Surely, no philosophical discourse is needed to understand or agree that nuclear weapons are never meant to be used. They are only a means of ‘deterrence’ and to an extent seem to have served this purpose during the peak Cold War years. But one must also agree that the risk of a nuclear catastrophe will continue to loom over our heads until the universally acclaimed goal of ‘Global Zero’ is accomplished.
The Cold War is over, yet tens of thousands of nuclear weapons developed as a means of ‘deterrence’ remain in arsenals around the world. Together the US and Russia alone possess more than 95 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. Their command and control systems are still tuned to permit immediate launch. The situation elsewhere is no less alarming.
Beyond rhetoric, there has been no progress towards a nuclear weapon-free world. The current global nuclear order inspires no confidence in the nuclear disarmament or non-proliferation agenda which is being followed in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner with scant commitment to the overarching goal of “general and complete disarmament” as envisaged in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
If global disarmament is beyond reach today, it is only because the multilateral system is being used to legitimise the strategic interests of only the selected few. Partial efforts at arms reduction and arms limitation do not amount to disarmament. They only take the focus away from the imperative of a nuclear weapon-free world with the major nuclear weapon states telling the world that their nuclear weapons with limited reductions will stay forever while others should do without them – a situation that amounts to telling people not to smoke while you have a cigarette dangling from your own mouth.
Unless a fundamental change comes in this mindset, there is no prospect for a global consensus on disarmament in pursuit of a nuclear weapon-free world. President Obama understands the bleak reality and has admitted that he may not live long enough to see a nuclear-free world, and that “the US will maintain a nuclear arsenal as long as these weapons exist. This sums up the entire disarmament scenario.”
Even the famous ‘Gang of Four’ consisting of four veteran US policymakers, Henry Kissinger, William J Perry, George P Shultz and Senator Sam Nunn as a bipartisan quartet of individuals with impeccable credentials as ‘Cold Warriors,’ while questioning the very concept of nuclear ‘deterrence’ agree that “as long as nuclear weapons exist, America must retain a safe, secure and reliable nuclear stockpile primarily to deter a nuclear attack and to reassure our allies through extended deterrence.”
In an extraordinary series of widely published essays since 2007, the quartet, however, has been pursuing a thoughtful campaign for global attention to the fact that our world today is “on the precipice of a new and dangerous nuclear era.” According to them, the accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how, and nuclear material has brought us to a tipping point where reliance on nuclear weapons even as a means of deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.
In building their case for non-nuclear deterrence based on conventional weapons, the four former US policy-makers have logically argued that during the Cold War, nuclear deterrence was useful in preventing only the most catastrophic scenarios but did not deter the Soviet moves into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Nor did it prevent the numerous crises involving Berlin, including the building of the Wall in 1961, or major wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. In the case of the Soviet Union too, its nuclear weapons did not prevent its collapse or regime change.
In their view, the US and Russia were “lucky” that nuclear weapons were not used during the Cold War, and the world today had better not continue to bet its survival on continued good fortune with a growing number of nuclear nations and adversaries globally. The quartet’s broad conclusion outlined in its latest essay this March is that “nations today must move forward together with a series of conceptual and practical steps toward deterrence that do not rely primarily on nuclear weapons or nuclear threats to maintain international peace and security.”
The quartet’s most important, indeed insightfully realistic conclusion is the recognition that for some nations, nuclear weapons may continue to appear relevant to their immediate security. According to them, there are certain undeniable dynamics at play-for example, the emergence of a nuclear-armed neighbour, or the perception of inferiority in conventional forces – that if not addressed could lead to the further proliferation of nuclear weapons and an increased risk that they will be used. In their view, some nations might hesitate to draw or act on the same conclusion unless regional confrontations and conflicts are addressed. This requires redoubled effort to resolve these issues.
Interestingly, this assessment is of direct relevance to the India-Pakistan nuclear equation, the only one to have emerged in history that is totally unrelated to the Cold War and rooted in their legacy of unresolved disputes as underlying causes of their conflicts and confrontations. This aspect together with a number of nuclear and strategic restraint measures mutually applicable to India and Pakistan found adequate reflection in the outcome of the latest round of a track-two process called Ottawa Dialogue held earlier this month at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, California.
The Ottawa Process is sponsored by the world’s prestigious academic institutions and comprises a distinguished group of academics and retired senior civil and military officials from both India and Pakistan. The Palo Alto meeting hosted by former US secretary of state George Shultz welcomed the recent resumption of high-level India-Pakistan dialogue and formulated an elaborate list of nuclear and other CBMs for presentation to the two governments before their foreign ministers meet in Delhi later this month.
The idea was to assist the official (track one) process between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, with a history of conflicts and confrontations, in developing a mutually acceptable framework of nuclear restraint and stabilisation measures. Last year, they had made similar recommendations to the two governments which already seem to have found way in their expert-level discussions on implementation and strengthening of existing risk reduction arrangements and identification of additional mutually acceptable measures to build trust and promote peace.
The new list comprises a wide range of steps and CBMs that could be implemented not only to prevent an accidental launch of nuclear weapons or escalation of conflicts between the two neighbours but also to stabilise their broader relationship through mutual confidence building and restraint strategies. These also include conventional military CBMs or restraint measures and steps to encourage people-to-people engagements.
The Ottawa Group is mindful of the fact that some of the proposed CBMs cannot be undertaken in the absence of stability in other aspects of the relationship but they can, at least, contribute to the creation of a “virtuous cycle;” an atmosphere in which progressively more ambitious steps can be taken in all fields of confidence-building. In the ultimate analysis, however, India and Pakistan representing the most uneasy nuclear equation in today’s world will have to move beyond CBMs and purposefully get involved in conflict resolution.
Steady improvement in their relations requires fundamental changes in the way they deal with each other. A clearer framework of principles is needed on the basis of which to organise future relations. India, being the biggest country in South Asia, must lead the way by discarding hegemonic designs in the region.
For both India and Pakistan, peace and prosperity must now become the strategic priority. Mutual renunciation of the use of force for settlement of their outstanding disputes including the Kashmir issue will ensure a stable and peaceful neighbourhood conducive to harnessing the region’s vast untapped economic potential.
The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: shamshad1941@yahoo. com
Source: The News
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