For
all who have opposed Pakistan's nuclear program
over the years - including myself - the US-India
nuclear agreement may be the worst thing that has
happened in a long time.
Pakistan's ruling
elite is confused and bitter. They know that India
has overtaken Pakistan in far too many areas for
there to be any reasonable basis for symmetry.
They see the United States is now interested in
reconstructing the geopolitics of South Asia and
in repairing relations with India, not in
mollifying Pakistani grievances. Nevertheless,
there were lingering hopes of a
sweetener during
President George W Bush's furtive and unwelcome
visit to Islamabad last month. There was none.
This change in US policy thrilled many in
India. They enjoyed President General Pervez
Musharraf's discomfiture. But they would do well
to restrain their exuberance. The nuclear deal,
even if ratified, will not dramatically increase
nuclear power production - currently this stands
at only 3% of the total production, and can at
most double to 6% if currently planned reactors
are built and made operational over the next
decade. On the other hand, Pakistan is bound to
react - and react badly - once US nuclear
materials and equipment starting rolling into
India.
One certain consequence will be
more bombs on both sides of the border. The deal
is widely seen in Pakistan as signaling America's
support or acquiescence, or perhaps even
surrender, to India's nuclear ambitions. India
will be freely able to import uranium fuel for its
safeguarded civilian reactors. This will free up
the remainder of its scarce uranium resources for
making plutonium. Further, when India's
thorium-fueled breeder reactors are fully
operational, India will be able to produce more
bombs in one year than in the past 30.
Not
surprisingly, important voices in Pakistan have
started to demand that Pakistan match India
bomb-for-bomb. Abdus Sattar, ex-foreign minister
of Pakistan, advocates "replication of the Kahuta
plant to produce more fissile uranium ... to
rationalize and upgrade Pakistan's minimum
deterrence capability". He has also written about
the need to "accelerate its [Pakistan's] missile
development program".
This is a
prescription for an unlimited nuclear race, given
that "minimum deterrence" is in essence an
open-ended concept. Pakistan has mastered
centrifuge technology, and giving birth to more
Kahutas would require only a political decision.
Moreover, unlike India, Pakistan is not
constrained by supplies of natural uranium. Thus,
at least in principle, Pakistan can increase its
bomb production considerably.
Although
nuclear hawks in India and Pakistan had once
pooh-poohed the notion of an arms race, there is
little doubt that India and Pakistan are solidly
placed on an arms-escalation trajectory. As more
bombs are added to the inventory every year, and
intermediate-range ballistic missiles steadily
roll off the production lines, both countries seek
ever more potent weaponry.
Many years ago,
the nuclear powers crossed the point where they
could lay cities to waste and kill millions in a
matter of minutes. The fantastically cruel logic
known as nuclear deterrence requires only the
certainty that one nuclear bomb will be able to
penetrate the adversary's defenses and land in the
heart of a city. No one has the slightest doubt
that this capability was crossed multiple times
over during the past few decades.
What
action would best serve the interest of the people
of India and Pakistan, as well as of China?
A fissile-material cutoff is the easiest
and most straightforward way to ease nuclear
tensions. It offers the best hope to limit the
upward spiral in warhead numbers. Instead of
threatening to create more Kahutas, Pakistan
should offer to stop production of highly enriched
uranium, while India should respond by ceasing to
reprocess its reactor wastes. Previous stockpiles
possessed by either country should not be brought
into issue because their credible verification is
extremely difficult and would inevitably derail an
agreement. Years of negotiation at the Conference
on Disarmament in Geneva came to naught for this
very reason. A series of "Nuclear Risk Reduction"
talks between Pakistan and India have also
produced zero results. The cessation of
fissile-material production is completely absent
from the agenda; it must be made a central item
now.
The arms race directly benefits
Indian and Pakistani elites. Hence they are tacit
collaborators as they woo the US and prove that
their countries belong to the community of
"responsible nuclear states" that are worthy of
military and nuclear assistance. The past has been
banished by an unwritten agreement. Retired
Pakistani and Indian generals and leaders meet
cordially at conferences around the world and
happily clink glasses together. They emphatically
deny that the two countries had ever come close to
a nuclear crisis in the past. Being now charged
with the mission of projecting an image of
"responsibility" abroad, none among them wants to
bring back the memory of South Asian leaders
hurling ugly nuclear threats against each other.
But instances of criminal nuclear behavior
are to be found even in the very recent past. For
example, then Indian defense minister George
Fernandes told the International Herald Tribune in
2002 that "India can survive a nuclear attack, but
Pakistan cannot". Yogendra Narain, then the Indian
defense secretary, took things a step further in
an interview with Outlook Magazine: "A surgical
strike is the answer," adding that if this failed
to resolve things, "We must be prepared for total
mutual destruction." On the Pakistani side, at the
peak of the 2002 crisis, General Musharraf had
threatened that Pakistan would use "unconventional
means" against India if necessary.
Tense
times may return any time in the in the future.
But Indian and Pakistani leaders are likely once
again to abdicate their own responsibilities
whenever that happens. Instead, they will again
entrust disaster prevention to the United States.
Of course, it would be absurd to lay the
blame on the US for all that has gone wrong
between the two countries. Surely the US does not
want to destabilize the subcontinent, and it does
not want a South Asian holocaust. But one must be
aware that for the US this is only a peripheral
interest - the core of its interest in South Asian
nuclear issues stems from the need to limit
Chinese power and influence, fear of al-Qaeda and
Muslim extremism, and the associated threat of
nuclear terrorism.
The Americans will sort
out their business and priorities as they see fit.
But it is unwise to participate in a plan that
leaves South Asian neighbors at each others
throats while benefiting a power that sits on the
other side of the globe.
Regional tensions
will increase because of the deal. Given that the
motivation for the US-India nuclear agreement
comes partly from the US desire to contain China,
the Pakistan-China strategic relationship will be
considerably strengthened. In practical terms,
this may amount to enhanced support for Pakistan's
missile program, or even its military nuclear
program. Speaking at Pakistan's National Defense
College in Islamabad a day before Bush's arrival
there, Musharraf declared, "My recent trip to
China was part of my effort to keep Pakistan's
strategic options open."
By proceeding
with the nuclear deal with India, the US may
destabilize South Asia. It will also wreck the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, take the heat
off Iran and North Korea, open the door for Japan
to convert its plutonium stocks into bombs, and
bring about global nuclear anarchy.
Pervez Hoodbhoy is professor of
nuclear and high-energy physics at Quaid-e-Azam
University in Islamabad.
