India's Obsession, Pakistan's Choice

India's Obsession, Pakistan's Choice
Eqbal Ahmad
Al-Ahram, 21 May 1998

It is well known that Indian leaders generally, and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wallahs in particular, are obsessed with projecting India as a big power. They view nuclear weapons as a permit to the club in which India does not belong, and should not enter, with a population of half a billion illiterate and four hundred million under-nourished citizens. Furthermore, it's illusory to search for power through nuclear weapons.

The nature of power changes in accordance with shifts in modes of production, knowledge and communication. In our time, these shifts have been revolutionary. Power has changed in ways least understood by those who formally hold the reins of power. Take nuclear weapons. When first invented, they were viewed as weapons of war, and wantonly dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their development and possession coincided with the rise of the US as a global power, a coincidence which confirmed them as a modern component of power.

The strike on Hiroshima also proved that it was a weapon of total annihilation, therefore not usable, notwithstanding the crackpot realists like Henry Kissinger and Herman Kahn. After the USSR tested its hydrogen bomb, it became a weapon of terror, and of deterrence against war between two giants in a bipolar world. It also served as an umbrella for covert, proxy warfare. Given these facts and their association with super-powers in the 1950s, the identification of nuclear weapons with power became total. It was in the interest of the United States and USSR to perpetuate this perception. But change has its own inexorable logic.

Three events helped devalue nuclear weapons as a component of power. There were first the cases of Cuba and Vietnam. Together, the liberation movements of these two small nations reduced the world's most awesome nuclear power, in the words of Senator J W Fulbright, to "a crippled giant". Castro's revolution succeeded and survives to this day, despite American nuclear power; in fact, the possession of nuclear weapons constricted American ability to destroy that revolution. The Vietnamese demonstrated that a nuclear giant can, in fact, be defeated, even militarily. France offered a second and negative example. It tested and inducted nuclear weapons as a means to challenge the preeminence of the United States in Europe. It did not work.

A third related reality dawned: the world was changing in a way that, for the first time in history, political economy took precedence over military might as a component of power. In Europe, the influence of France, now a nuclear power, does not surpass that of non-nuclear Germany. Similarly, Japan exercises much greater influence in the world than does China or France. South Africa and Israel offer contrasting examples. South Africa's prestige and influence in world politics increased after it had renounced and dismantled its nuclear arsenal, while Israel's considerable nuclear capability - so scandalously tolerated and augmented by the United States - has added not a bit to its influence or security in the Middle East and beyond.

That in 1998 India's leaders still view the possession of nuclear weapons as a necessary element to gain recognition as a world power speaks volumes of their intellectual poverty and mediocre, bureaucratic outlook. In effect, these five tests may set back India's ambitions. As any politician and gang leader knows, power grows from the neighbourhood. A country that does not command influence and authority in its own region cannot claim the status of a world power. India's standing with its neighbours, already low, will not now sink further. It tested a fusion bomb which demonstrated thermonuclear capability, then went on to test its ability to produce tactical weapons. This cannot but raise the anxiety of India's non-nuclear neighbours, while contributing little to its military balance with China or Pakistan.

Similarly, while the tests may be psychologically satisfying or politically beneficial to the BJP's insecure leaders, the material losses to India may be greater than they surmise. India was expected in the coming years to achieve a growth rate of 7 per cent. If the international sanctions, including technology transfers, are half as severe as Japan and the US are threatening, this expectation may be in jeopardy. Lastly, with these tests, Delhi may have put India in the fast lane of the arms race. A Third World country can crash more easily in such a race than the second world power did.

What then should Pakistan do? My advice is: do not panic, and do not behave reactively. This translates as: do not listen to people like Qazi Husain Ahmad and Benazir Bhutto, who, either out of ignorance, or more likely from crass unpatriotic opportunism, are advocating nuclear tests, here and now. The arguments for steadying the jerking knee are compelling.

Consider these: One, India is currently the focus of adverse world attention both governmental and popular, and is likely to remain so for a while. A Pakistani test will immediately relieve the pressure on India and shift it to Pakistan, with consequences surely worse for us than it would be for India. Islamabad should not take Delhi's burden upon itself. Rather, this is the time for it to mount diplomatic initiatives and international campaigns to put pressure on India, both within the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and worldwide, and reap some benefits for Pakistan's statesman-like posture.

Two, Pakistan's objective in developing nuclear weapons is different from India's. Delhi's nuclear programme has been linked to the quest, however misguided, for power. Islamabad's is related to security. What Pakistan has sought is a shield against India's nuclear power. That requires the achievement of a sufficient deterrent which Pakistan does possess. India's five tests do not change that reality, at least not from what I know of strategic weaponry from a lifetime of studying it. Scientists and their managers like to test; that is what they do. The question we need to ask is: Is Pakistan less defence capable today than we were a week ago? I don't think any honest person can answer in the affirmative.

Three, one major risk Pakistan runs is to get drawn into an arms race with India, a country with far superior resources. There is evidence to suggest that India would like Pakistanis to do just that. But Pakistan would be getting into the wrong lane. The development of strategic armaments is an expensive business which carries little Keynesian logic. In other words, while it costs a lot, the economic multiplier is negligible. The reasons are that the development and production of strategic weaponry is a capital intensive and largely secret activity, which means that it rarely yields either the economic multiplier or the technological spin-off.

It is thus that the former Soviet Union and its satellites such as Poland and Czechoslovakia became highly sophisticated arms producers, but remained very underdeveloped economically. As a consequence, their states and societies grew dis-organically and eventually collapsed. For Pakistan to avoid that fate, it must resist falling into the trap of seeking strategic equivalence with India. Our requirement is effective deterrence not equivalence. Deterrence demands fewer shifts in strategic planning and weaponry, providing a more stable environment for economic growth.

Finally, the most basic problems facing Pakistan today are economic and social. It is not an exaggeration to say that the country's future depends on how well it confronts the challenges of economic slow-down and social fragmentation. Both are expressions of fundamental structural crises of state and society, and neither is susceptible to simple crisis-management. In an environment such as this, Pakistan is considerably more vulnerable to international sanctions than India, which, whatever its other weaknesses, has been and remains less dependent on foreign aid, loans and technology transfers than Pakistan.

For these reasons and more, it is much better for Islamabad to stay cool, calculating and utilising the opportunities Delhi has presented. May reason prevail.

Copyright 1998 Al-Ahram