Nuclear Potential of India and Pakistan

Patron Lt Gen (Retd) SARDAR F.S. LODI discusses the nuclear potential of the South Asian countries.

It was reported in Washington on June 7, 2000 that Pakistan has not only five times more nuclear warheads than those of India, but it possessed far more capability to use them also. This was told to the NBC News by US military and intelligence officers, after reassessing the South Asian balance of power. The report titled “Pakistan nukes outstrip India’s”  says that in the light of new evidence, the US has been forced to reverse its assessment.

In May 1998 nuclear tests by India and Pakistan caught American intelligence off guard, the report said. While US agencies had known for long about weapon-development research in both the countries, the decision by the two neighbours to go public with their capabilities shocked policy makers, it added.

Since then, the US intelligence and diplomacy has focused on South Asia with a new intensity. Until recently, for instance Pakistan was considered to have somewhere between 10 and 15 nuclear weapons and India between 25 and 100, reports the NBC.

But after two years of intelligence gathering, officials now believe that those figures overstate the capabilities of India’s homegrown arsenal and understate those of Pakistan, whose programme it says has relied on “generous Chinese assistance”. The report quotes one US official as saying that the Pakistanis “are more likely to have those numbers (25 to 100 weapons).

Perhaps most important is that Pakistan appears far more capable than India of delivering nuclear payloads, say the officials. “I don’t think their (the Indian’s) programme is as advanced as Pakistan’s,” one of the officials told NBC while discussing particularly the ballistic missiles.

In an interview by the NBC TV network, Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni, Chief of the US Central Command, said that longtime assumptions, that India had an edge in the South Asian strategic balance of power, were questionable at best. “Don’t assume that the Pakistan’s nuclear capability is inferior to the Indians”, said Zinni, the senior US official who claims to be a friend of General Musharraf and was in Islamabad when the US fired cruise missiles on Afghanistan.

Opinions of other military and intelligence officials, as well as an intelligence analysis of South Asia’s nuclear balance, obtained by NBC News, shed more light on the revised review. “They both have a capability”, the network quotes another unnamed senior military official. “Pakistan’s may be better than India’s, with more weapons and more capability”, he said. “You can’t underestimate the Pakistani programme”, said the official.

The network’s Pentagon specialists, Robert Windrem and Tammy Kupperman, said: “These US officials believe India understands that it is behind”. A recent Defence Department analysis of the Indian programme, obtained by NBC News, states that India is moving to address its shortcomings.

 Referring to India’s recently publicized draft nuclear doctrine, the Defence Department report said that “India announced its plans to develop a minimum nuclear deterrent force composed of a triad of nuclear delivery systems - air, mobile land-based launches and sea-based platforms.

As a defence analyst I find it difficult to comprehend how the United States intelligence and other agencies could come to the revised conclusion that Pakistan is ahead of India in nuclear assets and the ability to deliver them to the target area. For after all India has been a nuclear power since 1974 when she first detonated a nuclear device and called it a “peaceful” nuclear explosion, which the Western World was only too happy to accept.

India has, therefore, been at this game for about 35 years or so. In her quest for nuclear technology, India was given unqualified assistance by some Western countries under the “Atoms for Peace” programme initially. Later components and know-how were provided for civil uses of atomic energy and some outright help and assistance within the laws. Western help in India’s missile programme has been covered in some detail in my article “India’s missile development with foreign assistance” published by the Defence Journal in its issue of August 1998.

Therefore to talk of “India’s homegrown arsenal” is somewhat unfair, and gives a partisan view of India in comparison to Pakistan, and their nuclear weapons background and present capabilities. It gives a wrong impression to the world which would be to the detriment of Pakistan, and her international image and interests abroad. Even the release of the intelligence review to the NBC News for wider publication seems by many, to have partisan intentions. Is it a message to India that any further nuclear or missile tests to obtain “parity” with Pakistan’s estimated nuclear capability will not be looked on with disfavour by the West. In other words an increase in India’s nuclear arsenal would be preferred.

The new message of nuclear and missile tolerance towards India seems to have got through as was desired. India successfully test-fired its short-range surface-to-surface Prithvi missile on June 16, 2000, from the interim Test Range at Chandipur-on-Sea, off the eastern coast of Orissa in the Bay of Bengal. Meanwhile, Pakistan said it “has no intention to respond to the Indian missile test.” It is, however, doubtful if Pakistan will receive any credit for her further missile testing restraint in the present scenario, where a major Western “tilt” is now in India’s favour.

The Pakistan Government dismissed as “motivated and removed from reality” reports that it possesses a better and larger nuclear arsenal than rival India. “Pakistan’s nuclear capability is modest and solely aimed at deterring aggression. We are opposed to an arms race and will maintain nuclear deterrence at the minimum credible level”, a Foreign Office spokesman said.

The spokesman was commenting on an NBC News report which quoted US officials as saying US intelligence has concluded Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal and means of delivery were more effective, sophisticated and larger than India’s. He said the report “will encourage India to defy efforts to prevent a nuclear build-up and promote nuclear and missile restraint in the region”. The official spokesman went on to caution, that the NBC report carries “dangerous implications as it tends to justify the ambitious Indian programme for nuclear and conventional (arms) build up”.

