Daily Times

Recently a seasoned Pakistani strategist Lieutenant General (retd) Khalid Kidwai, Advisor, National Command Authority( NCA); and former Director-General, Strategic Plans Division, Pakistan, gave the Keynote Address at the Workshop on ‘South Asian Strategic Stability: Deterrence, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control’, hosted by the London- based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). Lt General Khalid Kidwai warned India not to take Islamabad’s “nuclear capability as a bluff” and said that the country reserved its right to exercise all options to protect territorial and ideological interests in case of a war-like situation. PM Imran Khan has already warned New Delhi about its miscalculation about Pakistan. The reliability of weapons and command and control and the political conditions that underpin stable relations between nuclear-armed states.

Despite the growing lethal threats posed by the use of these weapons by any of the global nuclear powers– producing a regional, and likely global, disaster, the fact is that India and Pakistan are of special concern because of a long history of military clashes including serious recent ones, lack of progress in resolving territorial issues, thickly populated urban areas, and ongoing rapid expansion of their respective nuclear arsenals. Needless to say, in order to make its security more viable and in the exigency of making strategic stability in the region, Pakistan continues to expand its nuclear arsenal with more warheads, more delivery systems, and a growing fissile materials production industry. Nonetheless, the concept of strategic stability in a nuclearized South Asian region has to be understood given the dilemma that in the South Asian region, with the passage of time, strategic stability is becoming more and more fragile instead of becoming strong. In such a strategic landscape, three possible threats are posed to regional strategic stability are: crisis instability, arms race, security dilemma and escalating danger have largely worsened the situation.

The most critical thinking threshold– creating the concepts of escalation control and stable nuclear deterrence could posit some rational decisions-taken only by rational actors, albeit in the quagmire of the deepest crisis

True, deterrence stability and crisis stability in the region has not yet been stabilized because of various internal and external factors. Arguably, Eternal powers role remains one of the crucial factors in disturbing the strategic force balance and strategic stability in the region. Whereas the Internal challenges such as territorial disputes, mainly the Kashmir issue and the water dispute including increased border tension on LOC, defence production gap and Indian military modernization, Indian ballistic missile program, and absence of arms control regime are the main caused of disturbing the strategic stability in the region.

Contextually, the future use of nuclear weapons by the two rival states India and Pakistan seems highly unpredictable. Though it appears to be not an illogical conjecturing that the issue raising the probable future range or scope and the need to develop policy recommendations are highly encouraging. In this regard, a pragmatic conclusion fosters three important policy implications. The first is that policies crafted or driven on the basis of hypothetical future reading are never relevant. The second is that the dynamic focusing on the wide range of possible futures, yet accompanied by the probable uncertainty,, should lead to a degree of humility among policy analysts and policy strategists. The policy pragmatists always favour Low-risk policies. The third and the most significant part of this appraisal is that hope is not a policy.…wishing for a good outcome to the inevitable India-Pakistan nuclear arms race- complicated by the other external or centrifugal concern such as the China-Pakistan factor as rival to India and a supplier to Pakistan-is not good enough and all enough. Therefore, the task before the South Asian Leaders scholarly community is to impart its obligation to be ahead of the policy curve, not trailing behind it.

Yet doctrinally, there are two streams of thought; one supporting the notion that the very possession of nuclear weapons by most of the states; while other support the restraint of the technology as it will lead to a disastrous end. Understandably, the nuclear pacifists opine that the deterrence effects of nuclear weapons would reduce the risk of future nuclear wars. Yet some of the policy strategists of nuclear weapons make their argument strong by raising the dictum that states being supreme authority– are not accountable to anybody–possess the defacto right to use this weapon when their supreme national interests demand.

So far as the opinion shared by the majority of military strategists and decision-makers in Pakistan is concerned, almost they all agree that TNWs complete so-called full-spectrum deterrence and, as such, is a necessary counterweight to India’s Cold Start, or proactive military operations-which calls for up to eight independent armoured brigades to penetrate up to 50 kilometres (about 31 miles) into Pakistan without crossing Pakistan’s nuclear thresholds. In the given strategic backdrop, “Pakistan remains unfazed and as before, we have adequate response options which will disallow any disturbance of the strategic balance or strategic stability. That fundamental policy will prevail,” Gen Kidwai argued in his address.

Recently, Pakistan successfully tests its Missile Ra’ad-11. The new longer-range Ra’ad II “significantly enhanced Pakistan’s air-delivered strategic standoff capability on land and at sea,” ISPR said in a February 18 statement. “The weapon system is equipped with state of the art guidance and navigation systems ensuring the engagement of targets with high precision. Foreseeably, In the given strategic South Asian landscape where the climax of hostilities between the two rival nuclear states India and Pakistan reaches its zenith, the scope of strategic stability seems to be a greater dilemma since both the states are virtually engaged in a nuclear weapons race while respectively keeping the doctrine of national security intact. In the wake of the ongoing MIRVs regime race between India and Pakistan, the growing apprehensions in terms of South Asian strategic stability/ instability, first strike/second strike or preemption, use them or lose them, the viability of strategic triad, arms race or strategic restraint accompanied by the growing quest for Multiple Interceptor Missile Programmes (MIM)-all these will remain the core concern regarding South Asia’s nuclear discourse for the years to come.

The most critical thinking threshold– creating the concepts of escalation control and stable nuclear deterrence could posit some rational decisions-taken only by rational actors, albeit in the quagmire of the deepest crisis. Nonetheless, there are some extremist groups in both Pakistan and India who would be more inclined to cash the emerging advent of crisis as a golden opportunity rather than as a crisis syndrome. Whereas the deterrence optimists also table the argument that “Murphy’s Law” could hardly apply to nuclear weapons…at least not to the extent that an accident ( or a chain reaction of miscalculation, error, chance, or misuse of authority) would ultimately lead to a lethal crossing of the nuclear threshold.

To be continued

The writer is an independent ‘IR’ researcher and international law analyst based in Pakistan