A. Vinod Kumar was Associate Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), and a Visiting Faculty at the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies (IFPS), University of Calcutta, Kolkata. His research interests include nuclear policy issues (including non-proliferation, nuclear energy and deterrence), missile defence and India’s relations with the great powers. Kumar’s first book titled India and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime – The Perennial Outlier was published by the Cambridge University Press in April 2014. He has written extensively in acclaimed publications including Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The National Interest, Strategic Analysis, South Asian Survey, Asia Times, Huffington Post, The Indian Economist and Vayu Aerospace Review, among others. Prior to joining MP-IDSA, Kumar was a journalist with stints in print and audio-visual media platforms and have spearheaded pioneering endeavours in mass communications including the first political public relations campaign in Kerala. He has been a private broadcaster as well as a first generation online journalist and was part of many web ventures, including as Executive Editor of South Asia Monitor – a media diplomacy platform. Kumar was earlier a Fellow at the Indian Pugwash Society. His ongoing study is on the implications of missile defence for nuclear deterrence. Concurrently, he is also spearheading an archival mining effort to trace India’s nuclear and foreign policy history. Kumar is recipient of the Ministry of Defence Madras Medal.
Does zero casualties in Iran missile strike point to backroom deal?
Associate Fellow
Email:- vinujnu[at]gmail[dot]com
Phone:- +91 11 2671 7983 Extn 7337
Associate Fellow, IDSA, Mr Vinod Kumar's chapter titled ‘Between Idealism, Activism, and the Bomb: Why did India Reject the NPT?’ was published in the Routledge edited volume ‘Negotiating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origins of the Nuclear Order, edited by Popp Roland, Liviu Horovitz and Andreas Wenger.
Given that the NSG may not be able to withhold the India membership question for long, in spite of China’s inconsistent positions, it would be unwise on India’s part to forfeit any advantage it has on the SCS issue.
How's this for irony: it was India's nuclear test of May 1974 that brought together the initial group of seven nuclear suppliers to form the "London Club" -- later christened as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) -- to formulate rules and guidelines for nuclear trade. Since 1978, when the first guidelines were formulated (INFCIRC/254), India found itself at the receiving end of the NSG, with the 1992 guidelines -- which required non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) to have the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) full-scope safeguards to gain supplies -- totally cutting out the nation from global nuclear commerce.
While the NSG gave India an exemption to this guideline in 2008, the story until then was about India's perennial struggle against a discriminatory non-proliferation order perpetuated by such "denial regimes". The India-US nuclear deal, which facilitated this exemption, though, happened only because of the Bush administration's decision to sidestep the cornerstone NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons) in favour of new solutions to strengthen the non-proliferation system based on the bargain that countries indulging in proliferation should be penalized while those with a good record be rewarded. India thus metamorphosed from a "proliferation problem" to being part of the solution.
Critics of the nuclear deal had described it as undermining the NPT, even as many of the naysayers backed the NSG exemption, with some eventually signing nuclear cooperation agreements with India. Nonetheless, the nuclear deal and its concomitant processes left a major conceptual question unanswered -- should India be deemed to have fully integrated into the non-proliferation regime with this waiver, or whether this could happen without being an NPT state-party? Amid differing perceptions of what "integration" means, it is inevitable that the NPT question presents itself as the final frontier in India's efforts to gain full legitimacy as a nuclear-armed state without being an NPT state-party.
After China's clamouring on the NPT as qualifier to decide membership, states with reservations on India had come around to support a criterion to admit non-NPT states. However, the current status of NPT and persistence of some outdated orthodoxies underline how using the treaty benchmark may not favour the NSG's interests or the cause of non-proliferation.
When the London Club first met in 1974, only a few states with advanced nuclear technology or resources had signed and ratified the NPT. It was natural that the NSG in its early years was a grouping of suppliers, including those who were yet to join the treaty, with common interests of ensuring that nuclear supplies do not go to unsafeguarded facilities or are diverted for non-peaceful purposes. The first guidelines of 1978 emphasized not on the NPT, but on IAEA safeguards (which preceded the NPT and was still evolving) as the principle determining nuclear exports. It was not until the 1990 Review Conference (RevCon) of the NPT and revelations of Iraq's clandestine programme that made the NSG rally around full-scope safeguards in order to restrict nuclear resources to the NPT state-parties.
