Pakistan's Atomic Bomb and the Search for Security

Pakistan's Atomic Bomb And The Search For Security edited by Zia Mian Gautam Publishers 27 Temple Road, Lahore, Pakistan Printed by Maktaba Jadeed Press, Lahore, Pakistan ©1995 by Zia Mian A publication of the Campaign for Nuclear Sanity and the Sustainable Development Policy Institute Acknowledgements No book is ever produced in isolation. This one in particular is the work of many hands, and minds. Among the people whose contribution has been indispensable, special mention must be made of Nauman Naqvi from SDPI. There is Gautam Publishers, who have taken the risk when others have not. The greatest debts are, as always, personal. They are rarely mentioned, can never be paid, and payment is never asked for. It is enough that they are remembered. Contents Foreword Dr. Mubashir Hasan i Introduction Dr. Zia Mian 1 1. Nuclear Myths And Realities Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy 3 Bombs for Prestige? 4 Understanding May 1990 8 The Overt-Covert Debate 11 Nuclear War - By Accident 16 The Second Best Option 17 Options for Pakistan 21 2. A False Sense Of Security Lt.-Gen. (rtd.) Mujib ur Rehman Khan 24 A Matter of Perception 25 Useless Nukes 26 A Sterile Pursuit 28 3. The Costs Of Nuclear Security Dr. Zia Mian 30 The Human Costs of Nuclear Programmes 31 Nuclear Accidents 35 Nuclear Guardians 38 Buying Security with Nuclear Weapons 40 The Real Cost of Nuclear Weapons 44 Safety 48 The Social Costs of Nuclear Security 51 Who Benefits? 53 The Ultimate Costs of Nuclear Security 56 4. The Nuclear Arms Race And Fall Of The Soviet Union Dr. Inayatullah 60 Initiation and Escalation of the Superpower Arms Race 60 What Sustained the Arms Race? 62 Why the Soviet Union Lost the Arms Race 63 Examination of the Theory of Deterrence 64 Lessons for Pakistan 66 5. A Regional Issue With A Regional Solution Syed Talat Hussain 70 The Bomb-Lobby's Assumptions 71 The Next Step ? 75 Regional Measures 77 6. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty And Pakistan Khalid Ahmed 78 Nuclear Nationalism 79 Incentives 82 7. Seizing The Nuclear Moment I. Hassan 85 A World-Wide Ban on the Bomb 85 Nuclear Beggars and Choosers 87 A Fatal Ambiguity 88 8. Time For A Third Nuclear Debate Farhatullah Babar 91 Nuclear Football 91 Questions for a Nuclear Debate 93 9. Appendix 1: How To Build The Bomb Dr. Zia Mian 95 The Basis of the Bomb 96 Producing Nuclear Materials 98 10. Appendix 2: A Nuclear Glossary 100 11. The Contributors 104 Foreword Many in Pakistan believe that the only way to meet the military threat posed by India is to possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan is smaller than India. Pakistan cannot match the resources of India. Should that country continue to augment its armed might in conventional weapons at the rate it has been doing, Pakistan shall ultimately be rendered vulnerable. They argue that possession of nuclear weapons by the United States and former Soviet Union prevented a war between them. Possession of nuclear weapons by India as well as Pakistan shall also prevent a war between the two. In the following pages, the learned authors rightly put forward a contrary point of view on which Pakistanis seriously need to ponder. And there is more to support their arguments. In classical strategic theory, the aim of war was simply stated: to disarm the enemy. That is, to disarm the fighting power of the adversary. Once that aim was achieved the vanquished populace, and its resources, lay at the mercy of the victor, to dominate, to exploit, even to annex. After the coming into being of modern nation states and the easy availability of lethal weapons for citizens, it is no longer feasible through war to 'disarm' the enemy. The people in a contemporary nation state, who comprise the 'enemy' are armed, and shall remain capable, for an indefinite period, to fight any power they consider an aggressor. Further, as the twentieth century draws to a close it is no longer possible for any country to keep in its possession for long any piece of a territory of another country. The international community shall not let that happen. Even tiny nation states can now exist as stable unconquerable entities next to much larger and militarily powerful neighbours. Thus war is no longer capable of producing any positive political results except the ruination of both combatants. For far too long war has been considered politics by 'other means'. This doctrine is no longer applicable even in the Third world where some nations still face, among others, a crisis of identity. Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Kampuchea, aggressions by Israel, wars in Lebanon, Africa and South and Central America, Iraq-Iran war, Afghanistan, the recent war against Kuwait and then against Iraq, three wars between India and Pakistan and in some ways even the total victory of the 'Allies' over the Axis powers failed to achieve the aims over which the aggressors and the victim of aggression had collided. As time passed, total wars, 'limited wars', 'proxy wars' and other forms of large scale organised violence have proved futile. Indeed, as the dawn of the next millennium draws near, war has become obsolete. Its classical aims are un-achievable. i For the past forty-eight years India and Pakistan have wrongly considered war as a viable option in the conduct of their foreign policy, or for the solution of their disputes. In order to achieve their foreign policy objectives they first indulged in an arms race of conventional weapons that their treasuries could ill-afford. And today they militarily face each other as threshold nuclear weapon-states. It is astounding how otherwise sane and sensible people can succumb to the arguments of achieving victory in the field of battle, as if by magic - through the possession of an atom bomb. Little do the war mongers on both sides of the India - Pakistan border realise how utterly useless and devastating a war, any war, between the two shall be. How can nations which cannot disarm political militants within their own borders think of capturing through war a piece of territory of the other country and holding on to it for any length of time. The option of settlement of disputes through waging a war, much less by nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan is bad politics, bad economics and sheer immorality. Mubashir Hasan Lahore: 10 March, 1995 ii Introduction Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. (The Einstein - Russell Manifesto) The nuclear age opened fifty years ago with a blinding light, a deafening roar, fire, and blood. On August 6th 1945, the United States first used their new nuclear weapon, and brought death to the people of Hiroshima. They used it again three days later, and the people of Nagasaki died. Despite suggestions that the bomb be exploded in some uninhabited place, with the Japanese invited to witness its awesome destructive power, the US taught the world the first lesson of the new age, the nuclear bomb is there to be used. The Soviet Union, seeing and fearing what the US had wrought, followed in its footsteps across the nuclear threshold, and the world also learnt of a new kind of war, Cold War. No armies clashed, no bombs dropped, no missiles fired, but it was war. And they said nuclear weapons were keeping the peace. To keep this peace one bomb was not enough, nor were ten, nor a hundred, nor a thousand. For decades humanity watched the "arms race", watched as the superpowers accumulated ever greater numbers of ever more deadly nuclear weapons. The bomb had created a system to reproduce itself. This was the second lesson of the nuclear age. No one has described this better than E. P. Thompson, the English socialist, peace campaigner, and historian : "the armourers excite the other's armourers, the hawks feed the hawks, the ideologists rant at each other like rival auctioneers, and the missiles copulate with each other, and breed on each others' foul bodies the next generation of missiles." Eventually, for all kinds of reasons, the system collapsed under its own stresses. But it was not the bomb that failed, it was people. Some could no longer feed the insatiable monster that was supposed to be protecting them, others just lost their fear of the "enemy". Many began to protest against living their lives in fear of nuclear destruction. They protested so that they could survive, and the number of nuclear weapons started to fall. The drift in South Asia has been in the other direction. For nearly fifty years India and Pakistan have known little but hostility and war. Equating national security with military security has meant that their armies keep growing in size, and there are weapons of every kind, and each year there have to be more and newer weapons, and so the insecurity grows. The date that the bomb arrived here can be set at May 1974, when India tested a nuclear weapon. This explosion, coming after decades of animosity, three wars, and fear of the future, hastened something that seemed bound to happen. Following the pattern of the superpower arms race, where what one 1 state had was desired and acquired by the other, Pakistan claims that, now, it too has the capability to make and use nuclear weapons. While both countries have stopped short of actually deploying nuclear weapons, the threat that they pose is real, even if the bombs have not stepped out of the shadows. They wait there, like demons, to be summoned at barely a moment's notice.

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