Sunday, March 22, 2015

Nuclear Regional Conflict In Asia Inevitable (Rev 16)

Nuclear holocaust

 Nuclear Holocaust
Rizwan Asghar
Friday, March 20, 2015
From Print Edition
 
Let there be no doubt that the nuclear establishments of Pakistan and India are on the verge of a nuclear holocaust. Both countries have been following the strategy of ‘mutual assured destruction’ (MAD) since the advent of the nuclear age in South Asia. However, India’s development of its nuclear delivery capabilities over the past decade is playing a critical and destabilising role by triggering a nuclear arms race in the region.

India’s growing conventional military superiority, coupled with the so-called ‘cold-start’ doctrine, has forced Pakistan’s nuclear establishment to rely more on its nuclear capabilities and less on conventional military capability. In fact, there is a lot of speculation that the Modi government in India might decide to alter the country’s 1998 no-first-use doctrine. The speculations are based on the BJP’s pledge to “revise and update” India’s nuclear doctrine.

Before 1998, India did all it could to deny the international community forewarning of nuclear tests and even at this moment there is little reason to believe that the current government in India sticks to its inherently contradictory doctrine of ‘credible minimum deterrence’. Some nuclear advocates in Pakistan also point out India’s investment in missile defence, indicating India’s interest in perpetuating military hegemony in the region.

Achieving ‘credible minimum deterrence’ towards both of its primary strategic adversaries, China and Pakistan, means substantially different levels of capability. What is credible towards China will not be minimum toward Pakistan, and what is minimum towards Pakistan cannot be credible toward China. The probability of a major war with China is not very high so India’s nuclear posture should be framed keeping in view its primary deterrent adversary which is Pakistan and against whom they initially wanted to build a credible minimum deterrent.

In addition, China is so advanced in nuclear capability that perhaps India will never be able to match China’s nuclear arsenal or delivery capability. But the prevailing attitudes toward nuclear weaponry among Indian nuclear security managers betray an over-obsession with China. Such attitudes will achieve nothing and start an unending nuclear arms race in South Asia. India’s conventional superiority could easily deter Pakistan from any attack against India, so India’s nuclear capability never had a ‘strategic’ justification but was a desire for ‘prestige’.

India’s irresponsible and recklessly dangerous provocations are forcing Pakistan to respond in ways that are detrimental to regional peace. Pakistan’s nuclear establishment is also heading down a costly and dangerous path, basing its nuclear doctrine on the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s nuclear security managers seem to be totally ignorant of the fact that by amassing more tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) Pakistan might not be able to deter any conventional attack by India but is definitely moving away from minimum credible deterrence posture to full-spectrum deterrence posture.

TNWs, as opposed to strategic nuclear weapons, are aimed at ‘counter force targets’ and their deployment is much more convenient than that of strategic nuclear weapons.

However, there is no strong evidence to suggest that these tactical weapons are really necessary for minimal, credible deterrence. The small size of TNWs add little to deterrence and only the threat of ‘massive nuclear retaliation’ can stop India from launching limited conventional strikes.

If India is not deterred from nuclear attack by 100 plus warheads, it is difficult to understand how a few tactical weapons will make any difference. The Indian armed forces have also repeatedly warned that the Indian nuclear doctrine makes no distinction between tactical and strategic weapons. Even a limited Pakistani nuclear attack would be met with massive nuclear retaliation.

The truth is that Pakistani nuclear experts have rarely, if ever, tried to examine the utility of developing battlefield nuclear weapons. In actuality, the deployment of TNWs is detrimental to deterrence stability in the region, making the unauthorised use of nuclear weapons more probable.
The idea of developing battlefield nuclear weapons seems to be an ‘overreaction’ to an impractical cold-start strategy. Many western analysts are afraid that the continuing expansion of India and Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities increases the chance of any small conflict escalating into a full-blown nuclear war in South Asia. Because some non-strategic nuclear weapons are deployed against conventional forces in the battlefield, they enhance the risk of such escalation.

For almost a decade after the 1998 nuclear tests, Pakistan’s nuclear establishment aimed to have only enough weapons for maintaining a ‘credible minimum deterrent’ because we could not waste massive resources to engage in a nuclear arms race with India. However, during the past five years, the nuclear security managers have forgotten the aim of maintaining a ‘modest’ nuclear arsenal.

It is so far unclear if Pakistan will use short-range nuclear weapons to annihilate advancing Indian troops near our big cities. Such an attack would turn Pakistan’s densely populated agricultural heartland into a nuclear wasteland and also cause serious radiation damage to other parts of the country. This was a major reason why the idea of employing these weapons against any Soviet advance was eventually abandoned by Nato countries.

The fact is that the atomic bomb, in fact, cannot be effectively used as a tactical weapon. The current approach of our nuclear establishment assumes that if thousands of Indian troops move into Pakistani territory, we can use these weapons against them without killing our own citizens.

It is generally impossible to forecast the initiation and conditions that could prevail in any such conflict between Pakistan and India. It could involve varying attack intensities and timing, and with different objectives, all of which would increase the danger of the outbreak of a large-scale nuclear conflagration. Nuclear tipped missiles may suffer mechanical failure or deflection in flight, allowing for the possibility of missiles falling within one’s own territory.

Email: rizwanasghar5@unm.edu

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