The hype about India's membership gave way to public perception of the NSG being an international legal body. Rather, the evolution of this group was shaped by political and commercial interests, with "non-proliferation" providing its raison d'être. NSG documents, in fact, list in its supporting activities that "suppliers should encourage... recipients to take the fullest advantage of the international commercial market and other mechanisms for nuclear fuel services while not undermining the global fuel market."
By its own admission, the NSG was inactive after the initial momentum, only to be revived by post-Cold War dynamics. Notwithstanding its preoccupation with formulating export control norms, its fast expansion in the last two decades could be attributed to the rising influence of emerging nuclear markets besides having to decide on new techno-commercial imperatives like fuel banks and proliferation-resistant reactor technologies. With the impending realignment of supplier-consumer dynamics, every country with a nuclear production capability or resources seeks to be on the influential side of decision-making.
The NPT might be the cornerstone and a near-universal treaty. Yet, it has been in the doldrums since its indefinite extension in 1995, with every RevCon since failing to develop consensus on fulfilling its key objectives, including disarmament. The nuclear deal and the India-specific waiver at NSG signalled that the treaty was no longer suited to address emerging proliferation challenges and that solutions had to be sought beyond this framework. Further, the cause of non-proliferation will no better be served by placing the treaty as impediment to engage "states with advanced nuclear technology" like India or in allowing them to shape the contours of this industry.
By the NSG's own assertion, full-scope safeguards were enshrined as criteria in the 1992 guidelines to ensure that "only NPT parties could benefit from nuclear transfers." The waiver given to India is standing example that such restrictive practices may not hold ground anymore. Full-scope safeguards were a mechanism to ensure that non-weapon parties to NPT did not divert resources to weapons programmes. The three major NPT hold-outs (India, Pakistan and Israel) had subscribed to IAEA's item-or facility-specific safeguards (INFCIRC-66) as guarantee against such diversion of foreign resources to their military programmes. India augmented this further through another safeguard agreement with IAEA in 2008, to meet the pre-condition for the NSG waiver. Considering that these three hold-outs will not join the NPT nor discard their strategic programmes, it will prove retrograde for the NSG to rely on archaic criteria to keep out thriving nuclear markets like India with a better record of non-proliferation than some existing NSG members.
The Chinese foreign ministry attributed its opposition to "caring about the NPT." It is another matter that China had rejected the NPT negotiations in the 1960s, calling it an instrument of imperialism. Beijing's current strategy seems self-defeating thanks to its inconsistency on the NPT criteria. After initially demanding that India could get membership only after signing the treaty, China ended up backing the criteria call for non-NPT states, realizing that the NPT criteria could well cut out Pakistan from the equation. While the conditions that facilitated the 2008 waiver could still work in India's favour for the membership decision, Pakistan has hardly fared well in these years with its feverish fissile production, blocking of Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) talks and continuing support to terror group, all adding to its blemished record that denied it the treatment that Indian gained.
The intense campaign spearheaded by the political leadership in the run-up to the Seoul plenary raised curiosity about why India feels the NSG membership is crucial to its nuclear future. Critics suggested that India should be content with the 2008 NSG and that such a high-stakes campaign may backfire. Other than the perceptual advantages of gaining a place at one of the nuclear high-tables, the actual benefit of being an NSG member is about influencing crucial decisions on global nuclear commerce and also positioning the country as a nuclear supplier. However, for a country that is dependent on fuel and technology for its expanding nuclear programme, sceptics may doubt the contribution India could make to the global industry with its archaic Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) competencies or its yet-to-be harnessed fast breeder technology that promises to harvest the country's massive thorium resources.
