Smug Nuclear South Asians
Praful Bidwai
The News International (Pakistan), 13 June 2002
Nothing testifies to the disconnect between South Asia and the rest of the world as eloquently as divergent perceptions of the likelihood of a nuclear attack in India and Pakistan, and the gravity of its consequences. We South Asians seem bent on minimising or dismissing out of court the possibility of a nuclear exchange even in the event of war. The wider world is truly scared at that danger.
Last fortnight, in Europe, many of my friends were astounded that I was going back after attending a seminar on "What Next?", or the shape of the rest of the Twenty-first Century. "Are you sure the Century won't be short-circuited prematurely in your part of the world by a nuclear
outbreak?" one of them asked. Another offered a generous fellowship and office space in case I wanted to stay on.
"You know what we would be doing in America if anyone felt a nuclear attack was plausibly imminent?" asked an American. "The government would advise immediate evacuation, people would flee the cities, we would stockpile food, children would be put through shelter drills, there would be a run on the banks..".
Some of us might call that an over-reaction, although few can rationally find fault with someone NOT wanting to die wantonly in a nuclear attack. But how would we describe Indian and Pakistani attacks on the travel advisories issued by many OECD governments as "unwarranted" and "excessive"? How would we characterise the Indian nuclear hawks' condemnation of the US' advisory as tantamount to "capitulating" to Pakistan's "nuclear blackmail" and "scare-mongering"?
Our part of the world has seen a concerted effort to play down the nuclear danger. Commentator after television commentator, and "expert" after trumped-up security expert have played God by telling us that the nuclear danger is simply non-existent (we can all "sleep in peace"-K Subrahmanyam), or that we can cope with it, we're "fully prepared". ("We can make a first strike, and a second strike or even a third"-Mirza Aslam Beg).
Of course, in the last instance, the experts ask: "what is this damned nuclear option for? We will use it against India...if I am going down the ditch I might as well take the enemy with me". (Javed Ashraf Qazi).
Nothing could be intellectually more irresponsible or morally more nauseating. There is no such thing as being "prepared" for a nuclear
attack. A poster of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War shows a telephone receiver dangling from its cradle, with the caption: "In case of a nuclear attack, don't bother to call your physician". There is no defence whatever against nuclear weapons: no military defence, no civil defence, no cure for the health damage they cause.
The Delhi fire brigade can handle only three major fires at a time. There will be hundreds in a nuclear attack. One must be brave indeed to assume that firefighters can navigate streets cluttered with collapsed buildings. Medical facilities, typically located in city centres, will be the first to be hit. No air-raid shelters and underground passages can protect you against lethal radiation.
As for the "non-existent" nuclear danger, India and Pakistan have dozens of nuclear weapons, and scores of missiles and aircraft with which to deliver them. They are at last two known instances of one of them having considered actually using nuclear weapons.
The nuclear danger is uniquely, hair-raisingly, grave in South Asia, the only part of the world to have experienced a hot-cold war for
half-a-century between the same two rivals. Of the three-and-a-half hot wars between them, three were fought over Kashmir, which both states link to their nationhood, no less. They share a rich history of strategic miscalculation, mutual suspicion, and a tendency to parody one another's intentions.
The nuclear danger is real and present. Today, India and Pakistan have a million troops eyeball-to-eyeball, and worse, occasionally shooting. This is an "almost-war". And it is in war-like conditions that the chances of a nuclear attack are highest.
Contrast this to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the last time the world came close to the precipice. Then, both Kennedy and Khrushchev, aware of the devastating consequences of adventurist moves, were searching for a face-saving formula. Indian and Pakistani leaders have no compunction in further cranking up their war machines. The US and the USSR didn't share a common border. India and Pakistan are contiguous along 3,000 km; there is no strategic distance between them.
Neither has half-way-respectable safety devices, such as multiple-coded locks or insensitive explosives on their first-generation nuclear weapons, to prevent unauthorised or accidental use. Both have an appalling safety culture-with industrial accidents 10 to 14 times more frequent than the
world average. Both military establishments have an abysmal record of reliability. At maximum, any deterrence equation between them is ramshackle or Ram-bharose (See Chapter 8 of my book, with Achin Vanaik, Short Asia On a Short Fuse, OUP, Karachi).
The chances of a nuclear attack through misreading of information, accident, or unauthorised use are probably highest in South Asia, perhaps an order of magnitude higher than, say, during the Cold War post-1962.
Yet, we South Asians are complacent about this immediate-and spine-chilling-danger. Going by middle class dining-room conversations, one wouldn't suspect such a danger exists. There are four reasons for this, besides our (fortunate) lack of experience of large-scale modern warfare engulfing civilian populations-unlike in Europe.
First is ignorance. We grow up learning little about nuclear weapons. Our textbooks don't tell us what happened in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Nor are images of nuclear horror imprinted on our minds, as they are in the West or in Russia, through hundreds of symbols and artifacts of popular culture.
Second, we have always, perversely, attached prestige and scientific prowess, rather than horror and disgust, to these mass-extermination weapons, but never fully recognised the colossal, epochal damage they can cause to human life and the larger genetic pool. We haven't internalised the idea that no defence is possible against them.
Third, even the educated amongst us are largely influenced by the most rancid of conventional deterrence theory, thanks to our strategic
communities' preferences. This blinds them to the view that nuclear deterrence is deeply flawed because it has an inherently degenerative, unstable logic: Adversaries constantly try to outflank each other, thus disturbing the deterrence equation.
Even to work imperfectly, deterrence demands many things: there be no accidents or miscalculation; both adversaries are transparent in their ability to inflict unacceptable damage; there are symmetrical perceptions of what is "unacceptable". Not only our generals, but theirs too, must always think rationally.
These requirements do not obtain in South Asia.Fourth, the Kargil war, ironically, instilled a culture of smugness. India and Pakistan fought, but nuclear war didn't break out. Ergo, it won't happen now. This is a classic fallacy, akin to the man falling off the Empire State Building and noting he is still alive as he hurtles past the 33rd floor!
Our ways of thinking must change for our responses to become mature. But that can only happen when we start liberating our thinking from mutual prejudice and hatred.
Copyright 2002 News International
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