Source: The Hindu, Thursday, July 01, 1999 (Op-Ed).
The warning from Kargil
By Achin Vanaik
THE PRIME Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, has said that no responsible person can or should raise the issue of nuclear exchange or fears about it in the context of the Kargil crisis. What an extraordinary statement! But those who have defended India going nuclear can hardly be expected to acknowledge the legitimacy, seriousness and relevance of the concern over a possible nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan (if not now, then in the future) when because of their own belief in the wondrous powers of deterrence they dismissed such an outcome as effectively impossible.
Unfortunately, leaders on both sides have already raised the issue. The Pakistan Foreign Secretary, Mr. Shamshad Ahmad, openly states that in a context of sustained and escalating military hostilities, India should not doubt Pakistan's willingness to use all its might (implicitly not excluding nuclear weapons) if provoked beyond a point. On our side, the Naval Chief, Admiral Sushil Kumar, has reassured (if that can be the word) the nation that the Navy which is nuclear equipped can survive a nuclear attack and retaliate similarly! The more obviously insane aspects of the deterrence discourse have now made their appearance. This is the real irresponsibility surrounding the discussion of the nuclear issue, not the expression of legitimate fears about the possibilities of a nuclear exchange in the region.
Rarely has there been so quick and comprehensive a comeuppance and embarrassment to most members of the Indian community of ``strategic experts''. Virtually without exception, the Prime Ministerial summit in Lahore was hailed as a major development, indeed something of a political breakthrough even if there were differences over how much of a breakthrough it constituted. Kargil has decisively punctured these claims exposing the superficiality and foolishness of the judgment of these ``experts''. But insofar as so many of these ``experts'' were ardent champions of India's decision to go nuclear, they had to hype up the significance of the summit and its declaration. In supporting the nuclearisation of South Asia, they had to find some way of refuting the obvious inference that Pokhran-II and the events it inaugurated added a qualitatively new dimension of danger (a nuclear one) to South Asia when this need not (and should never) have been the case. They thought they could portray the summit as a great example of what marvels deterrence could achieve. This is not a judgment made with the benefit of hindsight.
Nuclear-military preparations are an expression of prior political hostilities between two countries. They therefore cannot ever resolve or help overcome the hostilities. Indeed, insofar as such preparations seek to promote security by further threatening the opponent, they exacerbate hostile sentiments and attitudes and therefore tend to make matters worse. India and Pakistan are the only countries which have remained locked in strategic hostility for over 50 years with no sign of its disappearing soon. It is the gravest mistake to bring in the possibility of a nuclear conflict where it earlier did not exist. Let us understand clearly what deterrence is. It is the irrational hope that a terrible fear (of the consequences of a nuclear assault) will somehow continuously promote wise decisions by fallible human beings operating under enormous pressure in conditions they can never fully control! Security thinking based on deterrence is nothing but hope masquerading as strategy!
Since deterrence is a state of mind, for it to hold, your opponent's state of mind must be such that you are certain it will not resort to using nuclear weapons. However, you cannot ever control the conditions that ensure this. The likelihood of deterrence breaking down is always the greatest in wartime and near-wartime conditions when ``unacceptable provocations'' are most likely to be perceived; when anger and hostility are the greatest, when the pressure for restoring pride or overcoming a loss of face or ``regaining the advantage'' is the greatest; when the dynamic of escalation in military action is the strongest; when fear of what the opponent will do or how far it will go (including the use of nuclear weapons) is the most heightened. The central lesson of all this is obvious. It is not Western propaganda or the duplicity of nuclear weapons powers but a simple and undeniable fact that South Asia today, and for a long time to come, is the most likely place where a nuclear exchange can take place.
The importance of Kargil is not that it will lead to a nuclear exchange. India and Pakistan do not yet have such weapons systems in place. But Kargil has served a clear and unambiguous warning that there can be wartime situations in the future when such weapons are in place and when the possibility of their use is real and frightening enough despite the motivated and irresponsible assurances of pro-nuclearists on both sides to put your faith in deterrence. About Kargil itself there can be little dispute. It is a deliberate and unjustified intrusion by Pakistani army regulars which must be opposed. The status quo ante on the Line of Control must be restored but without opening up other fronts or taking the risks of dangerously escalating the conflict. The costs will be very high and in the future Kargil will become another Siachen slowly bleeding both countries. In doing what it has done, Pakistan is one, seizing on an opportunity it has always had its eye on. It prepared carefully for a year and was given its chance by slack Indian intelligence. Two, it is looking for obtaining a bargaining counter vis-a-vis Siachen where India has the advantage. Three, after the Indian folly in nuclearising the region, Pakistan knows that the possibilities for internationalising the Kashmir dispute through military provocations are greater than ever - another adverse diplomatic-political consequence of Pokhran-II which our pro- nuclear experts never anticipated.
There is still time to move towards sanity. India should stop its nuclear weaponisation and deployment programme and even reverse the direction. Pakistan has already officially declared that it will not be the first to deploy such weapons but will follow India. Remove the threat of nuclear exchange from this region by not having them available and deployed, and best of all by fully eliminating them. However, the logic of Pokhran-II is to develop and deploy them and to justify doing so by citing (from time to time) the abstract ``China threat'' or by rehearsing the usual standard arguments about nuclear weapons being a ``currency of power.''
It is ironic that at the moment there is much appreciation of China's cautious pragmatism in not openly aligning itself with Pakistan over Kargil. But China all these decades never acted as a nuclear or strategic opponent of India. It has always been some sections of the Indian strategic elite which insisted on the long-term necessity of adopting such a posture and preparing accordingly.
Since Indian nuclearisation will make no sense unless it is aimed at developing a ``credible deterrent'' against China, one can be certain that at some point China will have to shift from its current watchful pragmatism to register this reality of India targeting China by its actions (even if not always by its words) as a nuclear-strategic rival. That is the point when not just the conflict with Pakistan but the border dispute with China will have become unnecessarily nuclearised. Making out China as a nuclear-strategic rival will then have become a self-fulfilling prophecy! There is still some time to step away from that brink but there is very little time left to step away from the scenario that is most frightening - the final nuclearisation of Indo- Pakistani relations.
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