Tag Archives: nuclear deterrance

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Building Trust in South Asia through Cooperative Retirement of Obsolescent Missiles

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(Mr. Feroz Khan also contributed to the piece.)

Nuclear deterrence is growing roots in South Asia. India and Pakistan have both incorporated nuclear capabilities into their defence planning. Both are guided by a philosophy of minimum credible deterrence, although within this context modest growth is expected to achieve desired force postures. It is natural that asymmetries exist in the forces held by India and Pakistan. These will persist along with different perceptions of strategy and tactics. Despite these differences, we believe India and Pakistan have both reached a point where they should share perceptions about deterrence and nuclear stability in the region.

indiapakThe time is right for India and Pakistan to expand shared understandings through cooperative exchanges of information about their respective deterrence postures. Such understanding could be critical in a crisis. Both India and Pakistan have mutually resolved to enhance strategic stability in our region, as affirmed in the Lahore Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in February 1999.  One possibility for furthering this goal is to consider retiring their oldest, first generation, nuclear capable, short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), which are at the end of their natural lifespan. Pakistan’s HATF 1 & 2 and India’s Prithvi 1 & 2 have served their purpose and will be eventually retired unilaterally according to each nation’s normal decommissioning process.  We propose a plan of mutual transparency measures that would share information about the retirement of these missiles on a reciprocal, bilateral basis — without impinging on the continuing modernisation of both sides’ strategic forces. The retirement of other nuclear capable, obsolescent ballistic missiles can then follow in the same cooperative spirit.

We have participated in an in-depth study and also recently in a mock exercise to explore how information exchanges between our two countries could be conducted. We are confident that such an exchange could be achieved with minimal risk and costs and yet provide important reassurance about significant changes in deterrence postures.

The Foreign Ministers of India and Pakistan have recently reaffirmed their commitment to pursue confidence building measures (CBM) in connection with their ongoing Composite Dialogue. A working group on peace and security matters is charged with exploring CBMs in the security area. One candidate CBM would be to conduct a Joint Transparency Exercise (JTE) to exchange information about retired missiles. With the voluntary retirement of these obsolescent missiles already imminent, New Delhi and Islamabad could make a virtue of a necessity by adding reciprocal transparency to the retirement process. Our studies show such a joint CBM is ripe for consideration and could be conducted in the near term. A first step might be to declare these nuclear capable missiles to be non-nuclear delivery systems. Then, as these missiles are removed from the nuclear arsenal, our two countries can build trust and understanding as our respective experts expand cooperation in the drawdown of obsolete forces.

This is a small step. It has been endorsed by several prestigious expert groups. We have studied the practical details of how such ideas could be implemented. We concluded that such exchanges could be powerful tools in enhancing mutual confidence and signal maturity as responsible nuclear powers. The costs and risks for India and Pakistan are small, but the potential benefits are great. It is a step whose time has come.

(Feroz Khan and Gurmeet Kanwal, both retired Brigadiers, are with the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA, and the Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi, respectively. Views are personal.)


Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Nuclear Dividends?

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Was the U.S.-India agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation worth all the trouble? Six years on, observers in both countries are accusing the other of perfidy.

Was the U.S.-India agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation worth all the trouble?  How have the expansive promises touted by its champions and dire warnings issued by its critics panned out? With the approach of the six-year anniversary of the landmark July 2005 summit between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, observers in both countries are at work tallying up the pay-offs and drawbacks.

PhotoThe Bush-Singh deal was momentous in both symbolic and material import. It implicitly recognized India as a nuclear weapons state, a gesture New Delhi very much wanted but which the Clinton administration refused to make. And by promising to end a decades-long embargo on nuclear energy technology against India, the Bush administration committed to overturning U.S. laws and global non-proliferation norms for New Delhi’s singular benefit.

