Category Archives: Nuclear Issues

Tactical Nuclear Weapons: A Step Closer to the Abyss

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Vice Admiral (retd.) Vijay Shankar

This article was first published by the Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, On November 30th, 2013.

Keywords: Tactical Nuclear Weapons, South Asian Nuclear Doctrine, NATO Paradigm, Nasr, India-Pakistan LoC

The Futility of Tactical Nuclear Weapons

        In March 2013 a workshop was conducted under the aegis of the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, CA. It sought to examine the escalation dynamics in a South Asian crisis under a nuclear overhang. A scrutiny of the scenario suggested that a vertical escalatory spiral was central to the paradigm and therefore, intrinsic to its anatomy was an inexorable traction to extremes. First blood had been drawn by a  Pakistan State sponsored terror attack, it targeted leadership at a very large public gathering leading to extensive casualties; in most strategic lexicons this is an act of war. The demands of the Indian side, unfortunately, were given short shrift. Had some movement been made towards apprehending and handing over the terrorists, the situation could have been defused.

        Accordingly, a swift punitive military thrust was launched by Indian forces across the LoC and a Maritime Exclusion Zone was decreed. Forces primarily used were the less intrusive Air and Sea arms. This in turn escalated to action that was not restricted to the LoC. The introduction of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) into the battle area attained inevitability. To Indian Leadership the question posed was how would offensive Indian forces respond? In the event a deliberate decision was made to search out and strike the nuclear tipped Nasr batteries as with other tactical artillery pieces without discrimination; and should a nuclear Nasr launch occur on Indian Forces it would be regarded as a First Strike and India would reserve the right to launch massive retaliatory strikes to the dictates of her Nuclear Doctrine. The adversary balked from deploying TNWs.

What is it all about? The Essence of Stability

      Marshall Ferdinand Foch, one of the lesser of the meat grinding generals of the First World War when faced with the bewildering nature of the larger strategic situation is said to have countered with a fundamental question, De quoi s’agit-il?  – What is it all about? Indeed this poser if understood and answered in the context of nuclear stability would bring us to the complexities that face nations with the coming of a weapon that can obliterate the very purpose of warfare; in the circumstance the separation of the conventional from the nuclear is a logical severance. A major divergence from the Two-Bloc-Nuclear-Face-Off of the past is nuclear multilateralism. In this altered plurality the true enemy is the dynamic that rocks the equilibrium.

       The essence of stability is to find agreement on three foundational truths. Firstly, technology, while it provides for modernization it invites covertness whereas its impact demands transparency. Secondly, that the army in Pakistan is the real power centre, and therefore for India to engage an enfeebled civilian leadership is self defeating. Thirdly, TNWs make for a dangerously unconvincing deterrent correlation.

         Why would a nation turn its back on the prudence of the past six decades and deliberately reduce the nuclear threshold through the introduction of TNWs and in a situation of mortal internal collapse, invite the increasing probability of the breakdown of nuclear deterrence? After all it was the Pak foreign Minister Mr. Aga Shahi in dialogue with the American Secretary of State in 1979 who suggested that the “value of nuclear weapons lies in its possession and not in its use”. TNWs are marked by several features that prop up the illusion of control and the misguided belief that the adversary would, for some reason, abjure the opportunity to escalate response. Its deployment will attract pre emptive suppressive action and doctrine for employment follows conventional field axioms with the risk of accidental, unauthorized or mistaken use.  It therefore promotes only one cause and that is the Pakistani military establishment’s hold on that hapless state. Recognizing the politics of the South Asian region and the emasculated nature of civilian leadership in Pakistan; the dangers of adding nuclear violence to military perfidy, as recent proliferatory history and Jihadist terror acts have shown, is more than just a reality.

The NATO Paradigm

      Pakistan in defense of TNWs often cites the NATO analogy. However, by the 1980s NATO was doctrinally imbued with the idea of the irrelevance of nuclear weapons against less than existential threats. With this conviction, both Britain and France perceived the use of nuclear weapons (of any yield) as a failure of deterrence and therefore not a realistic alternative to conventional forces. Employment of TNWs through the doctrine of ‘flexible response’ did not provide the lever to control the escalatory ladder. The strategy, even in concept lacked conviction for limited nuclear war is a contradiction in terms.

