[sacw] SAAN Post (3 June 00)

[Harsh Kapoor]

llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
South Asians Against Nukes Post
3 June 2000
llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

#1. Pakistan's nuclear doctrine
#2. India: N-Arms Programme Off AERB Jurisdiction
__________________________________________

#1.

The News International Pakistan
Opinion

PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR DOCTRINE

[by ] Rasul Bakhsh Rais

Pakistan has embarrassingly simple strategic calculation: a rough
nuclear parity would be the best guarantee of peace and stability in the
region. Let us spell out the issues of parity and nuclear peace. One
important, perhaps, fundamental lesson that India and Pakistan can learn
from the US-Soviet equation is that numbers game of warheads is neither
necessary nor winnable. Looking back at the nuclear junkyards, the US
and Russian strategists wonder if they needed all that for creating a
condition of mutual assured destruction (MAD). They could maintain a
stable strategic balance at much lower level without wasting resources.

But for long time, the Americans were not willing to concede parity to
the former Soviet Union; and the nuclear buildup was meant to engage
Moscow in the spiral of costly and self-destructive arms race. One may
wonder why India would not push Pakistan to a similar costly arms race.
The answer is that neither India runs an economy on the scale of the
United State, nor is Pakistan locked in a grand strategy for a global
balance of power. Pakistans strategic goals are modest and limited to
ensuring national survival against a larger adversary. The central
assumption around which Pakistan has built up its nuclear capability is
that a credible nuclear deterrence would compensate for inferiority in
the conventional force structure and offset nuclear advantage of India.
Pakistan lacks the economic and technological resources to maintain even
an optimal conventional defence capability against India that has kept
investing more in modernisation and expansion of defence forces than any
other developing country in the world.

The international power arrangements have changed, and Pakistan does not
expect the West or the Muslim countries to offer much in way of defence
cooperation. Already, Pakistan has pushed defence spending to a limit
beyond which the current rate of economic growth may not support it.
Therefore, Pakistan considers its nuclear deterrent cheaper, effective
and positive means to maintain a stable deterrent regime in the region.

The fundamental element of MAD is that the destructive force can be
credibly delivered and application of such force may not be acceptable
to an adversary. Of course, these are assumptions about rational actors,
and, I do not think the Indian and Pakistani decision-makers are less
irrational or rational than their western counterparts. Another
important aspect of MAD is that the nuclear forces of the adversaries
would survive the first strike, and the target country would be able to
absorb the attack and left with sufficient forces to retaliate with
punitive strikes. In our judgement, Pakistan has acquired all the
central elements of nuclear capability from mining, processing,
enriching fissile materials to the development of effective and credible
delivery systems. Before we move on to examining the nature of Pakistani
capabilities, let us briefly discuss the question of minimal deterrence
and the role of conventional forces.

It would be wrong to assume that nuclear deterrent is a substitute for
conventional war-fighting capability. No country can make an abrupt
transition from tensions on the border to nuclear strikes, particularly
when the adversary is also armed with nuclear weapons. What we expect
from the nuclear deterrence is that it would prevent outbreak of a total
war because of the inherent risks of escalation to nuclear exchanges,
which in the case of India and Pakistan would be suicidal. Nuclear
weapons are about deterring war, not for fighting one. Therefore, use of
these weapons by any side in the subcontinent would be counterproductive
to the very purpose of acquiring them.

One way to prevent their early use in the conflict is that the
conventional capability is good enough to deny the adversary valuable
strategic assets and maintain a stalemate for a reasonable time. The
assumption is that the conventional pause would give the parties at war
and the international community enough time to avoid escalation and
negotiate end of hostilities. Therefore, it would be important that
Pakistan maintains a robust conventional defence and thinks of the bomb
as a weapon of last resort when the strategic gains of the adversary
appear irreversible through conventional means.