At the time, U.S. advocates spoke of portentous opportunities in the strategic and commercial realms. A high-ranking U.S. official described the deal as “the big bang” designed to consummate a broad strategic relationship with a rising India that was aimed at balancing China’s burgeoning power. Ron Somers, the head of the U.S.-India Business Council, argued that “history will rank this initiative as a tectonic shift equivalent to Nixon’s opening to China.” Leading U.S. corporations quickly lined up, expecting that a grateful Indian government would reward them with lucrative contracts in the nuclear power generation and defense systems fields. Estimates were floated that access to India’s expanding nuclear energy sector would alone generate some 250,000 U.S. jobs.

Have the promised gains materialized? According to Michael Krepon (here and here), a prominent critic of the accord, they have not.  Pointing to India’s recent elimination – in the face of heavy U.S. lobbying – of Boeing’s and Lockheed Martin’s bids in its $11 billion fighter aircraft competition, as well as New Delhi’s failure to support U.S. diplomacy on the Libya and Syrian issues, he contends that the significant U.S. concessions made in the agreement have netted little in terms of a strategic or diplomatic return. Likewise, he notes the tough nuclear liability law adopted by India last year has the effect of all but blocking the involvement of U.S. companies in the country’s nuclear energy sector.

The accord’s advocates contended at the time that by granting India a special position in the global nuclear order, the nonproliferation regime would ultimately be strengthened. But Krepon believes the reverse has occurred. By bending the rules for India’s sole benefit, a pernicious precedent was set, one that China has just exploited in justifying its sale of two more reactors to Pakistan. And the failure to extract meaningful restrictions on India’s nuclear-weapon capacity has only spurred a paranoid Pakistan to undertake a significant expansion its own arsenal.

Krepon does not deny that bilateral diplomatic and economic ties have improved measurably in the last six years. But much of this, in his opinion, would have occurred even in the accord’s absence. From his vantage, the accord’s actual benefits are far from what was pledged, while the costs critics warned about have been substantiated.

Krepon’s critique arrives at a time of widespread disappointment in Washington that bilateral ties continue to fall far short of the promise that seemed so glistening just a few years ago. In an interview prior to his departure from New Delhi, U.S. Ambassador Timothy J. Roemer chided the Indian government’s failure to live up to its side of the bilateral relationship, adding that “There’s no doubt this needs to be a two-way street.”

The reasons for this sense of letdown are many, with fault lying both in Washington and New Delhi. Nonetheless, U.S. champions of the Bush-Singh deal were under no illusion that India’s signature registered its enlistment as America’s junior partner in global affairs or the surrender of its foreign policy independence.  For example, Nick Burns, who as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the last administration played a key role in crafting the new U.S.-India relationship, cautioned at the time that “the United States must adjust to a friendship with India that will feature a wider margin of disagreement than [Washington is] accustomed to.”

And even as the deal was proceeding, the two governments were at loggerheads in multilateral trade talks, an impasse that helped bring about the Doha Round’s collapse.  Paradoxically, the U.S. Congress gave its preliminary assent to the nuclear deal in December 2006 at the same moment that frustrations with New Delhi’s position in the Doha negotiations caused legislators to cut some of India’s trade privileges under the Generalized System of Preferences. And in the months prior to Congressional approval of the implementing “123 Agreement,” a high-ranking Bush administration official publicly accused New Delhi of stymieing negotiations and “working behind the scenes for Doha’s demise.”

India’s decision on fighter aircraft was a sharp disappointment to an Obama administration that lobbied strenuously on behalf of the U.S. contestants – so much so that the decision may have even hastened Ambassador Roemer’s resignation.  And it undoubtedly deepens the perception in Washington that New Delhi has not lived up to its side of the bargain by reciprocating the huge commitment the United States has made over the past decade to bolster India’s great power prospects. But as Ashley J. Tellis demonstrates in a superb piece of analysis, the decision was sui generis, involving the Indian air force’s rigid application of technical desiderata, rather than the anti-U.S. move some have described it as.

