The Pakistani Nuclear Bombast! Is there a method in the madness?

MOHAN GURUSWAMY:

Several times in the recent past senior Pakistani officials have warned that dispute over Kashmir could escalate into a nuclear war on the sub-continent. These statements by themselves do not constitute acts that will push the South Asian nuclear clock any closer to Armageddon. Yet this nuclear saber rattling is not without reason and purpose. Even though there is little risk of a nuclear world war anymore, because of their awesome power and potential to inflict sudden and massive violence on large populations, nuclear weapons inspire tremendous and often irrational fear, however infinitesimal the probabilities of their use. When both the adversaries have nuclear weapons you have a balance of terror. The fact that the fallout from nuclear explosions tend to impact on countries quite distant from the sites of usage, gives other nations the right to be concerned. 

As a matter of fact, under the prevailing international regime any war involving even conventional forces cannot remain a local affair for long to be sorted out by just the two adversaries. Where there is even the smallest risk of an escalation to nuclear conflict, that intervention could be quite quick. This is what the Pakistanis are counting on. Given the prevalent worldwide mood on terrorism and the general acceptance that Pakistan has been involved up to its neck with terrorists like the late but less lamented Osama bin Laden and the Lashkar-e-Tolba, it would seem that even India plays this game from time to time. During Op Parakram we witnessed a deliberate turning up of the ratchet towards a war with Pakistan. Nevertheless were are not closer or farther from war when Indian strike formations were deployed to the front line for the simple reason that there is no such thing as being close to war. One can only be ready for war. 

But since nuclear weapons cannot be used, their only utility lies in the mere threat of their use. In nuclear theology this has come to be known as “the utility in non-use.” From time to time declared and undeclared nuclear powers have tried to use nuclear weapons in this manner. The Pakistanis are only traveling down a well-traveled path. Each time the Pakistanis threaten us with nuclear war, what they are in fact doing is semaphoring to the rest of the world, particularly the Western powers that have taken upon themselves to supervise the international regime, to intervene. It seems that the Indian government too has begun seeking western intervention. This is in variance to our long held position of keeping the matter an internal affair and not even a bilateral one giving Pakistan a locus standii, with no role whatsoever for third parties whoever they maybe. 

In the early days of the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and incident occurred which tells a great deal about how the game of nuclear diplomacy is played. The sudden and successful attack by Egyptian troops under the command of Gen. Saaduddin Shazli not only put the Egyptians back on the Sinai Peninsula but also unveiled a new generation of Soviet weapons and tactics to match. At the northern end of Israel a Syrian armored attack under Gen. Mustafa Tlas was threatening to push the surprised Israelis down the slopes of the Golan Heights. In just the first three days of the conflict the highly regarded Israeli Air Force lost over forty fighter aircraft and a huge number of tanks to the new generation of Soviet anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. The panicked Israelis turned to the USA for assistance but found them reluctant. Both, President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, till then were of the opinion that a degree of battlefield reversal was needed to get an increasingly intransigent Israel to the conference table. Caught, in a manner of speaking, between the devil and the deep sea, the Israelis then played their nuclear card.

US surveillance satellites and high-flying reconnaissance aircraft suddenly began to pick up unusually heightened activity around the Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona near the Negev desert. The Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, while imploring Kissinger to start the airlift of urgently needed weapons and military technical assistance told him about how desperate their situation actually was and had already hinted that Israel might have to resort to nuclear weapons to halt the Arab armies. The alarmed Americans sent a SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft fitted with special sensors to detect nuclear material over Dimona. The SR-71 capable of sustained speeds in excess of Mach 3 and flying at altitudes of over 70,000 feet, was then and presumably still is invulnerable to any jet interceptor or anti-aircraft missile. This successor to the U-2 spy plane even regularly over flew the Soviet Union unscathed and to the great annoyance of the Russians. 

Yet when the SR-71 was beginning its run over Dimona, the Israelis scrambled a flight of F-4 Phantoms to intercept the Blackbird. Both, the SR-71 pilot and American sigint ships snooping nearby heard the Israeli flight commanders reporting to the ground controller that the US spy plane was sighted and heard him in turn urgently order the F-4’s to shoot down the Blackbird. Even as the Israeli aircraft tried vainly to shoot it down the SR-71 made its run over Dimona airfield and its sensors picked up the signature of nuclear material on a bomb conveyor apparently loading an Israeli fighter-bomber. Whether the nuclear flare registered was from an actual nuclear weapon or radioactive material in a container to simulate a weapon will never be known. 