Of pivotal interest will be to discern how the NSG will determine its policies on transfer of Enrichment and Reprocessing (ENR) technologies. The NSG had recently resolved to restrict ENR access to only NPT state-parties. Can India, as a member, force a change in this position? There are other lingering issues as well -- the question of who qualifies to be a supplier in the fuel banks that are being mooted. Fuel banks work on the premise that recipient states have to subscribe to these banks as their captive source. The Indian urgency might be driven by the desire to be on the influential side of this spectrum, and possibly play a future spoiler role.
The article was originally published in Huffington Post
The pivotal question is whether a judicial intervention, in the absence of any political stimulus, can make a meaningful difference to the disarmament movement.
Much like in the days after the November 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, the knives are out in the aftermath of the Pathankot incident to fix responsibility on the upper echelons of the government for their inability to stop a handful of jihadis from sneaking into the country and for an allegedly "botched-up" operation.
Major decisions pertaining to the operation -- from deploying the National Security Guards (NSG), which supposedly created a confusion of command, to sending veteran soldiers of the Defence Security Corps (DSC) for the combing operation -- were criticised for being knee-jerk and arbitrary. The resultant slugfest, especially between the men in uniform -- representing both the Khakhis and Faujis -- revealed the innate turf battles that define the current state of the Indian security establishment, and by implication, its inherent weaknesses. Lost in this din, though, are the deeper systemic issues that reinforce our enduring vulnerabilities to such attacks.
For one, the bone of contention -- whether the decision to hand over the reins of the operation to the NSG instead of the army was a prudent one -- itself looks insignificant. That the NSG was designated as the pivot of our counter-terror strategy after the 26/11 attack, along with an ambitious plan to position it across the country for a rapid reaction capability, clearly justifies the decision to dispatch the force to Pathankot. Further, the attack happened in an IAF base, guarded by the Garud force (not a counter-terrorist unit), which made it contingent for the NSG (composed of commandos drawn from the army) to be deployed at the first sign of an imminent terror strike. Though it has considerable experience in confronting terror elements (owing to the many attacks on army camps in Jammu and Kashmir, besides its Rashtriya Rifles exposure), it is worth considering that the army has been far from eager to have its forces being deployed for counter-insurgency operations and internal security requirements.
While the swift decision-making, howsoever centralised in one person or group, pursued in this instance needs due appreciation, the relative effeteness of many other structures within the security apparatus underlines the continuing challenges in creating a durable counter-terror strategy for the country. Despite many efforts for "sweeping reforms", the national security establishment, like many arms of the State, continues to thrive on mediocrity and complacency, which, in turn, points to a corrupted national ethos and systemic decay that has the potential to subvert the country's progress and governance initiatives.
Following the 26/11 attack, a series of structural reforms were proposed in the security set-up --notably, establishment of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the regional hubs for NSG deployment in various states, the setting up of a National Intelligence Grid (NatGrid), the plan for a National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) -- along with various other initiatives to enable a qualitative improvement in our counter-terror infrastructure and strategy.
While the setting up of NIA has been the only success story till date, the efficacy of the NSG redeployment plan has been doubted even by its original votaries. The NCTC plan, meanwhile, met a premature demise at the conceptualisation stage itself, owing to resistance from various state governments and confusion over its command structure and role definitions. The more glaring story of systemic failure is of the NatGrid -- a mammoth data repository connecting key information and intelligence databases -- which has not taken off even after seven years and hundreds of crores being spent since its conception. Then, there is the perennially pending case of police reforms, supposed to reinvigorate the federal policing structures, ridden by corruption and inefficiency, and yet expected to the first responders in a terror incident.
Who is to be blamed for this state of affairs? While terms like "comprehensive restructuring" and "sweeping reforms" have become clichéd, one wonders why such symbolism and half-hearted measures are repeated after every major terror incident, or rather, why systemic transformation remains a difficult mission for this nation. This cycle has continued after Pathankot as well, with suggestions like a national security doctrine, legislative oversight and even the call for a Chief of Defence Staff, being mooted from various quarters as elements for yet another restructuring exercise. While some of these proposals might be constructive, the actual question that the nation has failed to ponder on is whether such reforms will actually make a credible difference to the manner in which our national systems function.
