India be watchful

It is the first ever body in the post-Cold War era that seeks to tackle the problem of hold-out states with access to nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. UNSCOM provisions are fundamentally intrusive and have resulted in a severe abridgement of Iraq8217;s sovereignty. The US has managed to establish the full range of leverages by constantly raising the profile of Saddam8217;s venality and then micro-managing thefunctions of UNSCOM, which is still devotedly engaged in dismantling Saddam8217;s stockpile of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

Just before he became Sweden8217;s Ambassador to the US, Rolf Ekeus, who was for six years UNSCOM8217;s executive chairman, was asked for how long, given the ground reality in Iraq, he saw the need for UNSCOM8217;s continued monitoring of Iraqi weapons potential. He replied that even if UNSCOM and the International Atomic Energy Agency could report, at a given moment in the future, that all prescribed items had been identified and eliminated, the monitoring of Iraq8217;s dual-use capabilities would be necessary for many years thereafter. The response indicates the extent of intrusiveness, the kind of time frame and the kind of situation within which UNSCOM functions.

The lessons from UNSCOM have more than archival value. To view UNSCOM in the narrow context of an attempt, albeit successful, to contain Saddam is to miss the wood for the trees. It is time to take stock of what UNSCOMexemplarily seeks to achieve. There is vast scope for the application of UNSCOM-like provisions to rogue countries, hold-out states and even problematic states. Many countries can draw their own inferences, all the way from Libya and North Korea on the one hand to countries with inconvenient nuclear posture such as India and Pakistan.

The American articulation of South Asia, in strategic terms, has consistently been to describe it as a 8220;nuclear flashpoint8221;. In that sense India and Pakistan are problem states8217;, hold-outs against the global norm. Both are in behavioral, though not technical, defiance of the legislated global norm. Second, the outstanding and long-standing issues between New Delhi and Islamabad primarily condition the inter-state behaviour. The two have been unable to meaningfully address these issues. The peace process is in the grip of an enduring paralysis in terms of outcome. It can be successfully argued that this will be the holding pattern. Moreover, at the heart of the divergencesbetween New Delhi and Islamabad is an outstanding territorial dispute, complicated by the fundamental linkage between it and the two countries declaring themselves as nuclear powers.

This self-declared metamorphosis from being merely nuclear-capable to being formal nuclear weapons states has invited avid and formal international attention to the region. Ways are being devised at the trilateral and multilateral level to address the situation appropriately. The US has managed, as a logical consequence of the nuclear tests, to inveigle itself into the political, strategic, and diplomatic matrix of the region in such a way as to establish a deep and durable presence. This will, ultimately, help the US further its non-prolifera- tion objectives in the region. The most recent articulation of this has come from Strobe Talbott, the American pointsman for the region. He is on the record that the American mission in the region is to see that India and Pakistan accede to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states. This is aclearly stated objective which Indian policy-makers are carefully ignoring in public pronouncements.

We have to examine the means available, given the existing bilateral circumstances between India and Pakistan that can contribute to that objective being achieved. The fact is that the UN Security Council has for some time now been formally seized of the outstanding differences between India and Pakistan on Kashmir. So far, there has been a benign element in the Security Council8217;s attitude. More than even before there exists now the ground for the UN to begin moving to a stage where it could take a more active interests in the region. How can this be achieved?

Pakistan has been campaigning steadily for international arbitration. India has been opposed to this. The nuclear tests have served to harden the consensus that Kashmir is a legitimate issue for international concern. This concern can only deepen in the future. The US will work on setting up a regional nuclear-free zone. China will be activelyinvolved. But 8220;India8217;s concerns8221;, it is being stated by our policy makers, 8220;extend beyond the region8221;. Also, India will not want to be boxed into a situation where China remains a nuclear power but not India. There is only so much progress that can be achieved through avuncular moderation. All the while, the world will move steadily from expressing mere concern to expressing outright serious concern. The regional dismay will be more tangible than mere abstentions at future Security Council resolutions on India and Pakistan.

An analysis of Nawaz Sharif8217;s latest trip to Washington confirms that in order to achieve its long-term objective the US will demonstrate 8220;strategic8221; even-handedness between New Delhi and Islamabad. That is easy to do considering that Islamabad cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be strategically equated in Washington8217;s scheme of things with, say, Tel Aviv, for the US to tilt the scales decisively. Pakistan over the medium-term would be left entirely to its own devices tohandle the situation appropriately to achieve international arbitration. Would not a significant series of suitable and muscular uniformed Pakistani aggression, then, achieve this simple objective?