The proliferation-related arguments Krepon reiterates formed the core of the criticism against the accord when it was originally announced. But these points were difficult to sustain at the time in view of the strong support Mohamed ElBaradei, then director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, gave to the deal. He called the agreement a “win-win” as well as “a milestone, timely for ongoing efforts to consolidate the non-proliferation regime, combat nuclear terrorism and strengthen nuclear safety.” He has reaffirmed this view in his new book. And in case anyone missed the significance of ElBaradei’s endorsement, this is the same man who butted heads with the Bush administration over nuclear weapon allegations regarding Iraq and Iran – actions that helped earn him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.  In the end, most nations were persuaded by his view that it was better to welcome New Delhi into the nuclear clubhouse, even if somewhat awkwardly, than to continue leaving it out in the cold.

It should also be noted that as the nuclear accord was being debated by the international community, Beijing explicitly assured Washington that it would not exploit India’s special carve-out in the nonproliferation regime to provide more reactors to Pakistan. It is also unclear how large a factor the deal looms in the rapid expansion of Pakistan’s nuclear weapon capabilities. Most likely, Islamabad’s anxiety about India’s “Cold Start” military doctrine – which focuses on deterring Pakistan’s use of jihadi proxies by holding out the threat of swiftly-mounted but calibrated military offensives against Pakistani territory – plays at least as significant a role.

While Krepon accuses India of failing to live up to the broad spirit of the Bush-Singh deal, Indian observers are presently charging Washington with an outright breach of faith. Specifically, they see restrictions just promulgated by the 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an informal cartel regulating global nuclear commerce, as undercutting the privileged perch the accord gave India in the international nuclear hierarchy. The NSG prohibitions are designed to prevent the spread of uranium-enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing technology to countries, like India, that have not signed on to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Technically speaking, the provisions, which were advanced by the Obama administration, are not country-specific. However, there is little question they are aimed squarely at India, and this has revived cries about American perfidy that were at fever pitch in New Delhi’s tumultuous debate over the nuclear accord three years ago. Once again, the Communist Party of India and the Bharatiya Janata Party are making allegations about Mr. Singh’s lack of candor in revealing the agreement’s details.

Anil Kakodkar, a former chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission who played a major role in drafting the nuclear deal, has also joined the present fray, characterizing the NSG move as a “betrayal,” while G. Parthasarathy, a leading light in the foreign policy establishment, concludes that “we cannot trust the U.S. as a long-term and reliable partner on nuclear issues.” The Hindu newspaper exclaims that “the Indian side has scrupulously adhered to its side of the broad bargain and has assumed the U.S. and the NSG would do the same. But if the latter are going to cherry-pick which of their own commitments they will adhere to and which they will not, India may well be tempted to examine its own options.” Indeed, the Indian government has threatened to withhold coveted reactor contracts from any country enforcing the new rules.

Beyond the perceived affront to national honor, made all the more palpable since the NSG was founded in response to India’s first nuclear detonation in 1974, it is unclear whether the restrictions will have any practical effect. India already can reprocess material from its fast-breeder reactor program to supply its nuclear arsenal. And the country’s chief nuclear partners – the United States, France and Russia – have rushed to assure New Delhi that the restrictions will in no way impinge upon their previous commitments. Still, it is curious why the Obama administration chose to press the new restrictions at the very same moment it was championing New Delhi’s membership in the NSG (read the U.S. paper on India’s candidacy here).

