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Pakistan: between a ROCK and a HARD PLACE
If our plan envisages in a war scenario with India a first nuclear strike in an adverse military situation, even as a battlefield weapon, we lose world sympathy. No world power, including old friend China, will support the madness of a first nuclear strike. The equalizer scenario breaks down now that India has shown the will to develop a second nuclear strike capability, deliverable by a triad of military assets in superpower fashion. It will probably take India another three to five years to develop this triad, in particular nuclear-powered submarines and an
early warning system which will primarily rely on dedicated military satellites.
Since the Indian policy paper talks of increasing the level of deterrence, this means large increases in conventional defence outlay. To match it, it is estimated that our defence outlay will have to increase to the level of total
revenue. At some point of time, the back of the weaker economic power is broken. And this is exactly what happened to the late Soviet Union. The US increased R&D and defence outlays to a level which the Soviets simply could
not match. Nuclear logic played its part in the break-up of the Soviet Union.
A nuclear war has the potential of dismembering Pakistan and to a lesser extent India.
1. Which is the greater enemy of Pakistan - the fundamentalist sectarianism spewing from Taliban Afghanistan or an obdurate India? Our sponsorship of the
Taliban has alienated us from our traditional friends - China, Iran and Turkey and most of Central Asia, not to mention the west.
2. Our Kashmir thrust beginning in 1947 to Kargil in 1999 has been premised on a sub rosa creeping aggression or confrontation with India. The policy has
miserably failed.
We shut our eyes and ears to the fact that the Pathan tribesmen sent to liberate Kashmir in 1947/48 indulged in loot and plunder. It took 40 years and even worse treatment from the Indian army to shake this memory. Operation
Gibraltar in 1965, like Kargil in 1999, was based on trained guerillas led by army officers to infiltrate behind the cease-fire line.
Successive governments in their wisdom have chosen not only to back the violent elements within the movement but also to augment them with trigger-happy Afghan mercenaries. This was a tragic mistake. World attention has now moved from human rights abuses in Kashmir perpetrated by India, which was in focus before the Kargil misadventure, to Pakistan as a country accused of aggression.
Sparse voting in Kashmir is partly induced by fear of terrorist attacks on poling booths- my note
Recent BBC/CNN coverage of the Indian election showing empty ballot boxes in Srinagar conveys the depth of Kashmiri alienation more explicitly and convincingly than our hamhanded official propaganda. The independent media
will support the aggressed not the aggressor; the victims of terrorism not the terrorist; peaceful activists, not fire-spewing holy warriors.
that in the prevailing situation our objectives in Kashmir should be lowered to getting India to honour the special status of Kashmir as provided in Article 370-A of the Indian constitution as an ad interim measure pending the final settlement of the problem, and to trade the exit of the Indian army out of Kashmir by respecting the sanctity of the LoC. No nuclear weapons are needed to attain these objectives. A less confrontational policy in relation to India is called for.
brings us finally to the question of our nuclear conceptualization in response to India:
my notes Pakistan's development of second nuclear strike capability will break the back and the geography of Pakistan as it happened to USSR. Why can't Pakistan be like Canada, USA vis-a-vis CANADA = INDIA vis-a-vis PAKISTAN, any problem with that Don't like to play second fiddle? ??
1. We should declare that Pakistan has no intention to develop a second nuclear strike capability. It would be a gross error if we attempt to follow the Indian
policy in this regard. Kuldip Nayyar, writing in these columns on September 7, quoted an estimate of Rs 7,700 crores for developing SNS capacity by India.
We do not have the means to enter this competition.
2. Our nuclear conceptualization be premised on the use of battlefield N-weapons on our own territory 'in extremis' only to eject enemy concentrations. The policy must categorically declare that we have no intention of hitting any Indian city or territory as a first nuclear strike. My notes: Sane advice
3. Declare the framework of a Kashmir policy which aims at an interim settlement of the problem and calls for negotiations leading to the withdrawal of the two armies from the disputed territory.
Precondition: Eliminate noxious habits of Talibans and " freedom fighter" before LOC becomes porous. Asking for too much, a tall order, yea- my notes
4. Recognize the inherent right of the Kashmiris to trade and travel across the LoC and for their elected representatives to meet as a joint body to make
recommendations to the governments of India and Pakistan without prejudice to the UN resolutions, Simla agreement or the recognized positions of the respective governments in regard to the dispute.
Don't eat grass, Import Wheat -cheaper but good - from India instead of from Canada -my notes
Boasts such as "we shall even eat grass if we have to build N-weapons" win thunderous jingoistic applause but when it comes to paying honest taxes and repaying bank loans to the piper, none from the man who invented this slogan to the current prime minister is prepared to pay. |