The official spokesman showed surprise when he said. “This is an extraordinary assertion in view of the fact that in comparison with a few Pakistani nuclear facilities. India has a vast nuclear programme comprising dozens of nuclear installations outside international safeguards, which have been operating to produce fissile materials over decades”. The report also “falsely surmises that Pakistan’s programme relies on generous outside assistance, while crediting India’s nuclear arsenal to indigenous effort”.

“It ignores the fact that a large part of the Indian nuclear facilities is of Western origin in addition to a vast number of Indian nuclear and missile specialists who had been trained in the West”, the spokesman said. On the other hand, Pakistan has been “constantly subjected to economic and technological sanctions and its programme kept under close scrutiny”, he said.

The official spokesman concluded by saying that India’s nuclear doctrine was based on a triad of land, air and sea based nuclear assets, “being implemented with the unprecedented 28 per cent increase in India’s defence budget this year. Pakistan (on the other hand) continues to follow a policy of restraint and responsibility on nuclear issues.

India’s reaction to the NBC News item was abrupt and to the point. Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman R.S. Jassal brushed aside media reports from Washington which quoted US officials as saying, Pakistan had five times the number of nuclear warheads held by India. “I have seen the reports and they are speculative”. Mr Jassal told reporters. “India is fully capable and prepared to meet any challenge posed to its national security”, he added.

The US Government was somewhat circumspect on the report that said Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is up to five times more and vastly superior to that of India’s. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said, “I’ve seen those reports and obviously those reports go directly to questions of intelligence matters and I am not in a position to comment or discuss them”. “But let me say”, he added, “this is not a question of a numbers game. The right number is zero on both sides. Exactly how many nuclear missiles each side could assemble and deploy if it chose to do so is not as important as avoiding an arms race”.

He acknowledged that “the 1998 tests showed that both India and Pakistan obviously have capability to field nuclear weapons. This fact is sufficient to prompt a great concern in the international community and here in the United States. Mr Reeker said, Washington had been working hard with both sides to exercise restraint in the development of nuclear weapons and to resume a dialogue to resolve tension. “We would like to bring both India and Pakistan into the global non-proliferation mainstream and that’s a message that the President delivered very strongly when he visited both countries”, he added.

The US hoped to persuade India and Pakistan that they would be more secure without nuclear weapons, but for now, its emphasis is to urge maximum restraint and steps towards renewed dialogue between the two countries, he said. The United States stress has constantly been on India-Pakistan dialogue to reduce tension in the region and move towards the solution of disputes. India seems to be averse to a dialogue between the two countries. She also opposes other methods of solving disputes in a peaceful manner, such as mediation, arbitration or good-offices of third parties. This intransigent behaviour on India’s part will undoubtedly lead to greater tension in the region, which already seems on the brink of a limited, war, a phrase coined by India recently.

India has certainly embarked on a major nuclear and missile production programme for which the defence budget has been increased by an unprecedented 25 per cent. To prevent any further leaks to US intelligence and other agencies, a recent government order has made India’s nuclear programme, including weapons production, more secretive, officials and scientists said in Mumbai (Bombay) early this month.

The order issued on April 25, by Rajagopalan Chidambaram, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, pulls the country’s premier nuclear body - the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) - from under the regulatory umbrella of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB). The order issued with the approval of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee states that regulatory and safety functions at the Mumbai-based BARC, will be exercised through an “Internal Safety Structure to be constituted by the director (of) the BARC”.

The AERB chairman Suhas Sukhatme said the order has been issued “after consultations” involving himself and was in line with global practices. He described the change as “inevitable” as India has undertaken a programme for civilian and non-civilian nuclear development. The BARC is India’s first and perhaps most advanced nuclear research establishment.

Pakistan on the other hand again offered India to negotiate a “nuclear restraint regime” in order to avoid any accidental use of weapons of mass destruction, and the catastrophe that they may cause in South Asia. The Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf said at a seminar held to mark the second anniversary of Pakistan’s “gate-crashing into the nuclear club”, that Islamabad neither had any ambitious nuclear programme nor it wanted to enter into some kind of an arms race.

He said Pakistan’s nuclear capability was purely for defensive purposes, and it would like to enter into some kind of an agreement with India to avoid any accident. Pakistan had made such offers in the past as well, but never got a positive response from India. He said Pakistan had always exercised a great restraint in its nuclear programme and shown respect for international norms and resisted the temptation to conduct nuclear blasts a decade ago.

India has certainly embarked on a major nuclear and missile development programme with large sums allocated for the purpose. The NBC News item was an exclusive story put out on MSNBC News On-line Service, a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC. It quoted senior US military and intelligence officials, now reassessing the balance of power in the South Asian region, who had said in a series of interviews over a week that Pakistan not only has more warheads than its arch adversary but has far more capability to actually use them.

Are these statements an encouragement to India to take the lead or are they a justification for India’s large scale nuclear programme now underway. Either way it will increase tension in the region, which is surely not the US intention.