Non-proliferation pressures are still there

Columnist MB NAQVI analyses the pressures to go the non-proliferation route.

The German ambassador to Pakistan has said that Pakistan’s signing the CTBT, earlier than Indian government’s signatures on it, would be in the best national interests of this country. He has said this during the deliberations of the official German Pakistan Dialogue held recently in Islamabad, only a sketchy report of which was made available by daily newspapers. However, what the German and other experts and parliamentarians said on the occasion deserves to be taken very seriously. The reason for that is the importance and standing of Germany as a great power in its own right and as one of the chief anchors of the European Union. The subject of the Dialogue was Security and Stability in South Asia.

The German advice, as one had occasion to get it first hand as far back as 1995 in Bonn in the Chancellor own office, was that Pakistan should take, and stick to, the non-proliferation road to banish the nuclear weapons, if necessary unilaterally. The man briefing one cannot be named because all that he said was non-attributable and for one’s background understanding. But he was a senior Foreign Ministry bureaucrat. Pakistan’s national interests, as understood by the German government then, were to ensure that its economy remains viable and continues to grow with a human face (which is what is denoted by the advocasy of social economy in Germany). In this context the Germans were sure that the ongoing India-Pakistan arms race and cold war was a very dangerous affair. Obviously the official briefing one was well-informed not only on the precise economic state of this country but probably also regarding its nuclear programme. That was when Gen. Asad Durrani was Pakistan’s ambassador to Germany and the Germans, insofar as one could then judge, were quite uneasy about his presence in Germany about which they appeared to have entertained certain misgivings and indeed doubts. The German advice, it would seem, appears to be still the same, though one has not had the pleasure of listening to any one of the German participants whether in public or private. But the subject deserves good faith investigation without attributing motives to the Germans.

The German ambassador speaking at the Dialogue on April 19 termed the Kashmir dispute to be mainly a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan. But he hastened to add that does not foreclose international community’s role in the matter. This is certainly the usual western stance shared with the US, France and Britain in particular. This translates into no formal mediation from any major western power, now or later even if a clash of arms has been occasioned. It is, however, true that this does involve major western powers to informally nudge and push the South Asian neighbours into peaceful negotiations and to lean on them not to increase military clashes and or tensions or go to war. A sample of this diplomacy has been in spectacular evidence during US President Bill Clinton’s South Asian visit in March last.

It would be easy for official publicists to rubbish the non-proliferation concerns of the US (and western powers) for ignoring India’s much larger and proven nuclear stockpiles, not to mention the arguments that Indian government goes on advancing in pursuit of its immoral and politically brazen stance on Kashmir (being an integral part of India as testified by their constitution). Thus Pakistan could turn around and say, as even Gen. Nishat Ahmed did, that Pakistan needs a Minimum Nuclear Deterrent simply because India has not only a fairly large nuclear deterrent but also enjoys a definite superiority in the number and quality of conventional military forces. From the sketchy reports of the Dialogue available it would seem that the Dialogue proceeded along the familiar and sterile lines. Pakistan accepts all the moral and other arguments of the west on their intrinsic merits. But, and this is a big but, it claims that the relationship with India is a peculiar matter and since the Indians act with such arrogance of power and possess all the advantages - military occupation of Kashmir, a large and well-equipped conventional force and the capability and plans of making of a big nuclear deterrent (perhaps larger than what Britain or France have) - there is no option for Pakistan but to keep its powder dry. This powder now clearly involves a continuous, indeed running, arms race with India in all military departments and of course to continue to conduct the cold war occasioned by the Kashmir dispute. No amount of western persuasion is likely to deflect Pakistan military government - or even the political class that had hitherto ruled - from the present course.

On the larger question about the prosecution of the Kashmir dispute insistence on running arms race as an integral part of the cold war with India, including building of a Minimum Nuclear Deterrent - apparently a settled policy - will have its inevitable effects. Whatever these  effects happen to be, they cannot be helped; they are irresistably fated. That is, insofar as the resolve to stay the present course remains unchanged. The nation will have to stand ready to face all the consequences that flow from this set of policies.

But the matter cannot be left at this stark and hopeless note. To begin with two separate factors need to be taken into account. First, there is a special position of the Germans and what the German ambassador did say vis-a-vis Kashmir ought to be taken a particular note of. It may not fundamentally be different from the American stance, but it is a shade closer to Pakistan’s own thinking. While he has said that Kashmir is a bilateral issue to be solved by India and Pakistan between them, he has gone further than the Americans and found a given role for the international community that is not preempted by terming the Kashmir dispute a mainly bilateral matter of two South Asian states. This is certainly an advance over the American formulation that superficially appears to be the same as the German formulation. The latter clearly envisages an indeterminate amount of activism on the part of international community on Kashmir. But this is not where this matter ends.

