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."
So far, the Indian and Pakistani publics largely dismiss fears of a conflict as well. The cover story in last week's India Today magazine, titled "What If . . .," had to start at the beginning, offering a detailed description of how people die from a nuclear blast and the resulting fallout. But the risks are real. India is still smarting from the May 14 assault by Pakistani militants on an Indian Army camp that killed 32 people, mostly women and children. Hard-liners in New Delhi are urging an attack into Pakistani-controlled territory to pursue the militants and destroy their training camps. Hundreds of bullet and mortar rounds are fired across the so-called Line of Control that separates the Pakistani- and Indian-controlled portions of Kashmir. Pakistan fears an attack by the much larger Indian Army, even instituting occasional blackouts in sensitive areas in Kashmir. Nerves in India were further rattled last week when Pakistan test-fired nuclear-capable missiles.
The State Department last week issued its strongest warning yet for Americans to leave the region immediately. Intelligence officials are watching closely to see if either side will move to assemble its nuclear weapons. "We have never come closer to deployment than now," says Feroz Hassan Khan, the director for arms control at the Joint Services Headquarters in Pakistan and a visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
If India does launch a conventional assault--perhaps with the stated justification of rooting out terrorists in northern Kashmir--Pakistan refuses to rule out using nuclear weapons. "I want to make it clear that Pakistan has not made nuclear weapons to put them in a museum," says a Pakistani Army spokesman. "Definitely, if there is a threat to our country which could not be thwarted without the use of our nuclear weapons, we will go for it." For Pakistan, the threat to use nuclear weapons has become its main strategic response to the conventional advantages that India enjoys with its much larger Army. India, for its part, has pledged not to use nuclear weapons first, but its rhetoric has been similarly heated. "The very existence of Pakistan will become doubtful if India is attacked with a nuclear weapon," says the Indian Army chief, Gen. S. Padmanabhan. Neither of these threats should be idly dismissed, coming from nations that have fought three full-scale wars.
Perils of brinksmanship. This time around, the impending monsoon season, forecast to begin on June 30, might well rain out military moves by either side. But history suggests the cycle could quickly bring the two countries to the brink of conflict again within months. The Kargil conflict three years ago nearly sparked a war, as did an attack by Pakistani militants on the Indian Parliament last December. "How many times can this occur without something going terribly wrong?" asks Karl Inderfurth, the State Department's top South Asia expert in the Clinton administration, who now teaches at George Washington University. "This will happen again and again, and at some point, their luck will run out."
Another problem is that both sides have kept their programs--and strategic plans--remarkably secret. "Nobody really knows what the thresholds are" that would trigger a nuclear strike, says Khan. This leaves plenty of room for misunderstandings. Even U.S. officials are uncomfortable with how little they know about the command and control facilities or the safety procedures, especially in Pakistan. "We don't have enough knowledge in that area," acknowledges one administration official.
In the end, the only way to reduce the danger will be to deal with underlying problems. Recently, Indian officials have echoed Bush's antiterrorism rhetoric to denounce Pakistan for supporting militants. But the fundamental problem remains the dispute over Kashmir, the Himalayan region the two have fought over since independence from Britain. Last week, Bush telephoned Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, reluctantly inserting himself into the crisis for the first time. Kashmir, it turns out, may be one more area of the world that the United States cannot afford to ignore.
Deadly scenarios
The nuclear blast and fallout of a 12-kiloton fission bomb explosion in the capitals of India and Pakistan would kill hundreds of thousands.
[Chart labels]
Fatality rates from a nuclear strike
Fallout
90 pct. die at epicenter; 80 pct.; 50 pct.; 30 pct.; 10 pct.; 1 pct.
Approximately 20 miles
(Model assumes prevailing easterly winds)
If India hits Islamabad
Range of initial blast: 1.75 miles
Range of lethal fallout: 6.3 miles
Estimated immediate civilian deaths by blast: 115,000
Estimated civilian deaths by fallout: 195,000
If Pakistan hits New Delhi
Range of initial blast: 1.68 miles
Range of lethal fallout: 6.3 miles
Estimated immediate civilian deaths by blast: 125,000
Estimated civilian deaths by fallout: 365,000
Pakistan India
Nuclear warheads 25 to 50 50 to 150
Armed forces 620,000 1.3 million
180,000+ 260,000+
in Kashmir in Kashmir
Combat aircraft 353 738
Over 12 over 36
In Kashmir in Kashmir
Armed helicopters 0 22
Tanks 2,300 3,414
Sources: Heritage Foundation, Jane's, International Institute for Strategic Studies
[Map]
India
Pakistan
Kashmir
Afghanistan
China
New Delhi
Islamabad
Arabian Sea
Bay of Bengal
Source: Heritage Foundation, Jane's, International Institute for Strategic Studies
With Aamir Latif and Soni Sangwan
This story appears in the June 17, 2002 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.