Preparing for nuclear suicide?

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.” – Omar Bradley
These words of wisdom ring true at a time when the nuclear establishments of Pakistan and India are, slowly but consistently, getting ready to commit nuclear suicide. Earlier this year, in January, India test-fired its intercontinental surface-to-surface nuclear-capable ballistic missile ‘Agni-5’, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead up to a distance of 5000 kilometres. Two months later, Pakistan launched its surface-to-surface nuclear capable Shaheen-III missile with a range of 2750 kilometres.
Continuing this mad race, on April 15, the Pakistani military successfully test-fired Ghauri medium-range ballistic missile, which has a strike range of over 1300 kilometres and can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads. The very next day, the Indian Army’s Strategic Forces Command tested its nuclear-capable Agni-III ballistic missile from Wheeler Island, off of the Odisha coast. These events make it crystal clear that the governments of Pakistan and India are doing everything possible to make a nuclear war in the region inevitable.
Additionally, both countries are also locked in a nuclear naval arms race. It is certainly true that India’s pursuit of a sea-based nuclear strike will raise some justified concerns but Pakistan’s decision to be part of this arms race is definitely not a sane approach. This nuclear 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.
It seems that after failing to bring hundreds of millions of people, living on both sides of the border, out of poverty over the past sixty-five years India and Pakistan seem to have settled on nuclear war as a solution. The truth is that after spending billions of rupees on the proliferation of these deadly weapons, the military commanders of both countries have made the region more insecure.
In Pakistan, the military enjoys absolute decision-making authority over nuclear use and the civilian government is not competent enough to play any role in the formulation of military strategy. And the Modi government in India is intentionally triggering a mad nuclear race in a hope to be in a position to assert hegemony over its neighbours.
More alarmingly, a myriad of vested interests and misguided writers from both countries are influencing the public mind in favour of the nuclear option. 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.
According to a 2014 report published by a US-based military intelligence think tank, India’s all-powerful nuclear establishment is rapidly expanding its ability to produce fissile material to support an unnecessarily larger nuclear arsenal. The report echoed Pakistan’s justified fears that India is pursuing ‘runaway’ expansion of its nuclear arsenal. The Modi government has plans to develop a covert uranium enrichment plant, which would substantially expand India’s nuclear submarine fleet in addition to the proposed development of thermonuclear weapons.
India, the first country to bring nuclear proliferation and the terrible threat of nuclear war in South Asia, already holds around 100 to 120 nuclear weapons. Now, because of the continuous expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal, Pakistan’s nuclear establishment also feels compelled to produce more bombs in order to offset India’s overwhelming superiority in both conventional and nuclear warfare.
It is quite unfortunate that New Delhi remains a dominant player in conventional warfare against Pakistan but the Indian military establishment remains in a paranoid state, refusing to reduce the role of nuclear forces in its military strategy. 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. After 2007, Indian policies have largely hastened an arms race, prompting Pakistan to scale up the number of missiles to a level enough to evade the missile defence shield.
Many changes in the prevalent regional security environment in the post-9/11 era have raised the danger of nuclear terrorism in the region if both countries do not take drastic steps to reduce their nuclear arsenals while ensuring that low-level conflicts do not escalate unpredictably. New Delhi has exhibited interest in strategic missile defence since the early 1980s. In 1983, the Indian Ministry of Defence in partnership with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) started work on the ‘Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme’ for the development of the Theatre Missile Defence (TMD). The programme included offensive missiles like the nuclear-capable Prithvi and Agni, and Akash, a surface-to-air missile with the potential to provide India with theatre missile defence capabilities.
India also received a lot of foreign help to enhance its offensive nuclear capabilities as part of diplomatic initiatives like Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) launched in 2005 and Defence Trade and Technological Initiative (DTI) in 2012, giving rise to further challenges for strategic stability in the region. It is ironic that the US continues to be supportive of India’s emergence as a dominant nuclear player in the region in pursuit of its regional security interests while remaining a consistent advocate of complete nuclear disarmament at the global level.
The people of India and Pakistan cannot afford to live in the shadow of nuclear annihilation anymore. Sooner rather than later, they will they move forward to rein in their paranoid establishments. Otherwise, no one will be able to save us from committing nuclear suicide.
Email: rizwanasghar5@unm.edu