To the advantage of the Israelis, the Americans read this as preparations for an imminent nuclear attack. Would the Soviets sit quietly when their allies are subjected to a nuclear attack would have been the immediate thought? Was this going to be the beginning of WW III? Within minutes President Nixon was on the line to Golda Meir telling her that a massive US airlift bearing much needed weapons and military advisors was ordered and that supply would begin within hours. As it happened US military advisors were able to develop tactics and devise electronic jammers to fob off the Soviet SAM missiles. From the fifth day onwards Israeli aircraft losses were significantly down and the tide of the battle began to turn. By the thirteenth day an Israeli thrust under Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon had crossed the Suez and had begun threatening to encircle Shazli’s advancing army on the Sinai. Only a Soviet threat to the Americans that their troops would physically join the battle with all “available” weapons compelled the Americans to force the Israelis to accept a cease-fire. Thus, twice in two weeks the threat of nuclear escalation had the desired outcomes for the parties involved.

In early 1952 as the Chinese poured in troops into Korea to grind to a halt the advance of the American led UN forces, a highly placed US diplomat in Geneva conveyed through the Indian diplomat, KM Pannickar, a warning to China that the US will use nuclear weapons on it unless it agreed to talks immediately. China soon after agreed for talks, which soon resulted in the armistice that holds till today. Others have done this somewhat differently. During the 1982 Falklands War the British quietly deployed the nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror armed with nuclear missiles off the Argentine coast. As the fighting raged and the Argentines scored some naval victories by sinking the destroyer HMS Sheffield and the converted Harrier jet carrier, Atlantic Conveyor, the Royal Navy revealed the presence of its nuclear submarine. The presence of the Conqueror with nuclear weapons was to tell its somewhat lukewarm ally, the USA, that if the war went badly for it Britain would be forced to use even nuclear weapons. It was therefore in the USA’s interest too not only using its enormous clout with the Argentines to end its occupation of the Falkland Islands but to also assist Britain. Soon after this the USA tilted fully in favour of the British by providing it with critical intelligence and political support.

The 1962 crisis between the USA and USSR better known as the Cuban missile crisis was once again an exercise in nuclear diplomacy. The Russians installed nuclear capable missiles in Cuba because the Americans had embarked on a major effort to destabilize the Castro regime. When the missiles were detected, the USA commenced a naval blockade of Cuba. A Soviet flotilla was halted on the high seas bringing the Russians and Americans eyeball to eyeball making a nuclear conflict imminent unless someone blinked. Faced with a resolute John Kennedy, the Russians blinked first. In secret talks with the Americans they agreed to withdraw the missiles from Cuba, but not before the Americans too quietly agreed to dismantle their similarly placed Jupiter missiles in Turkey on the southern borders of the USSR. Apparently the American nerves were as frayed as the Russians and faced with the prospect of mutually assured destruction both sides made compromises.

In 1992 US President George Bush conveyed to the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, that a poison gas attack on Israel using its Scud missiles would invite a nuclear strike upon it. The Iraqis fired several Scuds on Israel, but none with poison gas. After the war the UN inspectors scouring Iraq for weapons capable of mass destruction detected huge quantities of poison gas in ready to use explosive triggered canisters. Obviously the threat worked.

Clearly the threat of the first-use of nuclear weapons if provoked beyond a point could be often as effective as nuclear deterrence. In recent times, to give credence to their irrationality, Pakistan has deployed or claims to have deployed tactical nuclear weapons to some of its formations. Since a tactical nuclear weapon has a much smaller destructive power its use is considered somewhat more likely and hence more credible than a strategic nuclear weapon. A strategic weapon is a city or area buster, while a tactical weapons is said to have only a battlefield application. But India's response to this is that whatever the weapon, and wherever it is used, if it is used it will invite a full scale retaliation. Many analysts think this is not credible, and India needs a flexible policy that will allow it to also match escalation up the ladder. 

But the frequent Pakistani outbursts that nuclear war can happen here if the Kashmir situation boils over is an addition to known nuclear semaphoring practices. Here the Pakistanis are using the western abhorrence of nuclear war to influence Indian policy. They are not threatening India, because that is not credible particularly since India has a far bigger nuclear arsenal. They are in fact threatening the world that the balance of terror may be breached and wants it to intervene. Whatever the nature of this intervention, it is deemed to be in its favour. We saw this happen when within minutes after the 26/11 Mumbai attacks Presidents and Prime Ministers from all over began calling our Prime Minister calling for restraint. We have a somewhat ironical situation here. A cruel and ruthless military presiding over a notoriously lawless and corrupt nation is pleading for Kashmir’s supposed right to self-determination and is blackmailing the world to come to its assistance. Since the credibility of the seriousness of the crisis depends on how provoked India gets, it has been increasing ruthless in is using terrorism to do just this.