The Climate in South Asia: Hot and Nuclear
M. V. Ramana
May and June are the hottest months of
the year in South Asia. People watch the sky anxiously for signs
of clouds, in the hope that they may result in cooling rain. This
summer was somewhat different. Anxiety centered not on clouds
coming in but rather on the hope that the clouds of war would
disappear from the region.
The trigger for the latest round of Indo-Pak confrontation was the December
13, 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament by militants, allegedly
from Pakistan. The eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation between Indian
and Pakistani soldiers that followed persisted for several months.
Just when things looked like they were improving came two gruesome
attacks in Kashmir within the space of 2 weeks in the month of
May, the first of which was on the wives and children of Indian
soldiers posted in the region.
As the world around waited,
India and Pakistan amassed troops across the border. India moved
five warships from the east to the Arabian Sea, closer to Pakistan. [1] On May 22, Indian
Prime Minister Vajpayee told front-line troops in Kashmir that
the time has come for a “decisive fight”, promising, “We will
win again”. [2]
US intelligence reports suggested that Pakistan was
building missile launch sites near its border with India.
Fortunately the situation appears to have cooled down, especially following
high-level American diplomacy. Anxious not to have tensions between
India and Pakistan get in the way of continuing its war on Afghanistan,
US leaders made a number of promises to India, while at the same
time supporting Musharraf as well.
This follows the model
of the war at Kargil in the summer of 1999, where once again US
intervention proved necessary to get Pakistani soldiers and others
to withdraw from their posts in Kargil. The recent report by Bruce
Riedel, formerly the Senior Director for Near East and South Asian
Affairs at the US National Security Council, American Diplomacy
and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House reveals in no uncertain
terms that India, and Prime Minister Vajpayee, did not stop the
war fearing Pakistani nuclear weapons. [3] It was reassurance from the US that Prime Minister
Sharif would behave himself and order Pakistani troops back from
the Line of Control that set the conditions for the cease-fire
at Kargil.
This goes in the face of
the often-parroted claim that nuclear weapons protected Pakistan
and kept the war from escalating. Or for that matter the belief
– or hope – that nuclear weapons act as a deterrent to war. Indeed,
many have argued that the Kargil war was actually caused by nuclear
weapons. [4]
A number of factors contributed to making the recent crisis much worse.
The first is the fallout
of US actions following September 11th. With the US
arrogating for itself the right to bomb Afghanistan, several Indian
politicians, media commentators and military personnel fell over
each other to recommend that India follow the US lead and attack
facilities in the part of Kashmir in Pakistan. In November 2001,
for example, even before the attack on the Indian Parliament,
a meeting of high-level Indian army officials recommended going
in “for ‘hot pursuit’ of terrorists in Pak-occupied Kashmir and
destroy[ing] their training camps.”
[5]
The second factor is the
increased levels of (nuclear) brinkmanship indulged in by both
countries, especially India. This took both the form of threats
and actions. For example, during his January 2 speech in Lucknow,
Prime Minister Vajpayee reportedly stated that: “no weapon would
be spared in self-defence. Whatever weapon was available, it would
be used no matter how it wounded the enemy.” Indian Army chief
General S. Padmanabhan warned that if Islamabad dared to unleash
its nuclear arms, “The perpetrator of that particular outrage
shall be punished, shall be punished so severely that the continuation
of any form of fray will be doubtful,” and expressed his readiness
“for a second strike” since he felt that India had “enough” nuclear
arms. [6]
On the other side of the
border, former chief of the Pakistan Army General Mirza Aslam
Beg declared: “We can make a first strike, and a second strike
or even a third.” [7] (To put this in
perspective, it helps look at General Beg’s attitude towards nuclear
war: “You can die crossing the street, or you could die in a nuclear
war. You’ve got to die someday anyway.”)
In the midst of the crisis,
both India and Pakistan tested new nuclear capable missiles. India
started off the race with a test of a 700 km version of the Agni
– clearly specific to Pakistan – on January 25.
[8] Pakistan’s response was amplified: it tested three
missiles – the 1500 km Ghauri, a 300 km Ghaznavi, and the 180
km Abdali – later in the year. It was also reported that Indian
Prime Minister Vajpayee granted authorization to the armed forces
to use the short range Prithvi missile at their discretion.
[9]
The third factor was the Indian military’s impatience after Kargil. Though the
Kargil war was extremely limited in a geographical sense, it took
a toll of nearly 1300 lives (according to the Indian government)
and over 1750 (according to Pakistan). Since that combat involved
Pakistan occupying high terrain and controlling approach roads,
the Indian army literally and figuratively had to fight an uphill
battle. The lesson that they seem to have learnt from that war
is that they did not want to be limited in their options in such
a situation. Even at Kargil, India called on its air force to
launch attacks for the first time since 1971 and there were calls
to open up other battlefronts or the bombardment of Pakistani
supply routes to the border.
Such recommendations became
more common after the end of the Kargil war. In January 2000 Defence
Minister George Fernandes, once a trade union leader, declared
that the Kargil conflict had shown that nuclearisation of India
and Pakistan had not made conventional wars obsolete.
