Complexities of Risk Reduction in South Asia

By: Michael Krepon

June 18, 2009

The Indian electorate has now voted into office a very strong coalition government led, once again, by the Congress party. Pakistani domestic politics, on the other hand, have produced a weak civilian government that faces extraordinary internal security challenges. In due course, dialogue between Islamabad and New Delhi will resume, but it will be hard for leaders to make significant progress on bilateral disputes given existing disparities in domestic political circumstances and the certainty that new acts of mass casualty terrorism will occur.

The strategic calculus facing national leaders in India and Pakistan has changed radically over the past decade. Kashmir, one of the most dangerous of all international disputes — a witches brew of territorial, religious and inheritance grievances produced by Great Britain’s abrupt withdrawal from India in 1947 — is no longer the “nuclear flashpoint” of old. Calls for a plebiscite in Kashmir and a redrawing of maps are now relics of the past.

The outlines of a settlement are now widely understood. Before General Pervez Musharraf reached the predictable conclusion that he was politically indispensable — and thus could dispense with judicial checks on his authority — his emissaries reportedly made headway in back-channel talks with New Delhi on the Kashmir issue and on other long-running disputes. Musharraf’s subsequent domestic difficulties put these talks on hold. Earlier in his tenure, after stumbling badly in Kargil, Musharraf adopted a series of bold policy shifts on Kashmir. But when he was strong enough to make a deal stick, New Delhi’s timid coalition government, beset by lingering doubts over Musharraf’s bona fides and by domestic foes, was unwilling to seize the moment for a game-changing settlement. The crux of the Kashmir dispute is now over politics rather than substance.

To be sure, infiltration across the Kashmir divide and acts of violence directed at the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir will continue to be of great concern, but for some time now, the primary targets of high-consequence acts of terrorism have been elsewhere. According to data collected by the U.S. National Counter-Terrorism Centre, the brunt of these attacks has shifted, with Pakistan now victimised far more than India. (According to these figures, Pakistan suffered 3,628 fatalities to terrorist acts in 2007 and 2008, compared to 2,206 in India.) The logic of Pakistan’s domestic military campaign to reclaim national territory — if sustained — certainly points to an accentuation of this trend. But India will surely not be spared wretched explosions, as well.

New Delhi understands weak civilian governments in Pakistan, but it has no prior basis for dealing with one that appears to recognise and is willing to address, however imperfectly, the internal security challenges that previous governments have abetted. It took no great gift of prophesy to predict where Pakistan’s prior support for the ISI’s clients would lead. (The same could easily be said for U.S. support for the “mujahideen” in Afghanistan.) What matters now is the recognition of new realities, one of which is the commonality of the threat now facing Pakistan, India, and the United States.

Under such novel circumstances, military rejoinders and standard political rhetoric in the face of terrorist acts are of limited utility. Less than eight years ago, the Indian and Pakistani armies mobilised at fighting corridors in response to an attack by wild men on the Indian Parliament building. Many grievous acts of terror against symbolic venues, religious shrines, and innocent bystanders have occurred since. These attacks, including those directed against Mumbai in 2008, elicited no such mobilisations, perhaps in recognition that military options would likely achieve little and could risk much.

After the Parliament attack, the Indian armed forces reportedly adopted smaller scale military plans, but these, too, have apparently been found wanting. Stern warnings backed up by military options are not particularly effective when directed against a weak government that has forged an uncertain alliance with Pakistan’s military hierarchy to counter internal enemies. Granted, there may well be lingering ties between some elements of the security apparatus and those who wish “regime change” in Pakistan. But New Delhi appears to have recognised that the most direct way to strengthen these ties and to suspend a domestic military campaign against terrorists would be to respond militarily to severe provocation emanating from Pakistan.

Another compelling reason against military mobilisations is that they would likely place more of Pakistan’s nuclear assets in motion, where they would be less well protected against domestic enemies of the state. The guardians of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal currently sit on the horns of a dilemma: Consolidation of Pakistan’s nuclear assets would protect most effectively against insider threats, while dispersion of Pakistan’s nuclear assets would protect most effectively against preemption by external threats. This dilemma does not lend itself to a solution, although the resumption of Indo-Pakistan dialogue on contentious issues would surely help. It would also help if poorly informed U.S. commentators would stop talking about the imperatives of snatching up Pakistan’s nuclear assets before the on-coming hordes of the Taliban.

Overriding nuclear concerns on the subcontinent now revolve around the safety and security of nuclear capabilities in Pakistan that are growing alongside internal security challenges. Very few individuals in Pakistan (and presumably no one outside of Pakistan) have exact knowledge of where all of these assets reside. Therefore no one who speaks of such matters can say with certainty how secure Pakistan’s crown jewels are. What can be presumed is that Pakistani military authorities have come a long way since entrusting A.Q. Khan with security measures at Kahuta. It is also evident that nuclear assets are safest when they are not in motion — but this is a luxury that the guardians of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal cannot completely embrace.

Growing nuclear capabilities are part of the changing strategic calculus in Pakistan, India and China. Nothing clarifies Pakistan’s unsettled nuclear mindset more than its construction of two new Plutonium production reactors. India’s nuclear options have now been unencumbered by civil nuclear cooperation agreements, and Beijing is at last stepping up the pace of its strategic modernisation programmes. Nuclear-capable cruise missiles are joining ballistic missiles in the arsenals of all three states, and initiation of a fissile material “cutoff” negotiation in Geneva, which Pakistan no longer appears to oppose, is unlikely to crimp bomb-making capabilities anytime soon.

The next crisis sparked by a grievous act of terrorism on the subcontinent will therefore occur against the backdrop of increased nuclear options of no discernible battlefield utility and an uneven effort by the Pakistani military against domestic foes. New Delhi’s options will be greatly constrained by the challenges of dealing with a weak government in Pakistan. Under these circumstances, the key to nuclear risk-reduction on the subcontinent may now lie in the ability of governments to trust each other sufficiently to share intelligence against common terrorist threats.

This article first appeared in The Hindu on May 29, 200