The Hindu : Dangerous talk

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 03, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

Dangerous talk

WHILE AN OFFICIAL spokesperson has clarified that the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, was not referring to the possible use of nuclear weapons, when he was said to have warned the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, that a resort to non-conventional methods of war should not be ruled out if Indian troops crossed the border, there remains sufficient ambiguity to suggest that Islamabad has not abandoned its practice of raising the nuclear bogey from time to time. In an address to veterans of the Pakistan Air Force, Gen. Musharraf had said that the message he had sent to Mr. Vajpayee on several occasions was that India should not expect a "conventional" war if its troops crossed the international border or the Line of Control. As a senior military leader, Gen. Musharraf knows that the terms "conventional" and "non-conventional" have a specific meaning when used in connection with warfare. Given Pakistan's proven nuclear weapon capability, its refusal to adopt a "no first use" doctrine and the statements made by senior officials in the past that Islamabad would not abjure the use of these weapons, there ought to have been little doubt in Gen. Musharraf's mind as to how his statement would be interpreted. It was therefore disingenuous of the official spokesperson to issue a clarification that the Pakistan President had not been talking of the use of non-conventional weapons but about using unconventional troops, such as the guerrillas in Kashmir.

Gen. Musharraf, through his careful choice of words, was able to appeal to the patriotism and militarism of his immediate audience and yet retain the scope to deny that he had spoken of a resort to nuclear weapons. In the period when Indian and Pakistani troops were confronting each other on the borders it served Pakistan's interests to magnify the risk of nuclear war so as to goad the international community into intensifying efforts directed at a defusing of the situation. While that particular crisis has been relegated to the past, Islamabad apparently still entertains the false belief that a third party would feel compelled to mediate the various issues in contention between India and Pakistan (especially Kashmir) if fears of a nuclear conflict are raised from time to time. Irresponsible statements in regard to nuclear weapons and their use have also been made from the Indian side in the past. Therefore, it must be assumed that the leadership on both sides of the Subcontinent's main strategic fault-line have yet to develop an understanding that a stockpile of non-conventional weapons can, at best, be justified as a deterrent and that talk of their possible use has to be avoided scrupulously. Loose talk only conveys to the world outside the Subcontinent that neither India nor Pakistan can be trusted with the possession of such dangerous weapons and nuclearisation might well become the only subcontinental issue that the rest of the global community will concern itself with.

The poverty of thought that led to the nuclearisation of the Subcontinent gets all the more exposed when threats of nuclear weapon use are so freely brandished. What is worse is that resort to such dangerous brinkmanship is being made in a context devoid of any real effort to re-start substantive negotiations to resolve the serious issues between India and Pakistan. In its response to Gen. Musharraf's statement, New Delhi has focussed exclusively on its phraseology and the context in which it was made. While New Delhi might be justified to an extent in treating with disdain Gen. Musharraf's nuclear muscle-flexing, it cannot forever ignore the fact that the decades-long subcontinental impasse has acquired a dangerous dimension. India cannot compromise its best interests under threat of nuclear blackmail but the political and military leadership of the country does need to examine the ways by which the risks of non-conventional warfare can be minimised.

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