The concept of minimal deterrence is neither new in the literature nor
irrelevant to the strategic conditions of India and Pakistan. India may
define its strategic objectives in extra-regional context or in relation
to China and build a nuclear force structure that would be larger than
that of Pakistan. The available evidence suggests that India's nuclear
capabilities are more varied and, at the moment, greater than Pakistan
can hope to put together. This imbalance will remain between the nuclear
forces of the two countries. It is neither necessary nor desirable for
Pakistan to match Indian nuclear strength warhead by warhead or delivery
vehicle by delivery vehicle. What it needs is a credible, effective and
survivable nuclear capability at a minimal level. The minimal deterrent
posture is associated with the notion of sufficiency of nuclear forces,
meaning these forces are enough to take a beating in the first attack
and stage a counterstrike.

The question of nuclear sufficiency is a very complex one and tends to
become subjective. Much would depend on in what modes the nuclear forces
are to be deployed, how many elements of these force are likely to
survive the first strike and what the targeting strategies are. It is
too early to suggest that Pakistan has made all these decisions. But, by
all indications, it appears that Pakistan would pursue a strategy of
minimal deterrence that it can economically afford to maintain and not
get into a wasteful nuclear arms race.

The question of stable nuclear deterrence is equally complex and it
cannot be addressed exclusively in terms of nuclear strategic logic of
the classical deterrence theory. Physical elements of nuclear deterrence
are necessary but not the sufficient guarantee of a stable strategic
environment. The emerging nuclear powers like India and Pakistan have a
common stake in taking other steps that would ensure mutual security,
safety of nuclear assets and stabilise deterrence.

Two steps are important to consider. First, Pakistan, due to the
limitation of the resource base and costs of an arms race, must consider
minimal deterrence as its nuclear doctrine. In this area Indian policies
may be provocative in going for more testing or exaggerating the
requirements of sufficiency, as its draft nuclear doctrine does.
Pakistan ought to focus more on what would be the level of unacceptable
harm to a rational Indian decision-maker and organise its nuclear force
structure accordingly. We must avoid the trap of numbers game. What is
important is a smart, credible and survivable nuclear force and not a
flabby, rough overkill capability. Second, Pakistan must engage India in
a meaningful dialogue with India on all issues of security. Success in o
ne area may have positive spillover effects in other areas.

Arms control agreements that would be consistent with the security
requirement of Pakistan must be negotiated. This is a kind of process
that needs two parties and Pakistan cannot do it alone. Opening of trade
between the two countries, sale of surplus power to India and even the
facility of proposed gas pipeline from Iran and Turkmenistan through
Pakistan to India would serve as instruments of interdependency between
the two countries. Avoidance of both conventional and nuclear war must
be the central objective of South Asian diplomacy and cover all areas
from resolving contentious issue like Kashmir to agreements on
conventional arms reduction and nuclear stability.

__________

#2.

[The following is a news report which appeared in "The HINDU" dated
June 02 , 2000 published from Madras ,India:]

N-ARMS PROGRAMME OFF AERB JURISDICTION

India has formally taken its nuclear weapons programme out of
the jurisdiction of its safety organisation, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board
(AERB), and set up a separate panel to do the job.
This is to follow the model evolved by several other nuclear weapons states
for the safety of their weapons programme. For instance, the U.S. Nuclear
Safety Commission oversees the functioning of civilian nuclear facilities
from the radiation safety point of view, but its plants producing nuclear
warheads are outside the commission's purview.
Dr.Anil Kakodkar, director of the Bhabha Atomic
Research Centre (BARC) has formed an unnamed safety panel for his
organisation following an order from Dr.R. Chidambaram, Chairman of the
Atomic Energy Commission, the nuclear authority of the country.
The BARC is the heart of Indian nuclear programme and has all the research,
design and fabrication facilities for making nuclear warheads. Its sprawling
campus in Mumbai has the country's first nuclear waste reprocessing plant,
used for extracting plutonium from burnt natural urnium.
The BARC had several health and safety panels for
its various research programmes and these bodies used to work closely with
the AERB which would provide safety standards and codes. But, say insiders,
the AERB seldom invoked its jurisdiction and exercised little control over
the BARC.
The AERB and BARC are located close to each other.
The AERB uses the laboratories and other facilities of the BARC and also
depends upon the latter for scientific and technological backup that it
needs for regulating commercial nuclear power plants. Besides, both belong
to the same 'nuclear family,' the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).
Many believe that the formation of the safety panel by the BARC and the
research centre's withdrawal from the jurisdiction of the AERB only
formalised the existing arrangement. BARC sources refused to give details
about the new panel.
Dr. Chidambaram told reporters that the move was of
strategic importance and more details could not be given. He said it was
aimed at ensuring the safety of strategic nuclear programme.
The AERB secretary, Dr. K.S. Parthasarathy, said the
BARC would continue to follow the safety management norms, codes and
standards evolved by the AERHB, especially in the area of radiation
exposure.

