Published in "The Times of India, June 2, 1999
From Pokharan to Kargil:The Nuclear Danger Is No Fantasy
By PRAFUL BIDWAI
However one looks at its genesis and its remarkably inept
handling by New Delhi, the Kargil crisis highlights, as nothing
else, the sub-continent's strategic volatility and the fragility
of the Lahore process. If the Indian army had to wait till May 6
to be informed of the unprecedentedly large-scale intrusion by a
shepherd, and then took six days to report this to the defence
ministry, and if the ministry two days later still said the
infiltrators only occupied "remote and unheld areas", then there
is something deeply wrong with our security decision-making. The
sudden switch from smugness and inaction to high-profile air
strikes with their high-risk escalation potential testifies to
the same flaws. One year after Pokharan-II, these put a huge
question-mark over nuclearisation's claimed gains. The Bomb has
comprehensively failed to raise India's stature, strengthen our
claim to a Security Council seat, expand the room for independent
policy-making, or enhance our security.
India stands morally and politically diminished: a semi-pariah
state to be equated with Pakistan, and periodically reminded of
Security Council Resolution 1172. Most Third World countries see
India as contradictory: a nation that for 50 years rightly
criticised the hypocrisy of the Nuclear Club, only to join it; a
country that cannot adequately feed its people, but has hegemonic
global ambitions. Our neighbours, crucial to our security, see us
as an aggressive, discontented state that violated its own long-
standing doctrines without a security rationale.
After prolonged talks with the U.S., in which we put our "non-
negotiable" security up for discussion, India remains a minor,
bothersome, factor in Washington's game-plan as a non-nuclear
weapons-state. South Asia's nuclearisation has enabled Washington
to grant Pakistan what Islamabad has always craved, and which New
Delhi has always denied it, viz parity with India. Today, India
and Pakistan act like America's junior partners. Washington last
August drafted both to smash the unity of the Non-Aligned in the
Conference on Disarmament on linking FMCT talks with the five
NWSs agreeing to discuss nuclear disarmament. If nuclearisation
had enhanced our capacity for independent action, we would not
have been mealy-mouthed on the U.S. bombing of Sudan and Iraq nor
capitulated to unreasonable U.S. demands on patents.
Nuclearisation has put India on the defensive in SAARC and ASEAN,
in NAM and the World Bank. Damage control remains the main
preoccupation of our diplomacy one year after the mythical
"explosion of self-esteem". Worse, nuclearisation has drawn India
into dangerous rivalry with Pakistan and China. India has eight
times more fissile material than Pakistan. But in nuclear, more
isn't better. The truth is, India has become for the first time
vulnerable to nuclear attacks on a dozen cities, which could kill
millions, against which we are wholly defenceless.
By embracing the "abhorrent" doctrine of nuclear deterrence, we
have committed what we ourselves used to describe as a "crime
against humanity" This article of faith assumes that adversaries
have symmetrical objectives and perceptions; they can inflict
"unacceptable" damage on each other; and will behave rationally,
100 per cent of the time. These assumptions are dangerously
wrong. India-Pakistan history is replete with asymmetrical
perceptions, strategic miscalculation, and divergent definitions
of "unacceptable". For fanatics, even a few Hiroshimas are not
"unacceptable". Deterrence breaks down for a variety of reasons:
misreading of moves, false alerts, panic, and technical
failures. The U.S. and USSR spent over $900 billion (or three
times our GDP) on sophisticated command and control systems to
prevent accidental, unintended or unauthorised use of nuclear
weapons. But the Cold War witnessed over 10,000 near-misses. Each
could have caused devastation. Gen. Lee Butler, who long headed
the U.S. Strategic Command, says it was not deterrence, but
"God's grace", that prevented disaster.
Generally disaster-prone India and Pakistan will have no reliable
command and control systems for years. Their deterrence is
ramshackle, if not ram-bharose. A nuclear disaster is
substantially, qualitatively, more probable in South Asia than it
ever was between the Cold War rivals. Kargil starkly highlights
this. It would be suicidal for India and Pakistan to deploy
nuclear weapons and then "manage" their rivalry. They must never
manufacture, induct or deploy these weapons. India must not
erase her own memory. For decades, she correctly argued that
deterrence is illegal, irrational, strategically unworkable,
unstable, and leads to an arms race. The "minimum deterrent"
proposition does not weaken this argument's force. Minimality is
variable and subjective, determined not unilaterally, but in
relation to adversaries. Embracing deterrence means entering a
bottomless pit. That is why the NWSs' "hard-nosed" realists ended
up amassing overkill arsenals--enough to destroy the world 50
times. The danger that India could get drawn into an
economically ruinous and strategically disastrous nuclear arms
race, especially with China, is very real.
Consider the larger truth. Nuclear weapons do not give security.
Because of their awesome power, their use, even threat of use, is
determined less by military, than by political, factors. That is
why America cannot translate its enormous atomic prowess into
real might. Nuclear weapons have never won wars or decisively
tilted military balances. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Falklands,
the Balkans, all expose their a-strategic nature. They are not
even effective instruments of blackmail. State after state, from
tiny Cuba to China, has defied nuclear blackmail attempts.
Nuclear weapons are false symbols of prestige. But they are
ruinously expensive. To build and maintain a tiny arsenal, about
a fifth of China's, will cost about Rs. 50,000 crores. This will
further inflate our bloated military budget. Already, New Delhi
spends twice as much on the military as on health, education and
social security put together.
With Pokharan-II, and now Kargil, Kashmir stands
internationalised. It is widely seen as a potential flashpoint
for a nuclear confrontation. Largely symbolic events like Lahore,
while welcome, do not alter the causes or conditions of Indo-
Pakistan rivalry. The Lahore agreements do not even commit the
two to slow down nuclear and missile development, only to inform
each other of their tests. Such limited confidence-building can
easily collapse, as Kargil vividly demonstrates.
Add to this debit side the enormous social costs of militarism,
tub-thumping jingoism and male-supremacist nationalism; of
further militarisation of our science; legitimisation of
insensate violence; and psychological insecurity among the young.
The Pokharan balance-sheet looks a deep, alarming, red. But there
is good news too: nuclear weapons aren't popular. According to
recent polls, 73 per cent of Indians oppose making or using them.
After November's "Pokharan-vs-Pyaaz" state elections, politicians
know that nukes don't produce votes. And now, Kargil should
induce sobriety. For sanity's sake, the nuclear genie should be
put back into the bottle. What human agency can do, it can also
undo.--end--