Tehmasib
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Whether it is the code word Buddha has smiled after its first nuclear explosion from Pokhran test site in 1974 or Prime Minister Manmohan Singhs recently calling Agni-V tests a milestone in exploring frontiers of science, one has to admire the Indians for their choice of innocuous phrases to hide the deadliest of intents. New Delhi is also nonplussed if its phenomenal increase in defence budget and deepening nuclear nexus with the US is causing anxiety among its neighbours and triggering responses in the form of Pakistans recent test firings of Haft-5 and Haft-9 nuclear-tipped missiles.
The two countries have made little progress in the several expert-level nuclear talks between them to improve regional stability. In fact, the core aspects of their post-1998 scenarios and earlier undeclared nuclear-power status have remained altogether excluded from their discussions so far. In the sixth round held in Islamabad, both delegates barely agreed to an extension in validity for another five years of the Agreement on Reducing the Risk from Accidents Relating to Nuclear Weapons and reviewed implementations and strengthening of existing CBMs in the framework of the Lahore MoU and agreed to explore possibilities for mutually acceptable additional CBMs. Even by notoriously procrastinated standards of nuclear negotiations, that is hardly an achievement for toils of 12 years.
For the first time, the 1999 Lahore Declaration recognised a need for understanding the role of nuclear weapons by both countries in their geopolitical context and reducing the risk of accidental or unauthorised use, as well as elaborating measures for confidence-building in the nuclear and conventional fields. Whether this recognition would have found any realisation or not is now a moot point as the whole process of normalisation of Indo-Pakistani relations was derailed by the Kargil misadventure. But now that there is some movement in other areas, the process of achieving a degree of improvement in the nuclear environments should be taken up in all earnestness.
The root of the problem lies in Indias seeking clarification of conditions under which Pakistan would be constrained to use its nuclear weapons. From the Indian standpoint, this would seem fundamental to the formulation of any strategy for stable deterrence in the subcontinent. Pakistan, on its part, is not off the mark in being ambiguous and holding back a commitment on no-first-use (NFU), as that, after all, is the essence of a classic nuclear deterrence doctrine to avoid a war.
Pakistan doesnt lend any credence to Indias NFU declarations, for historical reasons and deep-seated mutual mistrust. It also refuses to participate in the Fissile Material Cut-off Talks (FMCT) at the Conference of Disarmament (CD) unless Pakistans concerns in relation to Indias existing stockpiles are addressed. It is also for the experts to examine the extent to which the discriminatory nature of 2008s Indo-US deal may have transformed the regional strategic dynamics and its impact if any on FMCT since India can now divert its domestic fissile material stocks for weapon production.
Indian planners probably think that they can successfully launch and pull off a limited war against Pakistan with their Cold Start doctrine under what they call the nuclear overhang. Pakistan neutralises such thoughts with nuclear posturing in an early timeframe, notably through deployment of nuclear-tipped Haft-9 missiles capable of pulverising a large formation about 35 miles away. But any Haft-9 shoot and snoot operations will almost certainly trigger multiple higher-yield nuclear exchanges with unimaginable consequences. Under the surface of an apparent calm, therefore, there is actually a greater deterrence instability than deterrence stability.
This underscores an urgent need for a responsible approach and some credible cooperation by the two countries, more so as the world puts a higher probability on an India-Pakistan nuclear war than it had ever placed on a US-USSR nuclear conflict at the height of the Cold War. Quite correctly, this global concern stems from two pertinent factors: one, the geographical proximity which renders any notions of early warnings meaningless; and, two, the doctrinal dilemmas and ambiguity issues in which the two sides appear to be perennially bogged down and unable to extricate themselves.
India has also clearly not heeded the Fukushima nuclear disaster, just as Japan hadnt heeded Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986, and has embarked on an ambitious nuclear-power-generation programme. It already has 18 reactors operating at Narora, Rajasthan, Kakrapar, Tarapur, Kaiga and Kalpakkam. Seven are under construction at Rajasthan, Kakrapar and Kalpakkam, and a staggering 44 are being planned or sites selected at Gorakhpur, Chutka, Rajauli, Mithi Virdi, Jaitapur, Kavvada, Nizampatnam, Pulivendula, Kiga, Kalpakkam, and Kudankulam.
With such a large spread of nuclear reactors, the environmental cost for the region and our common heritage is huge in the event of a nuclear disaster. Pakistan has proposed bilateral cooperation on nuclear safeties and peaceful uses of nuclear energies. But the idea has found no takers in India, even though such a cooperation can bring no harm and can only be mutually beneficial. Through such general lack of enthusiasm for nuclear stability in both strategic and power-generation domains, India and Pakistan may unwittingly be creating greater room for miscalculation at the human level.