The Burden of God’s Gift

      The South Asian nuclear imbroglio is evolving under circumstances that are unique. A shared antagonistic history; geographic contiguity; a political and structural contradiction between a centralized de facto military leadership and a democratic dispensation; a yawning economic gap; and, awkwardly a self ordained military that (mis)perceives in antagonism an existential peril and a reason for self perpetuation. India also views the complicity of China in the Pakistan nuclear weapons programme as suggestive of doctrinal links that permit a ‘Janus’ faced approach to the latter’s  no first use posture.

      Pakistan contends that the articulation of a nuclear doctrine is unnecessary for the purpose of establishing deterrence.  Unfortunately, a nation that announced its nuclear weapon status and views it as “God’s gift”  must also realize that a deterrent relationship is essentially about mutual knowledge of purpose. Ambiguities, deception and carousing with non state actors can only serve to obfuscate.

The Challenge: Contending with Pakistan’s Perspective

     The impending introduction of a sea-based deterrent into the Indian arsenal, rather than being seen as an element of stability that will enhance credibility of the second strike, is perceived through a curious logic as an asymmetric trend that somehow adversely impacts crisis stability.  Given the opacity of Pakistan’s strategic nuclear underpinnings, descent to TNWs and duplicity of policies, it has become increasingly prickly for India to either understand nuclear thinking in Islamabad or to find coherence between a mania for parity, the rush for stockpiling fissile material and the loosening of controls over nuclear weapons.

       More puzzling is the strategic notion that the perceived conventional imbalance between the two countries may be countered by Pakistan exercising one of two options: firstly, secure an assured second-strike capability; secondly, place the arsenal on ‘hair trigger alert’ and then the argument goes, introduce TNWs as “another layer of deterrence” designed to apply brakes on India’s military doctrine of Cold Start (ala NATO’s discredited formulation). As Feroz Khan posits, “Pakistan’s flight-testing of the short-range, nuclear-capable rocket system Hatf-9 (Nasr), was introduced to add ‘deterrence value’ to Pakistan’s force posture.” The author in a bizarre contradictory temper adds “due to the proximity of targets, short flight times and the technical challenges of assuring information accuracy, the likelihood of inadvertence is high.” He further holds that “…central command and control will become untenable and the ‘Nasr’ with its marked footprint will attract punishing pre-emptive conventional attack. Thus, battlefield nuclear weapons such as Hatf-9 will pose a ‘use it or lose it’ choice, precipitating a nuclear exchange that may not be intended.”  The unbiased political examiner is left bewildered that if such be the imbalances in the power matrix, then why does Pakistan not seek rapprochement as a priority of their military, economic and political policies? The answer perhaps lies in asking, “Who stands to gain in this power play?”

Conclusion: The Quest for a Response 

       Pakistan espouses an opaque deterrent under military control steered by a doctrine obscure in form, seeped in ambiguity and guided by a military strategy that finds unity with non-state actors. The introduction of TNWs exacerbates credibility of control. It does not take a great deal of intellectual exertions to declare whose case lowering of the nuclear threshold promotes. Two options present themselves to the Indian planner; firstly to generate specialised forces that continuously track and mark TNWs and incorporates an airborne conventional capability to neutralise them. The second option is a soft one that aims at dispelling the veil of opacity that surrounds the nuclear deterrent. What may have impact is a combination of the two.

       Nietzsche astutely warned that “And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee”. Thus far nuclear relations in the region have been bedeviled by a persistent effort to combat the monsters that the shroud of covertness has cast; it has left us the unenviable task of out staring an abyss. Nietzsche in the circumstance would have advised an assault on the first causes – dispel opacity and engage the military through dialogue and from a position of total preparedness.

Coastal Security: To Keep the Homeland out of Harm’s Way

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Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

Abstract

Coastal Security is a harmonious extension of state policy whose purpose is protection against ingress of inimical man and material. Its progression is managed by unified control driven by global sharing of information, surveillance and a comprehensive interdiction system. The litmus test to ascertain credibility of the system lies firstly, in the extent to which we have a cohesive unified strategy in place and developed a joint surveillance and pre-emption capability; and secondly, whether we have made the local seas present an insuperable obstacle to every foe that seeks to penetrate. The Fortress of Murud Janjira did precisely so.

Keywords: Coastal Security, 26/11 Mumbai Terror Attacks, Nuclear Trafficking, Anti-terror legislation, Operational plans and communication, Murud Janjira.

