Pakistan may deploy low yield nuclear weapons
The Moderate VoiceIn an extraordinary first, a top Pakistani official has said his country will use tactical nuclear weapons as a routine defensive measure against a conventional military attack by the Indian army.
This portends new headaches for President Barack Obama’s difficult relationship with Islamabad, which is already fraught with deep suspicions about the Pakistani army’s use for terrorists as proxies in Afghanistan and Kashmir.
“Pakistan has built an infrastructure near border areas to launch a quickest response to Indian aggression… Usage of such low-yield nuclear weapons would make it difficult for India to launch a war against Pakistan,” top foreign ministry official Aizaz Chaudhury said.
He spoke to media in Pakistan on October 22, the day that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met President Obama at the White House.
The infrastructure Chaudhury referred to involves small missiles with a 40-mile range launched from heavy trucks. They are equipped with low yield nuclear warheads capable of explosions much larger than any conventional bomb but unlikely to spread nuclear radiation over hundreds of miles.
This is sinister because stocks of such missiles and small warheads will be hard to protect. The current chaos inside Pakistan is deep enough for outsiders to believe that extremist Islamic terrorists might succeed in bribing their way to obtaining a few or simply stealing them.
Saudi Arabia is a major bankroller and religious mentor for high-level military and political operatives in Pakistani. The Saudis would certainly want some of those weapons without Washington’s knowledge. Iran will not sit on its hands if Pakistan does become a supplier.
Worse, India and China would develop similar nuclear weapons if they do not already have them. Delhi may assert a similar tactical first strike doctrine to match Islamabad. China would not be far behind.
This would lead to a new kind of proliferation of nuclear weapons without having to build them indigenously. The headache for Obama and subsequent American presidents is obvious. It would also open windows for Iran to buy such weapons covertly to deter Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies.
India has often threatened but never deployed a conventional attack strategy described by military planners as “cold start”. It would be used to respond to terrorist attacks in India aided by the Pakistani military, which, according to US intelligence findings, regularly provides planning and training for such cross border attacks.
The Indo-Pak border in Kashmir is an informal delineation called the Line of Control. Making it a permanent frontier is a major disagreement in on-off peace negotiations between Islamabad and Delhi.
Fears have increased in Pakistan that India will temporarily occupy small territories just across the border to increase the costs for Islamabad of proxy terrorism. It would use a cold start doctrine, which involves land, air and cyber warfare to conduct lightning strikes to occupy small territories quickly.
The tactical nuclear weapons would deter such strikes and certainly stop their advance effectively.
Pakistan now has the distinction of being the first to threaten use of nuclear warheads to halt conventional attacks, instead of turning to nuclear missiles only as a last resort to avoid a final defeat.
In military jargon, this change is one from “minimum credible deterrence” to “full spectrum deterrence.” It raises serious issues for the already fraught US-Pakistan relationship.
After the Obama-Sharif talks, a White House statement said, “The two leaders expressed their conviction that a resilient U.S.-Pakistan partnership is vital to regional and global peace and security and reaffirmed their commitment to address evolving threats in South Asia.”
This seems sanguine if the Pakistani military, which operates outside civilian control, has decided to change its nuclear deterrence doctrine. Chaudhury’s assertion suggests that the Sharif government either agrees with the military on this threat of nuclear warfare or has no say.
The US pays nearly $500 million a year to the Pakistan military for help in fighting terrorists using Pakistani safe havens to conduct attacks in Afghanistan. It has given over $20 billion over the past 14 years, which the military spends with no oversight from the civilian government in Islamabad or the Pentagon. Thus, it is a major financier of the Pakistan military’s programs.
Several senior analysts, including Bruce Riedel an author of the Obama administration’s Afghan-Pakistan policy, suggest that the military aid should be halted if the military does not stop supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan. That is unlikely.
Analyses published earlier this week suggest that Pakistan’s nuclear warheads could rise to 250 in 10 years from 130 currently. The yet uncounted tactical low yield nuclear weapons mentioned by Chaudhury must be added to those.
Washington’s intense focus on the wars in Syria and Iraq has pushed the likelihood of much more devastating nuclear war between Pakistan and India to the far backburner.
That is imprudent because a major terrorist strike inside India is all it might take the next time, especially if it is traced to Pakistani military planning.
