"Saddam, you're my friend. We are allies."
Posted on 04/27/2003 6:18:55 PM PDT by BLACK_FLAG
NEW DELHI: Indian military experts are worried that the US will not allow India to continue with its nuclear program if Washington decided that Pakistani nukes should be taken out or neutralized. This view is gaining ground among Indian strategists with profound seriousness.
According to Indian media reports although India is quietly self-satisfied that Pakistani nukes have come under the US scanner, the shadows are definitely going to fall on the Indians as well.
Since 11 September, America has been terrified that Pakistan's insecure nuclear weapons will fall into terrorist hands. It threatened to destroy them when Pakistan demurred support for the Afghan war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. And with the "consent" of General Pervez Musharraf and his corps commanders, it may have acquired their partial control and marked them down (Intelligence, "US to supervise Pak N-weapons," 22 December 2001, and "US marks down Pak nukes," 14 June 2002).
To that extent, a report in Jane's may not be giving the full story. Jane's magazine on intelligence says the US has a contingency plan to prevent Pakistani nuclear weapons and technology from falling into Islamist hands. But it leaves the Pakistanis with two distinct threats.
After Saddam Hussein, Pakistani nukes and Pakistani terrorists will engage US attention - and probably nukes will invite first notice. America can hardly leave Pakistan with them - when it is committed to cleaning the Islamic world of WMDs. Pakistan and Iran follow in natural succession to Iraq - while North Korea's time will come.
According to a report in Newsinsight, a web magazine, India cannot be smug. General Musharraf or his military or civilian successor will resist Pakistani denuclearisation if India is allowed to keep nukes. It will result in such military asymmetry that India will attack Pakistan at the slightest provocation in Jammu and Kashmir.
The threat of pre-emption that Yashwant Sinha hurls at Pakistan every other day will be all too real - and the Pakistan army will not stand for it. The US could choose to maintain the status quo - controlling Pakistani nukes but allowing Islamabad to maintain the fiction of sovereign deterrence. But the threat of nuclear theft or terrorist control of nukes will not go away - which is why the US may plump for staunching Pakistani fears by asking India to dismantle its nuclear and missile programmes as well.
From the UN Security Council standpoint, India and Pakistan's nuclear programs are illegal. Despite its distaste for the Security Council, the Bush administration may seek its backing to denuke India - giving its guarantee to the other four permanent members, China, Russia, France and UK, that Pakistan is already amenable, and that it is defanged for all purposes.
China will jump at the proposal because Indian nukes are, theoretically so far, directed at it (it may even be a joint US-China campaign at the UN at Pakistani prodding). The UK will agree to anything the US proposes, and France will have no reason to object - seeing it as an opportunity to crush India's tiny chance to replace it in the Security Council.
Russia will not hold back - especially when the other four powers agree, and there is a chance to enforce the nuclear non-proliferation treaty finally. That will be India's testing time - because it will never agree to roll back its nuclear and missile programs. If it leads to sanctions on India and hard cash rewards, trade concessions, and aid to Pakistan - India could be in serious trouble. It could face isolation as never before.
Experts say the problem is India's deterrence strategy which has lacked purpose and direction - and convinces few outside the country, fewer, at any rate, than Pakistan's does. No one understands why Indira Gandhi ordered the first Pokhran blast in 1974 - when she herself chose to call it a "peaceful nuclear explosion". It was the result of the US refusal to give deterrence protection to India following the first Chinese atomic test in 1964 - but there was no recorded Chinese nuclear blackmail in the succeeding decade that warranted the test. It had occupied Indian territory in Ladakh in 1962, but Pakistan was the more immediate enemy - after India created Bangladesh in 1971.
Still, Mrs Gandhi missed the opportunity to settle the Kashmir issue with ZA Bhutto in Simla in 1972 - and proceeded with a nuclear test two years later whose strategic thrust is still fuzzy. It alarmed both China and Pakistan - and without blackmailing India directly, China proliferated nuclear technology to Pakistan, creating its first tested deterrence against India in 1986-87.
Indian experts believe Israel offered to blast Kahuta Research Laboratories in 1982 - after striking Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, but Mrs Gandhi said no. It would have delayed the course of the Pakistani bomb, but not stopped it, since Chinese interests were tied to it. So, at final count, India was trapped by events of its own making. The US ambassador to India then, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, told Mrs Gandhi presciently she had opened the way for Pakistani generals to demand Kashmir on the strength of nuclear weapons.
The second Pokhran explosions have also ill-served the country. Rather than controlling the insurgency in J & K, they increased it, and under the nuclear overhang, Musharraf attacked Kargil one year later. Indo-Pak tensions have grown incrementally since - and most of last year, its armies were in eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation on the western border. At least in cross-border rhetoric, deterrence has failed. While Pakistan talks of a nuclear first-strike against Indian pre-emption, India warns of Pakistan's annihilation.
Forgotten in this war cry is China - ostensibly the target of the Pokhran-II explosions. Five years since, India has no credible deterrence against it - and no naval platform to sustain it in the endgame. Calling the May-1998 blasts "Shakti" may have satisfied deep-rooted Hindutva urges - but they have not landed India in a higher geo-political orbit. It remains a second power - whose 50 per cent population is desperately poor.
Experts say if India cannot match its nuclear policy to its known and perceived enemies, its national interests (including Kashmir), and its vision for itself - it may be unable to withstand the coming pressure to denuclearize with Pakistan.
After a few years, and a few "planted" news stories and "staged terrorist attacks supposedly caused by some Indian nationals," which would probably be committed by non-Indian actors, India can and probably will be ganged up on by the international community, under the doctrine of "preemption," which disgracefully is now a geopolitical reality.
There is absolutely no doubt that the denuclearization of India is one of the foremost goals of the U.S., British, and Chinese intelligence community. Pakistan is only a vehicle with which to do so.
Democracy is over. Lets face reality, in a decade or two, after extensive behind the scenes collaboration between China and the United States, we will all be Communists.
Leni
Then I read your post.
We're not worried about India's nukes. Welcome to FR.
"Saddam, you're my friend. We are allies."
But he hasn't said that to the Indians, either.
India is a young democracy. It will mature, I hope, and relations are certainly closer than during the Cold War years. But India has a long way to progress if it wishes to become a trusted ally. It's up to India.
They're not burning American flags there that I've seen.
I'm still a hopeless optimist in that I'd like both India and Pakistan to be our allies. That's hard to do when all either thinks about is nuking the other.
Uh, Pakistan is an Islamic Nation. Seems the bomb is in the hands of the Islamics already. Why else would the ugly, multi-headed serpent of the Islamic Empire be makings it's second bid for world conquest after 1000 years of sleep?
Because the Koran tells them to lay low until they have military parity, then strike.
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