The political scene in both India and Pakistan is too turbulent to permit any projection of their likely defence-foreign policy orientations. It is evident enough, however, that the end of the Cold War must force a significant change in their approaches.
India and Pakistan are not independent actors on the international scene. They cannot but be influenced greatly by what is happening all around them. Their space for manoeuvre is pretty narrow in view of the magnitude of their dependence on external aid. Even so, it is open to them to widen it more than a little if only they are willing to grasp the implications of the end of the US-Soviet competition.
The compulsions to engage in such an exercise are grim enough for New Delhi. They are grimmer for Islamabad. It was directly involved in the superpower conflict, especially between 1979 when the Soviet Union established its military presence in Afghanistan and 1989 when Soviet troops pulled out of that unfortunate land. India has never been so involved. It can, at worst, be said to have tilted towards the Soviet Union, as at the time when Moscow intervened in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
By virtue of its direct participation in the Cold War on the winning side, Pakistan has also derived far larger benefits than India. It has received free, or almost free, enormous supplies of modem weapons from the United States for over two decades – from 1954 to 1965 and from 1980 to 1990 – while India, at best, got Soviet credits for purchasing its defence equipment on low interest rates. On a per capita basis economic aid to Pakistan from the West too has been several times higher.
As is well known, Pakistan’s nuclear programme has become a major source of irritation in its relations with the United States. As required under the Pressler amendment, President Bush has not been able to certify to Congress that Islamabad does not possess, and does not seek to possess, nuclear weapons and that military-cum-economic assistance to it may be continued. But US-Pakistan relations would have undergone change even if Pakistan had not undoubtedly embarked on a nuclear weapons programme. These ties were a product of the Cold War, particularly between 1980 to 1990, and could not have survived its termination.
US-Pakistan relations began to go sour in the sixties on account of President Kennedy’s and President Johnson’s search for improved ties with India. They reached a critical point at the time of the Indo-Pakistan armed conflict in 1965 when Johnson suspended military aid to both countries. Pakistan then turned to China as source of free military supplies. That virtual alliance has continued ever since, so much so that China has assisted Pakistan in its nuclear weapons programme as no other country has done elsewhere.
According to Gary Milhollin and Gerald White, director and assistant director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, China gave Pakistan a complete design of a tested nuclear weapon of 25-kiloton yield in 1983 and subsequently enough weapon-grade uranium to fuel two modem weapons. In 1986, China sold Pakistan tritium which is used to achieve fusion in hydrogen bombs and boost the yield of atomic weapons enough to destroy entire cities (International Herald Tribune, May 13, 1991). More recently the Chinese M-11 ballistic missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead over a distance of 3,000 kilometres, has been spotted in Pakistan by US intelligence.
It is more than likely that in the new context, Pakistan will seek to further strengthen this relationship with China. It also appears that the present rulers of China are keen to reciprocate. Judging by the positions which Chinese scholars took at a recent seminar in Colombo, Beijing is back to its old anti-India stance. They charged India with pursuing hegemonic ambitions and policies. Interestingly at a similar exchange between Chinese and Pakistani scholars after the death of President Zia-ul Haq in 1988, the former had studiously refused to endorse such a formulation regarding India by their Pakistani hosts.
China has, of course, its own calculations and reasons for pursuing such a course. In addition to wanting to continue to harass India, as in the past, with Pakistan’s help, it is looking for a profitable market in the whole of West Asia for its military hardware. Apparently it regards Islamabad as a gateway to other Muslim lands. It has already sold ballistic missiles to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria. US intelligence has revealed that China also secretly building a heavy water reactor in Algeria which is too small to produce electricity economically and too large for purely scientific research. It can be depended upon to expand this drive.
The Chinese disregard for US sensibilities on the question of the spread of missiles has provoked uneasiness on Capitol Hill. The House of Representatives has adopted a resolution laying down condition for continuance of the ‘most favoured nation’ treatment to China which enabled it to raise its trade surplus with America from 3.5 billion dollars in 1988 to 10.4 billion in 1989 and over 15 billion in 1990. President Bush has indicated that he would veto this move and the vote in the Senate has been such as to enable him to do so without much difficulty. But China cannot possibly hope to get away with this kind of defiance for too long.
That, however, is not the issue under discussion presently. We are concerned with the feasibility of Pakistan leaning on China for military support in the new situation created by the end of the Cold War. The answer obviously lies more in Washington than Islamabad and it would be premature to try and anticipate the US response. Pakistan pursued a two-track approach during the eighties. While it received massive military-cum-economic assistance from the United States, it maintained and even expanded a clandestine relationship with China in the nuclear weapons field. Naturally it would wish to continue this policy, though suspension of US military aid for a year now must alert its leaders to the fact that there is a limit to Washington’s indulgence towards it, the presence of a powerful pro-Pakistan lobby in Congress and the administration notwithstanding. That is why the decision has, in the final analysis, to be taken in Washington.