Can perfunctory measures redress the decay that has crept into our governance systems, despite revolutionary movements like Right to Information (RTI) and Whistle Blowers Protection Act? Will any initiatives for restructuring make sense when their fundamental purposes are lost in meaningless heaps of red-tapism and bureaucratic languor? Why do gaps exist in the international border and across the Indian coast for drug smugglers and terrorists to sneak in? Can such spaces exist without the knowledge of local policing and political institutions? Is a systemic rot or national sense of complacency allowing this status quo?
A striking aspect about contemporary India is that while the nation is rewarding young talent and incentivising fresh thinking in the corporate and economic spheres, the national security establishment continues to be a vestige of antediluvian workmanship. Even as a former minister unapologetically termed the DSC veterans at Pathankot as "armed gate-keepers" not fit enough to take on terrorists, the political leaderships over the years had no inhibitions in converting national institutions into re-employment shelters for retired bureaucrats and military officials. For that matter, even the many review committees that have recommend "sweeping reforms" in key sectors have most often been spearheaded by officials who would have hesitated to pursue any such radical measures while in office. (I couldn't hide my chagrin after witnessing an Indian-American in his late 30s leading a US Senate Armed Forces Committee delegation to India recently, after serving as senior advisor in the White House.)
This being the general shape of our national security edifice, it makes the average citizen wonder whether the grandiose declarations of reforms and "punishing the enemy" have any iota of realism in them. With the Army Chief proclaiming that his force is ready to take up any operational challenge, the debate within the military community should actually veer towards examining whether our Special Forces could be able to successfully pursue a cross-border mission on the western flank (without triggering a nuclear conflagration), if the political leadership decides to initiate a hot pursuit or target the terror camps across the border, as reportedly undertaken in the territory of an eastern neighbour recently. The last time we debated this eventuality -- a la Cold Start doctrine -- the results were inconclusive!
This article was originally published in The Huffington Post.
There is a stark similarity between the disaster that struck Chennai recently and the ordeal that Delhiites will be subjected to in the coming month. Both are an outcome of the failure of successive governments to heed the repeated warnings of impending calamity and to take pre-emptive measures while planning urban development. If it was an overflowing lake that inundated Chennai -- thanks to clogged drains and waterways, land reclamation and unrestrained constructions -- the toxic scourge in Delhi is a result of its shabby urban infrastructure that's bursting at the seams, the abysmal state of public transport and an archaic construction culture that still defines the city's landscape.
A little over a decade ago, Delhi was running a crusade to redeem its breathing space from diesel-run public transport and fuming factories. Whatever little gain that was accrued from that momentum was squandered by the government's inability to create a sustainable infrastructure and public transport network to match the requirements of a national capital. The primary reasons cited for Delhi's pollution are the uncontrollable growth of light vehicles (emitting particulate matter) and rampant construction, besides seasonal influxes like crop burning in adjoining states and the uninhibited use of firecrackers during festivals.
The city's administration machinery deserves outright blame for aggravating, rather than reversing the primary stimulants that have made Delhi a 'gas chamber'.
The city's administration machinery deserves outright blame for aggravating, rather than reversing the primary stimulants that have made Delhi a "gas chamber". For over a decade, experts have been warning the uninhibited growth of light vehicular traffic into the city, with some media reports suggesting that over a thousand cars are being added every week. Policymakers flaunting the growth of the automotive industry overlooked the pollution spin-off that was integral to this influx, without devising norms to limit the emission imprint or develop a matching infrastructure. The lacuna of policy framing was writ large when the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered the banning of vehicles of a decade or more vintage and the city not having a single authorised recycling yard to dump the discarded lot.
Any fast-growing city would witness a tremendous demand for personal-owned vehicles when its public transport fails to provide last-mile connectivity or a decent network. City planners have to, hence, necessarily prioritise investments in all forms of mass-transit modes well in advance, anticipating a population surge. By that standard, Delhi should have started its Metro Rail construction at least by the late 1990s, like Chennai's Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS). Despite the now functioning Metro connectivity, the Delhi Transport Corporation's (DTC) bus network remains the public transportation mainstay.
