The transition in Pakistan has set forces churning which are now more than ever optimal for India to pursue bold measures in the revamp of our missile technology portfolio. We must not lose this opportunity and rue at leisure
The return of Nawaz Sharif brings both opportunities and risks. This first democratic transition in Pakistan has understandably rekindled hope for a meaningful dialogue with India on all outstanding issues including specifically nuclear confidence-building measures. While the new Government in Pakistan is busy devising its foreign and security policy stances — balancing its powers against the Army’s pervasive influence — India has seen a renewed debate on nuclear issues.
It has been 15 years now since the 1998 nuclear tests and 25 years since the first set of nuclear confidence-building measures were signed between the two countries. The deal signed in 1988 set in place a system, which like the Indus waters accord, has withstood several conflicts unscathed. The deal called for not attacking each other’s nuclear facilities and involved a significant leap of faith from both countries which have to exchange a list of their facilities on an annual basis with their exact
geographic coordinates.
This deal though has been a one-off. After it came into force in 1991, India had proposed extending this to other areas such as economic and civilian facilities which Pakistan rejected. Since then, India and Pakistan have exchanged several proposals, both specific and generic. All of these have for one reason or another never seen action. For example, when Pakistan asked for a bilateral treaty restricting cruise missiles, India promptly rejected the idea. This was based on the misplaced over-confidence that India was far ahead of Pakistan in this technology. However, owing to certain happy (or unhappy from the Indian point of view) coincidences, Pakistan has stolen a significant march over India.
Given the evolving nuclear dynamics in the subcontinent, there is an urgent need for immediate measures at least in the sphere of short-range and tactical ballistic missiles. There is on one the hand a military need for it and on the other hand an academic and bureaucratic resistance to the idea.
As things stand, India has a policy of massive retaliation. This is to say, any strike on India or Indian forces — even small sub-kiloton tactical strikes — will theoretically be responded to with overwhelming force that targets Pakistani cities. The credibility of this threat rests on the fact that it will have to be carried out in its entirety and be overwhelming. On the face of it, this seems logical with built-in pressure alleviation, since it allows conventional action to escalate to significant levels tills certain thresholds are crossed. The assumption is that it buys Indian conventional forces the time to carry out significant action. This is based on a reading of Pakistani literature that assumes that Pakistan will wait for some form of imminent defeat before launching a nuclear strike.
Sadly, ground realities do not bear out this interpretation. An equally valid point can be made here: Given the huge advantages India has, Pakistan’s response will be to go in for preliminary tactical nuclear strikes to level the playing field and then engage Indian forces when parity has been achieved.
What this means is that Pakistan is not factoring in India’s seriousness of massive retaliation, and India is not factoring in Pakistan’s seriousness to launch a first strike. Add short-range ballistic missiles to this, and we have a situation ripe for several mistakes to happen with catastrophic consequences.
Short-range nuclear missiles are inherently destabilising and add incredible complexity to a very volatile dynamic. On the one hand, the sides deploying them might find this complexity they offer smart, but in a real shooting war they may very well turn out to have been too-smart-by-half.
logically, the very fact that Prithvis are being deployed runs counter to India’s nuclear doctrine, since massive retaliation is quite incompatible with these weapons. Add to this the duty of care to one’s troops. Our soldiers are exposed to highly volatile and corrosive rocket fluids while a bulk of these missiles has gone past its expiry date, means that these particular missiles are a bigger threat to India and Indian troops than they are to Pakistan. Yet, despite all this, India which has far more to gain from eliminating short-range missiles, has taken no steps in this direction. In short these missiles are fossils, both in terms of age and in operational terms.
Waiting for and negotiating with Pakistan on such measures is pointless; it outsources our security and the security of our troops to Pakistan. What is needed, therefore, is an immediate and unilateral elimination of these fossils from the inventory. However, their retirement can be turned into a diplomatic asset that turns necessity into virtue. In this scheme of things, unilateral retirement of an anachronistic system can be leveraged to coax Pakistan to give up its own equivalent systems that are the source of said destabilisation.
There is, however, considerable opposition to this from within. The scientific bureaucracy believes that these missiles can be re-used and are subjected to vigorous testing. However, as anybody who owns a car will tell you, a 20-year-old machine is simply not worth the trouble and no amount of inspection and repair can fix these systems beyond their use by date.
The second source of opposition comes from academics. They hold the view that India has learnt everything that is worthwhile from the Cold War experience and that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation-Warsaw Pact analogies cannot be duplicated in Asia. This betrays a certain arrogance in one’s own infallibility. As India’s best case scenario interpretation of Pakistan’s nuclear stance has shown, the room for misinterpretation here is immense.
Short-range missile elimination — even if it is only a cosmetic measure that piggybacks on a fossil — will yield real and disproportionate benefits in the long-term; and now is the time to get a deal done. The transition in Pakistan has set forces churning which now more than ever are optimal for India to pursue bold measures. The time has come to strike while the iron is hot; else, we stand the risk of being labelled as that country which “never loses an opportunity to lose an opportunity”.
(Contributed by J Jeganaathan)