For all who have opposed Pakistan’s nuclear
program over the years - including myself - the
US-India nuclear agreement may probably be the
worst thing that has happened in a long time.

Post agreement: Pakistan’s ruling elite is
confused and bitter. They know that India has
overtaken Pakistan in far too many areas for
there to be any reasonable basis for symmetry.
They see the US is now interested in
reconstructing the geopolitics of South Asia and
in repairing relations with India, not in
mollifying Pakistani grievances. Nevertheless,
there were lingering hopes of a sweetener during
President George W. Bush’s furtive and unwelcomed
visit in March 2006 to Islamabad. There was none.

This change in US policy thrilled many in India.
Many enjoyed President Musharraf’s discomfiture.
But they would do well to restrain their
exuberance. The nuclear deal, even if ratified,
will not dramatically increase nuclear power
production - currently this stands at only 3% of
the total production, and can at most double to
6% if currently planned reactors are built and
made operational over the next decade. On the
other hand, Pakistan is bound to react - and
react badly - once US nuclear materials and
equipment starting rolling into India.

One certain consequence will be more bombs on
both sides of the border. The deal is widely seen
in Pakistan as signaling America’s support or
acquiescence, or perhaps even surrender, to
India’s nuclear ambitions. India will be freely
able to import uranium fuel for its safeguarded
civilian reactors. This will free up the
remainder of its scarce uranium resources for
making plutonium. Further, when India’s
thorium-fuelled breeder reactors are fully
operational, India will be able to produce more
bombs in one year than in the last 30.

Not surprisingly, important voices in Pakistan
have started to demand that Pakistan match India
bomb-for-bomb. Abdus Sattar, ex-foreign minister
of Pakistan, advocates "replication of the Kahuta
plant to produce more fissile uraniumŠ. to
rationalize and upgrade Pakistan’s minimum
deterrence capability". He has also written about
the need to "accelerate its [Pakistan’s] missile
development programme".

This is a prescription for unlimited nuclear
racing, given that “minimum deterrence” is
essentially an open-ended concept. Pakistan has
mastered centrifuge technology, and giving birth
to more Kahutas would require only a political
decision. Moreover, unlike India, Pakistan is not
constrained by supplies of natural uranium. Thus,
at least in principle, Pakistan can increase its
bomb production considerably.

Although nuclear hawks in India and Pakistan had
once pooh-poohed the notion of an arms race,
there is little doubt that India and Pakistan are
solidly placed on a Cold War trajectory. As more
bombs are added to the inventory every year, and
intermediate range ballistic missiles steadily
roll off the production lines, both countries
seek ever more potent weaponry.

Many years ago, all three countries crossed the
point where they could lay cities to waste and
kill millions in a matter of minutes. The
fantastically cruel logic, known as nuclear
deterrence, requires only the certainty that one
nuclear bomb will be able to penetrate the
adversary’s defences and land in the heart of a
city. No one has the slightest doubt that this
capability was crossed multiple times over during
the past few decades.

What action would best serve the interest of the
peoples of India and Pakistan, as well as of
China?

A fissile material cutoff is the easiest and most
straightforward way to ease nuclear tensions. It
offers the best hope to limit the upwards spiral
in warhead numbers. Instead of threatening to
create more Kahutas, Pakistan should offer to
stop production of highly enriched uranium while
India should respond by ceasing to reprocess its
reactor wastes. Previous stockpiles possessed by
either country should not be brought into issue
because their credible verification is extremely
difficult and would inevitably derail an
agreement. Years of negotiation at the Conference
on Disarmament in Geneva came to naught for this
very reason. A series of "Nuclear Risk
Reduction" talks between Pakistan and India have
also produced zero results. The cessation of
fissile material production is completely absent
from the agenda; it must be made a central item
now.

If a Pakistan-India bilateral agreement could
somehow come through, it would have fantastically
positive effects elsewhere. China - which is the
major target of US nuclear weapons - may not have
enough warheads to match the US but has more than
a sufficient number to constitute a nuclear
deterrent. Inspired by an Indian cutoff, it could
formally declare a moratorium on fissile material
production. The US, which no longer produces
fissile materials because it has a huge excess,
could encourage the Chinese action by offering to
suspend work on its Nuclear Missile Defence (NMD)
system.

Unfortunately the United States is not acting as
a force for peace in South Asia. Confronted by
the accusation that it is pumping arms into a
region that some of its leaders had once
described as a “nuclear tinder box”, US officials
have responded defensively with answers such as:
you have to deal with the world as it is and the
Indian program cannot be rolled back; India is a
democracy; India needs to import nuclear fuel and
technology and we need to sell them. But such
lame replies sweep under the carpet the
disturbing history of near-nuclear conflict on
the subcontinent for which the US has often taken
credit for defusing.

The arms race directly benefits Indian and
Pakistan elites. Hence they are tacit
collaborators as they woo the US and prove that
their states belong to the community of
“responsible nuclear states” that are worthy of
military and nuclear assistance. The past has
been banished by an unwritten agreement. Retired
Pakistani and Indian generals and leaders meet
cordially at conferences around the world and
happily clink glasses together. They emphatically
deny that the two countries had even come close
to a nuclear crisis in the past. Being now
charged with the mission of projecting an image
of “responsibility” abroad, none amongst them
wants to bring back the memory of South Asian
leaders hurling ugly nuclear threats against each
other.

But instances of criminal nuclear behaviour are
to be found even in the very recent past. For
example, India’s Defence Minister George
Fernandes told the International Herald Tribune
on June 3, 2002 that "India can survive a nuclear
attack, but Pakistan cannot." Indian Defence
Secretary Yogendra Narain had taken things a step
further in an interview with Outlook Magazine: "A
surgical strike is the answer," adding that if
this failed to resolve things, "We must be
prepared for total mutual destruction." On the
Pakistani side, at the peak of the 2002 crisis,
General Musharraf had threatened that Pakistan
would use “unconventional means” against India if
necessary.

Tense times may return at some point in the in
the future. But Indian and Pakistani leaders are
likely to once again abdicate from their own
responsibilities whenever that happens. Instead,
they will again entrust disaster prevention to
the US.

Of course, it would be absurd to lay the blame on
the US for all that has gone wrong between the
two countries. Surely the US does not want to
destabilize the subcontinent, and it does not
want a South Asian holocaust. But one must be
aware that for the US this is only a peripheral
interest - the core of its interest in South
Asian nuclear issues stems from the need to limit
Chinese power and influence, fear of Al-Qaida and
Muslim extremism, and the associated threat of
nuclear terrorism.

The Americans will sort out their business and
priorities as they see fit. But it is unwise to
participate in a plan that leaves South Asian
neighbours at each others throats while
benefiting a power that sits on the other side of
the globe.

Regional tensions will increase because of the
deal. Given that the motivation for the US-India
nuclear agreement comes partly from the US’s
desire to contain China, the Pakistan-China
strategic relationship will be considerably
strengthened. In practical terms, this may amount
to enhanced support for Pakistan’s missile
program, or even its military nuclear program.
Speaking at Pakistan’s National Defense College
in Islamabad a day before Bush’s arrival there,
Musharraf declared that "My recent trip to China
was part of my effort to keep Pakistan’s
strategic options open."

By proceeding with the nuclear deal with India
the US may destabilize South Asia. It will also
wreck the NPT, take the heat off Iran and North
Korea, open the door for Japan to convert its
plutonium stocks into bombs, and bring about
global nuclear anarchy.