Dealing with Pakistan’s brinkmanship
by Shyam Saran in
HINDU 7/12/2012
Islamabad’s expanding nuclear capability is no
longer driven solely by its oft-cited fears of India but by the paranoia about
U.S. attacks on its strategic assets
During the past
decade, there have been notable shifts in Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine, away from
minimum deterrence to second strike capability and towards expanding its nuclear
weapons arsenal to include both strategic and tactical weapons. Islamabad has
described these developments as “consolidating Pakistan’s deterrence capability
at all levels of the threat spectrum.” These shifts are apparent from the
following developments:
(1) There is a
deliberate shift from the earlier generation of enriched uranium nuclear weapons
to a newer generation of plutonium weapons.
(2) This shift has
enabled Pakistan to significantly increase the number of weapons, which now
appears to have overtaken India’s nuclear weapon inventory and, in a decade, may
well surpass those held by Britain and France.
(3) Progress has been
made in the miniaturisation of weapons, enabling their use with cruise missiles,
both air and surface-based (Ra’ad or Hatf VIII and Babur or Hatf-VII
respectively) as also with a new generation of short range and tactical missiles
(Abdali or Hatf II with a range of 180 km and Nasr or Hatf-IX with a range of 60
km).
(4) Pakistan has
steadily improved the range and accuracy of its delivery vehicles, building upon
the earlier Chinese models (the Hatf series) and the later North Korean models
(the No-dong series). The newer missiles, including the Nasr, are solid-fuelled,
which are quicker to launch than the older liquid-fuelled
versions.
Not under safeguards
This rapid
development of its nuclear weapon arsenal has been enabled by the setting up of
two plutonium production reactors at Khusab with a third and fourth under
construction. These have been built with Chinese assistance and are not under
safeguards. The spent fuel from these reactors is reprocessed at the Rawalpindi
New Labs facility, where there are reportedly two plants each with a capacity to
reprocess 10 to 20 tonnes annually.
Olli Heinonen, a
former Director of Safeguards at the IAEA has observed: “Commissioning of
additional plutonium production reactors and further construction of
reprocessing capabilities signify that Pakistan may even be developing
second-strike capabilities”.
These developments
are driven by a mix of old and new set of threat perceptions and, equally,
political ambitions. The so-called existential threat from India continues to be
cited as the main driver of Pakistan’s nuclear compulsions. The rapid increase
in the number of weapons is justified by pointing to India having a larger stock
of fissile material available for a much more numerous weapons inventory, thanks
to the Indo-U.S. civil nuclear agreement. Tactical nuclear weapons are said to
be a response to India’s so-called “Cold Start” doctrine or its suspected
intention to launch quick response punitive thrusts across the border in case of
another major cross-border terrorist strike.
Pakistan’s strategic
objective has been expanded to the acquisition of a “full-spectrum capability”
comprising a land, air and sea-based triad of nuclear forces, to put it on a par
with India.
However, the focus on
India has tended to obscure an important change in Pakistan’s threat perception
which has significant implications. The Pakistani military and civilian elite is
convinced that the United States has also become a dangerous adversary, which
seeks to disable, disarm or take forcible possession of Pakistan’s nuclear
weapons.
This threat
perception may be traced to the aftermath of 9/11, when Pakistan, for the first
time in its history, faced the real prospect of a military assault on its
territory by U.S. forces and the loss of its strategic assets. In his address to
the nation on September 15, 2001, President Pervez Musharraf justified his
acquiescence to the U.S. ultimatum to abandon the Taliban and support U.S.
military operations in Afghanistan, on account of four over-riding and critical
concerns — “our sovereignty, second our economy, third our strategic assets and
fourth our Kashmir cause.” Pakistan once again became a “front-line state,” this
time in the U.S. war on terrorism in Afghanistan in contrast to the U.S.-led war
against the Soviet forces in that country in the 1980s. But this time round,
Pakistan became an ally by compulsion rather than by choice.
While the immediate
threat to its strategic assets passed, Pakistan’s suspicions of U.S. intentions
in this regard did not diminish and have now risen to the level of paranoia. The
American drone attacks against targets within Pakistani territory and, in
particular, the brazenness with which the Abbotabad raid was carried out by U.S.