For all its claims of an environment-friendly CNG fleet, DTC has an abysmal record in imparting time-bound service and connectivity to all nooks of the city. The only major public transportation initiative that was conceived in the last decade was the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) in select corridors. In a city where bus connectivity is pathetic, BRTS caused massive traffic congestion thanks to its faulty construction. Even an effective tram system (like in European cities) could have served these corridors better as a mass transit option than building exclusive pathways for buses.
[Can] European solutions like the odd-even option, congestion and pollution taxes, and exclusion zones... be a tangible solution to this mess?
The miserable state of urban road infrastructure also raises serious doubts on the ability of the Public Works Department (PWD) to shape Delhi's architectural contours. The city was witness to a spate of engineering eye-sores that came up as part of the 2010 Commonwealth Games preparations. A notable example of lack of imagination or realistic planning is the Rao Tula Ram (RTR) Marg -- an arterial road supposed to be the entry point to the capital of a rising power. Two badly-designed flyovers, constructed without retaining sufficient road space, has created major bottlenecks and traffic congestion causing not just tremendous pollution in the area, wasting man-hours and fuel, but also spiralling jams to other parts of the city.
Five years after raising these structures, and realising their folly, the PWD is now preparing to build a parallel flyover in this sector, while retaining the same mistakes (of limited road space) and ignoring various choke-points that will vitiate the misery created by existing structures. Leave alone penalising those responsible for this mess, even the suggestions by the High Court and various agencies to decongest the area -- by developing alternative routes, underpasses at choke-points and sufficient road space -- has fallen on deaf ears. For that matter, flyovers across Delhi, owing to faulty designs, have caused more congestion than facilitating signal-free drives, which was their original purpose.
It is in this backdrop that the city mulls the odd-even proposal to restrict the use of personal cars as a recipe to address pollution. Two questions weigh in the minds of Delhi's denizens: (a) will this be a 15-day charade where all state systems will try to function optimally to undertake a symbolic experimentation? (b) Will restrictions on personal vehicles be the sensible way to address pollution? While the dominant perception is that the experiment is destined to fail thanks to the poor transportation infrastructure (despite resources outside the government's normal purview being garnered for the "road show"), many favour curbs on personal vehicles as a means to address the unmanageable traffic conundrum the city faces, irrespective of whether it reduces pollution.
The key to an orderly urban future for Delhi is a combination of realistic, imaginative and futuristic planning on urban infrastructure aided by effective public utility services.
The more significant point, though, is whether European solutions like the odd-even option, congestion and pollution taxes, and exclusion zones can be a tangible solution to this mess, despite knowing their inefficacy in Indian conditions. In a city where the population is vertically divided into those who need dependable public transport for day-to-day transit and those who can afford to surmount all forms of restrictive policies, realistic rather than reactive policy options will be the need of the hour.
Below are some short and long-term options planners could consider:
(a) Make substantial advancements in all modes of public transport -- involving both private and public operators, existing and new -- to give incentivised travel options to the population, with last-mile connectivity.
b) Strictly restrict the sale and purchase of new non-commercial vehicles in the city for the immediate future, with exceptions made only to those without personal vehicles or seeking to replace aged ones (as per NGT stipulations). This has to be followed up with a ban on sale of used vehicles in the city and setting up numerous recycling yards.
(c) Implement a credible (and corruption-free) Vehicle Health Check/Monitoring System, which could periodically assess and certify the health of a vehicle to ply in Delhi's roads.
These options apart, the key to an orderly urban future for Delhi is a combination of realistic, imaginative and futuristic planning on urban infrastructure aided by effective public utility services. The more relevant question, though, is whether promising initiatives could gain traction in a city that is low on civility, high on corruption and ignores common good.
This article was originally published in The Huffington Post.
