BY MIR MURTAZA BHUTTO
Centuries before, Hobbes described the predicament that Pakistan today faces in the quest for her security: “The nature of wars consist not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition that during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.”
On March 18th 1974, the Indian government exploded a nuclear device in the Rajhisthan desert in close proximity to our borders. The device was not large or unsophisticated. In fact it was small enough to have been delivered through a narrow and deep shaft for explosion underground. In other words, it was small enough to be placed in a fighter aircraft’s bomb casing or in the cone of both versions of the prithvi missile. That was twenty two years ago. It was the bipolar era and mutual détente had transformed the super power relationship from pure confrontation to competitive rivalry. Yet, claiming it was a “peaceful explosion,” India went unpunished by the major powers. While the U.S.S.R. ignored the event, neither the U.S nor any European powers imposed any sanctions.
Mankind has yet to see a peaceful bullet or a peaceful grenade what to speak of a peaceful nuclear explosion. Strontium 90, the main chemical ingredient of a nuclear bomb, kills on a massive scale; there is nothing peaceful about it. Lord Chalfont remarked, “Any one could now claim that in setting off nuclear explosions they were merely investigating new methods of opening beer cans. “ But that, for now, is not the immediate issue. The urgent matter is Pakistan’s dangerously flawed stance on the comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
Our policy decision on this matter has been linked to India. Our government has made the signing of this treaty conditional to India signing it first. The danger and the fallacy of this policy lies in the concept of linkage. What difference does it make to India if they accept and sign the CTBT? By detonating a nuclear device in 1974, they have already tested their capabilities and demonstrated it to the world. A ban on further testing would not have the same security implication for India as it would for Pakistan, which until today does not have a similarly tested capability. Making our decision conditional on India’s would leave India with a confirmed nuclear capability and us with no such assurance of security. This would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament.
It is no consolation to hear that Pakistan has the bomb and that it has been “ cold tested” in laboratory conditions or that it was tested in China. The story about us having tested a nuclear device on Chinese soil simply lacks credibility. And credibility is vital if deterrence is to be effective. Because, deterrence occurs above all in the mind.
A credible deterrent is only possible if the nuclear weapon capability can be verified. Neither the China story nor that of “Cold-testing” lend itself to this condition. France and China, countries far superior than us in technological development have not been satisfied by “cold testing” and have conducted, even recently, nuclear tests under ground and below the ocean. For a country of our modest technological abilities Cold-testing can become, in a future Nuclear showdown, much more painful than cold-turkey.
Hence, instead of linking our acceptance of the CTBT to that of India, our only serious and viable option is to detonate a nuclear device and then promptly sign the Test Ban agreement, regardless of whether India or any other country does so or not. By detonating we would assure ourselves of possessing this vital military technology in it’s fullest. Also, by demonstrating this know-how to India (and others) we can be secure in the knowledge that the ultimate deterrent has been realized.
Uninformed commentators and faint-hearted policy makers have several reservations about this strategic prescription. As we start to address these concerns it is essential to be accurate about the premise of the debate: India has been a confirmed nuclear weapon state for the last 22 years. The pressure of India’s nuclear menace left us no choice, in the determination of our security, but to acquire a nuclear weapon based deterrent. Now because of the “Diktat” of the western World to impose a comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, we have no option but to demonstrate our nuclear weapon capability. Our signing after India would leave us exposed to a nuclear-armed adversary. They do not have to test again to engage in a policy of nuclear black mail or to employ a doctrine of aggression backed by the supreme weapon. There is simply no others deterrent against another nuclear weapon state with a hostile agenda. As Professor Brodie has written: “If the atom can be used without fear of a substantial retaliation in kind, it will clearly encourage aggression.”