The growing irritations on both sides will be aired out at the mid-July convening of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue in New Delhi. The confab was originally scheduled for April but was postponed, ostensibly at least, because Defense Minister A.K. Antony had to campaign in the Kerala state elections. More likely, Antony and others in the Indian leadership were looking for an excuse to dodge the Obama administration’s full-court press on the fighter aircraft decision. As it turns out, the meeting will now take place with both sides nursing grievances.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Pakistan’s Annual Deception

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By Rajiv Nayan,
Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses

The Conference on Disarmament is an organ of United Nations (UN) for negotiations on disarmament and related issues. The UN Disarmament Commission (UNDC) is the centre for pre-negotiation activities on disarmament. The FMCT is a core issue in CD negotiations. Other issues are nuclear disarmament, negative security assurances and prevention of an arms race in outer space. All 65 members have to agree before, negotiations can commence on any issue. No decision can be possible without a consensus.

Over and above other reasons articulated in previous years, Pakistan had an additional excuse this time. On earlier occasions, Pakistan had stated that the 2008 India-specific exemptions given by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) had adversely affected the strategic balance in its neighbourhood. Though it did not mention India this year, yet the language and its earlier explicit references to India leave no doubt about what it wants to convey. Referring to South Asia’s strategic environment and to a non- NPT member, Pakistan said: “…it cannot agree to negotiations on a FMCT in the CD owing to the discriminatory waiver provided by the NSG to our neighbour for nuclear cooperation by several major powers, as this arrangement will further accentuate the asymmetry in fissile materials stockpiles in the region, to the detriment of Pakistan’s security interests.”

This time, Pakistan’s objection was that India’s membership of the four multilateral export control regimes, with the support of the U.S. and other countries, would destabilise the region. In November 2010, the U.S. supported India’s candidature for membership of the NSG, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Australia Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement. Later, France also endorsed the U.S. move. It was followed by the Russian support for the membership of those régimes of which Russia is a member – Russia is not a member of the Australia Group. Many more countries are expected to support India’s candidature given its rising global status. Pakistan’s statement in the CD showed its resentment regarding the likely modification of criteria to accommodate India in the NSG and the Wassenaar Arrangement.

It is necessary to examine the objections raised by Pakistan regarding the 2008 India-specific waiver in the NSG. Is it really going to allow India to accumulate so much fissile material that the region around Pakistan would be destabilised? Would the exemption enhance the fissile production capabilities of India? Actually, such propaganda may well serve as an excuse for Pakistan to increase its own fissile material production. In the past, some Pakistani diplomats misled the world by saying that India’s eight unsafeguarded reactors can comfortably produce 1400 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium – sufficient for around 280 nuclear weapons a year – if run for that purpose, or even more if totally dedicated to fissile material production purposes.

When the India-US civil nuclear energy agreement was being debated before the 2008 waiver, one of India’s leading strategic analysts argued in favour of the agreement saying that it would enable India to ‘release’ its indigenous uranium for nuclear weapons, and to use imported uranium for nuclear energy generation. This was one of the many arguments used by both the supporters and opponents of the agreement. However, many of these arguments were unsubstantiated and polemical. The U.S. non-proliferation community followed by the Pakistan government used some of these polemics for their convenience and propaganda. Moreover, India’s indigenous uranium can be allocated in any way by the government, so, the word—release—is basically meaningless.

First, India’s strategic and security imperatives demand that it rely on nuclear weapons mainly for deterrence. If there is a choice between national security and electricity generation, India may prefer the former. Electricity can be generated by other means – despite the growth in nuclear energy production in recent months, overall electricity generation stays around three per cent.

True, there are eight reactors in the strategic category. The categorisation of these and other fast breeder reactors outside the civil category should not imply that India would go in for unlimited and unnecessary fissile material production. These reactors are not going to produce fissile materials round the clock. India’s nuclear doctrine is one of credible minimum deterrence, meaning India will not needlessly hoard nuclear weapons and fissile materials. Moreover, a new nuclear weapon country like India has the benefit of learning from the Cold War experience of nuclear weapons accumulation by the two super powers. The unnecessary accumulation of nuclear weapons created the problem of disposal – not only of nuclear weapons through arms control – but also of excess fissile materials.

