Fallacies of War-mongering
Praful Bidwai
The News (Pakistan), 6 June 2002
A requirement, if not precondition, of war is myth-making, especially by glorifying one state's greatness and devotion to peace, and demonising the adversary's inherent meanness and bellicosity. Another requirement is the promotion of fallacious beliefs about both the justice and the winnability of wars-irrespective of the cause, means, or combat conditions. Nobody has cultivated these arts better than South Asia's hawkish war-mongers.
Take a few propositions which have acquired currency in India and Pakistan since the cranking up of the war machine post-May 14. Indian hawks have promoted the idea that a war with Pakistan is winnable despite Islamabad's nuclear weapons. Some hold that Pakistan's nuclear status should not be taken seriously-indeed, it is time to "call Pakistan's nuclear bluff". Pakistani hawks have floated the view that nuclear threats assuredly work; the world will soon recognise the legitimacy of Pakistan's right to "nuclear self-defence" just as it acknowledges the Kashmiri people's "freedom movement".
These views betray a comprehensive failure to understand what nuclear weapons can or cannot do, and the severe constraints they impose on military options, as well as on freedom of manoeuvre in the world arena. They also reveal warped mindsets. Many Indian hawks-including that old devotee of nuclearisation K Subrahmanyam, and the younger Brahma Chellaney-make light of Pakistan's operational nuclear-weapons capability, and/or its ability to act relatively autonomously of the United States even in extreme crises.
This first anomalous premise is part of a long history of underestimation of Pakistan's nuclear capabilities, and overestimation of the technological sophistication involved in first-generation atomic weapons. This in turn derives from the Indian bomb lobby's hubris.
Examples of this anomaly would be hilarious if they were not sordid. For instance, before May 1998, Indian nuclear scientists would routinely boast that Pakistan could not possibly have the Bomb because, unlike India's, its nuclear programme was based on stolen technologies.
This assumes that making the Bomb is some major technological feat, possible only in a highly advanced country. In reality, publicly available manuals tell you it's pretty simple: once you have fissile material, you can assemble the Bomb in a garage. And you can get the material in any number of ways-if you are determined enough to build a reactor or an enrichment plant. Yet, a number of BJP and RSS leaders-certainly including L K Advani, if not A B Vajpayee too-were seriously convinced until May 28, 1998, that Pakistan didn't have the Bomb. That's precisely why Advani made his infamous "geostrategic change" speech on May 18, linking nuclearisation to Kashmir.
Even today, many Indian "experts" pompously declare that Pakistan might have the rudimentary technology to set off nuclear-fission explosions, but lacks the ability to make really usable Bombs. This too vastly overestimates the level of technological advancement required to miniaturise a robust Bomb assembly and fit/load it on to a missile/airplane.
When these hawks talk of "calling Pakistan's nuclear bluff", they get eerily delusional. Pakistan isn't bluffing. It doubtless possesses some nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to many Indian cities. By chiding or challenging Pakistan to use them, the hawks are in fact threatening millions of India's own citizens with genocide. This is morally sickening.
The circumstance that India has more Bombs, fissile material or a greater general technological proficiency than Pakistan is basically irrelevant. For, nuclear weapons are Great Equalisers. It doesn't matter if a nuclear adversary has 10 or 50 atomic bombs-so long as he can deliver them. One bomb can produce a Hiroshima-lakhs of deaths, and devastation for thousand of years. The more devious among the hawks, who lay claim to greater knowledge and expertise, have strangely convinced themselves that the US will "neutralise" Islamabad's arsenal before it can be used. The assumption is that the US knows where each missile and warhead is stored; it can safely, reliably, destroy these with its own weapons. Alternatively, Gen Musharraf will voluntarily hand America the key to his arsenal.
The assumption is dangerously wrong. No Pakistani military ruler will give up control over that jealously guarded strategic "asset" and presumed "trump card". And the US cannot bomb Pakistan's nuclear weapons without risking a catastrophe. No one has the miraculous technology to accurately hit remotely placed golf-ball-sized nuclear cores.
The Pakistani hawks' assumptions are equally mistaken. Many thought Islamabad can once again "convert its weakness into its strength"-just as it had done post-May 1998 by pleading it would economically collapse under sanctions. But the overt playing up of the nuclear card against conventional asymmetry has proved extremely counter-productive. No one in the West takes "nuclear self-defence" seriously-certainly not in respect of other states.
So Munir Akram's statement in New York about India's "licence to kill with conventional weapons while Pakistan's hands are tied ..". turned out to be a total diplomatic disaster. Ordinary people saw this as shockingly crude nuclear muscle-flexing. According to reports, it even sent Colin Powell into a tizzy.
Musharraf has since done well to repeatedly clarify that only imbeciles can think of using nuclear weapons. But where does that leave the hawks' oh-so-clever strategy of deterring an Indian conventional attack?
It is also becoming apparent that the Kashmiri "freedom-fighter" card isn't selling internationally. It's not that there is no sympathy for the plight of the Kashmiri people in the face of New Delhi's repression and denial of their fundamental rights. There is, even in India. I am not alone in saying this, or in protesting against the rigging of elections, and Constitutional and human rights violations.
However, there is little sympathy for the fanatical Jaish-Lashkar style "freedom-fighter" who has no compunction in killing innocent people. The fidayeen suicide-bomber may inspire awe and fear, but never the respect that Abdul Ahad Guru or Abdul Gani Lone did. Since justice has much to do with the means used in its pursuit, the jehadi fanatic has compromised the justice of his own cause.
Islamabad's support for such "freedom-fighters", driven by blind faith in the nuclear "shield" since 1989-90, has earned it a terrible reputation. The backing can no longer be sustained. The government's protestations that it only lends "diplomatic, moral and political support" to jehadi fanatics and mercenaries in Kashmir sound unconvincing. After all, it never admitted to virtually creating, supporting and sustaining the Taliban.
Today, ordinary Kashmiris feel as disgusted with the "freedom fighters" as with the Indian security forces. An opinion poll, commissioned by Lord Avebury-no Indian agent he-and conducted by a subsidiary of one of Britain's biggest media groups, Mori International, finds that 86 percent of Kashmiris, including 78 percent Muslims, want an end to the militancy, and believe that the militants must leave the state for peace to return.
As many as 63 percent feel India and Pakistan should not go to war to find a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem, and 71 percent believe a free and fair election could be a solution. It won't do to dismiss all this. It may be no more spurious or hyperbolic than A Q Khan's 1987 claim that "we have it (the Bomb)..". All of us South Asians must read the writing on the wall.
Copyright 2002 The News
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