Nuclear Standoff and Kashmir: Recipe for Disaster?

By M.M. Ali

Liquidation of the Soviet empire has radically altered the premises upon which American diplomatic and military policies have been based for nearly 50 years. With the nuclear threat to the United States greatly reduced, military budgets will shrink, and economic competition will replace military confrontation.

The changes in the superpower equation will not have the same degree of impact on all other countries, however. This is particularly true of states that have few or no global or regional interests or ambitions. Nevertheless, most nations seem to be repositioning in the changed international environment. With the Russian nuclear threat to the United States almost eliminated, the tension in that relationship is likewise almost gone.

A highly significant fact, however, is that despite the similar reduction almost to the vanishing point of Sino-Russian tension, China is emerging as a nuclear superpower, with a rapidly growing economy. This lends a new significance to Asia in world affairs and is particularly unwelcome in India.

More than ever, therefore, India needs the United States. Where India's size and geopolitical location are assets, the grand scale of its poverty is its liability. Also, although India has ambitions to play the leading role in the South Asian region, it has yet to deal fairly and consistently with its smaller neighbors.

It is a highly visible annoyance to Indians that the United States is not yet clear about either its short-term or long-term goals in Asia. Perhaps it still is in the process of readjusting to the post-Soviet and pre-China world order. Nevertheless, this important transient phase will determine the shape of things to come not only in South Asia but in other regions of the globe.

Indo-U.S. Relations

The old adage that one needs to worry more about friends than enemies was never more true than in the case of India's friend, former Congressman Stephen Solarz. He froze the process of appointing a new American ambassador to India for more than a year because he would not withdraw his name, even though he could have learned by reading the Washington newspapers that his nomination was permanently derailed by the results of the mandatory security investigation.

The delay was interpreted in many different ways in India, and kept relations with the United States at a very low point. As a result, Indians overreacted even to relatively innocuous pronouncements by State Department officials on sensitive issues like Kashmir.

Perhaps Washington also wanted to send messages of its own to Delhi. Clinton administration officials made it clear that while they respect the presence of democracy in India, they do not like violations of human rights in Kashmir, and they hope to see an end to nuclear proliferation in the subcontinent.

More than ever, India needs the United States.

The last item, clearly, has become a U.S. foreign policy priority in South Asia. Several American intelligence reports have alluded to the real possibility of a nuclear war between India and Pakistan if existing frictions and disputes between the two countries are not carefully resolved, and the nuclear race ended.

Picking up on the subject, The Washington Post observed on March 28: "The United States is cranking up a new approach to the threat of nuclear war in South Asia ... American initiative would enlist India (and Pakistan) in similar nuclear forbearance" and draw the two "into an expanding web of dialogue on nuclear, political and regional security matters."

In a bid to help remove some of the increasingly audible misgivings in New Delhi, the U.S. nominated seasoned and highly respected career diplomat Frank Wisner, presently deputy secretary of defense for international affairs, as the next U.S. ambassador to India, and sent newly named Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to visit the subcontinent and clarify U.S. regional positions.

The Wisner appointment was especially appropriate because some of India's pique stemmed from the abrupt transfer of former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering from New Delhi to Moscow, long before his tour of duty was scheduled to end. Indians rightly perceived that the man widely regarded as America's top career diplomat was moved because Washington considered the situation in Moscow more important than that in New Delhi.

The newest steps apparently have assuaged some of the misunderstandings that had cropped up in Delhi. However, no one is prepared to bet that Indo-U.S. relations are on cruising speed. There still are many unresolved issues. Commented Suman Dubey in The Wall Street Journal: "Bowing to Indian sensitivities, the U.S. has changed the tenor—though not the content—of its diplomacy in South Asia."

This was best illustrated by thereaction to a visit to New Delhi by Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Robin Raphel, which aimed at removing "misinterpretations" of her previous statement on Kashmir, and paving the way for Talbott's visit. However, her reception was marred by Washington's announcement of circumstances under which it would go ahead to deliver F-16 aircraft that Pakistan had bought and paid for a long time ago. Indians protested, although Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had her own problems with the linking of delivery of the F-16s to a rollback of Pakistan's nuclear program.

Nuclear Proliferation

A spate of news stories sounded the alarm in major American newspapers throughout the month of March over a "nuclear race" between India and Pakistan. The New York Times said on March 29: "U.S. intelligence predicts that if a nuclear war is going to happen, it will be a war between India and Pakistan ... Both countries have all the nuclear material and parts they need to assemble a considerable stock of warheads. And each is developing missiles capable of striking the other's cities. . ."

This had created the mixed climate of fear and anger before Strobe Talbott's visit to the subcontinent. Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao delayed his meeting with Talbott by one day, but then accepted President Bill Clinton's invitation to visit the U.S. in May.

Indians focused on the U.S. decision to release the 38 F-16s to Pakistan as a move that would further jeopardize the prospects of peace in the subcontinent. Prime Minister Bhutto, for her part, reportedly told Talbott in no uncertain terms that Pakistan opposes linking delivery of the F-16s, for which it already has paid $658 million, with Pakistan's nuclear program—especially when India continues increasing its nuclear weapons capability.

