Confidence building helps

Even so, it is worth noting that Sharif’s rhetorical shift coincides with indications of a policy shift in Washington. A key component of the changing approach seems likely to be what the Council on Foreign Relations’ task force on South Asia recommended on the non-proliferation front: focussing on establishing a more stable plateau for the nuclear competition between India and Pakistan. This translates into urging the two countries to adopt threat-reducing postures and cooperative measures to slow down the arms race. It is a constructive view in that it tacitly acknowledges the security concerns behind India and Pakistan’s nuclear programmes and tends to cut the ground from under the feet of those who advocate `weaponising’ the deterrent as a means of putting it beyond the reach of non-proliferation zealots.

New Delhi would be unwise to take the position that there is no mileage in the kind of proposals Sharif made because the Simla Agreement says it all and it only requires Islamabad to adhere to the spirit of that agreement to stabilise the military situation. Every decade since independence has seen stabs by both sides at non-aggression or peace and friendship treaties. Each initiative petered out under an avalanche of suspicion. It is possible to reduce suspicion to some extent, even in the absence of accord on larger political issues, by working, not for a high-sounding friendship treaty, but on a series of technical agreements on security-related matters.

A happy conjuncture exists to make such agreements possible. In Pakistan there is a leader with a strong parliamentary majority and a crisis-ridden economy to manage which the civilian power must exercise greater authority over military/security matters. India has a leader who is prepared to go the extra mile to generate goodwill. At Male the two prime ministers set in motion the process for a wide-ranging dialogue. Lastly, less missionary work by the American Administration means fewer thermal currents for hawks in the subcontinent to cruise in.

When the prime ministers of India and Pakistan found occasion early in September to confirm publicly that each of their countries possesses nuclear weapons capability, neither felt it necessary to go beyond bald statement of fact. Addressing defence personnel in Lahore, Nawaz Sharif declared that Pakistan’s nuclear programme was in an advanced state. Two days later, at a conference on nuclear energy in New Delhi, I. K. Gujral responded with repeated assertions of India’s determination to retain its nuclear option “to meet unforeseen circumstances”.

There was nothing new or surprising in those statements. India has been known since at least 1974 to have the knowhow and material, and Pakistan since 1989, if not before. Both are believed in the intervening period to have increased their nuclear stockpiles and to be developing medium-range missiles. Periodic restatements of well-known facts are intended essentially to fight off domestic critics who accuse the leadership of vacillation and weakness in the face of Western pressure.

If the intention is to reassure the people of two neighbouring countries about their safety, their leaders will have to do much more than rattle their options noisily from time to time. If both countries are a few nuts and bolts away from nuclear bombs, it is reasonable to ask what is being done to slow down the nuclear escalator and prevent those weapons from ever being produced and used because of miscalculation, misunderstanding or accident.

A credible security policy does not consist only of warding off Western tactics to roll back India’s nuclear programme and seeing every defeat of those tactics as an opportunity to forge ahead, or of reacting to acquisitions in the neighbourhood with more extensive nuclear and missile programmes. It calls for a clear-eyed, independent view of the consequences of possessing nuclear and missile capabilities and the responsibilities that go with it. It needs recognition of the fact that a weapons programme driven by technological possibilities but disassociated from clear national aims and objectives is unsustainable, expensive and dangerous.

Opportunity must be found to engage Pakistan in talks on military confidence-building measures which have the potential over time of reducing perceptions in that country of hostile intent across the border. In theory, the function of CBMs is to bring about more transparency and perdictability in military activity. But Cold War experience cannot be replicated in South Asia where the principle of openness seems to contradict the very basis of a deterrence strategy based on ambiguity/secrecy.

India and Pakistan can concentrate in the first instance on more of the small steps towards managing a crisis. One which immediately suggests itself is getting military commanders and political leaders actually to use installed hotlines regularly. A second objective would be to try and reduce mutual fears. Although an agreement not to launch pre-emptive attacks on each other’s nuclear installations was signed in 1988, the process of exchanging lists of sites was interrupted by the deterioration in the Kashmir situation and was never completed. It is frequently suggested the two countries sign a no-first-use of nuclear weapons agreement. By affirming formally the retaliatory capabilities which is all both countries claim in any case, suspicion of intentions to the contrary would not be laid to rest. But it could have a valuable psychological impact, reinforce the political dialogue and create an opening for other kinds of CBMs.