MONDAY, MAY 19, 2003
Nuclear Caveats: Musharraf's Offer Makes No Sense
K SUBRAHMANYAM
General Musharraf and his colleagues must have been vastly amused at the reception their proposal for denuclearisation got in the media in this country. It attracted headlines and discussions in the print and electronic media.
The prime minister explained in Parliament that while Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is solely India-focused, India's nuclear weaponry is not directed against any one country and is meant only to deter nuclear threats to this country. General Musharraf's offer is only a repetition of a Pakistani proposal which was originally put forward in 1974 by Z A Bhutto and pursued relentlessly over the years in the UN general assembly by Pakistan till 1998. It used to get overwhelming support in the UN general assembly and India used to vote against it along with one or two of its staunch friends.
The idea of a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) is generally appealing and Latin America, Africa, South Pacific and South East Asia have declared themselves to be nuclear-weapon-free. But the entire indus-trial world from Vancouver to Vladivostock, which has the highest density of nuclear weapon concentration, is not a nuclear-weapon-free zone though the very first concept of NWFZ was advanced in Europe by the Polish leaders, Rapaecki and Gomulka in the fifties. The reason for it is the NWFZ constitutes a protectorate guaranteed by the nuclear weapon powers. So Australia and New Zealand in South Pacific are not in it nor Japan and South Korea.
Pakistan's nuclear deterrent strategy has been fully explained by Messrs Aga Shahi and Abdul Sattar, two former foreign ministers and air chief marshal Zulfikar Ali Khan, a former air force chief in an article published on October 5, 1999 in News International. They disclosed that following the military defeat in December 1971, the Pakistani leadership concluded that the only way of countering India's conventional superiority was for Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons.
They also maintained that nuclear deterrence operated in Pakistan's favour in the mid-80s, 1987 and 1990. They felt that even during the Kargil war, nuclear deterrence ensured that there was no escalation. Islamabad officially argues that it cannot adopt the no-first-use po-licy because India has conventional superio-rity and cites NATO's nuclear strategy vis- a-vis Soviet conventional superiority as the example they follow. Given this background, it is obvious General Musharraf cannot be sincere in his offer of denuclearisation and he is counting on short public and media memory in putting forward such proposals.
Further, Pakistan's nuclear effort has significant Chinese inputs in violation of Beijing's obligations under the Non-proli- feration Treaty. In spite of its assurances to the US in 1994, China supplied ring magnets to Pakistan in 1995 and there have been reports that it continues to assist Islamabad in the development of nuclear facilities outside the international safeguards regime. While this is the position after Beijing joined the Non-proliferation Treaty in 1992, in the period before, it supplied the weapon design, tritium and other crucial components for Pakistan's bomb programme.
In that sense, the Pakistani nuclear programme is a Chinese surrogate and, therefore, de- nuclearisation of the region cannot exclude China. There is now further evidence of the Pakistan-North Korea exchange of missiles for nuclear technology. This has been going on since 1994. Pakistan has breached international norms on nuclear proliferation just as China has done. Therefore, the basic prerequisite conditions for denuclearisation do not exist in the case of Pakistan.
Denuclearisation took place in the case of South Africa, Ukraine and Kazhakstan. In the case of South Africa, white South Africans wanted to get rid of nuclear weapons and weapon-making infrastructure before the black majority under Nelson Mandela came to power. It was considered to be in their interest. In Ukraine and Kazhakstan though, the weapons were on their soil, but the command and control systems were with Moscow. The leaderships of Kiev and Almaty were not in a position to use the weapons on their own. Therefore, they made the best of the situation and allowed de-weaponisation under US and Russian inspection. Those examples are not applicable to Pakistan.
If Pakistan is agreeable to denuclearisation which will restore the earlier situation in which India had a conventional superiority, what prevents Islamabad from accepting the no-first-use policy? While denuclearisation will involve a verification regime which is totally unviable under the present circumstances, a no-first-use policy will leave Pakis-tan with its deterrent capability and will only require it to behave responsibly. Gene-ral Musharraf has been resorting to nuclear sabre-rattling on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and asserting on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays that it is utterly impermissible to think of using nuclear weapons. This double-talk also makes it difficult for the Indian leadership to negotiate meaningful nuclear arms control with Islamabad.
General Musharraf's offer has a caveat. He talks of denuclearisation after the Kashmir issue is settled, presumably to Islamabad's satisfaction. At the same time, he has gone on record that even if the Kashmir issue is settled there will always be the possibility of low-intensity conflict between Pakistan and India, though nuclear and large- scale conventional wars can be ruled out. Denuclearisation is logical only among countries which are totally at peace with each other. General Musharraf's offer, therefore, is a public relations gimmickry.
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