Onus is on Pakistan

By Ashok K Mehta

(April 28, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Nobel Peace Prize winner US President Barack ‘No-Bomb’ Obama has taken several initiatives in nuclear diplomacy. Earlier this month, he hosted the first ever Nuclear Security Summit — which some call nuclear theatrics — to ensure that no nuclear device or nuclear material falls into terrorist hands and that all fissile material is secured within four years.Without naming Pakistan, during his presentation at the summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh highlighted the threat of terrorist groups accessing weapons of mass destruction. It is around this incubator of nuclear terrorism that intentions and resources of non-state and state actors intersect.

While Mr Obama considers Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal as secure and sees “no nuclear crisis anywhere in South Asia”, US experts are not so sure. Presidential adviser Bruce Reidel cites the nightmare scenario of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba acquiring a nuclear device —no guesses who the No 1 target is. Mr Bob Graham, head of US Commission on WMD, Proliferation and Terrorism, testifying before a congressional hearing last week, said that Pakistan may slip over nuclear weapons to the Taliban for use against India in the event of escalated tension between the two countries. British counter-terrorism expert Shaun Gregory has said that Pakistan’s nuclear complex has been attacked thrice between 2008 and 2009.

The US has spent $ 100 million in augmenting the security of Pakistan’s nuclear capability and, despite denials, has contingency plans for responding to 15 crisis scenarios by its Northern Command, including the employment of the Conventional Prompt Global Strike Weapon capable of pinpointing its target within 60 minutes. Located next door to the terrorist launch site, one hopes that India, the most likely victim of a nuclear attack, has suitable contingency plans in its Strategic Nuclear Command. To start with, how does New Delhi deter a terrorist group, ostensibly a non-state actor, from doing what it has vowed to do — annihilate India using the ultimate terrorist weapon? Fundamentally, a non-state actor is existentially non-deterable.

After 26/11 and other cross-border misadventures, Pakistan has lost the fig-leaf of deniability vis-à-vis state linkages with terrorist groups it calls strategic assets. India and other potential victim states of nuclear terrorism must hold the state responsible for the actions of its non-state groups. Obtaining a UN convention or resolution on culpability of states harbouring terrorist groups will be as difficult as securing an acceptable definition of terrorism. Saner and responsible states must keep trying to find links between terrorist groups and the host state, and create conditions of traditional deterrence.

Since 26/11, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has been periodically stating that another major terrorist attack will invite a swift and decisive response (provided it is categorically established that it was launched from Pakistan is unstated). Another Kasab may not fall into the bag. Ultimately, it is Pakistan that has to be deterred through a clear declaratory policy outlining the consequences of actions by a non-state actor.

The Nuclear Security Summit was another opportunity for India to prove its bona fides as a responsible state with nuclear weapons outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty but yet following the rules of the non-proliferation regime. While Mr Singh announced the establishment of a global centre for nuclear energy partnership in New Delhi, Chinese President Hu Jintao said that his country would set up a centre for nuclear security. Not to be left behind, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani offered to host an international fuel cycle service facility in Pakistan. A Pentagon study is examining the universalisation of ‘No First Use’ and a world without nuclear weapons.

In one of the ‘Global Zero’ models, delegitimisation of nuclear weapons and getting the US and Russia to reduce their weapon stocks to 1,000 each, and implementation of NFU are seen as pre-conditions for arriving at a start point aiming for ‘Nuclear Zero’. At some stage, all states with nuclear weapons will be required to reduce their stocks to 100 bombs each. The alternative to numbers, the megatonnage of weapons, is also being considered, but numbers are likely to trump yields.

The ‘Nuclear Zero’ concept is not a bolt from the blue. Its illustrious pathfinders include Rajiv Gandhi who had put forward an ambitious action plan in 1988 for nuclear disarmament by 2010. Its more recent votaries are the ‘Gang of Four’: Former US Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defence Secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with his five-point action plan. Just as chemical weapons were delegitimised, it is theoretically possible for nuclear weapons to be declared taboo.

The Australia-Japan sponsored International Commission on Disarmament has recommended that the US and Russia’s stock of 23,000 nuclear weapons be scaled down to 2000 by 2025. It suggests that all nuclear weapon states declare NFU and reduce their weapon stocks proportionately when the US and Russia reach 1,000 each. As for the three elephants — India, Pakistan and Israel — outside the nuclear tent, it recommends that they be made to join the NPT but not as nuclear weapon states. As India will never get to enter the nuclear club as a nuclear weapon state, it must join the party bypassing the NPT but conforming to its non-proliferation regime.

India still has some time to review its position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty till the US and China ratify it. Revisiting its nuclear policy of credible minimum deterrence in light of the threat of nuclear terrorism is urgently required. Iran held its own parallel summit with a catchy title: ‘Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None’. The next Nuclear Security Summit is to be held in South Korea in 2012. States are required to comply by an action plan that will make the world safer against a terrorist nuclear attack. Al Qaeda for a long time and Lashkar more recently are seeking nuclear weapons for use against the US, Israel and India. The threat of loose nukes or dirty bombs must be taken seriously by New Delhi, especially after Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed’s latest jihad over river waters.

Since the attack on Parliament House in 2001 and despite several pledges by Pakistani leaders that their soil will not be used for terrorist attacks on India, Mumbai happened. New Delhi has failed to get Islamabad to rein in the jihadis. The challenge for India is to thwart the ultimate preventable catastrophe by holding Pakistan responsible for any nuclear misadventure by so-called non-state actors.