A losing gambit
India and Pakistan flirt with nuclear confrontation (again)
A cartoon might seem an unlikely instrument of diplomacy. But in July 1999, one of the last times that India and Pakistan nearly went to war, President Clinton was looking for a way to illustrate the dangers of a nuclear conflict. In particular, Clinton needed to persuade Pakistan's then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to withdraw troops from a remote part of Indian-controlled Kashmir called Kargil. Clinton opened a meeting in Washington by brandishing a cartoon that depicted India and Pakistan as two nuclear bombs battling it out.
That Clinton had to begin with such basics is more than a little unsettling, given each side's power to kill. But perhaps the lesson bears repeating. Once again, the threat of war, even a nuclear one, hangs in the air. India and Pakistan are trading war rhetoric as some 1 million troops angrily face off over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Ominously, Pakistan's nuclear centers have been put on higher alert, with all vacation and leave canceled indefinitely, U.S. News has learned. And once again, senior American officials--this time including President Bush--are frantically trying to remind the two sides of just how unthinkable such a war should be. In a sign of the administration's level of concern, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is traveling to the region this week to hammer home that message.
There were some encouraging signs last week that both sides were stepping back from the brink. Pakistan has begun to prevent militants from infiltrating into Indian-controlled Kashmir, at least for now. But the inevitable flare-ups in the future could easily prompt the kind of miscalculations that trigger a deadly nuclear exchange.
What if . . .? In some ways, both India and Pakistan are new to the nuclear game. While the two archenemies have been researching nuclear weapons for years, they only performed real-life tests of weapons in 1998. The full consequences of these weapons appear to be still sinking in. Both sides have a "lackadaisical attitude" toward their powerful arsenals, according to Husain Haqqani, a former adviser to three Pakistani prime ministers. "These two countries have acquired nuclear weapons without consideration of what happens if they have to use them," says Haqqani, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For example, neither country has embarked on a campaign to build fallout shelters, despite the serious risk of a war.
Few observers think that either side would deliberately start a nuclear war. "They understand that any use of nuclear weapons would destroy centuries of Hindu and Muslim civilization," says Michael Krepon, a South Asia expert at the Stimson Center. But the potential for misperception or accidents gives even the most seasoned nuclear experts pause. Both countries have missiles that could carry either a nuclear warhead or a conventional one. It takes only minutes for a missile to travel from one country to the other, leaving the targeted nation with very little time to determine whether the weapon is nuclear.
To some degree, leaders in India and Pakistan seem to feel they could fight a conventional war and rely on rationality and outside pressure to stave off a nuclear response. "Both sides are under the mistaken impression that they can go up to the brink and the United States will pull the other back," says one U.S. government expert. "They think we can force the other side into concessions, but we can't."
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