Lessons from the Almost-war
India’s Brinkmanship and Over-reliance on America Lack Wisdom and Maturity
Praful Bidwai
The Hindustan Times, 15 June 2002
By nominating APJ Abdul Kalam as its presidential candidate for despicably opportunist reasons, the ruling alliance is putting into
practice The Advani Thesis. This philistine thesis contemptuously dismisses Amartya Sen’s well-reasoned argument that health and education hold the key to development. It maintains that defence and militarisation open the doors to true progress.
Kalam has many outlandish ideas, including combining the occult with hardcore science, powering airliners with nuclear fission, and putting "bio-implants" into "deficient" brains. But in common with The Advani Thesis is his abiding faith in the military-industrial complex as the motor of progress.
Dogged advocacy of militarisation is the sole public face of Kalam, an engineer-turned-manager, wrongly called a "scientist" by sections of the media which go into a paroxysm each time a missile is test-flown. Militarist nationalism is also a trade-mark of our ruling dispensation. And its figleaf.
Just as anti-Pakistan jingoism and the post-Kaluchak border-buildup rescued the NDA from a devastating Opposition-civil society attack over the Gujarat pogrom, its leaders hope that Kalam’s candidature will cover up the rabid communalism of its core, the BJP. But Kalam may be too much of the RSS’ "poster-boy Muslim" to serve even as a figleaf.
Echoing The Advani Thesis, militarism’s media-drums continue to beat out propaganda. We are told the Vajpayee government’s reckless gamble of cranking up the war machine with 700,00 soldiers was a strategic "master-stroke". A "determined" India, through its show of might, made Pakistan "blink", and called its "nuclear bluff".
Even better, goes the chorus, India blasted its way out of the burdensome "mental block" imposed by nuclear deterrence. Now, free of both that block and cross-border infiltration, New Delhi now can militarily do what it likes, especially in Kashmir.
These propositions are deceptive, if not dangerous, half-truths. For instance, it was not New Delhi which stared Islamabad down. It was Washington. India’s "coercive diplomacy" was no more than crude brinkmanship, directed less at Pakistan than at the Major Powers, especially the US. When bitter nuclear rivals confront each other with a million troops, their brinkmanship of necessity has a nuclear-blackmail dimension. The US’s pervasive role as mediator, go-between or peace-maker between India and Pakistan falls just short of Camp David.
This high-risk gamble seems to have (partially) succeeded for reasons which favour New Delhi, but which are hardly of its making: the claimed presence of Al-Qaeda elements in the Kashmir Valley, Pervez Musharraf’s growing political weakness, especially after the referendum, and
Pakistan’s overt nuclear threats and missile test-flights in late May.
Islamabad particularly alarmed the world when its UN representative demanded that "India should not have the licence to kill with
conventional weapons while Pakistan’s hands are tied..." This generated a diplomatic disaster and turned the tide further against Islamabad.
This happened within a larger context defined by a realignment of the US-India-Pakistan triangular relationship since the Cold War’s end, the ascendancy of the most right-wing and pro-US government in Independent India’s history, vigorous promotion of India-US "strategic partnership" since the Clinton visit, Bush’s "discovery" of India as a useful junior ally and especially, the post-September 11 emergence of counter-"terrorism" as the central axis of US policy, focused on Al-Qaeda/Taliban.
If triumphalism is wrong, it is downright delusional to hold that India called "Pakistan’s nuclear bluff". Pakistan wasn’t bluffing. It has the
weapons-which it brought into the open at India’s taunting and goading, the delivery vehicles, the excuse (conventional "asymmetry"), and the doctrine, of first use. We are plain lucky there was no nuclear catastrophe.
Some hawks who wanted to "call the bluff", reposed their faith not in nuclear deterrence-their sole rationalisation for the Bomb in the first place, but in the US’s presumed ability to disarm Pakistan’s atomic arsenal before it could be used.
It defies credibility to argue that Pakistan’s military would not disperse or hide its jealously guarded "trump-card" nuclear weapons, and
it would cede control over them to the US. And it is ludicrous to attribute to the US the magical power to locate and destroy golf-ball-sized nuclear cores-without risking serious mishaps.
Admittedly, India’s massive show of military strength played a role in the drama. But that role was minor. International opinion favoured India not because it was impressed by its nuclear brinkmanship or might, but because it saw it as the "aggrieved party".
It is because India was able to produce some evidence of infiltration of fidayeen militants into Kashmir-and because it invited the US to verify this-that Washington stepped up pressure on Islamabad. It was in America’s own interest to force Islamabad to cooperate more fully in hunting down Al-Qaeda militants.
It is open to question if India could have used largely non-military means to attract world attention. But it is beyond question that both
India and Pakistan practised dangerous brinkmanship-to frighten the world about the likelihood of war. If war did break out, its dread logic would impel escalation to the nuclear level-with unspeakable consequences.
Nuclear war is everybody’s business. That’s precisely why the US could intervene so actively to defuse the South Asian flashpoint.
Rather than reflect on how close South Asia’s one billion-plus people came to a nuclear catastrophe, and why US-USSR-style nuclear deterrence does not operate here, our self-styled strategic "experts" are busy patting themselves on the back for smashing the "mental block" of deterrence. Rather than draw lessons from Kargil-where Pakistan prepared a nuclear attack, and devise risk-reduction measures, our policy-makers
want to expand their mass-destruction arsenals, accepting no restraint or discipline.
Two issues are now critical: who verifies that there is no cross-border infiltration, and what policy India takes towards Kashmir. India can’t be both complainant and judge as regards the cessation of infiltration. Pakistan has rejected joint-patrolling proposals since 1972 for fear they
would make the LoC a permanent boundary and cheat it of a negotiated Kashmir deal. India dreads empowering UN agencies for fear of "internationalising Kashmir".
Perhaps the best compromise would be a multilateral agency composed of different governments and non-governmental organisations like Verification Technology Information Council and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which have some expertise/experience
in such matters. This would be vastly preferable to US-UK aerial surveillance or US-controlled sensors.
Kashmir will be India’s litmus test. Like it or not, Kashmir stands internationalised thanks to Pokharan-II, Kargil and the latest almost-war. India can no longer avoid discussing the issue with Pakistan, nor indefinitely resist reasonable demands for ending its repressive approach.
India must evolve a coherent Kashmir policy which goes beyond holding elections and announcing unattractive economic "packages". Going by the arrest of Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Yasin Malik, the cruel harassment of journalist Iftikhar Geelani, and official briefings on ending the
Hurriyat’s "appeasement", the government is moving in the wrong direction.
Official signals are likely to put off various moderate currents whose participation could make the coming elections meaningful and give
Kashmiris a much-needed breather. But a change of course means repudiating The Advani Thesis.
Copyright 2002 The Hindustan Times
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