No Clear Policy On Nuclear Weapon Use By India Or Pakistan

by Nadeem Iqbal

But in truth, both countries have failed to officially declare their nuclear doctrines, which would clearly state under what circumstances they would use nuclear weapons.

On Jan. 1, despite the explosive situation between them, the South Asian rivals carried out the same routine, under an agreement on the "Prohibition of Attack against Nuclear Installations and Facilities."

Tensions, as well as exchanges of gunfire across their border, have been rising over the past three weeks after the Dec. 13 attack on the Indian Parliament, which New Delhi blames on terrorists supported by Pakistani groups.

Although both governments know the exact number of each other's nuclear installations, this information is kept from the public. No information is shared, unlike in the past, on whether either country has added new installations to the original list.

This is also despite the fact that both India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices in May 1998 -- and their nuclear status has since added a new fillip to fears of a conflict in the subregion.

Without the two countries developing their official doctrines, as has been done by other five nuclear powers, the circumstances under which they would use nuclear weapons remain ambiguous for their citizens and much of the rest of the world.

This concern about a nuclear war is surfacing again during the present war footing between India and Pakistan, as fears rise about a deterioration into nuclear conflict. Similar fears had risen during the undeclared war between the two at Kargil in 1999.

It is widely believed that for Pakistan, nuclear weapons are its weapons of "first strike and last resort," and for India these are of "second strike use" meaning that it would absorb a first strike and then retaliate.

These theories are developed on the grounds that Pakistan, with its small land area, has limited strategic depth compared to bigger India, which has long strategic depth. Pakistan believes that its nuclear weapons are essentially to make up for the discrepancy in conventional military assets between the two countries.

Zafar Jaspal, a strategic expert, says that Pakistan's nuclear doctrine is like the unwritten British Constitution, which lists some broad objectives to be achieved in different situations.

"The three main pillars of Pakistan's nuclear doctrine is that it is Indian-specific, it is to make up for asymmetry in conventional arsenal (India has larger forces than Pakistan) and that it would use them if the very survival of the state is threatened," said Jaspal, a senior researcher in the Islamabad Policy Research Institute.

In an interview, former foreign minister Sartaj Aziz in fact says that if Pakistan did not have nuclear weapons, India would have attacked it amid the current crises and not just stopped at assembling troops on the border.

This is so that in a crisis scenario -- like the present situation -- Pakistan and India would have to consider each other's threats as credible. This credibility message has to be communicated to each other effectively, but the lack of declared nuclear doctrines by the two sides keeps even the threats ambiguous.

Last week, military spokesman Maj. Gen. Rashid Qureshi created confusion among nuclear experts here when he publicly ruled out Pakistan's use of nuclear weapons.

"One gets surprised when some people jump into a nuclear situation. Pakistan and India are responsible nations and we cannot think of using nuclear weapons," Qureshi said. "These are deterrents and not meant to be more than that. The use of nuclear weapons is something one should not even consider."

"I hope it was a slip of his tongue. Giving such a statement at a time when India has gathered its forces at our borders is unfortunate," commented a nuclear expert, who wanted to remain unidentified.

Another ex-government official adds that Pakistan needs to spell out a clear "red line" where its survival is under threat from Indian aggression and at which it would be forced to use nuclear weapons.

But M.A. Niazi, editor of the English-language newspaper The Nation, says this ambiguity on the part of Pakistani policymakers is deliberate and has led to speculations among Indian officials on how Pakistan might use its nuclear weapons.

In 1999, nuclear experts in both the countries started deliberating the development of a nuclear doctrine.

But the process remains unfinished. In India, consensus could not be developed at the time on power-sharing in the control of nuclear weapons among the equally powerful bureaucracy, politicians and the military and its navy, air force and army.

After the military takeover in Pakistan in October 1999, the country's central legislative assembly was dismissed. But Pakistan installed a Nuclear Command and Control Authority headed by the army chief.

Indeed, some say Pakistan could develop a nuclear doctrine easily by virtue of army's undisputed superiority in the control of nuclear weapons over and above politicians, bureaucracy and the other branches of the military.

For India's part, a "Draft Report of National Security Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine," released publicly in August 1999, is considered its unofficial doctrine.

It says that "India shall pursue a doctrine of credible minimum nuclear deterrence'; and that "in this policy of 'retaliation only', the survivability of our arsenal is critical" -- but the definition of minimum deterrence was a subject of intense debate.

This draft ignited controversy among hawks and doves in India and Pakistan.

Aachin Vanaik, a nuclear policy expert and peace activist with the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament, says in an interview with IPS in New Delhi that India never formalized the 1999 draft because it was "ridiculously ambitious and ruled out nothing."

He adds that the draft was also not formally adopted because India changed its foreign policy sharply under the right-wing government of the Bharatiya Janata Party, moving from a non-aligned stance to one aiming to be the most trusted ally of the U.S. in the region.

The Pakistani government had criticised the draft Indian doctrine, but three Pakistani former top officials in October 1999 said the response was weak. The three were former foreign minister Agha Shahi, current Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar and retired air marshal Zulfiqar Ali Khan.

They urged Pakistan to go full steam in beefing up its nuclear forces with more and better types of bombs and missiles, start deployment, and increase defence spending on both nuclear and conventional forces.

In his critique at the time, peace activist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy wrote that the Indian nuclear draft doctrine was "evil in intent and hypocritical."

"Starting with a preamble that nuclear weapons are 'the gravest threat to humanity', it nevertheless concludes that India needs 'sufficient, survivable and operationally prepared nuclear forces' together with 'the will to employ nuclear forces and weapons'," he had argued.

At the same time, he said the Pakistani position appeared to say that "for each one of Pakistan's nuclear weapons that becomes vulnerable to Indian preemption, a rule of thumb says that we must have at least one more." This, he had said, meant calling for "open-ended nuclear competition with India."

While some officials argue that Pakistan's nuclear weapons have helped deter an Indian attack, including in Kargil, Hoodbhoy disagreed.

The 1999 release of the draft Indian doctrine coincided with New Delhi scaling up the Kargil war, after it had shot down a Pakistani surveillance aircraft and moved its eastern fleet from the Bay of Bengal into the Arabian Sea.

Later, Washington put pressure on Pakistan to pull back intruders across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir -- whose intrusion had provoked that conflict -- for fear of an escalated war.