Navy Seals in May 2011 to kill Osama bin Laden, have only heightened Pakistan’s
concerns over U.S. intentions. These have overtaken fears of India, precisely
because the U.S. has demonstrated both its capability and willingness to
undertake such operations. India has not.
Recent shifts
Thus the recent
shifts in Pakistan’s nuclear strategy cannot be ascribed solely to the
traditional construct of India-Pakistan hostility. They appear driven mainly by
the fear of U.S. assault on its strategic assets. The more numerous and compact
the weapons, the wider their dispersal and the greater their sophistication, the
more deterred the U.S. would be from undertaking any operations to disable them
or to take them into its custody.
The U.S. finds it as difficult to acknowledge
this reality as it has, until recently, Pakistan’s complicity in terrorism
directed against its forces in Afghanistan. This permits putting the onus on
India to reassure Pakistan through concessions rather than admitting that the
problem lies elsewhere. There is also a strong non-proliferation lobby in the
U.S. which believes it could leverage the threat of an India-Pakistan nuclear
exchange to reverse some of the concessions made to India in the civil nuclear
deal. More recently, it is being argued that since the U.S. is finding it
difficult to get its promised share of the civil nuclear business in India due
to concerns over the country’s Nuclear Liability legislation, a major rationale
behind the agreement no longer exists. And meanwhile, it is further claimed, the
civil nuclear agreement has only heightened the danger of India-Pakistan nuclear
war by feeding into Pakistani fears of India’s enhanced nuclear
capabilities.
In this context, I
wish to recall an exchange over dinner hosted by President George Bush for Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh in November 2008 in Washington. The then Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice remarked that after the “heavy lifting” the U.S. had done
to get the nuclear deal through, she hoped India would ensure that U.S.
companies got a share of the orders for new reactors. Before our Prime Minister
could reply, Mr. Bush stated categorically that he was not bothered if India did
not buy even a single reactor from the U.S., since he regarded the agreement as
confirming India as a long-term strategic partner rather than a mere customer
for U.S. reactors.
Pakistan encourages
the arguments of the U.S. non-proliferation lobby since this keeps the pressure
on India and enables the camouflage of Pakistan’s real motivations. It would not
wish to project, as an adversary, a much more powerful U.S., and lose out on the
economic and military support it receives, however transactional these deals may
have become.
The implications
What are the
implications of these recent developments?
One, it is not
through “strategic restraint” or security assurances by India that Pakistan
would be persuaded to change its behaviour and revise its strategy. India and
Pakistan have some nuclear CBMs in place and India would be prepared to go
further. The main levers for such persuasion lie in Washington and in Beijing,
not in New Delhi.
Two, whatever
sophistry Pakistan may indulge in to justify its augmented arsenal and
threatened recourse to tactical nuclear weapons, for India, the label on the
weapon, tactical or strategic, is irrelevant since the use of either would
constitute a nuclear attack against India. In terms of India’s stated nuclear
doctrine, this would invite a massive retaliatory strike. For Pakistan to think
that a counter-force nuclear strike against military targets would enable it to
escape a counter-value strike against its cities and population centres, is a
dangerous illusion. The U.S. could acquaint Pakistan with NATO’s own Cold War
experience when tactical nuclear weapons were abandoned once it was realised
that use of such weapons in any conflict would swiftly and inexorably escalate
to the strategic level. Instead of urging India to respond to Pakistani nuclear
escalation through offering mutual restraint, the U.S. should convince Islamabad
that a limited nuclear war is a contradiction in terms and that it should
abandon such reckless brinkmanship. The U.S. knows that India’s nuclear
deterrence is not Pakistan-specific. Any misguided attempt to constrain Indian
capabilities would undermine, for both, the value of Indo-U.S. strategic
partnership in an increasingly uncertain and challenging regional and global
security environment.
Three, Pakistan is no
longer India’s problem. Its toxic mix of jihadi terrorism and nuclear
brinkmanship poses a threat to the region and to the world. Even China, whose
culpability in continuing to assist Pakistan in developing its nuclear and
delivery capabilities is well documented, is not exempt. It needs to reassess
its own policies. An apparently low-cost and proxy effort to contain India may
well become China’s nightmare, too, in the days to come.
(Shyam Saran is a
former Foreign Secretary. He is currently Chairman, Research and Information
System for Developing Countries (RIS), and Senior Fellow, Centre for Policy
Research, New Delhi.)
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