Abstract
Following the May nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, the United States imposed wide-ranging sanctions mandated by the 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act on both nations. By early November the sanctions regime had been partly lifted so that only high technology and military equipment exports were still covered. The sanctions were eased to reward India and Pakistan for announcing testing moratoriums, and because both nations had pledged to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by September of this year.
In its dealings with New Delhi and Islamabad, Washington has focused on three priorities: preventing an escalation of a nuclear and missile race; minimizing damage to the nonproliferation regime; and promoting bilateral dialogue between India and Pakistan on reducing tensions–particularly in regard to Kashmir.
Washington's South Asia policy has been a failure. Successive generations of policy-makers regarded the region as beset with intractable conflicts; they were frustrated by their own ill-conceived or poorly executed regional initiatives; they were torn in trying to choose between favoring Pakistan or India during the Cold War; and they generally left South Asia off the U.S. geostrategic policy map, except in times of acute crisis.
India's foreign secretary, Krishnan Raghunath (right), met with Shamshad Ahman, Pakistan's foreign minister, on October 18, 1998. No agreement was reached.
Since last May, however, the U.S. approach has been uncharacteristically pragmatic and coherent, focusing on the art of the possible. Several separate rounds of negotiations have been held between the United States and India and the United States and Pakistan in an attempt to work out an acceptable nonproliferation and security architecture for South Asia.
In the past, confidence- and security-building measures in South Asia have made little headway, which can be traced to an Indo-Pak failure to agree on reasonable levels of conventional, nuclear, and ballistic missile forces; an inability to develop a common strategic language incorporating arms control as a component of national security policy; and a failure to transform tacit bargaining into an explicit strategic dialogue, resulting in an emphasis on global nuclear disarmament at the cost of more modest region-specific measures.
In recent negotiations with the United States, both South Asian countries have engaged in hard-nosed bargaining, and it appears that Washington has opted for a strategy of accommodation. Washington has been tight-lipped about the status of its dealings with India and Pakistan, to the extent of keeping even its close allies in the dark. But it is clear that the strategy recognizes that neither India nor Pakistan will give up its nuclear weapons or ballistic missile capabilities in the short to medium term.
Given that, it makes sense for the United States to be sympathetic to India and Pakistan's respective security dilemmas; to encourage Indo-Pak restraint in the development and deployment of nuclear weapons; to promote strategic dialogue between Pakistan and India (as well as between India and China); to demonstrate flexibility in sanctions by waiving restrictions on economic assistance and military-to-military contacts; to provide expertise in implementation of export controls on weapons-of-mass-destruction materials and technologies; and to engage in technical discussions on restraints on nuclear weapons, including safety, security, and chains of custody.
Apparently, France is also discussing high-technology cooperation with India in such fields as inertial confinement fusion and advanced laser research.
In its negotiations with the United States, India's goals have included recognition of its status as a regional and a global power, mitigation of the effects of a U.S.-China strategic alliance, the lifting of technology sanctions, the sharing of information and data on subcritical tests and simulation technology for nuclear weapon safety and reliability, keeping the Kashmir dispute a bilateral matter between itself and Pakistan, and achieving progress at the multilateral level on global nuclear disarmament.
Among Pakistan's goals: securing the same package as India in terms of nonproliferation, economic assistance, and technology sharing; U.S. and/or international intervention in resolving the Kashmir dispute; easing the threat of war in the region; and salvaging its crumbling economy.
Since the May tests, India and Pakistan's heads of government, foreign secretaries, and senior officials have met bilaterally several times in an effort to lessen tension on a host of issues, from Kashmir to drug control.
At the October round of talks between Foreign Secretaries Shamshad Ahmed (Pakistan) and Krishnan Raghunath (India), Pakistan proposed a nonaggression pact, with a provision to set up a dispute resolution mechanism, as well as measures to prevent violations of air space, prior notification of military exercises, and the upgrading of military communication links.
India, which had already declared a no-first-use policy, asked Pakistan to do the same. It also asked Pakistan to agree to advance notice of ballistic missile flight tests, to the non-targeting of population and economic centers, to military-to-military exchanges, and to upgrading the communication links between the prime ministers and foreign secretaries.
However, disagreements over key issues, such as Kashmir and nuclear-restraint measures, prevented agreement on other confidence- and security-building measures where some common ground existed.
The dilemma in South Asia remains centered on the fact that nuclear proliferation and nuclear security are interlinked: Pakistan versus India, India versus China, China versus Russia, and Russia versus the United States. Regional security efforts in South Asia, therefore, can be served by the United States recognizing that both Pakistan and India are at a strategic crossroads. They can opt for the continuing development and deployment of nuclear and missile forces. Or they can reduce the proliferation dangers through confidence- and security-building measures.
India and Pakistan should be encouraged–and assist-ed–to consider a variety of bilateral (and multilateral) discussions and agreements to maintain their current tacit non-deployment practices regarding nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles; to agree on some measure of sufficiency in terms of weapon-usable fissile material stocks, warheads, and weapon systems; to negotiate and implement a package of regional confidence- and security-building measures; and to actively contribute to the universalization of current global nonproliferation norms.
The United States and the Group of Eight Industrialized Nations should remove all sanctions, save those directly related to the transfer of weapons-of-mass-destruction technologies and conventional weapons, thus facilitating a short-term focus on a South Asian nuclear nonproliferation strategy that could involve many components, only a few of which are noted here:
▪ India and Pakistan would maintain their moratoriums on nuclear tests, and would sign and ratify the CTBT. Other states, whose ratification is required for the treaty to enter into force (most prominently, the United States), must also ratify the treaty so that it can be brought into force through the mechanism of a political conference scheduled for next fall.
▪ India and Pakistan should maintain their apparent policies of limited weaponization and non-deployment. Russia should ratify START II, so that the United States and Russia can get on with the negotiation of START III.
▪ India and Pakistan should limit the deployment of ballistic missiles and agree on prior notification of ballistic missile flight-tests.
▪ Both nations should upgrade the “hot line” that has already been set up for periodic communication between senior military leaders. The United States could provide technological and financial assistance.
A regionally focused approach to the proliferation dilemma lies in resolving or ameliorating the security concerns that have led India and Pakistan to develop nuclear weapons in the first place. But at the same time, the global political currency of nuclear weapons must be devalued. As long as the traditional nuclear weapon states rely for their security on nuclear weapons, it will be seen by the de facto nuclear weapon states as illogical to deny them the same rationale.
In addition to maintaining existing global mechanisms to control proliferation, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the nuclear weapon states must themselves move away from reliance on nuclear weapons if they expect other countries to do the same.
A nuclear South Asia is here to stay. Pragmatic arms control strategies must therefore focus on accommodation, not appeasement or confrontation. South Asia is sufficiently different from other regions of conflict that an accommodation strategy need not set a precedent.