Thursday, June 18, 2009
Rabia Akhtar:The defence analyst. Email: rabois@gmail.com
Nuclear weapons are weapons of the weak because they embolden the weaker state through security that nuclear deterrence provides. There is enough evidence in history to reveal that deterrence as a strategy with its various phases from flexible response to mutually assured destruction (MAD) held value for the two Cold War rivals, the United States and the Soviet Union, only to deny the other 'nuclear superiority' or 'nuclear advantage'. But with the demise of the Soviet Union, the unipolar world order emerged and the US, being the mightiest, moved away from MAD to the doctrine of pre-emption which made much more sense because there was no point anymore in threatening the enemy when it could be beaten ten times over. The powerful state will not rely on deterrence as much as it will rely on pre-emption (either through conventional or nuclear means) because it can afford to. But for the weak states, nuclear weapons are power personified. However unfortunate the situation might seem, there is simply no comparison of states like Pakistan with the United States where an overwhelming conventional capability is absent thus deterrence through MAD seems not only plausible but the only rational doctrine to adopt. For those who do not respect deterrence for what it is worth for the weak and think of the bomb as a liability, history needs to be read backwards. While the critics of deterrence may like to believe that deterrence failed to prevent Vietnam, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Egypt-Israel conflict, Kargil crisis when one or the other parties involved were nuclear-weapon states, the lesson learnt is that deterrence works best when it is direct and mutual. In all the cases cited above with the exception of Kargil, blaming the bomb or deterrence is simple ignorance about the facts of Cold War history. For instance, had Egypt possessed even a small nuclear force at the time of the Suez crisis, Anglo-French involvement in the conflict would have been on different grounds altogether; Czechs possessing a few nuclear weapons would have seen a different Russian response and North Korea and Iran have already brought the superpowers to the 'negotiating table'. For Pakistan and India where deterrence is direct and mutual, I believe that it is the minimalist form of MAD coupled with a credible minimum deterrence doctrine that has helped prevent escalation between India and Pakistan and has denied India escalation dominance in every crisis. It has become rather fashionable for analysts at home and abroad to find parallels between the Cold War and the two South Asian rivals instead of founding new theories about crisis behaviour of Pakistan and India. The Cold War history of deterrence witnessed the shift from MAD to the discourse on defence. The cornerstone of the US nuclear security strategy remained reliance on MAD and Robert McNamara, the then US secretary of defence, articulated it well by stating that quantitative improvement in strategic weapons other than those required by MAD was not necessary simply because there was no longer any such thing as nuclear superiority, thus rendering defence useless. As bizarre or uncomfortable the notion might be for the peace nicks; for the weak states nuclear weapons still make sense. The very fact that Pakistan has the capability to threaten the Indians to escalate the conflict by 'threatening' to use nuclear weapons, denies the Indians the advantage of launching and fighting a conventional war in South Asia. This is the 'stability' that MAD provides between Pakistan and India which borders on rationality from the weaker states' perspective. The key, however, to sustain credible deterrence in a hostile crisis-prone environment for Pakistan is to continue to deny Indians the nuclear advantage they are seeking by gradually strengthening its nuclear deterrence.
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