Talbott, who previously had expressed qualified optimism about the outcome of his talks in both India and Pakistan, remarked upon returning only that the two countries have agreed to keep the door of negotiations and dialogue open on the nuclear and other issues that have kept tensions high between them all these years. Talbott, however, no longer was talking of "rollback" of the nuclear programs in the subcontinent. After his visit, the theme was "capping," or holding the programs in the two states to present levels.

Increasingly, these developments took place while the U.S. was escalating the verbal pressure on North Korea's alleged nuclear weapons program. It reportedly was China that intervened to cool the U.S. rhetoric but, obviously, both India and Pakistan were tuned into the North Korea debate that had started in the United States.

As the U.S. government sent out very mixed signals to the world community, if anything actually rolled back, it was Washington's policy toward India. It suddenly seemed to move from open indifference to extending a hand of warm friendship. The seeming indecision and uncertainty in Korea and South Asia, however, were dwarfed by the inconsistencies in U.S. policies over Bosnia. Such inconsistency and unpredictability are difficult to accept for countries to whom the U.S. is important, without the anger that became so obvious in India.

Commenting on the confused state of affairs, Charles Krauthammer wrote in the April 1 Washington Post: "Why fight nuclear proliferation? Is it not inevitable? Today, tomorrow, everyone will have the bomb. After all, don't India, Israel and Pakistan already have it?" He cautioned, however, that unless "outlaw states" like North Korea are contained, this generation will be leaving behind an extremely vulnerable and explosive world for its children and grandchildren.

With regard to the nuclear fears in the subcontinent, it was clear that the Clinton administration, this time around, appeared to be serious. Even as it pursued Israel-PLO diplomacy, it clearly hoped to bring India and Pakistan to sit across the table from each other and negotiate their own "outstanding" disputes, including Kashmir.

The Kashmir Question

There may be similarities between the Israel-PLO scenario and the Indo-Pak dispute over Kashmir. There also are wide dissimilarities. If the game were to be played out in the Tel Aviv style, bilateral dialogue would perhaps continue forever, giving the occupying forces a definite advantage. If the subject were being pursued with some concern for the Palestinians, the mediator would have to play a more activist role.

A pivotal aspect of the issue is that India and Pakistan are not the only parties to the dispute. The Kashmiris themselves will have to be included in the decision making.

Paula Newberg, in the April 3 Los Angeles Times, advocated a strong U.S. approach: "Until Washington makes clear that Kashmiri rights must be respected as a matter of right—and, correlatively, that Kashmiris should determine their own fate—U.S. persuasive power in any other policy arena will be limited." Asking for a strong U.S. policy and pointing at what she sees as good prospects for it in the subcontinent, Newbert added: "Preventive diplomacy, sustainable development and democracy, multilateralism, rights and non-proliferation all are clear, present and possible in the subcontinent today."

The Kashmiris find themselves in an almost no-win situation.

It is ironic that the most concerned parties in the dispute—the Kashmiris—find themselves in an almost no-win situation. If the dispute is left to the disputing members, the physically stronger holds out for the status quo, no matter what the moral and legal positions may be. If the dispute is internationalized, however, it is likely to become a political football, all parties seeking to please India or Pakistan, and no one concerned about the Kashmiris.

Until the recent flurry of U.S. diplomacy, India was so frustrated by the perceived in difference of the Clinton administration that it was considering giving up on the White House and the State Department and concentrating instead on the U.S. Congress and U.S. investors. (The ideas almost certainly stemmed from India's new-found Israeli friends.) The Indian government opened up its import policy and bent over backwards to entice the U.S. conglomerates. Foreign investments in India jumped to over $1 billion.

Meanwhile, to reduce public opinion pressure from abroad, for the first time New Delhi allowed observers from the International Red Cross to enter Kashmir. The timing of the revival of the F- 16 deal to Pakistan also afforded a good excuse for India to argue its nuclear case.

From its point of view, Pakistan has concluded that with Afghanistan freed of the Soviet yoke, with the Pressler Amendment halting U.S. aid so long as Pakistan continues nuclear weapons programs, and with Indian belligerence unabated, its best bet is to keep and enhance its nuclear capability.

Remove its nuclear potential and Pakistan suddenly disappears from the South Asian radar screen. Or, at least, it loses much of its potential bargaining power in the world.

Again, ironically, Pakistan eyes the military invincibility of little Israel as a possible model. These may be negative lessons, but they are real in a real world. What is sad is that as the resource consuming nuclear weapons programs are injected into South Asia's "great game," the people of the area remain among the world's poorest.

Can Kashmir spark a nuclear holocaust in the subcontinent? The potential is there, and the U.S. intelligence community agrees. Washington finally appears to be willing to help initiate meaningful dialogue between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue. But first it wants both countries to stop their nuclear programs. We have seen the inherent difficulties in such two-pronged approaches. It will cease to be a chicken-and-egg issue only if the United States is willing to work seriously in the role of activist mediator.

M. M. Ali is a professor at the University of the District of Columbia.