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Journalism of Courage
Where does Pakistan stand in terms of its nuclear weapons five years after its nuclear tests? The reality is that, according to General Mirza Aslam Beg, Pakistan8217;s then army chief and in control of the nuclear programme, it had a credible nuclear deterrent in place by January 1987. Samar Mubarakmand, the scientist in charge of the Chagai tests, stated on their first anniversary that Pakistan had tested a nuclear device in 1983, no doubt referring to the one carried out in China.
To understand Pakistani nuclear philosophy, one has to recall that the decision to acquire nuclear weapons was taken within two weeks of the end of the 1971 war, reversing the Ayub Khan cabinet decision. The logic then, and ever since, was to neutralise Indian conventional military superiority, that 8220;hangs like a Sword of Damocles8221; over Pakistan and which might be used by India for punitive retaliation as in 1965 and 1971. The clandestine nuclear programme came under heavy international pressure till Pakistan obtained an 8220;understanding8221; from the US in early 1981 for its acquiescence in return for its willingness to be a 8220;frontline state8221; to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. In turn, progress on the weapons front gave Pakistan the confidence to expand its strategic goals from defence against India to a more aggressive posture, escalating from the Siachen aggression in 1983, to a covert terror-based war in Punjab, followed by its expansion into Jammu and Kashmir by 1988.
Since then Pakistan has 8220;used8221; its nuclear weapons for political and foreign policy goals, essentially to seek support of the international community particularly the US by projecting Kashmir as the nuclear flashpoint. This also suited the international community in pursuing their own agendas, especially that of non-proliferation. Eminent scholars like Stephen Cohen were saying that the route to NPT accession by India and Pakistan lay through Srinagar! The process inevitably resulted on greater pressure on India since Pakistan decided to ride piggyback on it in dealing with non-proliferation pressures, claiming that it was ready to give up nuclear weapons if India would do so, knowing that India8217;s larger concerns would not allow it to accept de-nuclearisation in a purely South Asian context.
It was against this background that Pakistan held out a nuclear threat during the Kargil war on May 31, 1999. The aim apparently was to cash in on the decade-old mantra of Kashmir as the nuclear flashpoint repeated ad nauseam by the West. At that point Pakistan had aggressed across the Line of Control, setting up a bridgehead nearly 140 km broad and 7-9 km deep in the Kargil sector. The Indian army had yet to retake any of the heights held by the Pakistan army. An international intervention at that stage possibly leading to a ceasefire might have altered the status of the LoC, leaving Pakistan with victory and India in a more vulnerable position. But the threat failed to produce the requisite results primarily because Pakistan misjudged the move as well as the timing of the threat.
The second post-1998 nuclear threat produced mixed results. The threat expressed in multiple ways, including firing of nuclear-capable missiles, came toward the end of May last year after the massacre of innocent families and children of Indian soldiers at Kaluchak. The provocation had been serious enough to merit an Indian military response with forces fully deployed on the border ready for war. Washington quickly sought to restrain India. But Pakistan8217;s attempt at blackmail rebounded on it in the shape of enhanced pressures to end cross-border terrorism.
If such has been the record of nuclear weapons as instruments of Pakistan8217;s foreign policy, what about its actual military-strategic value? Nuclear weapons could come into play in the event of escalation of a conventional war, which itself may be the result of escalation of the covert war through ideological terrorism conducted across the borders for two decades. It would be prudent to expect that an 8220;all-out8221; war, which aims to destroy Pakistan8217;s military power, especially the armoured strike formations, is likely to make Islamabad reach for the nuclear button.
But would a Kargil in reverse escalate to nuclear levels? If a war were kept limited, applying punitive attrition spread over time, particularly restricted to the occupied regions of J038;K, the risk of escalation to nuclear levels would be minimised, if not eliminated. A 8220;war in slow motion8221; where each strike would not be destructive enough to provoke a nuclear response erodes the nuclear salience, especially if India maintains a strategically defensive posture limiting other military actions to the border zone itself and does not seek a classical 8220;decisive8221; victory. India8217;s 8220;no-first-use8221; doctrine places the onus of escalation on Pakistan; and it can do so only if the stakes in the situation credibly demand initiating a nuclear strike. As long as India avoids such scenarios, Pakistan8217;s nuclear weapons become meaningless 8220;paper tiger8221;? since it would have far more to lose in becoming a nuclear Fidayeen in the face of an assured, even massive, retaliation with nuclear weapons.
