GDR 99 - South-East Asian Issues

India and Pakistan
take the Nuclear Road


Section Articles
• Chinese Defence Build-Up • East-Asian Defence Sales • India & Pakistan go Nuclear
Top: Neither India or Pakisatn are CTBT signatories

Damon Bristow outlines the propensity for nuclear miscalculation along one of the world's most disputed borders.

On 11 and 13 May 1998 India conducted five nuclear tests at its Pokharan testing range in the Rajasthan desert. Two weeks later, on 28 May, Pakistan conducted six nuclear tests of its own, thereby matching the total number of tests conducted by India since 1974 when it exploded a peaceful nuclear device. After conducting the tests the Indian government announced that its decision to go ahead and test was the result of its frustration with the policy of nuclear apartheid practised by China, Russia, France, the UK and the US in the form of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) that allows them to retain their nuclear arsenals but prevents others from doing so. So far India has also refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

However, there were at least three other reasons behind the decision to test, including the widely perceived security threat from China, with whom India fought a brief border war in 1962; the desire by the BJP to court public opinion in order to strengthen its domestic political hand; and the fear that after Pakistan's test of its long-range Ghauri missile in April, India was falling behind Pakistan in the race to develop warheads for its emerging missile capabilities.

Meanwhile, Pakistan's decision to test was essentially reactive, prompted by the fact that its nuclear capability is India-focused, while the success of its nuclear policy rests on India believing that it is both crazy and willing enough to use the weapons in its inventory. Like India, the country has not signed the NPT, arguing that it will do so only if India signs up first, nor is it a signatory to the CTBT.

Separated at birth


Indian's Prithvi SRBM

Underpinning this dynamic is the fact that since independence from the UK in 1947, that also resulted in the partitioning of Pakistan, the two countries have gone to war three times. At the heart of the problem has been the disputed state of Kashmir that was the cause of the conflicts in 1949 and 1965 and was central to the 1971 war. For its part, Pakistan claims that the territory is part of Pakistan and that a plebiscite should be held in the state on its future under the auspices of the UN ceasefire agreement brokered in 1949; India, on the other hand, refuses to acknowledge Pakistan's position, arguing instead that any solution to the conflict must be worked out bilaterally under the 1972 Simla accord. Since 1979 the valley has been gripped by an insurgency that has resulted in more than 100,000 casualties.

In the aftermath of the tests both sides expressed the belief that they would be able to manage their relationship sensibly without it spiralling into an all-out nuclear war. If the failure of last November's talks between the two countries and recent reports of an upsurge in tensions on the Siachen glacier on their Himalayan border is anything to go by, the challenges confronting the two nations are not just numerous, but mounting by the day.

First, the formal channels of dialogue that exist between India and Pakistan are practically non-existent. Of even greater concern, the chain of command between the politicians and the military in both countries regarding nuclear weapons is opaque, to say the least. Just to put into perspective the importance of such structures, it is worth remembering that in the early years of the cold war although the militaries of the United States and the Soviet Union were relatively sophisticated, there was still a number of near misses, such as the Cuban missile crisis.

Border disputes
Secondly, India and Pakistan share a common border - something the US and the USSR never had to consider. Of far greater concern is the fact that in the disputed state of Kashmir effectively there is no border. Instead there is a line of control (LoC) that divides the state into two halves. The issue of the LoC is a crucial issue, not least because as part of its promise to deal with Pakistan from a position of strength, the BJP has suggested that it may allow Indian troops to pursue militants into Pakistani territory. Obviously this would be considered a provocative act by Pakistan.

Following on from this, and despite India's offer to adopt the principle of no first strike of nuclear weapons, Pakistan has no reason to take New Delhi up on its offer. This is because none of India's existing delivery systems (airplanes/missiles) is yet deployed in hardened shelters and the mobility of the Prithvi missile is severely retarded because of its liquid-fuel design. Therefore theoretically it is possible that Pakistan could take out nearly all of India's nuclear capabilities with a nuclear strike of its own.

Fourth, the deployment, development and recent advances in the ballistic missile programmes of the two countries is serving to make what is already a de-stabilising situation even worse. The main problem is that, unlike planes, it is difficult to turn missiles round once they have been launched. Missiles also reach their destinations much more quickly than planes. In the absence of good C3I systems, as mentioned earlier, the potential for a miscalculation is greatly increased.

Finally, the political environment in south Asia remains fairly unstable. In India the 18- party coalition appears to be getting weaker by the day. However, the real problem is in Pakistan where the economy is in a total mess, and there are indications that fundamentalist Islamic sentiment is rising.