries that decide to go nuclear was short-sighted. "Those who argue that dealing with the reality of a nuclear Pakistan and India will gut the NPT misunderstand both the resilience of the regime and the factors that drive countries to acquire nuclear weapons," they said.
- India Abroad News Service
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