Download full article here: Shankar_Coastal Security  

Excerpts

The Legend of Murud Janjeera

A little more than a nautical mile west of the coastal fishing village of Rajapuri in the Raigad district of Maharashtra stands the imposing Island fortress of Murud Janjeera. Built in 1490 by the local fishing community to ward off pirates, captured and enlarged by the Siddi mercenary Commander of the Ahmadnagar kings, the now brooding stone citadel was amongst the largest of that era. Repeatedly laid siege to by the Dutch, Portuguese, Marathas and the East India Company; its 19 bastions, 572 cannons and forty feet walls remained defiant and impregnable through history.[i] It was not till 1776, when the now independent Siddi’s led by Siddi Sat were defeated by the Marathas led by Chimnaji the brother of Peshwa Baji Rao I in the Battle of Riwas, that the unassailable fortress lost its doughty distinction. As a part of the battle reparations the Siddis were confined to this citadel. The immediate up shot was that the strategic significance of the fortress was annulled and the balance of sea power in the region disrupted. The legend will not be complete without deducing a theoretical abstraction that “the Fort, its eminence abroad and the resolve within had made the local seas present an insuperable physical obstacle to every foe that sought to penetrate”.

A Theory for Coastal Security           

As with any endeavour before we start upon an enquiry into coastal security in India, we seek a road map which will indicate to us at a glance what exactly are the waters we have to cover and what are its leading characteristics which determine its nature and general form so as to arrive at practical conclusions. The maritime domain is of such complexity that beyond the territorial waters of a state,[ii] only conventions exist to regulate, seize, search or even monitor the activities of vessels.[iii] Measures taken to sequester or impose control in international waters are normally unilateral and, predictably, run contrary to partisan interpretations of these conventions. Put pithily, what works on the high seas is that “might gives right”. Within the territorial seas what prevails are the laws of the State, to be put into operation by a plethora of disparate yet distinct agencies of government. But the predicament is that the medium that pervades does not tolerate distinction; both the high seas and the coast are washed by the same waters. So it scarcely needs saying that a segregated approach to providing comprehensive security across a fused medium is condemned to failure.

The second insidious feature that dominates the coastal arena is the effects of globalization and its hand-maidens the free flow of ideas, material and personnel. In addition to releasing entrepreneurial creativity and generating wealth it confers upon small groups’ disproportionate destructive and disruptive power. Access to this power and mobilizing it across the waters for illicit use involves exploiting the malgovernance of the High Seas and the fragmented nature of control within the Territorial Sea. A modus operandi which leaves frustratingly tiny footprints. The narrative of the assault on Mumbai on 26 November 2008 (26/11) and its chronology is well documented. What is not so well known is the evolution of the operational plan and the tell-tales that this process may have left for a discerning unified establishment to perceive and act upon.

Coastal security is firstly, about protection of the State from terrorists, non state actors and other dangerous people with violent intent (hereafter collectively referred to as terrorists) gaining access to the mainland using the sea route; and secondly, preventing the ingress of illicit hazardous material across territorial seas on to our shores. The fortifying process essentially begins with access to global information webs, establishment of wide area surveillance and intelligence networks and a three dimensional air-sea-land interdiction system. A pre requisite is for Command and Control of the entire process and the forces involved coming under a unified head irrespective of the Ministry of origin or the administrative department to which assets belong. Pursuits of diplomacy are obliged at all times be in harmony with the process.

So we arrive at our theory that Coastal Security is a harmonious extension of state policy whose purpose is protection against ingress of inimical man and material and its progression is managed by unified control driven by global sharing of information, surveillance and a comprehensive interdiction system. The American PATRIOT Act of 2001 provides a prototypical expansion of the Theory.[iv]

Sculpting the Approach: 26/11 as the Paradigm

Having now come upon a theory, it will be appropriate to fashion an exemplar and establish fundamental precepts that go into developing a counter to infiltration, penetration or assault plan in order to validate our theory. The events leading up to 26/11 provides a prime example of what could have gone into the planning and preparation of the assault founded on facts that are today available in the public domain. For it is out of such an analysis, that will emerge an approach to protect the State from the seaward ingress of inimical forces and illicit materials. It will also throw the spotlight on footprints and tell tales that our own intelligence and surveillance must stalk, and so also help define a strategy in order to defend and respond as we deter.

At the outset three assumptions are necessary. Firstly, for hostile ingress of any nature there are five essential steps that would have to be gone through by the perpetrators:

  • Planning and Reconnaissance
  •  Generation of an Operational Plan and Communications
  •  Logistics and Preparation
  •  Recruitment and Training
  •  Execution

Based on the extent to which the run up to the event can be reconstructed, experience tells us that these five steps, which may be called the Hostile Ingress and Terrorist Strike Process (HITSP), could be spaced over anywhere up to 18 months with Reconnaissance and the Provision of Logistics taking the bulk of time. Also, Planning is an individualistic activity restricted to a few and maybe conducted at a location distant from the target. The Second assumption is that between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ targets, there are no surprise targets and the Third assumption is that ‘wild cat’ unplanned assaults do not give the desired destructive benefit to the assailants.

