OPINION:
OP-ED:
Let us assume, at least for the moment, that the crisis between Pakistan and India over the Mumbai terror attacks two weeks ago recedes and a resolution acceptable to both sides can be found that does no permanent damage to future relationships in South Asia. Beyond the necessity of averting a shooting conflict between two nuclear-armed states that have gone to war with each other before, can this crisis be turned into an opportunity?
Emotions and tensions are running high for understandable reasons. Despite many earlier instances of significant terror attacks that have taken Indian lives, India views this outrage in which about 180 people were killed and twice as many wounded as its September 11th. Blame was immediately placed on Lashkar-e-Taibi, a Pakistani-based terrorist organization long ago banned by the prior Pakistani government. In a phone call, it was widely reported that Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee threatened Pakistani President Asif Zardari that this incident was “something over which India could go to war.” Although the call was not a hoax, the assertion it was does not remove India’s option to use force.
Initially, Pakistan denied that any Pakistanis were involved in the attacks. However, a thorough investigation is essential to establish culpability. Evidence clearly leads to Lashkar-e-Taibi. But new facts suggest other parties and individuals were also involved.
What opportunity could arise from this crisis? The most important is the most difficult and will take the longest to achieve. In early 2002, after terrorists attacked India’s parliament, both sides headed towards the nuclear precipice. In the current crisis, there is no guarantee that nuclear brinkmanship will not recur. Should India reject Pakistani actions to bring Lashkar-e-Taibi to justice as insufficient, it could follow the American precedent set in Afghanistan, Iraq and Predator strikes into Pakistan and intervene with military force into sovereign Pakistani territory.
However brave and able Pakistan’s army is, India is a far more powerful and much larger state. The last recourse and doomsday scenario is the specter of nuclear war in the event fighting gets out of control or intervention threatens the break up of Pakistan. Mr. Zardari has already taken the courageous and bold step of vowing not to use nuclear weapons first. In the excruciating pressure of war, the endurance of such promises cannot be guaranteed.
The greatest opportunity rests in determining how these weapons can be permanently prevented from being used and how they can be reduced and even eventually eliminated. Arms control treaties between the U.S. and Soviet Union through SALT and START demonstrated that bitter adversaries had mutual interests in limiting nuclear weapons. While this approach has long been proposed in South Asia, after this crisis has cooled down, new initiatives must be undertaken.
Initiatives could start with the Balusa Group, which is named for two adjoining villages in the Punjab and now devoted to bringing a rapprochement between India and Pakistan. A driving personality in this group is retired Pakistani Gen. Mahmud Durrani, currently serving as Pakistan’s first national security adviser. Aside from the most obvious aim of preventing nuclear war, other important realities underscore the essential need for such an approach.
India and Pakistan regard each other as the key threat. That competition has spread to Afghanistan, already engulfed in a fierce and worsening insurgency. Pakistan understands the existential nature of the insurgent threats and has shifted its priorities west away from India. Military officers, however, are generally conservative. The Pakistan army still views India as the major danger even though it must contend with the insurgency. The Mumbai crisis understandably reinforces this perception.
India, having repaired its relations with China long ago, regards Pakistan as its nemesis. Unfortunately, India has turned a blind eye to its internal insurgencies that are likely to prove far more threatening to its future stability. As Pakistan must concentrate primarily on its domestic dangers, the same reasoning applies to India. During the flying visits of Admiral Mike Mullen and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to both countries last week, it was only Pakistan and not India that was pressured to take prompt action against domestic threats in the form of Lashkar-e-Taibi.
The new administration of President-elect Barack Obama will be the inheritor of this crisis and this opportunity. As argued before in this column, establishment of a conference of all nuclear powers by expanding the Group of Six that is negotiating with North Korea to eliminate its atomic programs is one way ahead. India and Pakistan would join the U.S., Russia, China and North Korea. And Britain and France should participate as well. Using the Balusa model, the goal is to prevent the use and spread of nuclear weapons and eventually to reduce those numbers as much as possible. That would be a real opportunity made from adversity.
Harlan Ullman is a columnist for The Washington Times.
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