Mr Zardari has offered no-first-use (NFU) to India. This is new. But its newness notwithstanding, it shows he knows next to nothing about the issue and was either not briefed on it or decided, of his own bat, to charge down the pitchPresident Asif Ali Zardari’s address to the Hindustan Times Summit 2008 through video-conferencing from Islamabad reminds me of HL Mencken’s line that “Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince”.Good intentions are the stuff of poetry, but realpolitik works and survives on the basis of capability and power projection and that is the stuff of prose. The prosaic line was delivered by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, which quickly made clear that the remarks were not official and that change of Pakistani policy would have to be seen on the ground first. End of story.
Let me make the positive assumption about Mr Zardari, however — i.e., he really wants to break new ground. That’s good news. The bad news is that, like wars, the areas where some good can be done must be chosen carefully.Exhibit A: Let South Asia be a nuclear free zone (NFZ). Sure. Why just South Asia? The entire world should be an NFZ. Indeed, Article VI of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty talks about disarmament as one of the three pillars of the treaty, the other two being non-proliferation and the right to fuel cycle.But Article VI has not happened and is unlikely to consummate anytime soon unless the new US President-elect can begin to stitch back the tattered non-proliferation regime, do so without discrimination and move from non-proliferation to disarmament. Whether such is possible after the India-US civil nuclear deal is not something on which I shall wager my meagre resources.India has never pegged its nuclear capability on Pakistan, citing global reasons. That may be bunkum given its deployment patterns and force configuration but who can deny it its Foucauldian discourse which has informed its policy since the NPT came up for discussion. Over time, it has used both the nuclear capability and other sinews of national power to add value to itself. Why would it do poetry when prose has worked fine for it?Plus, this is not breaking new ground at all.
Pakistan first talked about a South Asian NFZ during General Zia-ul Haq’s time. We were of course developing our nuclear capability, as was India! We offered it, they rejected it and it was business as usual.Incidentally, on this note of history, let me pre-empt Mr Zardari on something he might also offer India thinking it is new ground — a no war pact. That too we offered India; that too was rejected. So yes, Mr President, it won’t be new.Exhibit B: First use of nuclear weapons. Mr Zardari has offered no-first-use (NFU) to India. This is new. But its newness notwithstanding, it shows he knows next to nothing about the issue and was either not briefed on it properly or decided, of his own bat, to charge down the pitch. If the first, he was obviously not briefed by the Strategic Plans Division. If the second, he needs to learn to play himself in before attacking. Let’s consider.NFU is for the birds, Mr President. Even India, which began with a declaratory NFU policy has let it drop quietly. Our nuclear capability and first use had rather simple premises. We needed the weapons capability because we were/are conventionally inferior. That being the case, we needed to, and still do, project the capability and the will to use it — and do so first and early into a conflict.But this still does not solve the problem of NFU. So here goes.
NFU is insubstantial in military terms unless it can be verified. Since Indian and Pakistani capabilities remain opaque, it is impossible to verify that the forces on one or both sides are configured for an NFU policy.Simply declaring NFU intent is merely a political statement. While nuclear weapons have a political purpose, they are also military weapons. Indeed, it is the military side — projection of capability and the will to use it — that allows a nuclear-weapon state to draw political mileage out of them.But if verification that a force is configured for NFU is important for the policy declaration to have any military meaning, are there any parameters through which this can be achieved?Li Bin, a Chinese expert, has presented five important parameters through which a state can project its NFU intent and which can be verified by rival states: the size of the nuclear force; the composition of that force; the number of warheads on each missile; the accuracy of nuclear weapons (whether counter-value or counter-force targeting); and the strength of the conventional forces. (For a detailed discussion of these points see Ejaz Haider, “First use and nuclear risk-reduction”; Daily Times, June 22, 2004.)Let it be said, however, that I raise the above points and objections strictly within the ambit of nuclear strategy and to show that Mr Zardari talked about a non-issue. Both Pakistan and India now face other forms of threats that need to be countered and they require cooperative strategies. It would be more useful, while nuclear weapons hold the inter-state balance, to offer concrete and workable proposals in those areas. Exhibit C: Mr Zardari also expressed the desire to trade with India and said that he looked forward to an economic union. No one can contend against the idea of trade per se. That, therefore, is not the issue. There was a time Pakistan used non-economic arguments to shoot down trade with India. Now there is a rush, without looking into what can be traded and to what extent and end, to trade. It has become a shibboleth.
I cannot do better than to draw the president’s and the government’s attention to work done in the area by Moeed Yusuf and his colleagues. See Yusuf, “Peace trade-off?” Daily Times, November 20, 2006; Yusuf, “Using Trade as a Driver of Peace: Prospects in the Indo-Pak Context,” Criterion, Vol 2, No 3, July-September 2007; Khan, Shaheen and Yusuf, “Managing Conflict through Trade: The Case of Pakistan and India” in Regional Trade Integration and Conflict Resolution: Southern Perspectives, Shaheen Rafi Khan, ed. (London, Routledge, 2008); Khan, Yusuf, Bokhari, and Aziz, “Quantifying Informal Trade Between Pakistan and India” in The Challenges and Potential of Pakistan-India Trade, Naqvi and Schuler, eds. (Washington, DC, The World Bank, 2007). This is an area that, more than good intentions, requires solid work. There are other economists who strongly favour trade. At the minimum there should be informed debate on the issue. And that brings me to the conclusion.The last time Pakistan tried its hand at a coherent national security policy was with the 1976 White Paper. Since then there has been no attempt to formulate a coherent NSP and/or set down some mechanism to review it annually, biennially or quinquennially etc. New opportunities and dangers have emerged; the world has changed in many ways. Yet, we trundle along like we are sleepwalking through all this.Mr Zardari will do the country much good if he could get down to the task of doing this review which could then become a basis for policies in various areas.As the situation stands, here’s an offering from Alice in Wonderland, the dialogue between Alice and the Cheshire Cat:“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat. “I don’t much care where –” said Alice.“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times. He can be reached at sapper@dailytimes.com.pk
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