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Thursday March 28, 2024

Nuclear fears

“In the nuclear age, by the time a threat has become unambiguous it may be too late to resist it.” – Henry Kissinger

By Rizwan Asghar
July 27, 2015
The recent meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit has raised hopes of a renewed cooperation between the two countries. In the meeting, both leaders agreed to cooperate with each other to eliminate terrorism from South Asia.
The engagement will certainly open new possibilities of cooperation but a number of security experts are taking a sceptical view of the willingness of both countries to join hands against common security challenges. They believe that if both countries do not stop expanding their nuclear weapons stockpiles, nuclear war in the region is not a matter of if but when. This mad arms race between the two countries has long been a matter of concern for the international community but our governments are not ready to revisit their approach.
In addition to the apparently rapid pace of the nuclear arms race, another potential source of military conflict between the two nations is India’s alleged involvement in fomenting unrest in Balochistan, Waziristan and other tribal areas of Pakistan. Earlier this year in January, Sartaj Aziz, advisor to the prime minister on national security and foreign affairs, expressed the apprehensions that India was using Afghan soil to carry out terrorist attacks on Pakistan.
Similar concerns were later raised by our military leadership, alleging that India’s spy agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), was involved in whipping up terrorism in Pakistan. What gave credence to these allegations was a statement made by Ajit Doval, India’s ex-spymaster and now the national security advisor, almost a year ago pointing towards the Indian strategy to weaken Pakistan by promoting terrorism and separatism.
Many other Indian officials have, on certain occasions, also admitted that RAW has been inciting violence and rebellion in Pakistan. In October 2013, retired Indian Army Chief General Vijay Kumar Singh revealed in an inquiry report that India sponsored bomb blasts in Pakistan and doled out money to separatist elements in Balochistan. According to the report prepared by India’s DG military operations, a clandestine unit of military intelligence personnel was used to launch covert operations inside Pakistan and support terrorist activities.
Armed with more than a hundred nuclear weapons, India is overlooking a threat that could wipe out more than 1.5 billion people within the time span of a few days. The Modi government seems to be unaware of the fact that prosecuting sub-conventional conflicts in the form of state-supported terrorism could potentially escalate into a full-scale nuclear war. The current approach of the Indian military establishment aimed at asserting its regional leadership is likely to drive to trigger a mad arms race in the region.
Against this backdrop, the destabilising effects of the presence of nuclear weapons become more observable in that nuclear capabilities have enabled both countries to engage in sub-conventional conflicts at the lower end of the spectrum of violence. And these sub-conventional conflicts will continue to persist in the years to come because conventional conflicts remain risky.
It is quite reasonable to assume that the region will continue to experience a high degree of unconventional and proxy wars in the years to come. These sub-conventional conflicts do not involve use of regular military force but their propensity to escalate to limited wars can entail unpredictably high levels of political violence. The goals in such conflicts could include disrupting enemy command and control centres or particular sites of strategic importance.
Many nuclear experts are of the view that Pakistan and India could become engaged in a limited war, entailing the use of nuclear weapons. The concept of limited nuclear war originated during the cold-war period when there were only a small number of countries with nuclear arsenals. At that point, the nuclear conflict scenarios involved only threats of confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union. Today’s global security environment includes the nine declared nuclear-weapons states and there are deep concerns about South Asia as a flashpoint for nuclear wars.
New Delhi remains a dominant player in conventional warfare against Pakistan but the Indian military establishment is still in a paranoid state, seeking to promote violence at the level of insurgency and terrorism. Indian officials maintain that their country would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict but recent moves by the Indian military are raising uncertainty levels for Pakistan.
Nuclear South Asia is not like cold-war Europe because of the many differences between the Indo-Pak nuclear calculus and the dynamics of nuclear deterrence between the US and the USSR. The bitter animosity between India and Pakistan has profound impacts on the decision-making approach of the leaders of both countries.
Pakistan and India do have the capability to pursue wars of limited aims but what makes these conflicts dangerous is the fear of operational failures and there is no surety to the fact that the war would be terminated once the initial goals are achieved. In addition, once initiated, the war might not remain limited in aims and consequences throughout the course of the campaign. So it is almost inevitable that, with limited nuclear war, there will be large uncertainties about the scope of conflict.
Ajit Doval has repeatedly mentioned the possibility of a limited nuclear war in South Asia, threatening to wipe Pakistan off the face of earth but he should not forget that Pakistan has also access to the button that could launch nuclear missiles at Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and other big cities of India. Are Indian people willing to pay that price for their leaders’ insane policies? Certainly not.
Email: rizwanasghar5@unm.edu