Pakistan’s mini-nukes won’t guarantee security, only annihilation
Pakistan believes that
dropping low-yield nukes on India will counter a conventional attack and
yet the war will remain limited. This is stupid.
Pervez Hoodbhoy
That Pakistan may first use
nuclear weapons in a future war with India was announced recently by
Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry. Coming just two days before Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to the United States in the last week of
October, this could be considered a reiteration of the army’s well-known
stance. But, significantly, it came from the Foreign Office rather than
Army General Headquarters or Strategic Plans Division. Coming from both
ends of the power spectrum, this confirms that Pakistan has drastically
shifted its nuclear posture.
In the late 1980s, Pakistan had viewed nuclear weapons very
differently: they were the last-ditch means to deter a possible nuclear
attack by India. But Pakistan now says it intends to use low-yield
nuclear bombs, also called tactical nuclear weapons, to forestall the
possible advance of Indian troops into Pakistan under India’s Cold Start
operational doctrine.
Floated by Gen Deepak Kapoor in 2010, Cold Start calls for cutting
Pakistan into “salami slices” as punishment for hosting yet another
Mumbai-style terrorist attack inside India. It assumes that this limited
action would not provoke a nuclear exchange. India strenuously denies
that such a doctrine is official or that it has been made operational.
This denial cut no ice across the border. In 2011 a successful test of the
Nasr “shoot and scoot” short-ranged missile was
announced by Inter Services Public Relations, the Pakistan military’s
official voice. Ensconced inside a multiple-barrelled mobile launcher,
the
four 60-kilometre-range missiles are said to be tipped with nuclear
warheads each roughly one-tenth the size of a Hiroshima-sized weapon.
Pakistan says these tactical weapons will not destabilise the current
balance or pose significant command and control problems, a claim that
many believe as incorrect.
Grave escalation
Pakistan is not the first country tempted by nuclear force
multipliers. Nor, as claimed by ISPR, is making small warheads a
significant technical feat. In fact in the 1950s, the Americans had
developed even smaller ones with sub-kiloton yields, and placed them on
the Davy Crockett recoilless guns deployed at forward positions along
the Turkey-USSR border. The nuclear shell, with a blast yield that would
be dialled as required, could be fired by just two infantrymen. This
was a tempting alternative to artillery but the Americans were
eventually unnerved by the prospect of two soldiers setting off a
nuclear war on their own initiative. The weapon was withdrawn and
decommissioned after a few years.
Wars are fought to be won, not to be lost. So how will Pakistan’s new
weapons help us win a war? This fundamental question is never even
touched. But let us assume their use in a post Mumbai-II scenario. For
every (small) mushroom cloud on Pakistani territory, roughly a dozen or
more Indian main battle tanks and armoured vehicles would be destroyed.
After many mushrooms, the invasion would stop dead in its tracks and a
few thousand Indian troops would be killed. Pakistan would decisively
win a battle.
But then what? With the nuclear threshold crossed for the first time
since 1945, India would face one of two options: to fight on or flee.
Which it will choose is impossible to predict because much will depend
upon the extant political and military circumstances, as well as the
personalities of the military and political leaders then in office.
Official Indian policy calls for massive retaliation.
In 2013, reacting officially to Pakistan, Shyam Saran, the head of the
National Security Advisory Board, declared that, “India will not be the
first to use nuclear weapons, but if it is attacked with such weapons,
it would engage in nuclear retaliation which will be massive and
designed to inflict unacceptable damage on its adversary. The label on a
nuclear weapon used for attacking India, strategic or tactical, is
irrelevant from the Indian perspective”.
Simply stated:
whether struck
by a micro-nuke or mini-nuke or city-buster, and whether on its own soil
or outside its borders, India says it will consider itself under
nuclear attack and react accordingly.
A tit-for-tat exchange
This is plain stupid. It violates the principle of proportionate
retaliation and pushes aside the barriers to hell. But could the
National Security Advisory Board be bluffing? It may be that if push
comes to shove, India will not actually launch its large nuclear
weapons. The sensible instinct of self-preservation might somehow
prevail, and the subcontinent live to see another morning.
More likely is that in the heat of the moment, reckless passions will
rage and caution will take a backseat. A tit-for-tat exchange could
continue until every single weapon, small and large, is used up on
either side. It is difficult to imagine how any war termination
mechanism could work even if, by some miracle, the nuclear command and
control centres remain intact.
At the end both India and Pakistan would win, having taught the other a terrible lesson. But neither would remain habitable.
The subcontinent’s military and political leaders are not the first
to believe that a nuclear war can remain limited, and perhaps even won.
President Ronald Reagan puzzled over the possibility of Armageddon,
uncertain whether or not God was commanding him to destroy earth or to
leave it in His hands. Allen Dulles, the first CIA director, had
repeatedly railed against the stupidity of those Americans, “who draw an
‘artificial’ distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons and
cannot realise that atomic bombs should be treated like bullets”.
Tactical nukes will not make Pakistan more secure. This dangerous
programme should be immediately abandoned. Nukes may win a battle for us
but at the cost of losing Pakistan. Instead our security lies in
ensuring that Pakistan’s territory is not used for launching terror
attacks upon our neighbours. We must explicitly renounce the use of
covert war to liberate Kashmir – a fact hidden from none and recently
admitted to by Gen Pervez Musharraf.
As for India: your security depends upon adopting a less belligerent
attitude towards Pakistan, stopping a menacing military build-up that is
spooking all your neighbours, and realising that respect is earned
through economic rather than military strength.
These are tall orders for both countries. Any optimism is currently unwarranted.