The German envoy went further: he has debunked the theory that the Indian government is assiduously propagating: Kashmir is not the only and the main issue between India and Pakistan. Should India present Kashmir on a platter to Pakistan, it would find another issue to remain at odds with it. Enmity with India is claimed to be the raison d’etre of Pakistan in its own eyes. The German government does not buy this theory. The ambassador has said categorically that should India and Pakistan find a satisfactory solution of the Kashmir problem, the South Asian situation would undergo a sea change. Pakistan would drop all its objections to friendship and cooperation with India. It would hopefully opt and work strongly, for regional integration for economic betterment of all. We should have eyes to see that international community’s active role is already in play.

The second factor is that Pakistan’s stances on the cold war, arms race and the resolve to maintain the nuclear deterrent vis-a-vis India should not be taken as absolutely immutable. There is one good reason: to expect a change: just as humanity has proved that the spirit may be strong and high minded, the flesh generally proves to be weak, the same may be true of this resolves. Even though it might be intended to be immutable, the economy of the country would simply not to be able to sustain the resolve; like flesh, it is all too weak. An economy that has already defaulted on its external obligations in 1998 and is facing another default in years after 2001, as Dr. A. R. Kamal, now the director of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, has already sketched out the scenario of the next few years.

Pakistan, is even at this writing striving hard to convince the IMF through the good offices of the US government that Pakistan needs (a) a new $ 2.5 billion loan nominally for Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF); (b) ensuring a somewhat greater involvement of foreign private investments in Pakistan; (c) easing many, if not all, the sanctions by western and other powers and (d) to ensure Paris Club aid’s resumption; and most important of all, another bailout to obviate the need to resume normal debt servicing payments from 2001 onward. It is a plateful of favours that Pakistan is seeking.

One way or another something has got to give way. Either the resolve to carry on as before concerning the prosecution of the Kashmir dispute through mainly military means, involving arms race and the continuously updated, and where necessary, enlarged Minimum Nuclear Deterrent - or the economy will go belly up. If Pakistan is going to maintain its various political resolves, Kashmir and all, it has no right to accept willing cooperaiton from the, BWIs and other IFCs and or major western powers. It is true that up to a point the west will not let Pakistan economy collapse. That will be for the sake of a whole region’s stability.

But its generosity would be much restricted - perhaps only to the point of keeping Pakistan economy just about alive almost on a drip though not in an ICU - to keep it on a short financial leash. This would effectively prevent either in augmentation of Pakistan’s conventional Armed Forces, particularly quality-wise, or its ability to develop, update, and deploy the so-called Minimum Nuclear Deterrent; it might extend to the acquisition of C3 (command and control system) with a price tag of $ 3 billion. There will simply be no funds, an example of which is to be available in the shape of national budget for fiscal 2000-2001: despite the fact of a 28 per cent increase in India’s defence expenditures, Pakistan has been unable to match it despite the fact that a lot of modernisation in the Armed Forces continues to postpone for the last 15 years or more.

Insofar as the Minimum Nuclear Deterrent of either India or Pakistan are concerned, the word minimum is utterly misleading. The conditions that Pakistani Deterrent has to meet, willy nilly, are that it must remain at all times effective and credible. Not only that. It will have to be adequate enough in numbers to be survivable. That means there can be no upper limit on the number of weapons in this so-called Minimum Deterrent. It will have to go on being survivable after the notional first strike by the designated enemy. There is no escape from any of these conditions; in other words, Pakistan will be obliged to match in some predetermined ratio and manner all the net accretions to India’s nuclear stockpiles. That is the prescription for a continuously expanding force and shall have to be related to the kind of developments in the field taking place across the border. The expense involved is definitely beyond the capacity of Pakistan economy. It will simply not do to pretend otherwise.

If Pakistanis have to avoid foreigners imposing unpleasant decisions at times of its utter vulnerability through financial weakness and inability to match Indian resources, they have to find ways of doing things in a manner that does not involve seeking alms for surviving as a viable state and the economy. If matters are allowed to drift, Pakistanis will have to do much of what the creditors demand. Might it not be better to foresee what is coming and avoid courses of action that would be unviable?