A Footprint Matrix has been constructed below (Figure 1) with the 5-step HITSP as augments marked by red stars (Planning and Reconnaissance have been separated). On the X-axis the ‘Persistence’ of a footprint is graded on a scale of 1 to 5, while on the Y-axis, ‘Detectability’ is also graded on the same scale. The notional size of the footprint is determined in terms of these two factors, both of which are more cognitive than absolute. The smallest footprint is the least detectable and of least persistence, graded at (1, 1) and the most prominent at (5, 5).

Fig 1: The Detectability & Persistence Footprint Matrix[v] 

 Source: Author 

Slide1

The matrix tells us the areas we need to concentrate on in order to achieve the elusive goal of deterring, defending and responding to terrorist acts. As will be noted, four zones have been established, these are the Opaque Zone, the Transitory Zone, the Transparent Zone and the Murky Zone. The Process has been assessed for Persistence and Detectability levels and plotted within the four zones, which to the planner provide areas of focus. Obviously, when we deal with the Transitory Zone and the Murky Zone, the returns for effort are extremely small yet they provide early warning. Often due to long gestation periods and a high false alarm probability, the difficulties associated with maintaining prolonged states of vigil may cause the guard to drop, and vital footprints to be lost in a mass of information. These, therefore, are Zones well suited for electronic surveillance and computer aided collation, analysis and dissemination.

The Transitory Zone provides opportunities that are not present in the other quadrants, primarily because the period of reconnaissance, while sporadic, has not only to be comprehensive but at some stage must involve the leading protagonists, some of whom maybe quite alien to the area of operation (Abu Ismail, of 26/11 notoriety, hailed from Dera Ismail Khan in the North West Frontier province is a case in point). The Reconnaissance stage is an activity conducted very early in the plan and as in any operational plan, the scope for errors are the maximum at this stage and therefore surveillance that is kept by way of civil measures would in all probabilities record  footprints. The fact that David Headley (alias Daood Gilani, a Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) operative) had been a regular visitor to Mumbai since early 2008 is symptomatic of such tell-tales.

When confronted with the Murky Zone one sees a picture and a pattern that in hindsight is 6/6 and yet Persistence in the Murky Zone of the operational plan is most significant and therefore, had the fact that the Master of Kuber, Sri Amar Singh Solanki been profiled after his incarceration in Pakistan, so also the movements of Kuber kept track of, 26/11 could well have been nipped during the execution phase. Intelligence, however sketchy, provided on 18th November 2008, indicated the What, Where and When components (nautical parlance) that is, the position of the mother vessel and time; both parameters provided the basis for mounting scouting operations, yet this was not done on grounds that intelligence was not “actionable”. Consequently in the absence of deployed forces either at the point of divergence or convergence Kuber had a free run. Also, the most vulnerable period of movement from sea to shore observed by local fishermen at Colaba and reported to the police ought to have been given the due import that it deserved.

The Opaque Zone if exploited, gives us the maximum benefit for it not only deters attack but action in this zone is pre-emptive in nature; it demands comprehensive knowledge of, and information on man and material that potentially could be used for a strike. This must be backed by all-embracing intelligence networks, field operatives and most importantly, the will to take anticipatory action before a potential incident. Here we must also understand that such pre-emptive actions may have ramifications of an international nature and the State must be disposed to take that risk. Investments in the Opaque Zone will have to be based on steps initiated on a multilateral basis and through ruthless elimination of potential personnel who could pose a hazard. The complexities of operating in the Opaque Zone is there for a planner to see, it poses great challenges, it will demand heavy investments of both man and finances and will yield the best rewards.

