A Recipe For Unbridled Pak-India Competition

The Indian Nuclear Draft Doctrine, released on August 17, has evoked a strong reaction (DAWN, Oct 5) from three of Pakistan's most distinguished, hard-line commentators on nuclear issues. Retired ambassadors Agha Shahi and Abdul
Sattar, and retired Air Marshal Zulfiqar Ali Khan (SSK for brevity), have stridently criticized the Pakistan governments' response as weak, inadequate, and amounting to little more than futile denunciations. Instead, they say,
Pakistan must now go full steam in beefing up its nuclear forces with more and better types of bombs and missiles, start deployment, and immediately increase defence spending on both nuclear and conventional forces.

These authors, as well as many other ardent exponents of Pakistan's nuclearization, have obviously been greatly agitated by the Draft Doctrine. While this is scarcely surprising, it simply proves for the hundredth time or more that independent thinking on foreign and defence policies has virtually ceased to exist, and there is little capacity to think of the wider, long-term interests of Pakistan and its people. Reactions to the Draft Doctrine once again
underscore that Pakistan's posture and policies are often little more than simple, spasmodic, knee-jerk reactions to an agenda set in New Delhi. What SSK recommend is a rapid descent into a bottomless nuclear abyss. Following them will mean that Pakistan's future will hold nothing but futile strife and unending misery for its people.

But let us first have a look at the Indian Nuclear Draft Doctrine. It is evil in intent and hypocritical. Starting with a preamble that nuclear weapons are "the gravest threat to humanity", it nevertheless concludes that India needs
"sufficient, survivable and operationally prepared nuclear forces" together with "the will to employ nuclear forces and weapons". It speaks of a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based missiles and sea-based assets, and requires
survivability of the forces through a combination of multiple redundant systems, mobility, dispersion and deception. In a clear departure from the late General Sunderji's ideas of a fixed number of weapons, there is no specification of what minimum deterrence or flexible response might mean.

Coming in the wake of Kargil, and released just before the Indian elections, the Doctrine beckons at Pakistan to respond in kind. While there are excellent reasons for Pakistan not to cooperate, SSK and others appear eager to oblige. These authors make four main points in their essay.

First, SSK state that for each one of Pakistan's' nuclear weapons that becomes vulnerable to Indian preemption, a rule of thumb says that we must have at least one more. But estimates of vulnerability are always highly subjective and
it is easy to create imaginary fears about an adversary's capabilities. At the extreme it is even possible to argue that all of our weapons are at risk. Therefore SSK are essentially calling for an open-ended nuclear competition
with India. This is in marked contrast with numerous statements made in earlier years by these gentlemen, as well as other nuclear advocates, claiming that possession of just a handful of weapons would be sufficient to guarantee
security in perpetuity. Number racing was then dismissed by them as a spurious and unfounded objection made by ignorant and pessimistic people. Unfortunately, we ignoramuses are being proved correct today.

Second, SSK welcome the induction of mobile nuclear-tipped missiles into the Pakistani arsenal and say that "a high state of alert" will be perpetually required as India proceeds with its deployments. They do show some small signs
of worry at the possibility of accidental or unauthorized launch of these missiles, and the short flying-time, but believe that these are mere technical problems that can be solved if other "more experienced" nuclear states help us
set up a command and control system. Unfortunately, there is absolutely no basis for this optimism, even if some friendly country were to help Pakistan or India.

The problem of making a safe but effective command and control system is not simply hard. Rather, the laws of physics deem that it is impossible. Whether for Pakistan or India, the impossibility comes about because one has two conflicting, directly contradictory requirements. One requirement is the
need to assure survivability by dispersing the missiles and their command as widely as possible, and the other is to exclude the possibility of unauthorized missile launches.

You can have either survivability OR safety, but you cannot have both.

Dispersal as the key to survivability is easy to understand: a single bomb on the Rawalpindi JCSC or GHQ would knock out Pakistan's ability to mount a retaliatory strike if all launch authority is centralized there. Even if this, or perhaps some other command and control centre, were somehow fortified to survive a nuclear blast in the vicinity, the electromagnetic pulse which accompanies a nuclear blast would destroy all normal telecommunications. Hence autonomy of dispersed mobile missile units is an inescapable requirement for maintaining a credible, survivable deterrent. For this to be meaningful, each unit must necessarily be provided the necessary authorization codes for arming and launching the nuclear weapons in its possession.