WISDOM OF ACTION QUESTIONED
******************************
[ From The HINDU dated June 2,2000]

Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan, who served as the Chairman of the AERB
from 1993 to 1996, stated in Hyderabad today, "The news that the authority
of the AERB has been substantially reduced by the Government is not
surprising in today's context. In one stroke, the safety assurance and
regulation of the mostly old and dilapidated BARC facilities has been made
the responsibility of those who are managing these installations, defeating
the very principle of independent external scrutiny which is at the core of
any safety regulation. But, if the Government's intention is to accelerate
the weapons programme, it will require the three-shift operation of all such
essential old facilities, whose degraded safety status and continued
operation without substantial repairs have been causing serious concerns
within the AERB from the standpoint of worker and public safety, even in
1995. The easy way to circumvent the problem of external interference in
their operation is to immediately remove the AERB's oversight authority
over these facilities. This could very well be the argument which the
Secretary ,Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), seems to have used to get the
Prime Minister's consent, throwing basic tenets of independent regulation
down the drain and keeping the PM in the dark about the glaring safety
issues involved in doing so. If only the Prime Minster's Office (PMO) will
once again go through the AERB Safety Issues Report I had submitted in 1995,
the appalling defects in BARC facilities will be clear even to the IAS cadre
in that office. But, the DAE is able to push through this change because of
their new-found power under the present Government, as a result of the May
1998 Pokhran tests. Unfortunately, the ultimate sufferers will be the public
living near these facilities.
As regards AERB's independence, he said, "The AERB
never had enjoyed the required independence from the DAE and it has not been
properly manned to make its safety evaluations without strong DAE influence
and interference coming in. It was kept technically dependent on DAE
totally, and answerable administratively and financially to the Secretary
DAE, whose facilities it is to regulate in an "unbiased" manner. Now that
the AERB has been divested of the responsibility for all weapons-related
facilities, one would hope that it will be permitted to carry out its few
remaining tasks without DAE interference. But, this may be wishful thinking,
since the power reactors are also used as producers of second-grade
plutonium for weapons and certain primary fusion materials for the
thermonuclear devices, through irradiation in these reactors. The DAE may
therefore want to continue the stranglehold on even the emasculated AERB
which now will be overseeing these power plants.
On the reported claim of the DAE that this
re-organisation follows our nuclear-weapon status since Pokhran-2, he said,
"Perhaps, the DAE wants us to believe that now that they claim India is a
nuclear-weapon state, we must organise our safety evaluation systems also
like other such states. If you take the US as an example, it is true that
they have a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) which regulates all the
civilian nuclear installations, while the Defence Nuclear Facilities Safety
Board (DNFSB) is responsible for the independent external overseeing of all
activities in the nuclear weapon complexes of the Department of Energy
(DOE). The DNFSB presents its recommendations on actions needed to ensure
worker & public safety to the Secretary, DOE., but, in cases where their
reviews show an imminent or severe potential threat to public health and
safety, the Board is required, under law, to transmit their recommendations
directly to the US President, as well as to the Secretaries of Energy and
Defence. To some extent, they are required to explain their actions at
public hearings, where they come under questioning of public interest
groups. In addition, the DNFSB Chairman and members are often asked to
testify before the U.S. Congressional Committees and, since all members of
such committees also hold top security clearances, the Board necessarily has
to reveal full details, without taking cover under the Official Secrets Act.
The DNFSB Chairman and members are selected from non-DOE personnel, usually
eminent public figures from the industry, academia, and management circles.
Will Dr. Chidambaram and the DAE assure us that his "Internal Safety Review
Committee" for BARC will also meet all these requirements like in the
developed nuclear weapon States?