How to explain our nuclear stance

“The thought that human beings are considering saving lives by killing millions of their fellow human beings is so preposterous that the words ‘saving life’ have lost all of their meaning. One of the most tragic facts of our century is that this ‘No’ to nuclear weapons has been spoken so seldom, so softly, and by so few.”
— Henri J M Nouwen
Pakistan is a nuclear state, with a stockpile of more than 120 nuclear weapons. There is no way these 120 weapons can be used without blowing up the whole planet. With four operating plutonium production reactors, Pakistan’s capacity to produce fissile material for weapons continues to grow. When would it stop? No one seems to know the answer.
Lt-Gen Khalid Kidwai, Pakistan’s former director general of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), remarked earlier this year that Pakistan has enough weapons to ensure that war in South Asia is no longer an option. These remarks suggested that Pakistan already has sufficient nuclear capability to ensure the credibility and reliability of our minimum nuclear deterrence.
We do not need a shift from a strategy of ‘minimum credible deterrence’ to ‘full spectrum deterrence.’ So our decision-makers will have to, finally, solve this puzzle: how many nuclear weapons are enough? Because it seems it is high time our nuclear establishment stopped producing more nuclear material for weapons.
Nuclear weapons are meant to deter a nuclear war, not arm the country to fight one. So the introduction of short-range missiles especially NASR (Hatf-9), with a range of only 37 miles (60km), is bound to raise lots of questions.
It is definitely true that, over the past decade, the Indian military’s growing quantitative and qualitative advantages have increased the pressure on our policymakers to enhance the role of nuclear weapons in our overall military doctrine and strategy. But our growing nuclear arsenal, along with the induction of tactical nuclear weapons, is certainly not the most sensible strategy.
There is no gainsaying the fact that India has one of the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenals. But the international community is not ready to accept the logic that the future trajectory of our nuclear programme should depend on how much Indian nuclear arsenal grows. Pakistan’s economy is only one-seventh of India’s and what certainly makes more sense is competing with India in the economic realm.
Our current nuclear approach continues to send alarms to the international community. According to the latest estimates by the International Penal on Fissile Materials, Pakistan has an inventory of approximately 3,100 kilograms (kg) of highly enriched uranium (HEU) and roughly 170kg of weapon-grade plutonium. This has led to both rational and irrational fears, bordering on paranoia, that Pakistan’s nuclear programme can be a source of threat to global peace and security.
Part of the reason why the international media is also swarming with apprehensions about our nuclear capability has to do with our complete failure on the diplomatic front. It is an unfortunate fact that our government has, thus far, remained unable to gain international support against India’s involvement in Balochistan and our tribal areas. And what explains this failure to appraise the world of our legitimate security concerns is the presence of the weak and uncharismatic leaders that dominate Pakistani politics at the moment.
Then there is the issue that our nuclear establishment has also made no bones about impressing upon the international community the need to understand the threats emanating from India’s conventional military strength. The course of events over the past one year shows that our political government and military leaders have not been quite successful in fighting our case on the diplomatic front.
It is highly unfortunate that Pakistani scholars are so ill-informed on issues of national security that in different international conferences and seminars they rely only on hackneyed phrases and diplomatic jargon to fight Pakistan’s case. Our nuclear establishment does not make any serious effort to select competent people for this purpose, relying on people who parrot the official position of the Pakistani government without really thinking about what it means.
The one thing our nuclear security managers should have understood by now is that the only way for Pakistan to be accepted as a normal nuclear state is to win over diplomatic support in favour of our nuclear stance. One way to win the support of the international community is by letting the Conference on Disarmament (CD) start negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).
Pakistan’s refusal to allow even the start of formal talks on the FMCT is an unsustainable position. What is worse is that, taking advantage of our collective failure to muster enough support, some members of the CD only blame Pakistan’s obduracy for the deadlock of the CD.
And this is a dirty truth: for the past four years Pakistan is just reiterating the original mantra not to allow the start of talks and the CD is bereft of any viable solution to the problem.
Another reason we have not been able to achieve this goal, so far, is that short-sighted leaders and incompetent diplomats are representing Pakistan at the world stage. During a recent conference in Los Angeles, California, this writer had the opportunity to interact with a couple of American academicians and people who are very influential in Washington’s policymaking circles. Most of the participants shared the opinion that the growing US-India synergy is a failure of Pakistan’s diplomacy in recent years.
More alarmingly, a myriad of vested interests and misguided writers in both Pakistan and India are influencing the public mind. And the very few people who are trying to make people aware of this rush towards nuclear insanity are being branded ‘traitors’ or ‘American agents’. This also explains why about 1.5 billion people of South Asia are being held hostage to the myopic vision of the nuclear establishments of both countries.
Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division (SPD) will have to stop relying on such dogmatic writers and, instead, engage foreign qualified experts who can reconcile our broader national security approach with certain reasonable demands from the international community. We need to convince the world that all the wild speculations about us becoming the world’s third largest nuclear weapon state – with an arsenal of more than 350 weapons – are exaggerated.
A decent beginning can be made if Pakistan allows the start of talks on the FMCT. The academics in our country should help bring down the emotional rhetoric on this issue. In December 1993, Pakistan supported the UN General Assembly Resolution calling for talks on a “non-discriminatory multilateral and internationally and effectively verifiable treaty banning the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” So, Pakistan cannot afford to appear as a country violating the UN resolution and blocking the CD from implementing its agreed agenda.
Pakistan’s current director general of the SPD should play his role in bringing fundamental changes to Pakistan’s emerging nuclear posture and ensure that our country earns a respectable place in the global nuclear order. One thing is clear: a nuclear Pakistan cannot afford to be a pariah state in the comity of nations.
Email: rizwanasghar5@unm.edu