During this week's SAARC summit in Colombo, Prime Ministers Atal Bihari
Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif are expected to resume the dialogue between their
two countries. The resumption of dialogue will be in the aftermath of both
India and Pakistan conducting nuclear tests and declaring themselves
nuclear weapon states. In a sense, this could be considered a new
beginning. As the US strategist Bernard Brodie pointed out in the very
first years of the nuclear era, the most important task facing two
potential adversaries is to ensure that all circumstances that may lead to
a war are avoided. This necessitates a continuous communication between the
two at the highest levels of political and military leaderships.
Image Problem
On the nuclear issue, Pakistan has a major image problem with the
international community. While India has offered a mutual no- first-use
agreement and there is a considerable body of opinion in this country
advocating an uncaveated unilateral declaration of no-first-use, Pakistan
has declared its inability to accept that offer. Secondly, as the departing
US ambassador to Islamabad has pointed out, Pakistan's baseless allegation
that India and Israel were preparing to attack it on the eve of its nuclear
tests - and then imposing a state of emergency on that account -- raises
serious doubts about the Pakistani government's sense of responsibility. On
Kashmir, while India is status quo oriented, Pakistan is the revisionist
power. Pakistan has been waging, a covert war in Kashmir for eight years
and the US State Department, in its annual terrorism reports, has
highlighted the operations of the international terrorist organisation
Harkatul Ansar from Pakistani soil. All these factors taken together
project an image of Pakistan as a country far more likely to act in ways
that may cause serious concern to the international community. In the US
folklore, narrated in the article "On the nuclear edge" in the New Yorker
in April 1993, it was Pakistan which was said to have made preparations to
launch a nuclear strike on India in May 1990.
India has a vital stake in the stability of Pakistan. India has no
intention to go in for an arms race since the present pace of effort, with
some marginal adjustments, would adequately meet its needs for a minimum
deterrent. New Delhi has offered a no-first- use agreement to Pakistan and
has lived with the line of control in Kashmir for 26 years, and before that
with the cease-fire line. Successive governments have also managed to
counter the massive covert war in Kashmir and have been able to restore a
situation of near normalcy in that state. India can afford to contain and
neutralise any further Pakistani effort to pursue the covert war in
Kashmir. The rest of the international community is today averse to
disturbing existing international borders and lines of control, given the
experience of ethnonationalist conflicts in Bosnia, Kosovo, Cyprus,
Kurdistan, Abkhazia, Nagorno- Karabagh, Chechnya, Xinjiang and Tibet. India
and Pakistan have lived in a state of tacit mutual nuclear deterrence for
the past eight years and the Pakistani nuclear blackmail in respect of
Kashmir has worn thin and is becoming counterproductive to that country.
Kashmir Issue
Against this background, India should offer to hold continuous high level
discussions with Pakistan on nuclear risk reduction and confidence
building, and on the core problem of Kashmir and terrorism therein. On the
first issue, teams of strategists from the two countries should sit
together to understand each other's doctrines, tolerance limits and the
probability of conventional wars. Just as the Helsinki talks between the US
and USSR became a mutual learning process, such a dialogue will improve
mutual understanding and build up confidence. On Kashmir, India has not
projected with all the data in its possession the dimensions of terrorism
there and the Pakistani involvement in it. Pakistan bases its case on
Kashmir on the third sub-para of the UN resolution, overlooking its failure
to implement the first two sub-paras. The time has come for India to
question the locus standi of Pakistan on the Kashmir question. Today's
Pakistan does not have the same credentials on the Kashmir issue as the
Pakistan of 1948 had. The 1948 UN resolution was a product of the Cold War.
As the UN mediator, Gunnar Jarring, pointed out in the last report on
Kashmir in 1957, such political resolutions as on Kashmir cannot be binding
forever, especially when ground realities undergo basic changes. Mr
Vajpayee should take the initiative to discuss Kashmir in this framework.