[10] Rather they “simply imposed another dimension
on the way warfare could be conducted.” Reflecting the thinking
that had been popularized by US nuclear strategists (or to put
it more bluntly, psychopaths) like Herman Kahn, then Army chief
V. P. Malik elaborated on his concept of limited war. “The escalation
ladder would be carefully climbed in a carefully controlled ascent
by both protagonists.” [11] Given the confusion and chaos
of war, such ideas are wishful thinking at best.
During the recent crisis,
an Indian army officer told a senior journalist about their plans
for a quick attack that would set back “Pakistan's military capability
by at least 30 years, pushing it into the military ‘dark ages’…
Casualties in men and machines in such an operation will be high
and the military has firmly told the politicians to prepare the
nation for losses and delayed results, as fighting will be fierce.”
[12]
In large part, the great concern about the standoff between India and Pakistan
stems from the fact that both possess nuclear weapons, as was
made clear to the world through their nuclear tests of May 1998.
But things have not stopped there.
There has been continuing development of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles.
In August 1999 the Indian Draft Nuclear Doctrine released by the
National Security Advisory Board called for the development and
early deployment of a triad of “aircraft, mobile land-missiles
and sea-based assets” to deliver nuclear weapons. Largely patterned
after the doctrines and deployment postures of the nuclear weapon
states, the weapons were to be organized for “rapid punitive response”.
As part of implementing this agenda, in January 2001, following a successful
test of a 2000 km range missile capable of delivering nuclear
weapons, the Indian government announced its decision to induct
the missile into the military. Pakistan has long claimed the ability
to deliver nuclear weapons using land-based missiles; a few weeks
after the Indian missile test, the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff
announced that Pakistan was thinking about equipping its submarines
with nuclear missiles. Earlier Pakistan, as well as India, had
stated that a ‘command and control’ system to manage nuclear weapons
had been set up.
Deployment of missiles
by India and Pakistan carries unique dangers. With missile flight
times of 10 minutes or less between the two countries, there is
no possibility of reliable early warning of launch. Therefore
the danger of use of nuclear weapons through accident or miscalculation
in a crisis is high. [13] This possibility
becomes more real if the authorization to use these weapons is
given to the military regiments possessing the weapons.
There could also be the deliberate use of nuclear weapons during war. The war
could start through a series of limited initial actions, leading
to responses that eventually intensify into a full-scale war.
The threshold for the use of nuclear weapons could be one of a
number of military actions, for example, the Indian army approaching
the city of Lahore that is close to the border, or a naval blockade
of the port of Karachi.
Broadly speaking there are two kinds of scenarios. The first postulates that
when one of the many thresholds is crossed, Pakistan would use
tactical nuclear weapons on some military target – as a warning
signal. India’s response to this would likely involve the use
of nuclear weapons, potentially leading to further escalation.
The other scenario predicts that under the same set of circumstances,
Pakistan would directly attack some Indian city with nuclear weapons.
If that were to happen, there is little or no doubt that India
would respond in kind. In either case, it is quite likely that
the end result would be large-scale nuclear destruction.
Even the use of a single
nuclear weapon in the crowded cities of South Asia would be catastrophic.
Just a 15 kiloton bomb, equivalent to the weapon the US dropped
on Hiroshima, would cause between 150,000 and 850,000 short term
casualties if exploded over Bombay.
[14] A limited nuclear exchange involving the use
of five Hiroshima sized bombs on each side could lead to about
3 million deaths and an additional 1.5 million severe injuries. [15]
What has been even more
worrying in such a situation is the progressively hawkish rhetoric
indulged in by policy makers on both sides and the complete lack
of diplomatic relations. Talks between political leaders have
been largely symbolic at best, and abject failures at worst. In
one sense, this should be no surprise. As Kanti Bajpai once pointed
out, the absence of war attributed to nuclear deterrence is actually
“a colossal failure of the political imagination.” [16] If deterrence is successful
- a big IF - then there is no incentive to work out problems with
the so-called adversary. By freezing problems, nuclear weapons
only entrench those on both sides who have an interest in permanent
enmity.
There is a way forward. On Hiroshima Day of 1998, an estimated 400,000 people
marched on the streets of Calcutta in opposition to the nuclear
tests conducted a few months earlier. Several other large cities
in South Asia also witnessed similar rallies. Perhaps even more
significant were the large number of spontaneous actions, mostly
unreported, from little heard of small towns and villages. These,
and other activities, mark the emergence of a large-scale antinuclear
and peace movement. There is now a national Coalition for Nuclear
Disarmament and Peace (CNDP), which emerged out of a National
Convention in November 2000 in New Delhi. Similarly the Pakistan
Peace Coalition has been formed by a large number of organizations
interested in fostering peace and nuclear disarmament.
The task facing these groups is immense. Ranged against them are governments
and powerful institutions. They also have to contend with the
hypocrisy of nuclear weapon states that argue that they, and they
alone, should possess nuclear weapons. They have to deal with
a vast populace that has no awareness of the dangers of nuclear
war.
Tough as it is, there is no alternative to this struggle.
The dangers of complacency or acceptance are too grave.
HOME