There is, however, another question which should interest policy-makers in Islamabad. Which is whether, on balance, they have more to gain from continuing the traditional hostile posture towards India, or from modifying it to provide for accommodation with it. The answer to this question will have a bearing on their ties with China as well as the United States.
Pakistan could not possibly have sustained its policy of hostility towards India if Nehru had not made the mistake of spurning US overtures, beginning at the time of his visit to that country in 1949, and Washington had not, in despair, opted for Pakistan as an ally in the early fifties. That phase is, however, now over if only because India does not any longer have any choice but to build intimate ties with the United States. Islamabad can no longer capitalise on Washington’s frequent annoyance with New Delhi. Old habits die hard and anti-US cold warriors survive in India. But they cannot possibly prevail.
Islamabad initiated the arms race in the sub-continent with US assistance, even if reluctant, in the fifties. India under Pandit Nehru did not show much interest in military capabilities even after the Pakistan-US security treaty in 1954. This was evident from the country’s unpreparedness to meet the Chinese challenge in 1962. New Delhi turned to the Soviet Union for military supplies on a large scale only after that debacle.
But putting all that aside, Pakistan could seek and achieve a measure of military parity with India only with US assistance. When that aid was suspended in 1965, China could only ensure that it did not fall too far behind India. By 1980 when US supplies were resumed, India was far ahead of Pakistan. China is better placed now to help Pakistan in respect of conventional weapons as well but it no longer gifts weapons to its ‘friends’.
Strictly from Islamabad’s point of view, therefore, it would be a better bet to work for a modus vivendi with New Delhi than to engage in an arms race with China’s assistance which no one else is going to finance. Even the Saudis appear to be unlikely candidates for that role.
Pakistan’s elimination from the security arrangements being worked out in the Gulf under US auspices must come as a shock to its leaders. Like their counterparts in New Delhi, they too have lived in a make-believe world. Leadership of the Muslim world has been as much a mirage for them as leadership of non-aligned has been for us. In terms of economic strength, which is what matters above all these days, little South Korea or Taiwan are better placed than either India or Pakistan.
India and Pakistan are both broke. They are heavily dependent, on aid from the West and Japan for their economic survival. In the past, the Cold War gave them a certain amount of leverage. That leverage has now disappeared. They have, therefore, to accept pretty harsh conditions laid down by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Surely, this can change to some extent if the two decide to end the senseless conflict between them.
The initiative lies with Pakistan. It is conducting a low-intensity war on India in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. There is no evidence that India is similarly active in Sind. In fact, precisely because it is not, New Delhi has no bargaining chip in dealing with Islamabad on this critical issue. If it had, Islamabad would in all probability have called off its proxy war.
The Pakistani operation is generally described as being low cost. It is so only in a superficial sense. For, in order to deter retaliation by India, as in 1965, Pakistan has had to maintain a high level of military preparedness and that is anything but low cost. The same can be said to apply to India. But this country is on the defensive twice over. It has not only to cope with insurgents, whom Islamabad arms and trains, but also to ensure that Islamabad does not feel tempted to back the secessionists with its regular troops. And Pakistan also has hundreds of thousands of well-trained and well-armed Afghan guerillas at its disposal.
By promoting insurgency in Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir, the Pakistanis have doubtless imposed an enormous strain on India. But in the process, they have linked the very survival of their brittle democracy with it. General Aslam Beg’s bellicosity should worry Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif as much as Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. If it does not, Nawaz Sharif does not know what he is up against.
Meanwhile rumours are circulating in Pakistan that Nawaz Sharif may be dismissed before August 16 when General Beg is due to hand over as Chief of Army Staff to his successor. Though similar reports turned out to be accurate last August when Benazir Bhutto was packed off, a coup may not be imminent in Pakistan. The decisive reason is the attitude of the United States. Washington endorsed, or at least acquiesced in, coups in the past for strategic considerations which are no longer valid.
Even China is not likely to encourage the Pakistani establishment to adopt a course of action which could seriously embarrass Islamabad’s relations with Washington. And, as noted earlier, Pakistan is highly vulnerable in the economic field. Its need for aid is as desperate as India’s. But if despite all this, a coup does take place, the situation will have changed dramatically and would call for an ‘agonising reappraisal’ both in Washington and New Delhi.
Sunday Mail, 8 August 1991