Even if we accept the logic that the reactors outside the civil category may be used to produce fissile materials, under the Indo-US nuclear deal India has increased its number of power reactors in the civil category from 6 to 14. Therefore the increase in the number of power reactors in the civil category and the decrease of power reactors outside it should indicate that Indian fissile material production may be decreased, not increased. Any logical analysis would underscore this. Of course, propaganda has its own logic!

This leads to the question: If India is not interested in unnecessary production of fissile materials, why is it retaining eight reactors in the strategic category? The answer is simple: to deal with an uncertain strategic environment. There are some declared NPT and non-NPT nuclear weapon countries which have not made their fissile material stockpiles public. The nuclear weapon declarations of these countries are also uncertain and lack credibility. At the same time, there are undeclared and potential nuclear weapon countries, which are likely to further complicate the strategic environment in the future.

The new Pakistani argument against FMCT negotiations in the CD, namely, that the Indian membership of the multilateral export controls regimes may adversely affect regional stability, is superficial. The membership of the regimes has nothing to do with regional stability; in fact, it is about enabling India to play a role in promoting international peace and stability by participating in the global strategic trade management. Pakistan’s obsession with projecting itself as a competitor to India is frequently leading it to make ridiculous and incomprehensible moves like the one in the CD. Instead, it may do well to imitate India’s responsible nuclear behaviour. It does not realise that the proliferation network and terrorism may not be able to sustain the Pakistani state for long. Pakistan needs to change.

(This post originially appeared at IDSA. USINPAC and IDSA are content partners.)

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Dangerous Conspiracy behind Pak’s Indeterminate Nukes

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By Bhaskar Roy

Indian Review of Global Affairs


Recently, leaked reports from U.S. government sources said Pakistan’s deployed nuclear warheads may have crossed 100, surpassing India’s estimated 60 -70 warheads, with Pakistan emerging as the 5th nuclear weapon power in the world.

paknukesThe Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), has claimed that the latest satellite imagery obtained by it shows that the fourth reactor at Khushab, Pakistan, is at an early stage of construction, and is nearly the same shape and size as the second and third reactors.

The Khushab complex planned to have four reactors.  The first was a heavy water reactor built in the 1990s and known as the Khushab Nuclear Complex-I or KNC-I.  The KNC-II, a plutonium producing reactor became operational in 1996.  It is estimated to produce 22 Kgs of plutonium per year.  The KNC-III, another plutonium reactor is scheduled to become operational this year, 2011.  The KNC-IV is now on the way, and construction work is going on well.  An expert on nuclear weapons proliferation was quoted recently as saying that the KNC-IV reiterates the point that Pakistan was determined to produce a lot of plutonium to make nuclear weapons far exceeding its need.

In addition, Pakistan has a reprocessing facility at the Pakistan Institute of Science and Technology (PINSTECH), and reports suggest other such facilities exist elsewhere in the country.

The Khushab complex also has a tritium production facility, an element that boosts the yield of a nuclear weapon.  Pakistan’s original fissile material facility remains at Kahuta.  This is a gas centrifuge, producing highly enriched uranium (HEU), estimated to produce 100 Kgs of fissile material a year.  Several other uranium enrichment facilities reportedly exist, including one at Golra Sharif, 15 Kms from Islamabad.

Kahuta was the traditional center of Pakistan’s nuclear programme.  Such centers have reportedly spread, to ensure that targeting one does not cripple Pakistan’s capabilities.

Pakistan has two types of delivery vehicles – the F-16 aircraft earlier provided by the US, and a variety of surface-to-surface missiles acquired from China and North Korea initially, and later developed in Pakistan using these designs and components.

