We expected to write an editorial this week on the issue of the Independent Power Projects and the government’s attempt to force them to cut their power tariffs. The cartoon above was supposed to illustrate some of the heavy-handed methods employed by the government to achieve its dubious purpose. However, last minute developments on the nuclear front in India and the Pakistan have pushed the IPP issue out of reckoning and compelled us to focus on the political and military dilemmas faced by Pakistan as a result of India’s decision to conduct nuclear tests in the face of world opinion.
India has conducted three thermo-nuclear tests, a fission test and a low-yield test to establish the fact that it is in a position to make nuclear warheads of varying yields. This has prompted Western and Pakistani commentators to argue that India has acted with reckless abandon, that its nuclear tests are dangerous and foolish because they are bound to heighten security concerns in the region and precipitate a military arms race which no country can afford.
But the Indian perspective is quite different. New Delhi says it was forced to gatecrash the nuclear Club of Five because its pleas for effective global disarmament were blithely ignored by the declared nuclear weapon powers who were able to legitimise their own nuclear weapons through the unconditional and indefinite extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Traty (NPT) which is biased in their favour. India now appears ready to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) provided it is granted the same nuclear status as the “gang of five”. Indeed, New Delhi would like the world to recognise that India, Pakistan and Israel are also nuclear weapons states like the “gang of five” and that the world is no less safe with the entry of these three into the nuclear club than it was with the historically most “war-prone” “gang of five”. If Pakistan should decide to conduct nuclear tests to demonstrate its prowess, says India, it would be of no undue concern to New Delhi. In fact, the Indian argument goes, the arms race in the region will be circumscribed once India and Pakistan and Israel are granted entry into the nuclear club and becomes signatories to the CTBT. India then goes on to suggest that after signing the CTBT both India and Pakistan should sign a “no-first” use of nuclear weapons pact to eliminate the chances of a nuclear holocaust in South Asia.
The problem with this thesis is that it appears to undermine the NPT and CTBT and opens the route to nuclear proliferation by other countries which have either abandoned their nuclear programmes (like South Africa, Argentina and Brazil) or decided not to build one (like Germany and Japan) or those that may be in the process of trying to become nuclear powers (Iraq, Iran and Korea). In other words, by attempting to redraw the nuclear line (however, inequitable it may be), India may be instrumental in opening a Pandora’s box of nuclear proliferationists and thereby making the world much more unsafe that it is today.
India’s decision has also put Pakistan in a very difficult position. From time to time, Islamabad has said that it is in a position to test and make nuclear bombs but that it has not done so because it does not want to precipitate a new arms race in the sub-continent. Indeed, Pakistan has said that it will sign the NPT and CTBT as soon as India does. Now that India may be thinking of pushing ahead with its agenda of signing on the dotted line of the CTBT, Pakistan is faced with a serious dilemma: if it does not demonstrate similar nuclear capabilities as India, its case for joining the club of five will not be as strong as that of India and it will be forever doomed to be an insecure partner in the non-proliferation alliance; but if it follows India’s route of trying to gatecrash into the nuclear club, the penalties and sanctions which it might have to face would be much stiffer and more crippling than in the case of India. What should it do?
An answer to this question may be found in an understanding of the political circumstances in which India has conducted its nuclear tests and an exploration of the likely response of the Western world to these tests.
The curious thing about the Indian tests is that there was no advance warning, especially by the United States, of any Indian preparations in the offing. This is in marked contrast to the situation in late 1995 when American intelligence sources leaked credible reports based on satellite data that India was readying the Pokran site for an underground explosion. The swift and hostile reaction which followed at that time may have persuaded India to think again by postponing the tests. But since no such preemptive “strike” was forthcoming from Washington this time round, it may be fair to speculate that perhaps Washington may have had strategic reasons not to reveal India’s impending tests. In order to ascertain the truth of the matter, consider the following developments in the recent past.
President Bill Clinton has recently sent two important envoys to India and Pakistan, namely Mr Thomas Pickering and Mr Bill Richardson. Shortly before India conducted the nuclear tests, the Indian foreign secretary made a discreet visit to Washington. Indeed, shortly before Pakistan test-fired its Ghauri missile, the Pakistani army chief was warmly welcomed in Washington. We do not know that discussions between the Americans and India were followed by the nuclear tests. It is possible that the Americans may have decided to “concede”, albeit reluctantly, a one-off missile test by Pakistan and “one-off” nuclear testing by India in exchange for getting both countries to sigh the CTBT?
It may be recalled that the CTBT, unlike the NPT, cannot be ratified and brought into force unless India and Pakistan and Israel accede to it. And if this is done speedily, President Clinton can veritably claim a feather in his cap. This would help explain why President Clinton has merely expressed his “regrets” at Pakistan’s missile test and why he is now insisting that India should sign the CTBT without further ado.
True or not, this line of reasoning fulfils to a greater or lesser extent the domestic political compulsions of both right-wing governments in India and Pakistan while simultaneously addressing international Western concerns attached to the immediacy of the CTBT. Ideally, of course, the US would have liked India and Pakistan to sign the CTBT when everyone else did so earlier. But having failed to get both countries on board, Washington may now have decided to fall back to the next-best “compromise” solution of reluctantly making some concession to both in exchange for their signatures on the CTBT.
If this hypothesis is correct, we should expect American “disappointment” with India to translate into sanctions for one main reasons: so that a “proper” message is sent out to Pakistan, which is likely to be hurt by sanctions much more than India, and it is restrained from following India’s nuclear-test route.
Pakistan’s choices are clear. It can either test its nuclear device immediately and line up behind India to sign the CTBT on the same terms and conditions as India. Or it can forego nuclear testing, negotiate some sort of limited “peace dividend” with Washington and sign the CTBT along with India.
There are greater advantages and fewer pitfalls in the second approach vis a vis the first. If Pakistan takes the first route, it might have to contend with sanctions during the time it takes for India to negotiate its terms for signing the CTBT and this could have far more serious short-term consequences for the Pakistani ecnomy than for the Indian economy. If it takes the second route, it could conceivably expect to receive a dividend on the “F-16 or money back” option when President Clinton visits Pakistan next Fall. The second route is also less problematic because, as a recognised threshold nuclear power state with demonstrated missile capabilities. Pakistan’s security can be reasonably assured without testing a nuclear device (after all, we have managed to establish a nuclear deterrence for over a decade without testing a device). At any rate, since Pakistan will not be lining up to sign the NPT, it can always retain its nuclear stockpile as a credible national security deterrence.
Whatever decision Pakistan takes, it should be taken with great deliberation and consensus. There are two roads which can be taken. The road not taken could make all the difference.