Call it the ten year itch – of how an exceptional treatment given to India, through a nuclear deal, was consistently gainsaid by a section of the American strategic community, who predicted the certain unravelling of the non-proliferation edifice and instability in South Asia as a result of the deal. A decade after the US-India deal, they seek to ‘correct the imbalance’ by hoping for a similar arrangement – a waiver for Pakistan from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) that could facilitate its entry into the non-proliferation mainstream, and possibly provide oversight over its nuclear programme. One prominent outcome of this campaign is the Stimson Centre-Carnegie Endowment report, which presents Pakistan’s desire to be a ‘normal state possessing nuclear weapons’ (unlike India’s status as an advanced state with nuclear technology), and calls for ‘mainstreaming’ it through some novel nuclear weapons-related initiatives, if not the commercial pathway.
The arguments put forward are passionate: (a) it’s a question of basic fairness: Pakistan deserves the same treatment and status in the nuclear order as India – reminding us of the famous ‘hyphenation’ that Americans are apt at. (b) It’s also about stability: the subcontinent will be unstable if neighbours are treated differentially, with India accorded ‘favoured treatment’ and Pakistan remaining an outlier – implying that the ‘favour to India’ remains the irritant. They go on to surmise that “providing Pakistan with same benefits as India will stabilize the nuclear competition”. After years of branding the subcontinent as a nuclear flashpoint, they do not seem to mind the competition anymore, only if it’s an even contest.
Lot many arguments are being propped up to orchestrate the potential deal – that Pakistan has the fastest growing arsenal; it will deploy tactical nuclear weapons (Nasr), which will be hard to secure; bringing Pakistan into the safeguards ambit will enable a check on its nuclear programme, and so on. Interestingly, unlike India’s case, which was reward for an exemplary record, this campaign is to check the tantrums of a perpetually problematic nation. Pakistan fuelled the alarmist crowd by feverishly expanding its nuclear arsenal and fissile production, besides keeping an active nuclear trading channel with China. With a sympathetic audience in place, every action and report seems to be only underlining the imperative of the deal.
While these are early days to assume if Pakistan will ever get such a deal, and whether it will muster support at the NSG, there is a counter-argument that may reverberate throughout this campaign – the reasons why Pakistan was not considered for such a deal in 2005 remains as relevant today as it was then. In contrast to India’s status as a vibrant democracy, Pakistan was then under a military dictatorship and torn apart by extremism. Though democracy has made a gradual comeback, the military continues to have a stranglehold over the nation, and the arsenal, with no let-up in the security situation. Unlike India’s economic surge, strife-torn Pakistan continues to struggle on basic economic indicators. None though mattered then as much as the dread created by the A.Q. Khan clandestine network, which, along with the Jihadi Frankenstein that Pakistan had fostered, gave it the unique distinction of being the global hub of terror and proliferation.
As this label stuck on, Pakistan’s nuclear posturing over the past decade has not helped matters either. Besides the hectic expansion of its arsenal and flaunting its tactical nuclear prowess, Pakistan’s role in causing the stalemate at the Fissile Materials Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) talks had underlined its inability to play a responsible role in global non-proliferation efforts. Its historical record too is hardly impressive. After supporting the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) resolution of 1968, Pakistan refused to sign the treaty, citing India’s rejection – a posture it emulated on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) as well. Following India’s 1974 Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE), Khan clandestinely mobilised resources for the Pakistan nuclear and missile programmes, with assistance from China and North Korea, which then flourished into a nuclear black market with the technology being distributed to other proliferators.
Thanks to US propensity to overlook these indulgences, Pakistan has escaped any punitive action of consequence for either Khan’s felonies or for the terror infrastructure that launched the global jihad. Following post 9/11 US campaign in Afghanistan, Pakistan became its frontline state and non-Nato ally, which gave the cover for past crimes to be absolved and aid to flow in. This being the backdrop, does Pakistan deserves an exceptional treatment as given to India. Can a nuclear deal turn Pakistan into a ‘normal nuclear-armed state’ that will play a responsible role in the non-proliferation system and stop supporting cross-border terror? Votaries of the potential nuclear deal are themselves unsure on whether Pakistan will be open to such pre-conditions that will be essential tenets of a deal. It will, though, be worthwhile to highlight some of perils that could come by, and the gains Pakistan could accrue from a deal.