The first nuclear weapon capable missile, the M-II with a range of 290 Kms, was acquired from China in 1991-92.  This was followed by the Nadong acquired from North Korea.  The main missiles ready are the Hatf-III (Gaznavi) with a range of 300-400 Kms; the solid fuel-IV (Shaheen), with a range over 450 Kms; and the liquid fuel Hatf-V  (Ghauri) with an approximate range of 1,300 Kms.  The solid fuel Hatf-VI (Shaheen-2), with a range of 2,000 Kms may have already been deployed or soon to be deployed.  The ground based cruise missile (Babur), and the air launched Ra’ad, with ranges around  320 Kms are under development. (see Congressional Research  Service Report, of January 13, 2011).

The above gives a glimpse of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and delivery system.  From the available information, Pakistan’s declaration of maintaining a minimum credible deterrence against India becomes questionable.  How much is still not minimum with more than 100 deployed warheads and ballistic missiles with upto a range of 2000 Kms covering most of India?  Pakistan’s current weapons stockpile is more than is required for its stated deterrence, and a doctrine which includes “first use”, as against India’s 60 to 70 warheads and declared doctrine of ‘no first use”.  Its nuclear weapons build up activities and development of long range ballistic missiles and airborne cruise missiles, suggests an ambition much beyond India.  So, what is Pakistan’s ambition that its burgeoning nuclear arsenal is going to serve?

It is well known that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons achievement is not indigenous.  It had, on the one hand, active foreign assistance which is still continuing.  It also acquired technology and know-how through its own efforts and that of a friendly country.  On the other hand, the United States and several western countries winked and looked away while blatant proliferation was indulged in by Pakistan, China and North Korea.  That is how Pakistan has emerged as the 5th largest nuclear weapons state in the world, and its activities suggest that it may surpass the U.K. and France in another decade.  Operationalization of KNC-III and KNC-IV will ensure that.

The West or NATO led by the U.S. failed to recognize those activities because of narrow geopolitical objectives.  During the cold war, the US-Pakistan-China axis evolved to counter the Soviet Union, and India was perceived as a Soviet ally.  Post cold war, the deep antipathy towards India remained for quite some time in Washington.  One cannot say with full confidence that the whole of Washington has moved away from the Pakistan appeasing line because of its current engagement in the region.

In parallel, in spite of several run-ins with China last year, the U.S. may not be keen to further antagonise China because of huge economic interests.  Militarily, the US, especially the Pentagon, is looking at Beijing more in bilateral terms (which includes the Asia Pacific region).

The history of China-Pakistan nuclear and missile cooperation is well known and needs no repetition.  The Pakistan establishment, especially the military is elated with China’s power and assistance.  It believes that it now stands toe-to-toe with India.

China created nuclear Pakistan to counter India, but the Pakistanis are unable to understand that China has used Pakistan all along.  Neither Islamabad nor the GHQ in Rawalpindi have ever stopped to objectively assess how little economic assistance they have received from China over the years.  Today China, with $2.8 trillion foreign exchange reserve, is not doing anything for Pakistan to extricate it from its economic hole.  When Pakistan suffered its worst ever floods, China did pathetically little, given its economic power.  Its investment in Pakistan is basically in the mining area which is to its own interest and in infrastructure like the Gwadar port which will serve China’s interest.  The trade imbalance between the two tells the story.  Pakistan’s economy is kept  afloat  by the U.S. and  the west.  Pakistan hardly realises that China is driving it to become a military nation, a fact which is beginning to worry most countries.  The Pakistani people will ignore this at their own peril.

Although China is a signatory to all non-proliferation regimes, it has been contravening them with impunity.  With its new found economic and military power it believes that it can do very much what it likes.
It is no secret that Pakistan continues to receive active assistance from China for its plutonium route.  It has also received technology to reduce the size of its nuclear warheads, and plutonium is, therefore, important.  The China-Pak alliance mainly targets India.  In the last two years or so China has made several assertive and aggressive moves against India.  Beijing is being extremely irresponsible, because Pakistan ultimately may not follow exactly the script written by China.  That is the emerging threat to the entire international community.
How secure is Pakistan’s nuclear asset?   The US, at the very highest level, have periodically certified that those are secure.  True, after the revelations of the A.Q. Khan Proliferation network, steps were taken to establish multi-layer security.  But the Americans agree that vulnerabilities exist, as stated by former Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) Director Maples in March, 2009.

