Daily Times

The culmination of events in the last few weeks owes its origins to events beginning a decade back and in nuclear chronology since May 1998. In this time period a lot has taken place, cumulatively, to Pakistan’s disadvantage including an estimated £ 27 billion loss due to floods. The strategic effects on Pakistan including its international political standing; internal economy; and effects on internal security and stability have undergone a major shift. Like a tectonic shift spread over these years, it has placed Pakistan on a different plane with changed topography altogether — no longer adjacent to India.

Thirteen years ago when the nuclear tests took place, India and Pakistan were considered to be in a ‘symbiotic’ nuclear relationship. With the kind of challenges that Pakistan is facing now, it would be naïve to assume that there would be no impact on the military/nuclear front, and it would jog alongside India as gamely as before.

While many in Pakistan are searching for individual and single-entity scapegoats, India heaves a big sigh of relief and ‘welcomes’ $ 800 million in military aid to Pakistan held back by the US as good for regional ‘equilibrium’.

No individual in the country, including General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, can be held responsible for the overall state of affairs in the country today. Mohammad Malick, writing a personal perspective on the army chief in a local English daily offers his divine prophesy: “Gen Kayani may have to decide whether he is part of the national solution or the problem” (‘The greatest dilemma of the general’, July13, 2011). Clearly the magnitude and multitude of challenges that Pakistan faces are neither created by any individual, and likewise cannot be resolved by an individual, including the army chief.

In this scenario, the matter of regional military equilibrium remains pertinent. India’s uncalled for remark comes as a rather unwelcome development in the sequence of events in Indo-Pak relations where Pakistan has only just amiably hosted Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupuma Rao for a bilateral dialogue. And the regional ‘equilibrium’ can certainly be affected negatively if the current situation persists. Will the invisible nuclear equilibrium also remain in place permanently and not be affected by the tectonic shifts no matter how worse the situation gets?

Two things are relevant here: short term measures and merely fixing the balance via the nuclear route may not be a viable solution in the longer term. Nuclear balance is intrinsic and Pakistan is performing well in this sector. Yet, it is not the answer to all (security) trials and tribulations facing the country or the equilibriums being challenged.

Merely devising ways to re-obtain the withheld military aid and resuscitate the Pak-US relations, and in short, thinking of emergency measures for ‘survival’ has proven faulty already. The fact that important quarters do think that this US aid and relations are important to Pakistan is enough to warrant a serious appraisal of the overall situation. Also the wave of endeavouring to stack the blame somewhere ‘interesting’ is counter-productive too, which Pakistan cannot afford at this time.

The series of tactics between the US and Pakistan pressuring and punishing each other is a game that may possibly hurt Pakistan more than the US in the long run. What spurs on this public posturing on both sides is also the upshot of the nationalistic-cum-Islamic sentiments in Pakistan and the Indian-Jewish clout in the US Congress asking for total aid cut-off after bin Laden was found on Pakistani soil.

The military aid being withheld by the US includes support for counterinsurgency and equipment for the Frontier Corps (FC) and the military. This can possibly impact both Pakistan’s security as well as the level of resistance by Pakistan’s military against militancy.

A Washington-based nuclear think-tank Institute for Science and International Security rather sensationally shows a row of cooling towers at Pakistan’s clandestine Khushab-III reactor concluded, and ponders upon its operations increasing stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium. Khushab-II, located next to it, has also become operational in February and fissile material produced at this complex allows for the construction of small lethal weapons (one kilogramme equivalent to 20,000 tonnes of conventional explosives). Efforts at Khushab-III will continue and add to the world’s fastest-growing nuclear stockpile in Pakistan. According to latest sources, 200 warheads could be achieved in much less than a decade (not taking into account the consequences of tectonic shifts).

While increasing its relations with China, Pakistan has simultaneously blocked the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva from fissile material cut-off discussions. Rose Gottemoeller, US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, warns Pakistan that her country’s “patience is running out”.

Pakistan has done its best, via the nuclear route, to retain the military ‘equilibrium’ in the region. India has done its best to give Pakistan a tough time in the international diplomatic arena, with conventional military developments and expansion of its own nuclear programme — with explicit assistance from the US and disturbing all kinds of ‘equilibriums’ (!).

Pakistan will need to undertake a comprehensive strategic re-evaluation that includes and goes beyond nuclear fissile and missile calculations for equilibrium or sulking over band-aid (pun intended). Has the search for a long-term map even begun in earnest, that can relocate Pakistan on better terrain given the tectonic shifts of the last decade, for not mere survival but growth and success as a nation-state?

The writer is a Fellow at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. She can be reached at defence.analyst@gmail.com