Indo-Pak. nuclear asymmetry

By M. R. Srinivasan

THE AGRA summit between India and Pakistan would no doubt have discussed the nuclear issue, even if Gen. Pervez Musharraf wished to talk only about Kashmir. For about 50 years, the Western media has managed to convey the impression of an equivalence between India and Pakistan in spite of the big difference in size, population and economic strength.

This fitted into the Anglo-Saxon image that the great British Indian empire had been broken into two contending halves. Over time, Indian diplomats got used to being twinned with Pakistan. Galling it was but there was just no way out. Now the Western media is upto its old tricks referring to India and Pakistan as the South Asian nuclear rivals.

Simply because Pakistan conducted six tests atChagai in May 1998, there is certainly no parity in nuclear capabilities between Pakistan and India. Pakistan has a limited capability for producing enriched uranium at the centrifuge enrichment plant at Kahuta.

India's capacity for producing plutonium is very large if we take into account the plutonium available in the spent fuel of its ten unsafeguarded operating reactors. India has three plants for separating plutonium from spent fuel.

Immediately after the Pokhran II tests, India announced a `no first use' policy. It wanted other nuclear weapon powers also to commit to such a policy. Pakistan has rejected it implying that it reserved the right to use nuclear weapons first. It has justified this policy on the ground that its conventional military might is no match to what India can deploy.

This situation therefore necessitates that India develop a `second strike' capability. This means that India should be able to resort to a nuclear attack after it has been the victim of a first attack. India will therefore have to withstand the consequences of the initial attack and then retaliate.

In the specific case of Pakistan, apart from Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, the other obvious targets are Kahuta, Sukur barrage, Tarbela and Mangla dams. There are no other large cities or concentrations of economic assets. Most of Pakistan is either agricultural land or desert.

India on the other hand has large cities with populations in excess of one million spread all over the country. It has large industrial complexes also spread all over the country.

In the event of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan, there will be many deaths and extensive damage to productive assets and infrastructure. But there is no doubt whatever that India will survive and come out the winner.

Some nuclear strategies compare the India-Pakistan situation to the U.S.-Russian situation that existed during the Cold War years. Let us note that the U.S. and the USSR had more or less equal populations. They also had comparable resources and industrial capabilities. The fact that the size of the economies was significantly different was important.

In not taking into account the big differences between India and Pakistan, strategic analysts make a real blunder. They may unwittingly encourage an adventurous leadership to seriously test India's resilience and ability to retaliate. This is not blandishing a threat but a statement of fact.

The American leaders during the last five decades have actually encouraged military dictatorships all over the world. They find it easier to deal with dictators than the raucous politicians who have to satisfy the expectations of diverse constituencies and win elections in democratic states.

Gen. Musharraf may be sincere in talking about Kashmiris' aspirations. But what about restoring democracy in Pakistan itself and returning it to civilian rule? The concerns of fifteen million Kashmiris are no doubt important. But so are peace and prosperity of the more than one hundred million Pakistanis and a thousand million Indians.

The 50 years of U.S. handling of global disputes has virtually frozen nearly all of them and carried them over to the present. It is arguable that some of the disputes such as the one between the two Koreas, that between Taiwan and China and that between India and Pakistan would have reached some resolution if external interventions had not taken place.

This situation has no doubt been seriously compounded by the inability of the leaderships of India and Pakistan to see where the long term interests of their peoples lie.

In recent times, some well-known American nuclear strategists have argued that states at an early stage of possessing nuclear weaponry with small arsenals have a tendency to be impulsive and unstable. This could be interpreted as a call to build more nuclear weapons to graduate to a responsible and stable level.

States with large numbers of people mired in poverty have no business to divert scarce resources on weaponry, conventional or nuclear. Gen. Musharraf stated recently that Pakistan will not accept the Line of Control (LoC) or indeed that Jammu and Kashmir was part of India. Partition took place some 50 years ago.

We may not like the ground rules adopted then but we cannot go back and rewrite history. The only way out is to accept international borders as they have emerged and arrange relations with neighbouring countries in a civilised manner.

To get an idea of the relative status of nuclear developments in China, India and Pakistan, one should go beyond nuclear weapons, into the realm of nuclear power. China has built on its own one PWR reactor of 300 MW at Chin Shan. It has imported two reactors from France which are operating. It is now building reactors in collaboration with Canada and Russia.

India has 14 operating reactors. Two reactors at Tarapur, our oldest, were imported from the U.S. and two in Rajasthan from Canada. Ten reactors operating at present were all designed and built by India. India has taken up construction of two reactors of 540 MW at Tarapur and two reactors of 220 MW at Kaiga as units 3 and 4.

Pakistan has an old reactor of 140 MW near Karachi, supplied by Canada. China is building a 300 MW PWR at Chashma. The Indian Government and even the Department of Atomic Energy have unfortunately not been very enthusiastic is stressing the great progress made by India in nuclear power technology on a self- reliant basis.

Going beyond nuclear weapons and nuclear power, nuclear technologies have been of great benefit in health, industry and agriculture. The nation has reserved the credits mostly for work in the weapons area. This distortion in acknowledging progress in different applications needs to be corrected.

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