A fine imbalance

Meanwhile Pakistan and the weapons powers have been staking out their positions. Islamabad is gambling on international intervention in South Asia. By testing, Nawaz Sharif threw away the opportunity of reducing the asymmetry in conventional weapons with help from Washington and Beijing, retaining some advantage from nuclear ambiguity and pulling the economy out of crisis. His present stance is based on the belief that Pakistan has more to gain from a state of uncertainty in South Asia than from a new point of equilibrium after Pokharan-II. To that end there has been alarmist talk in official quarters of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, attack scenarios and the logic of a Pakistani first strike as also a refusal to discuss Kashmir with New Delhi except inthe presence of an umpire.

Two facts and one assumption underlie such a stance. The facts are Pakistan8217;s vulnerability in economic and military terms and the unpredictability of India8217;s intentions. The assumption is that international engagement in South Asia will reduce any military threat and produce political openings on Kashmir.

The P-5 meeting in Geneva and the UN Security Council resolution yield the first outlines of the weapons powers8217; collective stance. No accommodation on the point of according India nuclear weapons status under international law. No weaponisation and deployment of nuclear weapons; no testing and deployment of missiles. Pokharan and Chagai are not linked to recognisable security concerns but to long-standing tensions over Kashmir.

The containment of regional conflict and rivalry has always been the central argument for international non-proliferation regimes. Non-weapons states, who are no less conscious of the biases in the NPT and CTBT, have accepted them as the price ofpeace in the neighbourhood while they concentrate on improving standards of living. The domino theory has it that nuclear breakouts in South Asia open the possibility of similar development in other areas of regional tension, the Middle East Iraq and Iran and East Asia North Korea and Taiwan. Far from emphasising the logic of weapons power disarmament, a scenario of potential turmoil fortifies the case for a handful of global nuclear cops. Egypt, Brazil or South Africa, to take random examples, have nothing to gain from the collapse of the NPT and CTBT.

More likely than not the P-5 will receive wide support for treating the India-Pakistan tests as regional phenomena and for strengthening non-proliferation regimes unchanged. In short, should economic sanctions and diplomacy fail to freeze Indian capability at a point short of weaponisation and deployment, the stage is set for political pressure and diplomatic isolation.

Vajpayee8217;s negotiating stance with the weapons powers consists at present of twotracks: moves towards stabilising India-Pakistan relations and a display of willingness to fall in with non-proliferation regimes subject to unspecified conditions.

The government is committed to talks with Pakistan on Kashmir. This is a definite advance from any previous position. But the offer of a no-first-use agreement is inappropriate for the new situation in South Asia. China made a no-first-use declaration after its first nuclear test in 1964 and has repeated it several times since. Having proved, by citing China as justification for Pokharan-II, how little confidence such declarations create, New Delhi cannot expect Islamabad to be enthused. In any case, no-first-use by itself is not enough to stablise the Kashmir border.

Pakistan has always believed it could gain political advantage when Kashmir was on the international agenda. It is there now and Islamabad has no incentive to cooperate in taking it off. On the contrary, there is an incentive to hot things up from time to time for domesticpolitical or external reasons. Whatever New Delhi8217;s other policy options now, it cannot do less than offer publicly to formalise the LOC in Kashmir. Second, it will be highly irresponsible for both countries after their tests not to put in place a verifiable ban on the deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons.

Vajpayee is prepared to convert his voluntary moratorium on testing into a binding commitment. In other words, conditional adherence to the CTBT. At the minimum, the conceptual changes and reciprocal processes8217; India requires of the CTBT, would mean disarmament guarantees from the weapons powers attached to the document. It is anyone8217;s guess whether the government is ready to sign the CTBT or is gambling on the P-5 rejecting its conditions. Other offers on the table are participation in negotiations on a fissile material cut-off treaty, bilateral or collective no-first-use treaties and a nuclear weapons convention. All these proposals require P-5 negotiators to engage India as a de facto weaponspower and in so doing give it de jure status. Nothing specific has been said about missiles.

For the moment, therefore, the BJP is poised between confrontation and reassessment of Pokharan-II and could jump either way.