[sacw] India, Pakistan Show Nuke Restraint [?]

[Harsh Kapoor]

FYI
(South Asians Against Nukes)
-----------------------------------------

New York Times
May 11, 2000

India, Pakistan Show Nuke Restraint

Filed at 1:10 a.m. EDT

By The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The muted rumble that heaved plumes of
dust into the air in a remote patch of Indian desert two years ago also
sent political shock waves around the world.

With its nuclear weapons tests on May 11, 1998, India became an
uninvited member of an elite club of nations that had openly wielded the
bomb. By the end of the same month, India's rival Pakistan had also knocked
loudly on the clubhouse door with its own underground nuclear explosions.

But the consensus among defense and disarmament analysts is that
a full-blown nuclear arms race in South Asia has yet to materialize.
Despite bitter tensions over the disputed territory of Kashmir, which
nearly pushed India and Pakistan into a fourth war last year, the two
countries ``have not moved very far or in any significant fashion'' to
field nuclear weapons, said Stephen Cohen, a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution.

Cohen, a former State Department official and presidential
adviser on South Asian affairs, said technical difficulties, disagreements
over control of the weapons, inadequate early warning systems and political
considerations all may have slowed the deployment of nuclear-armed air and
missile forces.

``Both countries have very weak command-and-control structures
when it comes to nuclear weapons and also fairly bad intelligence
generally,'' he said. ``I think there are very strong military incentives
not to deploy to a hair-trigger stance.''

There also is the issue of control. In India, a centralized
command under the civilian government will almost certainly call the shots,
Cohen said. In smaller Pakistan, however, fears that military and political
structures would be overwhelmed in a first strike could lead to the
delegation of authority to local commanders -- a potentially dangerous
scenario given the possibility of false warnings and the extremely limited
response time.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union
enjoyed the luxury of as much as an hour to verify a nuclear strike, but
because of missile flight times between targets in India and Pakistan,
``these guys have only about three minutes or 30 seconds,'' Cohen said.

For safety reasons, the region's delivery systems -- aircraft
and missiles -- are most likely being kept in different locations than the
bombs themselves, said P.R. Chari, the director of the New Delhi-based
Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies.

``But of course, they could be brought together very quickly,''
he added.

Both nations have ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear
weapons, but many analysts believe Indian and Pakistani scientists are
still struggling to produce suitable nuclear warheads for them -- a more
complex task than simply building a Hiroshima-type bomb.

``For the moment, we are talking only about air-dropped
weapons,'' said A. Nayyar, a physicist at Islamabad's Qaid-e-Azam
University. ``Although the weapon-makers have said that nuclear warheads
have been mated with missiles, it seems unlikely at this point.''

Cohen said in the case of India, ``there's no evidence of a
functioning missile delivery force. It's still largely on paper and several
years down the road.''

Following India's 1998 nuclear test -- its first since 1974 --
the United States moved quickly to condemn the action and lobbied hard to
prevent Pakistan from following suit.

But since the explosions, political factors have played a key
role in restraining an unbridled exuberance for deployment, especially in
India. Having become ``deeply engaged'' with Washington, New Delhi has
probably decided ``it's worth going slow on weapons development'' Cohen
said.

India has pledged ``no first use'' and says it wants only enough
weapons for a ``minimum deterrence'' against a possible Pakistani or
Chinese first strike. Pakistan has declined to rule out first use and says
it needs the bomb to offset India's superior nuclear and conventional
forces.

Both have steadfastly refused to sign the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty, designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons.
At the United Nations, where the treaty is under review,
Undersecretary-General for Disarmament Jayantha Dhanapala expressed hope
that if the two countries haven't yet deployed that ``in this interim
period ... the international community can have an effect on these
decisions.''

But the situation may be only a small window of opportunity for
mature nuclear states to usher India and Pakistan safely into their club.
With relations between the two antagonists at their worst in decades,
fighting in Kashmir threatens to ignite wider hostilities.

``Nobody's going to wake up and say 'Let's go nuke 'em,'''
cautions George Perkovich, director of the Secure World Program at the W.
Alton Jones Foundation and author of ``India's Nuclear Bomb.''

``What you have to worry about is that they have another kind of
conflict and it escalates,'' he said.