Moving into the Transparent Zone, while both Persistence and Detectability are high, they necessitate an internal scheme that is not only comprehensive but transcends the travails of Centre-State relations, ill-defined demarcation between agencies and most significantly, the resolve to cut across boundaries that have been drawn for administrative rather than operational purposes. The movement of logistics, creation of safe havens, handling munitions and that too with great discretion is no simple task.  It is perhaps for this reason that the sea-route with back-up operating in international waters, can by the very nature of the medium, avoid check-posts and regulatory mechanisms that one finds on land. Of course the disadvantages are equally irksome since the environment is hostile, probability of failure due to a variety of reasons is ever present and movement from sea to shore is relatively slow and a vulnerable period. The Transparent Zone provides for not only early warning but exposes the militant operation over both space and time. Logistics and Preparation is neither momentary nor is it undetectable since it involves creation of safe havens, movement of munitions, hazardous material and hit personnel close to the target area. And yet their exposure is subject to the weakest link and least attended virtue of the defensive shield; that of municipal regulation, citizenry awareness and unrelenting deployment of patrols and scouts. The vulnerability of the execution phase lies in the fact that it conforms to a rigid plan; while in most terrorist strikes there is an element of flexibility, exercising the flexibility option would normally result in failure of the strike or marginal success. And therefore the very rigidity of the execution phase provides opportunity to detect and respond.

In the absence of a general theory of terrorism on account of its many roots, motivations, manifestations and intent it is a priori impossible. However, at the heart of terrorist activity lie two critical characteristics; firstly a total disregard to legality of method and secondly it is inspired by a sustained programme of large scale planned and premeditated violence. Intelligence gathering and analysis targeting events related to these two characteristics consequently plays a pivotal role in putting in place counters. It is this relationship in the intelligence scheme that will discern actionable intelligence from a mass of information.

[…]

Conclusion                                                                                                      

Our review of the current state of the coastal defence scheme and the security it provides would appear to project a disjointed image of a contrivance that depends more on a massed approach to security through the induction of numbers (in terms of human resources as well as surveillance means). While it is true that there is logic in numbers, yet the adversary is one who has perfected the art of visualising the cracks in the system. Obviously with more disparate elements involved, more cracks are there to slip in between. On 26/11, ten men with small arms came in two inflatable boats and held our financial capital to ransom for sixty hours.  The mayhem in terms of loss of lives apart, the Mumbai Stock Exchange closed down for the same period resulting in trading disruption of close to USD 9 billion per day. And this is the essence of the disproportionality that has been conferred. ‘Mass’ pitted against ‘Knowledge’ invariably results in victory to the latter.

The covenant between religion and the terrorist is a volatile one. It is neither appeased by bargains nor is it broken by modernity. Indeed it has fused the ideology that drives them with the source of their being (this may explain the suicide bomber). Under these conditions the only route that can succeed is the promise of failure for which, the answer lies in adopting a unified strategy both in form and content. The Footprint Matrix provides an instrument to channelize national effort. We concentrate on any one Zone at the peril of missing out on the others. Persistence is the key and adoption of large scale electronic means for profiling, surveilling, collating and analyses is a necessity.

The nuclear dimension is potentially, the most destructive present danger. While a nuclear strike may present a very complex planning task, our adversaries have shown themselves to be up to the most challenging, the most improbable and yes, the most diabolic. The establishments’ facility to deter, defend and respond will test its will to the extreme.

There appears to be an absence of a guiding national strategy and a coalescing doctrine which seeks to marshal all disparate resources controlled by State and Centre under integrated Command. If our primary strategic goal is to protect against dangerous people and the ingress of illicit hazardous material then this goal must serve to transform the existing organizational and material structures. The litmus test to ascertain credibility lies firstly, in the extent to which we have a cohesive unified strategy in place and developed a joint surveillance and pre-emption capability. And secondly, as the Fortress of Murud Janjira did, have we made the local seas present an insuperable obstacle to every foe that seeks to penetrate? Clearly the answers on both counts must remain in the negative.

End Notes

[i] Hoiberg, Dale & Ramchandani, Students’ Britannica India. Publishers Popular Prakashan 2000, p 403. http://www.maharashtratourism.gov.in/MTDC/HTML/MaharashtraTourism/Forts

[ii] Territorial Seas were first defined in the 18th century as 3 nautical miles, the maximum range of a cannon shot. A workable formula was found by Cornelius Bynkershoek in his De dominio maris (1702), restricting maritime dominion to the actual distance within which cannon range could effectively protect it. This became universally adopted and developed into the three-mile limit.

[iii] See United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS) 1982. The Convention on the High Seas is an international treaty created to codify the rules of international law relating to the high seas, otherwise known as international waters. The treaty was one of four treaties created at the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS I). The treaty was signed 29 April 1958 and entered into force 30 September 1962. As of 2013, the treaty had been ratified by 63 states. Oceans, seas, and waters outside of national jurisdiction are also referred to as the high seas or, in Latin, mare liberum (meaning free seas).