How secure is secure in a volatile state like Pakistan with rising radical Islamism, with several factions fighting against the state?  The former IAEA Director General Mohammad EL Baradei had also expressed the fear that a radical regime could take over power in Pakistan, thereby acquiring control of the nuclear weapons.
It  must not be forgotten that A.Q. Khan and at least two of his nuclear scientist colleagues were in touch with Ossama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda group between 1988 and 2001/2.  Intelligence reports say the Khan-Ossama meeting was facilitated by the ISI in a safe-house of the organization, and Khan was also flown to Afghanistan in an ISI helicopter.  Recent reports suggest that the Al Qaeda has been seeking fissile material and technology.

One can never be too sure that more A.Q. Khans are not sleeping inside Pakistan’s nuclear establishment.  Even the real brain behind Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme, the low profile Dr. Samar Mubarakmand, had close friends among Islamists.  One cannot help but ask the question why Pakistan refused steadfastly to given access to the USA and the IAEA to question Khan.  Could Khan reveal names of his kind still inside the nuclear establishment and the involvement of the army in   the net-work?

The international community must ponder on the recent developments in Pakistan.  Take the case of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer.  He was killed by his own body guard because of his anti-Islamist and secular disposition.  Most  lawyers and the public declined to protest against Taseer’s killer, save a few in the media who are waging a lonely battle against the Islamists.

Fearless, liberal member of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Sherry Rehman, had to withdraw her bill on Blasphemy Amendment law under pressure from the party and Prime Minister Yusaf Raja Gilani.  The government succumbed to the threat from the Islamists.  The banned terrorist organization, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) can gather  20,000 people on the streets with a click of their fingers.  The LET remains banned in Pakistan in name only.

In all this, the Pakistan army remained silent.  It is well known that the government cannot move one inch in issues related to security and foreign policy without the army’s clearance.  So, what was the army’s role in the government giving way to the Islamists?  It may be recalled that radical Islamism was brought to the fore by the Pakistani army, especially Gen. and President Zia-ul-Haq.  The Islamist groups remain assets of the army in Afghanistan and in the operations against India.

The silence of the international community over Pakistan’s rapid accumulation of nuclear weapons, and China’s assistance, is confounding.  The obvious answer is Pakistan’s importance in combating extremists and militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, though it is evident whatever Pakistan has done in fighting terrorism has been done under pressure.

Imagine a man like Zia-ul-Haq, becoming the Chief of the army and, in a coup, takes over the government. With such a huge nuclear arsenal which is still growing, Pakistan will not remain India-centric.  It will move against the Christian west with the U.S. as the central target. 9/11 may look like a school play compared to what they can do.  This may be an extreme scenario.  More likely is the possibility of fissile material with dirty bomb technology falling in the hands of the jehadis across the region. Jehadis have among them highly educated technology savvy members.

The U.S. and the west remain short sighted and narrowly focussed, refusing to acknowledge and address a growing threat of dimensions never seen before.  The U.S. must accept that the billions of dollars it is pumping into Pakistan for development is not feeding the hungry but fattening the war machine of Pakistan.

(The article originally appeared at www.irgamag.com. USINPAC and IRGA are content partners.)

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

FMCT Negotiations: Games Pakistan Plays

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By P R Chari
Indian Review of Global Affairs

Pakistan is at it again. Whenever it is in trouble, Pakistan turns up the volume of its anti-India rhetoric. Suicide terrorism is taking a daily toll of lives in Pakistan. Its Afghanistan policy is going nowhere. The Pakistan army is obsessed with gaining ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan, and has drafted the Taliban to achieve this objective. But, elements of the Taliban have turned against Pakistan, and are indulging in sustained, uncontrollable violence within the country. The assassination of Salman Taseer – a voice of reason raised against Pakistan’s medieval blasphemy laws – highlights the growing Islamization and chaos in Pakistan. Taseer’s murder was condemnable, but the horrifying fact is that his assassin has become a national hero. Rose petals were showered on him when he was produced in court. Lawyers are flocking to defend him. Liberal opinion in Pakistan, on the other hand, has been marginalized.