This dangerous aspect has been articulately highlighted in a recent book The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory by Sheldon M Stern, which suggests two possible individuals who may have played a pivotal role in averting the 1962 nuclear war at the tactical level, well before Prime Minister Khrushchev blinked, at the political level, to accept President Kennedys hegemonic demands.
In the first incident and elaborately explained in another book, Cuban Samba of the Foxtrot Quartet, by Aleksandr Mozgovoy and translated from the Russian some years ago Commander Vasili Arkhipov, second-in-command in one of the four Foxtrot-class submarines prevailed on his commanding officer against a nuclear launch on the US Navy Task Force comprising the aircraft-carrier USS Randolph and 11 escorts deployed off Cuba to impose quarantine. The submarine had been detected and was depth-charged continuously to force it up for recognition.
In the given situation of loss of communications with Moscow, rules of nuclear engagement called for unanimity of views among the commanding officer, the second-in-command and the political commissar who had already thrown his weight behind the captain when some crewmembers began to lose consciousness with falling oxygen levels. In the ensuing heated discussions and clash of wills, Arkhipov talked the captain out of firing Hiroshima-yield nuclear torpedoes on the ships above, which, in the event of a US reaction, would eventually have resulted in the destruction of much of the Soviet Union and the northern hemisphere beyond recognition. Thomas Blanton, director of the US National Security Archives, acknowledged his contribution in observing that a guy called Vasil saved the world. Hollywood adopted this real-life incident as the theme of the movie Crimson Tide.
The other people who deserve credit for averting a catastrophe are the pilots of the US Strategic Air Command (SAC). At one time, two days before the crisis was formally diffused, one-third of the force was airborne with nuclear weapons, with rules of engagement as loose as they could possibly be. Though technically in charge, the SAC appeared to have had little control over the aircraft in the air.
According to the hair-raising account in the book Is that Something the Crew Should Know? by Major Don Clawson, one of the pilots of the B-52s on the so-called Chrome Dome missions, the civilian National Command Authority was kept in the dark by the SAC, which means politicians in Washington pondering the fate of the world knew even less. It was perhaps this knowledge that prompted Secretary of State Robert McNamara to remark after the crisis that we lucked out, and barely.
Both India and Pakistan have claimed foolproof command and control mechanisms of their nuclear arsenals. It can also be argued that technology has advanced in the last 50 years since the above incidents. But have the uncertainties of the human mind under stressful battlefield conditions changed much over time? Perhaps not. The fear, therefore, is that if two much more advanced countries like the US and former USSR escaped nuclear disaster, not so much through their wisdom or professional acumen but due to plain luck, India and Pakistan might be stretching their confidence too far. They need to do some serious thinking on this.
writer is a retired vice admiral named Taj Khattak
The two countries have made little progress in the several expert-level nuclear talks between them to improve regional stability. In fact, the core aspects of their post-1998 scenarios and earlier undeclared nuclear-power status have remained altogether excluded from their discussions so far. In the sixth round held in Islamabad, both delegates barely agreed to an extension in validity for another five years of the Agreement on Reducing the Risk from Accidents Relating to Nuclear Weapons and reviewed implementations and strengthening of existing CBMs in the framework of the Lahore MoU and agreed to explore possibilities for mutually acceptable additional CBMs. Even by notoriously procrastinated standards of nuclear negotiations, that is hardly an achievement for toils of 12 years.
For the first time, the 1999 Lahore Declaration recognised a need for understanding the role of nuclear weapons by both countries in their geopolitical context and reducing the risk of accidental or unauthorised use, as well as elaborating measures for confidence-building in the nuclear and conventional fields. Whether this recognition would have found any realisation or not is now a moot point as the whole process of normalisation of Indo-Pakistani relations was derailed by the Kargil misadventure. But now that there is some movement in other areas, the process of achieving a degree of improvement in the nuclear environments should be taken up in all earnestness.
The root of the problem lies in Indias seeking clarification of conditions under which Pakistan would be constrained to use its nuclear weapons. From the Indian standpoint, this would seem fundamental to the formulation of any strategy for stable deterrence in the subcontinent. Pakistan, on its part, is not off the mark in being ambiguous and holding back a commitment on no-first-use (NFU), as that, after all, is the essence of a classic nuclear deterrence doctrine to avoid a war.
Pakistan doesnt lend any credence to Indias NFU declarations, for historical reasons and deep-seated mutual mistrust. It also refuses to participate in the Fissile Material Cut-off Talks (FMCT) at the Conference of Disarmament (CD) unless Pakistans concerns in relation to Indias existing stockpiles are addressed. It is also for the experts to examine the extent to which the discriminatory nature of 2008s Indo-US deal may have transformed the regional strategic dynamics and its impact if any on FMCT since India can now divert its domestic fissile material stocks for weapon production.
