Dispatches From The Edge
Conn Hallinan – March 20, 2011
Washington—New American intelligence assessments have
concluded that Pakistan has steadily expanded its nuclear arsenal since
President Obama came to office…for the Obama administration the assessment
poses a direct challenge to a central element of the President’s national
security strategy, the reduction of nuclear stockpiles around the
world.”—New York Times
The above words, written this past February, were followed
by a Times editorial, titled “Pakistan’s Nuclear Folly,” decrying that “the
weapons buildup has gotten too little attention,” and calling on Washington to
“look for points of leverage” to stop it.
Well, the administration and the Times may be unhappy about
Pakistan’s nuclear buildup, but it certainly should not have come as a
surprise, nor is there much of a secret to the “points of leverage” that would
almost certainly put a stopper on it: scupper the so-called 1-2-3 Agreement
between the U.S. and India.
Back in 2003, Douglas Feith, then Under Secretary of Defense
for Policy in the Bush Administration, pulled together a meeting of the
U.S.-India Defense Policy Group to map out a blueprint for pulling New Delhi
into an alliance against China. The code word used during the discussions was
“stability,” but as P.R. Chari of the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
noted, “What they really mean is how to deal with China.”
The Bush administration changed the Clinton Administration’s
designation of China as a “strategic partner” to “strategic competitor,” and in
its U.S.-China Security Review concluded that Beijing is “in direct competition
with us for influence in Asia and beyond” and that in “the worst case this
could lead to war.” Another Pentagon document revealed by Jane’s Foreign Report
argued that both India and the U.S. were threatened by China, and that “India
should emerge as a vital component of US strategy.”
One of the obstacles to that alliance was the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which blocks any country that is not a signer
from buying nuclear fuel on the world market. Since neither India nor Pakistan
has signed the Treaty, they can’t buy fuel from the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers
Group. That has been particularly hard on India because it has few native
uranium sources and has to split those between nuclear energy and nuclear
weapons. The ban, however, is central to the NPT, and one of the few checks on
nuclear proliferation.
But the Bush administration proposed bypassing the NPT with
the so-called 1-2-3 Agreement that permitted India to purchase nuclear
materials even though New Delhi refused to sign the Treaty. India would agree
to use the nuclear fuel only in its civilian plants and open those plants for
inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). But the Agreement
also allowed India to divert its own domestic supplies to its weapons program,
and those plants would remain off the inspection grid. In short, India would no
longer have to choose between nuclear power and nuclear weapons: it could have
both.
In July 2008, Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister Khurshid
Kusuri predicted that if the 1-2-3 Agreement went through, “The whole Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty will unravel,” and, in a letter to the IAEA, Pakistan
warned that the pact “threatens to increase the chances of a nuclear arms race
in the subcontinent.”
However, neither the Bush administration nor the Obama
administration paid any attention to Pakistan’s complaints. The results were
predictable. Pakistan ramped up
its nuclear weapons program and may soon pass Britain as the fifth largest
nuclear weapons nation in the world.
It also dug in its heels at the 65-nation 2011 Conference on
Disarmament in Geneva and blocked a proposal to halt the production of nuclear
weapons-making material. The 1-2-3
Agreement and the push to bring India into the Nuclear Suppliers group, warned
Ambassador Zamir Akram, were “undermining the validity and sanctity of the
international non-proliferation regime” and would “further destabilize security
in South Asia.” The Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) is a priority for
the Obama administration.
Islamabad is not alone in its criticism of the 1-2-3
Agreement or the FMCT. A number of nations are challenging NPT signers,
including the U.S., China, Russia, Britain and France, to fulfill Article VI of
the NPT that requires the elimination of nuclear weapons. While the U.S. and
Russia have reduced their arsenals, both still have thousands of weapons, and
the Americans are in the process of modernizing their current warheads.
Pakistan is a far smaller country than India, and would
likely face defeat in a conventional conflict. It has already lost three wars
to India. Its ace in the hole is nuclear weapons, and some Pakistanis have a
distressingly casual view of nuclear war. “You can die crossing the street, or
you could die in a nuclear war,” remarked former Pakistan army chief Gen. Mirza
Aslem Beg. A BBC poll found that the Pakistani public has an “abysmally low” understanding
of the threat.
Many Indians are not much better. Former Indian Defense
Minister Georges Fernandes commented that “India can survive a nuclear attack,
but Pakistan cannot.” And that same BBC poll found that for most Indians “the
terror of a nuclear conflict is hard to imagine.”
Both countries have recently rolled out cruise missiles that
are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The Pakistani Hatf-7, or “Babur,” has
a range of almost 500 miles and a speed of 550 miles. It appears to have been
copied from the U.S. BGM-109 “Tomahawk,” several of which crashed in Pakistan
during 1998 air strikes against Afghanistan. The Indian PJ-10 BrahMos cruise
has a shorter range—180 miles—but a top speed of 2100 mph. India
and Pakistan also have ballistic missiles capable of striking major cities in
both countries.
In its editorial declaiming Pakistan as guilty of “nuclear
folly,” the Times pointed out that “Pakistan cannot feed its people [or]
educate its children.” Neither can India. As a 2010 United Nations Development
Program report discovered, as bad as things are in Pakistan, life expectancy is
lower in India, and the gap between rich and poor is greater. In fact, neither
country can afford large militaries—Pakistan spends 35 percent of its
budget on arms, and India is in the middle of a $40 billion military spending
spree—and a nuclear war would not only destroy both countries, but also
profoundly affect the entire globe.
Nuclear weapons are always folly, but what is sauce for the
goose is sauce for the gander. The U.S. currently spends in excess of $1
trillion a year on all defense and security related items, while our education
system is starving, our infrastructure is collapsing, and hunger and illiteracy
are spreading. If the Times wants
to ratchet down tensions in South Asia, let it call for dumping the 1-2-3
Agreement and beginning the process called for in Article VI of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to
pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measure relating to the
cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,
and on a Treaty of general and complete disarmament under strict and effective
international control.”