[iv] A public law in the USA enacted in October 2001, Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT Act) to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.

[v] The matrix was first presented by the Author at “The Seminar on Coastal Security” hosted by the National Maritime Foundation, New Delhi, in November 2009.

FMCT: Questioning Mass Destruction as the Basis for International Order

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By

Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar

This article was first published by the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies in June 2013.

Keywords: Pakistan nuclear doctrine, Indian Nuclear Doctrine, FMCT, Pakistan Foreign Policy and “India-centricity,” Deterrence Stability in South Asia.

Twenty eight years before Oppenheimer was stirred to note the significance of Krishna’s words from the Gita, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” Tagore, in 1917, had expressed deep scepticism in the fortifying effect of weapons of mass destruction. He (Tagore was not a pacifist in the Gandhi mould) posited that bigger weapons invoked a proportionally more intense reaction that exposed the paradoxically weakening effect of escalating military power. His reasoning was based on the premise that a nation’s pursuit of armed might, beyond a definable threshold, actually increases the penalty of war dramatically.

Seen in this perspective, Pakistan’s FMCT debate would appear unidimensional. Pakistan’s stance is that a modest and austere equation exists between, on the one hand, its current position on the FMCT, and on the other, the sum of ‘organised hypocrisy’ of the international non-proliferation regime and India’s capability both conventional and nuclear. It is important then, to examine the coherence of their standpoint.

Rabia Akhtar in her essay “Pakistan: the FMCT debate within” has pointed out that the tri-condition that would catalyse that nation’s participation in the FMCT is that “the treaty first address the asymmetry in fissile material stockpiles; second, reduce the existing stockpiles of nuclear materials by each party as a disarmament measure; and lastly address Pakistan’s security concerns emanating from India’s growing nuclear and conventional capabilities.” Given the India-centricity of their nuclear posture (as stated in the essay), all three conditions are, presumably, directed at India notwithstanding the suggestion in the second, which if applied would advocate an unworkable comparison and proportionality with all nuclear weapon states. If this were the intent then consistency of the proposal is waylaid before the treaty can get underway.

The first rider proposes to bring nuclear parity by level pegging of fissile stockpiles which in a sense may be appropriate when comprehensive power equation is comparable, doctrine of intent is known, is compatible and transparent, and Controller and Custodian of the arsenal are embodied in two distinct and separate national entities. However, a No First Use (NFU) policy can find no matching urge when faced with an opaque doctrine of First Use under military control, predisposed to tactical nuclear weapons managed by indistinct decentralised control and stewardship. There is only one riposte to this precarious state and that is to assure massive nuclear retaliation in the eventuality of the first use of nuclear weapons. Noting the imbalance in comprehensive power which is weighted so much in favour of India (GDP almost ten times that of Pakistan), the demand for equivalence does not make sense—in the same vein, India neither demands equivalence with China or the USA, nor expects it. Macabre as it may seem, deterrence stability is better served by destructive assurance rather than mathematical equality in stockpiles. Under these circumstances lowering the nuclear threshold with the introduction of tactical nuclear weapons only serves to amplify the vulnerability that Pakistan has put itself in and undermines the cause of deterrence. The Tagore Conundrum would appear to be at play here.

The third precondition is their security disquiet arising from India’s conventional and nuclear capabilities. A nation’s security concerns are a function of history, geography, developmental and economic objectives, power equations and, most importantly, driven by the aspirations of its people. The key is often leadership’s ability to find and leverage opportunities within the international system to the larger benefit of the nation. However, in Pakistan’s case, given the omnipresence of the military, it ironically remains a security state driven in the main by military considerations and Indo-centric security paranoia both at the cost of and to the neglect of development. The very nature of such a siege outlook will demand that the India threat remains in perpetuity, so patently reflected in their stance on the FMCT.

If we were to pause and consider a situation when the military threat of war from India did not exist or was of a low probability, then by the logic of the Pakistan security paradigm the siege will lift giving way to establishing a relationship that may suggest stability; then again the same prudence will petition for civil control over the military. The current political conditions post the recent elections have, debatably, opened a glimmer of opportunity. At least the voices that we hear from across the border are ones of less tolerance of extremism, civil control over the military albeit diffident control, and an air of reconciliation; whether this translates to concrete steps only time will tell, but economic deprivation often has an earthy rationale.

The FMCT provides the elemental impulse to restrain and safeguard the spread of nuclear weapons by capping fissile stockpiles. It is a first step not towards bringing equity in nuclear arsenals but to question the basis of mass destruction as logic for international order.