Indian planners probably think that they can successfully launch and pull off a limited war against Pakistan with their Cold Start doctrine under what they call the nuclear overhang. Pakistan neutralises such thoughts with nuclear posturing in an early timeframe, notably through deployment of nuclear-tipped Haft-9 missiles capable of pulverising a large formation about 35 miles away. But any Haft-9 shoot and snoot operations will almost certainly trigger multiple higher-yield nuclear exchanges with unimaginable consequences. Under the surface of an apparent calm, therefore, there is actually a greater deterrence instability than deterrence stability.
This underscores an urgent need for a responsible approach and some credible cooperation by the two countries, more so as the world puts a higher probability on an India-Pakistan nuclear war than it had ever placed on a US-USSR nuclear conflict at the height of the Cold War. Quite correctly, this global concern stems from two pertinent factors: one, the geographical proximity which renders any notions of early warnings meaningless; and, two, the doctrinal dilemmas and ambiguity issues in which the two sides appear to be perennially bogged down and unable to extricate themselves.
India has also clearly not heeded the Fukushima nuclear disaster, just as Japan hadnt heeded Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986, and has embarked on an ambitious nuclear-power-generation programme. It already has 18 reactors operating at Narora, Rajasthan, Kakrapar, Tarapur, Kaiga and Kalpakkam. Seven are under construction at Rajasthan, Kakrapar and Kalpakkam, and a staggering 44 are being planned or sites selected at Gorakhpur, Chutka, Rajauli, Mithi Virdi, Jaitapur, Kavvada, Nizampatnam, Pulivendula, Kiga, Kalpakkam, and Kudankulam.
With such a large spread of nuclear reactors, the environmental cost for the region and our common heritage is huge in the event of a nuclear disaster. Pakistan has proposed bilateral cooperation on nuclear safeties and peaceful uses of nuclear energies. But the idea has found no takers in India, even though such a cooperation can bring no harm and can only be mutually beneficial. Through such general lack of enthusiasm for nuclear stability in both strategic and power-generation domains, India and Pakistan may unwittingly be creating greater room for miscalculation at the human level.
This dangerous aspect has been articulately highlighted in a recent book The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory by Sheldon M Stern, which suggests two possible individuals who may have played a pivotal role in averting the 1962 nuclear war at the tactical level, well before Prime Minister Khrushchev blinked, at the political level, to accept President Kennedys hegemonic demands.
In the first incident and elaborately explained in another book, Cuban Samba of the Foxtrot Quartet, by Aleksandr Mozgovoy and translated from the Russian some years ago Commander Vasili Arkhipov, second-in-command in one of the four Foxtrot-class submarines prevailed on his commanding officer against a nuclear launch on the US Navy Task Force comprising the aircraft-carrier USS Randolph and 11 escorts deployed off Cuba to impose quarantine. The submarine had been detected and was depth-charged continuously to force it up for recognition.
In the given situation of loss of communications with Moscow, rules of nuclear engagement called for unanimity of views among the commanding officer, the second-in-command and the political commissar who had already thrown his weight behind the captain when some crewmembers began to lose consciousness with falling oxygen levels. In the ensuing heated discussions and clash of wills, Arkhipov talked the captain out of firing Hiroshima-yield nuclear torpedoes on the ships above, which, in the event of a US reaction, would eventually have resulted in the destruction of much of the Soviet Union and the northern hemisphere beyond recognition. Thomas Blanton, director of the US National Security Archives, acknowledged his contribution in observing that a guy called Vasil saved the world. Hollywood adopted this real-life incident as the theme of the movie Crimson Tide.
The other people who deserve credit for averting a catastrophe are the pilots of the US Strategic Air Command (SAC). At one time, two days before the crisis was formally diffused, one-third of the force was airborne with nuclear weapons, with rules of engagement as loose as they could possibly be. Though technically in charge, the SAC appeared to have had little control over the aircraft in the air.
According to the hair-raising account in the book Is that Something the Crew Should Know? by Major Don Clawson, one of the pilots of the B-52s on the so-called Chrome Dome missions, the civilian National Command Authority was kept in the dark by the SAC, which means politicians in Washington pondering the fate of the world knew even less. It was perhaps this knowledge that prompted Secretary of State Robert McNamara to remark after the crisis that we lucked out, and barely.
Both India and Pakistan have claimed foolproof command and control mechanisms of their nuclear arsenals. It can also be argued that technology has advanced in the last 50 years since the above incidents. But have the uncertainties of the human mind under stressful battlefield conditions changed much over time? Perhaps not. The fear, therefore, is that if two much more advanced countries like the US and former USSR escaped nuclear disaster, not so much through their wisdom or professional acumen but due to plain luck, India and Pakistan might be stretching their confidence too far. They need to do some serious thinking on this.
writer is a retired vice admiral named Taj Khattak