The Pakistani nuclear arsenal is in absolute control of its Army, with the prime minister only a civilian figurehead of their National Command Authority (NCA). That the Strategic Planning Division (SPD) is in charge is underlined by the legendary service of Gen. Khalid Kidwai for over two decades in securing the arsenal. It will therefore be difficult to assume that the Army will allow any kind of external oversight or loosen its grip over the arsenal. Moreover, even a physical separation of civilian and military facilities will hardly diminish the military control over the arsenal or even the civilian programme. Certainly so, a nuclear deal will imply rewarding and legitimizing an Army that is scuttling a democratic process and running proxy wars in the neighbourhood?
Many reports suggest that one of the stringent conditions for getting a nuclear deal will be getting Pakistan to commit on ending support to cross-border terrorism. Leave alone Pakistan, no state ever endorses their culpability in any terrorist action or designs, nor are they expected to abort any such proxy means which serves their strategic interests. While Pakistan has always claimed only ideological affiliation with militant groups, none of its promises on ending state support to such groups has ever been fulfilled (the LeT-Hafeez Saeed combine and Haqqani network being simple examples). Even giving a formal undertaking to desist from supporting such groups will imply that it has been fomenting cross border terrorism in the past. Pakistan has used low intensity conflict in Jammu and Kashmir and support to anti-India groups as a time-tested countervailing force against India, which a NSG waiver can hardly compensate.
It is a known fact that Pakistan perceives its nuclear weapons as not just a hedge against India but also as a currency of survival – ensure no external intervention to seize the weapons or force political/territorial change. Nuclear weapons are seen as an equalizer to India’s conventional superiority, and also a means to constrain any form of Indian responses (sub-conventional, conventional or nuclear) to Pakistan-aided low-intensity conflict. In other words, strategic deterrence for Pakistan entail full-spectrum deterrence against India, backed by ambiguous redlines on nuclear first-use. Committing to a recessed deterrence posture or limiting short-range missiles and tactical nuclear weapons will be seen as lowering the guard, especially with its fears over India’s Cold Start (which was a response to Pakistan-aided LIC) and missile defence capabilities.
Without palpable compromises on any of these aspects, what shape can a potential nuclear deal take to the satisfaction of all parties? Given its obsession over the Indian deal, Pakistan is unlikely to accept any arrangement that does not allow it to maintain a Strategic Fuel Reserve or uninhibited access to global nuclear commerce, along with membership to various export-control forums. Neither is it expected to sign the CTBT before India does, nor go beyond the commitments expected of India by the 2005 Joint Statement.
While these realities point to the improbability of a consensual nuclear deal, supporters of this initiative should consider an alternate route to facilitate Pakistan’s transformation into a ‘normal’ sovereign state, which will bring natural support for such causes. Pakistan’s well-wishers should cajole it to build its democratic institutions, withdraw the Army from the mainstream, dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, enter into fruitful dialogue with India with realistic objectives and work towards a peaceful regional security architecture in Southern Asia that will enable free movement of goods and people. A ‘normal’ Pakistan is certain to get India’s support to access global nuclear commerce and build its energy infrastructure to power its economy and ensure electricity and development for its impoverished population.
This article was originally published in Cambridge Blog.
While the first watt of power from foreign-aided projects may take many years to come, the 10th anniversary coincides with major transformations in India’s indigenous nuclear energy programme.
The 2015 NPT RevCon ended on an expected dismaying note. The only positive outcome was its endorsement of the recent initiatives to project the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, though not adopting its underlying theme - a nuclear weapons prohibition treaty.
The collective silence of the guardians and the state-parties by no means signifies the NPT’s good health, especially when they continue to emphasise upon the slow pace of disarmament and enduring pressures on the non-proliferation regime.
