Why Pakistan's nuclear threat is nothing but hot air ?

Minhaz Merchant

India's muscular policy on PoK and Balochistan will make Islamabad resort to empty saber-rattling. If you think Indian media is biased, take a look at American media: it's leagues ahead in prejudice.

A flashback is necessary. India had just tested a nuclear device at Pokhran in May 1998. We were on holiday with the children in New York.

The news of the Pokhran nuclear test came in that afternoon, US time. Surfing the news channels, I was shocked at the tone of the reportage. On CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, anchors hectored India for this unpardonable sin. How dare India, a non-NPT member, test a nuclear device?

The Indian point of view was totally absent. American nuclear experts, security officials and defence hawks all came together on TV to denounce India.

President Bill Clinton was urged to impose immediate economic and technology sanctions on India (which he did days later).

Annoyed by the one-sided coverage, I called CNN. “Get an Indian version on your programme,” I said to someone in the newsroom.

They had no idea whom to contact. “Talk to the Indian ambassador Naresh Chandra in Washington,” I suggested. “You need balance in your story.”

Eventually the network did get Chandra and other Indian viewpoints on air but the coverage remained skewed.

While president Clinton was a friend of India, Atal Bihari Vajpayee had been prime minister for just two months. The two leaders hadn't yet developed a rapport.

Indian diplomacy was lacklustre and defensive. In Washington, India lacked clout.

American newspapers were as biased as the TV networks. The New York Times and The Washington Post harangued India over the nuclear test. The tone was febrile.

Having spent a few days persuading the networks to broadcast the Indian view (and doing some of my own haranguing to make sure they did), we returned to India. The children's school holidays were over and I had to get back to work.

Back home, the reaction to the nuclear test was euphoric. But there was bitterness over the hostile reaction in the West, especially in the US and Britain.

And yet, like our diplomats, Indian media remained defensive. Even the US economic sanctions evoked only tepid criticism.

I called Girilal Jain, then editor-in-chief of The Times of India under whom I had trained years ago. He told me to quickly write a strong op-ed on the Indian nuclear test and the West's reaction to it which he agreed smacked of hypocrisy and arrogance.

Here's what I wrote in The Times on June 16, 1998 in an op-ed titled “The NPT game is up – India must set the agenda now”:

“India's nuclear test has shaken the edifice of nuclear hegemony carefully constructed by the five ‘original' nuclear weapon powers (the P-5). Their duplicity in denying the same right to other countries – a responsible nuclear weapons programme – that they arrogate to themselves stands exposed in the glare of international debate that will now increasingly focus on the P-5's double standards. “By testing its nuclear device, India broke no laws, domestic or international. It is the P-5 nations who have been in consistent breach of the law by reneging on two of their legal obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). First that they would not abet the transfer of nuclear technology to a third country (China did so clandestinely to Pakistan, Iran and North Korea). And second that they would work towards eliminating their own nuclear arsenals.

“Strategically, India was absolutely justified in pursuing its nuclear option to a logical end – testing and eventual weaponisation.”

Eighteen years later, in 2016, India is an acknowledged nuclear weapons power. NSG membership remains under negotiation but the US, so viscerally opposed to the Indian nuclear test in 1998, is at the forefront pushing India's case.

But back in 1998, opinion in the US was hostile to an extraordinary degree. Even Shashi Tharoor, then executive assistant to UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, was opposed to India's nuclear test. At a private lunch meeting with me in Mumbai shortly after the Pokhran test, Shashi argued passionately against India's nuclear adventurism. It took all of two hours to successfully counter his arguments.

As expected, the direct consequence of Pokhran-II was Pakistan's own nuclear test a month later. Today with its conventional army fighting insurgencies on several fronts, Pakistan rattles the nuclear sabre, calling it Islamabad's weapon of last resort.

And yet, it is an empty threat – a bluff as I wrote on these pages on September 4, 2015: “In a statement issued last week, Pakistan's national security advisor Sartaj Aziz said India shouldn't take his country for granted. Pakistan, he added grimly, has nuclear weapons. Other members of the Pakistani establishment have made similar statements in the recent past. But as Pakistan's army chief General Raheel Sharif knows perfectly well, Islamabad cannot use its nuclear stockpile – not even the small tactical battlefield nuclear weapons Pakistan is developing. The reason is simple: a retaliatory nuclear strike by India would cripple Pakistan. The Americans know this. So do the Russians and the British. And of course, so does Pakistan.”

Farooq Abdullah, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, had this to say about Sartaj Aziz's nuclear threat in an interview: “When a senior diplomat, a former foreign minister, talks about nuclear weapons, it's crazy.

May I remind Sartaj Aziz about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Does he want to bomb Jammu and Kashmir? India also has a bomb. When I went to Pokhran after the tests were conducted, I remember Vajpayee's words. He said we aren't the ones to use this first, we have this as a deterrence, only to tell people don't take us for granted. We can defend ourselves. I want to tell Aziz, don't think of the bomb because innocents will die. Sartaj Aziz saab, you too will die if the bomb falls.”

As India's policy on Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and Balochistan acquires new muscularity, rejecting talks with Islamabad except on cross-border terrorism, Pakistan is certain to resort to more terror strikes in Jammu and Kashmir and even nuclear bluster. But remember, it is empty bluster and Rawalpindi knows it.