In true Nero-fashion Pakistan has now blocked negotiations on the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) in Geneva. Its Ambassador, Zamir Akram, has argued that by ceasing fissile materials production, Pakistan would concede a ‘strategic advantage’ to India. The WikiLeaks inform that Pakistan is currently manufacturing nuclear weapons faster than any other country, according to a cable sent by the U.S. embassy in Islamabad to Washington. A recent study by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists also informs that Pakistan possesses more nuclear weapons than India, but is feverishly manufacturing fissile materials to further enlarge its inventory. Nuclear weapons are not comparable to conventional weapons, and adding to their numbers beyond a point makes no sense. But, this logic is unlikely to impress Pakistan, whose defense and foreign policy is basically driven by the obsessions of the Pakistan Army. Zamir Akram had another grouse. President Obama had pledged to assist India’s admission into the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australia Group and the Waasenaar Arrangement during his visit to New Delhi last November. Delivering on that promise the United States has very recently removed export controls on several Indian space and defense-related organizations, signaling a new era in U.S.-India nonproliferation cooperation. Zamir argued that this represented a “paradigm shift in strategic terms.”

Pakistan is actually hoping to somehow revive the debate on the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal that was generated in 2008 when that deal was under process. The Bush administration had hammered that deal through the U.S. Congress, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), despite reservations voiced in some countries, collectively named the White Knights. Pakistan is seeking a similar dispensation, and China is working hard to provide Pakistan a comparable nuclear deal by supplying two more 300 MW atomic power reactors for its Chashma complex. Without going into the legal complexities involved, it should be noticed that China needs to place this matter before the Nuclear Suppliers Group for getting its prior approval. A similar approval had been obtained by the United States before finalizing the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. China is reluctant to pursue this route in the knowledge that the NSG may not endorse this deal between two blatant proliferators in the international system.

Reverting back to the collaterally damaged and stalled FMCT negotiations Rose Gottemoeller, Assistant Secretary of State, has unequivocally declared, “Let me just place full emphasis and priority today on my main message, which is to launch the negotiations this year on a fissile material cutoff treaty in the Conference on Disarmament.” She added, “That is a kind of general time frame,” though 2011 was not a “specific deadline.” In diplomatic language these words amount to expressing extreme displeasure with Pakistan, and with good reason. The 65-nation Conference on Disarmament transcended a ten-year deadlock in 2009 by agreeing to address four issues: nuclear disarmament, a fissile material cut-off pact, the prohibition of space-based weapons, and an agreement on non-use of nuclear weapons by nuclear-armed countries against non-nuclear weapon states. Pakistan has reneged now after endorsing this plan, which derails President Obama’s hopes to operationalize his disarmament agenda; hence, Gottemoeller’s subsequent threat, “If we cannot find a way to begin these negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament, then we will need to consider options.”

And, what could be these options? Most effectively, by stopping financial assistance to keep a bankrupt Pakistan afloat. And, cutting off arms transfers, which includes spares and ancillaries, would heighten pressure on Pakistan’s armed forces who are its real rulers. Can the United States afford to ignore Pakistan’s logistics support to sustain the American and ISAF operations in Afghanistan? Will China bail out its distressed ally by defying the international community in this effort, and promoting a further closing of ranks by its neighbours? The United States and China will, no doubt, weigh all their options carefully. Pakistan seems likely to witness interesting times.

(The article originally appeared at www.irgamag.com. USINPAC and IRGA are content partners.)