Some analysts have expressed apprehension that a future nuclear confrontation would be catastrophic and infinitely more damaging than a conventional one. Over a period of time, modern combat aircraft and missiles can cause as much damage as an atomic bomb causes in the fury of a few second. So, while it is true that nuclear weapons concentrate destruction in terms of time, the position that they are destabilizing is contrary to historical fact as will to conventional wisdom. Since the advent of atomic bombs, no two nuclear-armed states have ever gone to war with each other. Even during the Korean War, when Chinese and American forces engaged in direct combat. The danger in a nuclear confrontation lies in the possession of a 1st strike capability by one party. However, when a 2nd strike relationship is established, deterrence operators in a stable and effective fashion. (A First Strike capability is when one state can wipe out the military potential of its adversary in a single strike. A second-strike capability is when a state can absorb a full nuclear attack and still hit back causing unacceptable levels of damage to its enemy).
Pakistan and India’s technological levels are such that their nuclear infrastructure will, at best, be of a rudimentary nature. Neither country possess the kinds of listening posts in space, nor is their command and control structure on the ground so regularized, as to give either country a first strike advantage. Dispersion and concealment of relatively crude devices and their conventional delivery systems would render a successful first-strike virtually impossible. Hence, the primitive 2nd strike relationship that will exist between a nuclear capable Pakistan and India would stabilize the military equation through a balance of terror.
Political commentator’s and pacifist suggest an alternative course of action: Universal Disarmament. Even advocates of this far-fetched and unrealistic order realize that never throughout the march of history has any preponderant state every voluntarily and unilaterally disarmed beyond the perception of its strategic and security requirements. Therefore, a revised and diluted variation of this approach suggest that, in order to avoid the demands posed by the CTBT on Pakistan, India should be compelled by world pressure to abandon its nuclear pretensions. From a historical perspective, it would be naïve to expect world pressure to compel India to dismantle its nuclear weapons industry. Once the knowledge has been acquired and tested, there can really be no such thing as a nuclear policy roll back. Once the capability has been demonstrated to exist, there is no guarantee that, if pushed by international pressure, India would not hide a few bombs or rapidly assemble them when a crisis develops. Also, it would be unrealistic to expect the United States or any other nuclear power to extend a “nuclear umbrella” to safeguard Pakistan’s security. No power would live up to such a commitment and would probably not even be prepared to enter into one, Anyway, pity the nation that relies on promised or borrowed security rather than a self possessed one. Even if a nuclear Umbrella prevents a nuclear attack on Pakistan, it will not prevent the constant nuclear black mail that we will have to endure. The master of nuclear deterrents, Henry kissenger, wrote; “it would be suicidal to rely entirely on conventional arms against an opponent with nuclear weapons.” Hence Pakistan has no choice to pre-empt the curtain call of the CTBT with a clear demonstration of its own nuclear capability.
Finally, those who oppose Pakistan matching India’s nuclear capability base their arguments on two broad points. First, they incorrectly assume that nuclear weapons are exorbitantly expensive. That is simply not true. Since this argument is so blatantly false I will not go into cost detail and will, rather, quote again Dr. Kissenger: “Since nuclear weapons provide greater destructive per unit cost than do conventional weapons, reliance on them enables economically weaker nations to redress the strategic balance much more easily than they could with conventional forces.” Clearly, the costs of a nuclear program are cheap and will not lead to social upheaval or economic stagnation. On the contrary, we would be able to rectify the conventional military imbalance and at the same time make substantial cuts in the burden that our conventional forces impose.
The second objection is that we would be destroyed be an American imposed embargo and, being a non-oil producing country, would be strangulated by sanctions. The fact of the matter is that nuclear weapon status confers power as well as responsibility on the state that acquires them. A nuclear power cannot be punished; it cannot be treated like a pariah. It cannot be out-manoeuvred to the point where it may contemplate exchanging nuclear weapons related information or technology for food and oil. And the preferential treatment given to India a Israel, both renegade nuclear state, bears testimony to this. States are punished for harbouring atomic ambition and striving to acquire a capability for nuclear weapons; they are not punished for possessing it.
Till today, no nuclear weapon state has had to endure the rigors of sanctions. The power to hurt, remember, is bargaining power, to exploit it is diplomacy. Pakistan will have to acquire the power to hurt if it is itself not to suffer the pain of extinction.
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