India and
Pakistan Must Be Stopped From Going to Nuclear War, But
How?
By JONATHAN
POWER
June 30, 1999
LONDON- A nuclear war creeps up on the world by an
unmarked path. As India and Pakistan confront each other
daily over "the line of control" that marks the temporary
division over their rival claims for the state of Kashmir
the chance of their conflict spiralling out of control can
no longer be dismissed. And if that happens the nuclear
weapons that both sides exhibited to the world for the first
time last year are within a hairtrigger of being
used.
"The first false alert could be last", said one seasoned
observer not very long ago. We should think of Kashmir as a
permanent Cuban missile crisis, when in nose to nose nuclear
brinkmanship the risk of inadvertent nuclear war is
unacceptably high. With only 4 or 5 minutes warning time
before a nuclear weapon fired from one country would
detonate in the other there is no time for second thoughts
before making a decision on retaliation. In fact India's
Prithvis missiles stored at Jullunder and Pakistan's M11s
stored at Sargodha lie within range of each other. It is
difficult to imagine a more unstable arrangement.
India and Pakistan are living far more dangerously than
the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. did during all the dark days of
the Cold War, the Cuban crisis excepted. Moscow and
Washington at least had half an hour's warning to think what
to do before the other side's rockets would arrive and,
despite the many proxy and semi-proxy wars they made sure
they never once themselves fired a shot in anger at the
other side. Perhaps most important psychologically, in their
long histories the two countries have never been to war.
But are India and Pakistan really heading for all out
war? There still seems to be an air of slow motion unreality
about it. The non-official Muslim militants of Pakistan
together with regular Pakistani troops clash with Indian
elite troops high up on near impenetrable Himalyan peaks,
engaged in heroics of combat and mountain climbing. It is a
scene from some rather old-fashioned melodramatic war movie
that surely is too remote from down to earth reality to be
the powder trail to modern day nuclear war.
Politically, the "play acting" of the principles is for
now equally rarified. They talk as if war is imminent, but
then that is invariably the language of Kashmir even in less
fraught times. Both India and Pakistan temperamentally have
a capacity for exaggeration. Moreover, neither government
has its feet firmly on the ground. The Indian government led
by Atal Bihari Vajpayee no longer commands a parliamentary
majority and has to go to the polls in September. The
Pakistan government led by Nawaz Sharif, despite its
comfortable majority, in the opinion of many informed
observers is not actually directing this particular drama.
It is the army and its irregular acolytes who are setting
the pace. Indeed some of the best informed argue that they
see the civilian finger on the nuclear trigger as only one
among two or even three others.
By comparison, Moscow and Washington not only had
sophisticated command and control systems (but even so
accidental use of nuclear weapons nearly occurred three or
four times), but the lines of political authority were very
clear and even in the worst of times they always knew who to
phone. The idea that the decision to go to war or not to, to
pull the nuclear trigger or to abstain, lies with shadowy
figures neither elected nor in public political office is
the most disturbing of all the elements in this latest
confrontation.
I have been a friend of Sartaj Aziz, the foreign minister
of Pakistan, for a good thirty years. I think I know him as
well as any outsider. He is a highly educated, highly
principled man. But if I tell you that I believe he'd never
be party to nuclear war, and probably not even to another
conventional war, my observation, I'm afraid, means very
little. I do not believe his hand is on the tiller.
If normal channels of authority, normal chains of command
and the normal disciplines of nuclear actors are no longer
germane in this highly charged situation what can the rest
of the world do? Can it sit back and trust India and
Pakistan simply to sober up? That is to take an enormous
gamble.
India has always insisted it would brook no
"internationalising" of its quarrel over Kashmir.But when
nuclear war is a real possibility is this a viable posture?
The question should answer itself. The world has no choice
but to get involved, as it did with the UN resolutions on
Kashmir in 1948 and 1949 and again in 1966 with the
successful mediation efforts of Soviet premier Alexei
Kosygin.
Fifty years ago the UN mediated an agreement to a four
part sequence--a cease-fire in Kashmir, followed by the
withdrawal of Pakistan's forces from all occupied areas, the
thinning of India's military presence and, when that was all
completed, a plebiscite to ascertain to which country the
people of Kashmir wished to belong. Only the first two and a
half of the four steps were taken.
These steps look uncannily right for today's situation
(especially when there is an agreed line of control to
withdraw behind). The world cannot abolish or even diminish
Pakistan and India's stock of nuclear weapons. But it should
work to remove the one, and probably only, issue that could
precipitate a war between them.
The world, however, has little influence. The use of
economic sanctions has been spent on a foolish attempt to
punish the two countries for going nuclear. (The Western
powers should punish themselves first for setting such a bad
example--look at what little progress they have made on
dismantling their nuclear armouries since the end of the
Cold War.) The fact is the people most hurt by sanctions are
the poor who then become prey to even more nationalistic
impulses.
Ideally the Security Council should intervene en bloc,
beseiging the two errant countries with its authority. Yet
after Bill Clinton, Tony Blair et al decided to ignore the
strictures of the UN Charter when they decided to bomb
Serbia the standing of that body is now much reduced.
Perhaps we outsiders have no choice but to enter the thin
air of the high mountains ourselves and see if nuclear
deterrence really works. After all, they always said it
did.
Copyright © 1999 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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