Mrs. Gandhi’s response to Pakistan’s determined bid to manufacture nuclear weapons and the US move to arm it in a big way is as restrained as it is firm. In its history as an independent country, India, as she has said, has never before faced so grim a situation. The one that resulted from the US decision to supply arms to Pakistan in 1954 bears no comparison with todays. For one thing, there was then no question of Pakistan entertaining nuclear ambitions and thereby acquiring a weapon which would nullify such edge as this country might have over it in respect of conventional forces. For another, the United States was then not desperate and did not regard Pakistan as key to its security interests in the Gulf region. While both these differences are of critical importance, the second perhaps needs to be emphasised.
In the ’fifties, the United States was in reality the only super-power, though the Soviet Union was also so described. It was on the offensive and not on the defensive. It and its European allies, especially Britain, recognised the importance of Gulf oil reserves. But no one had by then thought of possible shortage of energy. In fact, the vaguest talk of energy crisis did not begin till the late sixties. And in its bid to contain the Soviet Union in this part of the world, the United States looked upon Iran and not Pakistan as its key ally. Pakistan was useful but not critical to US purpose. All that has clearly changed now.
Two additional points about the United States deserve to be noted. Washington is obsessed with the fragility of friendly regimes in the Gulf, which it was not in 1954, though it was critical of President Nasser and his concept of Arab nationalism. Despite his notorious pactomania, Mr. Dulles, who was then in charge of America’s foreign policy, was a moderate compared with the hard-boiled right-wingers who dominate the Reagan administration. In view of America’s extremely hostile relations with China, he was also not wholly insensitive to the need to show some respect for India’s susceptibilities and interests.
Evidence
In other words, there was bound to be a ceiling on US arms supplies to Pakistan, both in terms of quality and quantity. Events proved that there was such a ceiling. This time we cannot be so sure. Witness the quality and quantity of weapons which Washington transferred to Iran, albeit against payment. Pakistan is now cast in an even bigger role than Iran under the Shah was.
It is a tribute to the effectiveness of the Pakistani propaganda that some influential Indians should take the view that our own underground explosion in May 1974 accounts for Islamabad’s decision to go in for nuclear weapons. But facts do not bear it out. There is conclusive evidence to show that Mr. Bhutto took the decision in January 1972 and not after May 1974. Moreover, the absence of follow-up measures by New Delhi should long ago have convinced Pakistani rulers that India was not engaged in a nuclear weapons programme. This should have especially been evident to them during the Janata dispensation when Mr. Morarji Desai – President Zia-ul-Haq regarded him as a great statesman and a good friend of Pakistan – was at the helm of affairs. In fact, while he sought to exploit fully the gullibility of men in power in New Delhi, he stepped up his own nuclear weapons programme. In that sense he has been a worthy successor to Mr. Bhutto who, too, talked of peace from 1972 to 1977 and planned to place himself in a position where he could blackmail New Delhi.
It is similarly a testimony to the success of the US propaganda that a number of serious-minded Indians have bought the proposition that Soviet intervention in Afghanistan has triggered off the US moves to acquiesce in Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions and to arm it. There are corollaries to the more basic decision to build and deploy around the Gulf a special quick action force. And that decision followed not Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979 but the collapse of the Shah in Iran in early 1979 and the sharpening of the US perception that other friendly regimes in the region could similarly collapse as a result of some similar upheavals. Soviet intervention in Afghanistan can at worst or at best be said to have lent an added urgency to moves which had already been initiated. It cannot be said to account for them.
President Carter was hung up on non-proliferation. This might have proved an obstacle in the path of Pakistan-US military cooperation if President Zia had taken up his offer and opened serious negotiations with Washington. But that is a separate issue. Indeed, it is not inconceivable that President Carter, too, would have set aside the Symington amendment and acquiesced in Pakistan’s nuclear programme.