The paradox is that dispersal of authority, while it enhances survivability of the arsenal, correspondingly increases the probability of unauthorized launch from a mobile missile unit. The reason could possibly be wrong or deliberately falsified information, or perhaps simple adventurism. The need to make split-second decisions, and the possibility of losing contact with the nuclear control
headquarters, almost certainly means that the final launch authority may have to be vested with a unit commander and not the headquarters. This commander would probably be someone at the level of a brigadier. Ultimately it could be
him, and not the prime minister or COAS/JCSC, who would make the fateful decision.

While one has confidence that strict screening of such commanders will be required, it takes only one ideologically charged person who may decide to take destiny into his own hands. Kargil certainly left open a number of questions
about who had authorized that particular initiative, questions that shall probably never be truthfully answered. But if a nuclear initiative is ever taken, the question of responsibility will be quite irrelevant. I stress here that these considerations equally apply to India.

Third, SSK reassure us that "the US-USSR paradigm has no relevance for us". More specifically, in their opinion, the USSR fell to pieces not because of over-spending on defence but because of bad governance. Hence they conclude that
Pakistan can afford to pursue an accelerated nuclear and conventional weapons program but first "the nation will have to get rid of incompetent and dishonest rulers". It would appear from this that SSK do not think too highly of our
present rulers. It also appears that they have some magical way to make a radical break with 5 decades of history. Sadly on this matter they have chosen not to share with us their wisdom.

I do not wish to debate SSK on whether Pakistan can "afford" more defence spending. There are plenty of perfectly boring figures about literacy, infant mortality, children out of school, access to clean drinking water, levels of pollution, nutrition per capita, and so forth. None of this is of the slightest concern to people like us who read English newspapers in Pakistan, have flush toilets, and worry about gaining excessive weight. Higher education is only slightly harder to dismiss. The Atlantique naval aircraft shot down by India, for which we are claiming $60 million in damages, was worth enough to run all of Pakistan's state universities for a period of nearly 2 years. Not surprisingly we have no real universities in Pakistan.

Fourthly, SSK claim that there were four historical episodes where Pakistani nuclear weapons prevented an Indian attack. The first in the mid-80's, the second at the time of the Brasstacks exercise in 1987, the third in May 1990, and the fourth during the Kargil crisis. Much has been written about the first three alleged instances of deterrence, and the decisive weight of academic opinion is that nuclear weapons played no role in those crises. Kargil, which followed the May 1998 tests by India and Pakistan, was different.

In Kargil, Pakistan's nuclear weapons quite probably deterred India from crossing the international border. But it was the confidence derived from these nuclear weapons that had emboldened elements within Pakistan to conceive an
initiative which otherwise they would not have taken. Plainly stated, nuclear weapons caused Kargil; without nuclear weapons Kargil would not have occured. However, as it turned out, the aftermath left international fury focussed upon Pakistan and inflicted severe humiliation upon it.

How then should Pakistan respond to the Indian Draft Doctrine? Recognizing that it was designed with an obvious election purpose, that it is not yet a part of official government policy, and that it was expressly designed to provoke, one should refrain from excessive action or comment. To draw Pakistan into open-ended racing would be a matter of delight for nuclear hawks in India such as
K.S.Subramaniam who, responding to a question about Pakistan's possible reaction on the Draft Doctrine said, "what race? The faster they run the quicker they'll collapse".

Pakistan needs an independent defence policy, one that is not dictated and determined by India but by our national needs. The country must shake itself out of the post-Kargil depression and become aware of the real threats to its
security--the unremitting carnage of Shia-Sunni violence, a collapsing economy, and growing tensions between the Centre and Sindh. On the nuclear front, Pakistan must once again seize the diplomatic initiative that has been so important to it in the past. But it can do so only if it is perceived by the international community as being sincere in working towards nuclear accommodation with India. Therefore, it will be necessary for Pakistan to take some form of meaningful unilateral action. This action could, for example, be
signing the CTBT before India does.

Together with this initiative, Pakistan could seriously work to assuage concerns that it seeks to export nuclear weapons technology to other countries. By agreeing to the inspection of all nuclear exports, and pledging not to transfer nuclear weapons related information, it would show itself as a
responsible country genuinely concerned with limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. Ratifying these declarations and signing the CTBT would not harm Pakistan's security interests.