Nuclear semantics

[Neo]

Nuclear semantics

EDITORIAL (September 14 2009): Will Pakistan respond if India carried out nuclear tests? Foreign Minister Qureshi's response to this question by journalists at his Iftar-dinner on Wednesday has been reported variously, ranging from something like 'we will cross the bridge when we come to it' to 'we don't have to follow a tit-for-tat policy'.

Probably, in the absence of a thorough briefing on the subject - which is moving fast to be at the forefront of international diplomacy - he was not sufficiently prepared to be categorical in his comment. That's procrastination on a crucial issue that time doesn't brook, given India's hectic moves to seek international endorsement of a kind of de-hyphenation of its nuclear programme from that of its arch nuclear rival, Pakistan.

In fact, India is building a case for additional tests on the pretext - first made public by K. Santanam, the RAW official closely connected to the 1998 Pokhran tests - that its tests had not been fully successful. These tests were of India's thermonuclear weapon, commonly called Hydrogen bomb, and it appears India needs to further fine-tune this arsenal, as it lays claim to a world-power status and permanent membership of the UN Security Council.

New Delhi's clamour for more tests is quite timely. Later this month, on September 24, President Obama would be meeting some 14 world leaders, invited at his request by the UN Security Council, in pursuance of his attempt at hammering out a consensus on reviving a debate on the presently moribund Fissile Materials Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). At the said meeting, India would certainly seek exemption from the ban on further testing.

One wouldn't be surprised if the United States decides to acquiesce - that was almost written, in the last year's nuclear agreement between the United States and India. If Foreign Minister Qureshi is presently unequivocal on the likely response to the expected Indian tests, that confusion should not last long, for President Zardari, who will be in the United States at the time of the Obama-invited meeting, or someone else representing Pakistan will have to stand up and take a clear stand.

There should be no hesitation in declaring that Pakistan wouldn't let India's nuclear tests go un-responded, whenever they take place and whatever it takes. If war has not broken out, despite the extremely dicey situations between the two countries since 1998 when both tested nuclear weapons, it is only because of the nuclear deterrent Pakistan has acquired.

The deterrence would be still more credible and effective in case Pakistan acquires substantial second-strike capability. This is not the shrill coy of a nuclear warmonger, but the lesson of modern history: since the end of World War Two, no two nuclear powers went to war, nuclear or conventional. And, the nuclear option is also safer to keep and relatively inexpensive to make and induct into defensive capability.

Those who say Pakistan's nuclear arsenal can fall in wrong hands should very well know that even when Soviet Union broke up into many pieces and disintegrated, its nuclear weapons remained in safe custody. Pakistan is confronted with no such challenge. So, the Pakistani leadership should be able to see through the Indian game to de-link its nuclear programme from Pakistan's - in order to justify its case that Pakistan doesn't need matching nuclear weaponry.