Reasons
One more point needs to be made to underscore the gravity of the situation the country faces. Acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan would constitute a far more serious threat than China’s truly remarkable progress in this field. This is so for a variety of reasons. China is separated from India by the Himalayas, the world’s highest and most formidable mountains. These are not wholly impenetrable. But they are a mighty obstacle. China and India are two wholly different civilisations. The fact cannot but limit Beijing’s leverage in this country. In the wake of the Chinese attack in 1962, many of us rushed to the conclusion, as if on the rebound from our earlier unqualified admiration and support for China, that its ambitions in south Asia were unlimited. But we could produce little evidence in support of this view. Subsequent events have proved that China’s ambitions lie elsewhere.
Pakistanis never tire of alleging that we Indians have not reconciled ourselves to partition. The reverse is true. It is they who have not accepted partition as a final settlement. Their claim to Kashmir is strong enough evidence to show that this is so. And can anyone be sure that they would have rested content and left us alone if by some mischance they had succeeded in grabbing the valley m 1947? Pakistan, like Israel, has been built on the basis of religion. Like Israel, it, too, cannot accept the traditional concept of nationalism and, therefore, the sanctity and inviolability of national frontiers.
This should end the silly comparisons between the force levels of the two countries. There can be no peace in the sub-continent unless India, a status quo power by virtue of its acceptance of partition and desire to be left alone so that it can attend to the heartbreaking tasks of building its economy and changing its social structure, enjoys decisive military superiority over ideologically motivated Pakistan and is in fact seen to possess that kind of power by Islamabad. Acquisition of nuclear weapons by Pakistan will make it impossible for India to fulfill this condition unless New Delhi beats Islamabad in that field as well.
India has four options. First, it can continue to drift and thus acquiesce in Pakistan’s nuclear programme in the hope that it will not succeed or that Islamabad will not abuse its newly acquired power or that it will not be allowed to do so by the international community. Secondly, it can make a preemptive strike on Pakistan’s nuclear installations. Thirdly, it can strengthen security ties with the Soviet Union and rely on it to protect it against the use or the threat of use of nuclear weapons by Pakistan. Finally, it can launch its own nuclear weapons programme.
Options
By accepting President Zia’s claim that Pakistan was not trying to manufacture nuclear weapons, Mr. Desai had taken the first option, though fortunately he did not sign the non-proliferation treaty and accede to the full-scope safeguards demanded by the US in return for continued supply of enriched uranium for Tarapore. This was an abdication of responsibility of which Mrs. Gandhi will never be guilty.
The second option is wholly out of character with India. New Delhi will not invent a provocation to bomb Pakistan’s nuclear installations and it is unlikely that President Zia will provide it with the necessary pretext. He will play it cool till he acquires the bomb.
Though the exercise of the third option will detract from India’s claim to be genuinely non-aligned, it is on a superficial view attractive. Since 1955, the Soviet Union has an unbroken record of standing by this country on critical issues. It is in a position to give a reasonably credible guarantee and it may be willing to do so because security and friendship of India are important for it in both the regional and global context.
But since the Soviet Union is a global power, it has a number of commitments, some of which can have priority over India’s security. As on the occasion of the Quemoy-Matsu crisis in 1958, it may also not be willing to risk a direct confrontation with the United States. Incidentally, it was recognition of this unpleasant fact that finally persuaded Chairman Mao Zedong to go in for nuclear weapons.
Thus we do not have much of a choice. We have to undertake a nuclear weapons programme if we are to preserve our independence and integrity. It is not an easy decision to take. It is contrary to our own ideal of a nuclear weapons-free world and it is bound to complicate further our relations with the United States and perhaps with some other Western governments. But if there is a realistic alternative, it needs to be spelt out. It is no argument to say that Pakistan is too small and weak to constitute a serious threat to India. The opponents of an Indian bomb have to produce a more convincing plea in support of their case. Their Pakistani friends have let them down very badly.
The Times of India, 11 April 1981