August 02, 2002
South Asia experts, religious leaders, trade consultants and activists participated in a one-day symposium organized by the Policy Institute for Religion and State (PIRS) in Washington, D.C., on July 18 to discuss different issues confronting South Asia. Four panels, chaired by experts, examined nuclear issues; religion and politics; socio-economic development; and United States-South Asia trade relations. The nuclear issues panel was chaired by Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican. The panelists were Jonathan Glenn Granoff, president, Global Security Institute; Feroze Hassan Khan, fellow, Brookings Institution; Adm. Laxminarayan Ramdas, former chief of the Indian Navy; Douglas B. Shaw, vice president for Policy and Programs at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy (IRPP); and Dr. Nayyer Ali, columnist and social activist. The discussion brought into focus the dangers of nuclear weapons, especially in the context of the religious dimensions of the Kashmir conflict.
Jonathan Glenn Granoff
“Sophisticated geopolitical analysts failed to adequately anticipate the testing of nuclear weapons and the subsequent creation of hazardous nuclear arsenals in South Asia during the last decade of the 20th century. The methodologies used to predict the conduct of states and the peoples neglected an important tool — simply called common sense.”
He regretted that despite the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which prohibits the possession of nuclear weapons, the U.S. has not been able to reduce nuclear arsenals.
“The recent U.S. Nuclear Posture Review, which calls for continued indefinite reliance on the threat to use nuclear weapons, the U.S. termination of the ABM Treaty, the failure to obtain a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, among other policies, make clear that the commitment to fulfill this pledge by the world’s most significant country, is indeed weak.”
Granoff went on to say that only four nations are outside the NPT regime — India, Pakistan, Cuba and Israel. “It is clear that India and Pakistan are unlikely to join the regime as nonnuclear weapons states given the foolish inconsistencies in the NPT.”
Referring to the call by the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in his Millennium Address that a major international conference should be convened to help identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers, Granoff regretted that nothing has been done so far to achieve this objective.
“The nuclear weapons states have not so far responded positively to this call for an international conference to address this ongoing crisis, nor have they proposed an alternative route to greater security.
“The need continues because the risks continue. Failure in progress toward nuclear weapons elimination persists as a stimulus for proliferation,” he said.
“The most pronounced effect of failure to lead by example can be seen in the ongoing crisis between India and Pakistan. The Cuban missile crisis gave us 13 days. How much time do we have now? Wisdom requires that the wise man lead by example. Is this not the time for the U.S. to raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair?” Granoff asked.
Douglas B. Shaw
Shaw noted that the addition of nuclear weapons to the arsenals of India and Pakistan made South Asia the most dangerous place on earth. “I will discuss three major reasons why the paired overt declarations of nuclear weapons in South Asia in 1998 have made both nations and the world much less secure. First, the religious dimension of the conflict makes the presence of nuclear weapons exceedingly dangerous. Second, nuclear arsenals are unavoidably attended by a possibility of accidental or unauthorized use, including the possibility that a terrorist organization could acquire a nuclear weapon or material. Third, the 1998 nuclear tests in South Asia struck a major blow against the global nonproliferation regime upon which the security of all nations depends.
“The world has long believed that India and Pakistan had the capability to acquire nuclear weapons — a great many nations and, perhaps, some subnational groups could reach the bottom run of this 1940’s era technology today — but by doing so, India and Pakistan have shouldered a tremendous burden and imposed one on the rest of the world.”
Shaw added: “The argument that India is responsible and that Indian nuclear weapons are, therefore, no cause for alarm, discounts significant problems that no amount of international relations or political theory can explain away. India is not the problem, neither is Pakistan, or China, or the U.S., or any other nation; nuclear weapons are the problem because they mix human fallibility with the most unforgiving technology ever devised.”
Laxminarayan Ramdas
Ramdas pointed out: “For all the pronouncements of nuclear doctrines by India and Pakistan and ‘no first use,’ the reality is that the command and control systems on both sides are primitive to say the least, thereby, adding an even more dangerous dimension to the entire situation. And looming over it all, and the primary reason for the resurgence of interest in the region, is, of course, the real and present danger in the shape of extremely high levels of troop mobilization over several months on the borders. There is a high possibility indeed of this escalating into actual hostilities, and from there into nuclear exchange, with catastrophic implications for not only the two countries, but for the region as a whole.”
The retired chief of naval staff also dwelt on the rise of religious fundamentalism in India. He said: “Today we are seeing the sway of opportunistic politics astutely combined with the most populist form of religion. On Kashmir, he said: “The entire issue is interwoven both with historical baggage and hard positions taken over the years, because of which no leadership in either country can afford to be seen as ‘soft’ or yielding to the other.”
Feroze Hassan Khan
Khan said that at the dawn of their independence, India and Pakistan opted for pluralism, democracy, tolerance and modernity and had zero tolerance for extremism or fundamentalism or theocracy of any kind. But down the road in both countries religious fundamentalism has cropped up due to various factors. So much so that when these neighbors went nuclear, a kind of “nuclear nationalism” erupted over the subcontinent.
Khan said this “nuclear nationalism” fused with an ideological fervor can only spell danger or disaster for a nation. As for the argument that nuclear deterrence has brought stability, Khan, a retired Pakistan Army officer, asked: “What kind of stability is that? There is no stability on crisis in the region or stability in the context of preventing a conventional war. In fact, after 1998 we have only witnessed crisis after crisis…” The key to the solution, he felt, was to defuse religious fervor of the kind witnessed recently in Gujarat or on the streets of Karachi.
Nayyer Ali
“In nuclear rivalries, the stronger conventional power will usually offer a ‘no first use’ pledge, while the other party will offer a ‘no war’ pledge, but must maintain a credible threat of nuclear weapons use in case of catastrophic defeat in a conventional war.
“This has been the case in South Asia. But given the nature of these weapons, it is hard to foresee any situation in which a sane leader would use the devises. They remain instruments of mass murder and apocalypse, and deterrence in theory and practice should be approached from the perspective that weapons will never be used. To do so would demonstrate the utter failure of a nation’s foreign policy.” Ali, executive director of the Council of Pakistan-American Affairs, said: “In South Asia, the options of brinkmanship, limited nuclear war, and mutual assured destruction are at play. It was fear of India’s capacity for brinkmanship that pushed Pakistan to develop the bomb… No Indian government could possibly consider attacking Pakistan in such a way as to threaten its national existence without risking a nuclear response.”
He added: “But the Pakistanis did not realize that this strategy worked both ways, and what shielded them on the one hand also bound them on the other. That is the real significance of the Kashmir crisis of the last six months.
“For Pakistan’s Army, which has always viewed freeing Kashmir as its primary mission, it has been difficult to accept that the nuclear status of both parties makes Kashmir off limits to a military or guerrilla strategy.”
(Reported by Vasantha Arora)
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