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Copyright © 2001 Dawn

Since the events of May 1998, India and Pakistan have been locked in a peculiar brand of politics: tit-for-tat nuclearism. Fireworks at Ras Koh followed the creation of nuclear craters in Pokhran; missile tests in one country were countered by a ballistic response by the other. Likewise, Islamabad refused to accede to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) because of New Delhi’s refusal to sign. When asked to explain the rationale for their policy, Pakistan’s national security managers proffered one exasperating excuse: “Because India did it.”

Despite Pakistan’s claims to pursue an independent and assertive national security policy, it soon became obvious that most of Islamabad’s actions were reactions to New Delhi’s policies. The results of this tit-for-tat politics had far greater negative repercussions for Pakistan than for India. First, Pakistan compromised its strategic autonomy. Further, the goal of trying to match its larger and more economically powerful neighbor contributed to Pakistan’s slide toward bankruptcy. Internationally, post-May 1998 Pakistani governments suffered increasing political isolation, a phenomenon painfully highlighted by former US President Bill Clinton’s public dressing down of the Musharraf regime on Pakistani television during his March 2000 South Asia visit.

Several observers argued that Islamabad was on the road to strategic and economic ruin. They counseled successive Pakistani governments to end their Indo-centricism; but their pleas fell on deaf ears. Now, however, a series of policy pronouncements and actions by the Musharraf regime suggest that Islamabad may be about to modify this pattern of reactive politics and get a strategic life of its own. If the regime succeeds in transforming its stated intentions into a framework to conduct foreign policy, it will have a positive impact on both Pakistani as well as South Asian regional security.

Policy actions in four areas indicate a change in Islamabad’s strategic behavior: a freeze in conventional arms spending, nuclear weapons-related strategic restraint, an end to reactive missile tests, and forward movement on nuclear arms control treaties. In all of these key areas, the Musharraf regime has adopted a moderate stance and offered to delink Pakistan’s security policies from India’s.

In the past two years, Pakistan has steadfastly refused to be drawn into a conventional arms competition with India. Despite the successive annual 28 and 14 percent increases in New Delhi’s defense budget in 2000 and 2001, Islamabad has accepted a freeze in its defense budget (in real terms) for the next four years. Cynical Indian observers could argue that the freeze is the inevitable consequence of the Musharraf regime’s political isolation and economic fatigue. Nevertheless, the structural constraints on Pakistan’s defense sector offer a historic opportunity to curtail conventional arms racing in South Asia.

Islamabad has also apparently amended its earlier policy of reactive missile tests. Last year for example, Pakistan swiftly countered India’s Agni missile test with flight-tests of the Ghauri and Shaheen ballistic missiles. However, Islamabad’s response to India’s January 2001 test of the Agni II was relatively muted; it responded to this newest provocation with routine military exercises involving tests of conventional anti-ship and air-to-air missiles. The reasons for the Musharraf regime’s turnaround have never been discussed publicly. But they could be a combination of an attempt to turn the international spotlight away from Pakistani missile collaboration with China and North Korea as well as the need to conserve strategic assets in a potentially endless game of one-upmanship.

Contrary to expectations, Pakistan has responded to India’s stated intent to acquire an operational nuclear force with a proposal for strategic restraint, something akin to the regime of “non-weaponized” deterrence that prevailed in South Asia during the greater part of the 1990s. Pakistan’s proposed strategic restraint emphasizes a regional moratorium on nuclear tests, non-weaponization and non-deployment of nuclear devices, non-deployment of ballistic missiles, negotiated caps on ballistic missiles tests, and nuclear risk-reduction and confidence-building- measures. Islamabad’s proposals appear to be motivated primarily by the need to avoid the vast expenditure and organizational effort needed to deploy an operational nuclear capability. However, they also offer an opportunity to foreclose a potential nuclear arms race and institutionalize strategic stability in the region.

Finally, the Musharraf regime has underlined the fidelity of its moderate approach by indicating that it is willing at long last to sign the CTBT irrespective of India’s position on the treaty. Admittedly, the regime has not yet overcome the opposition from ideologues such as General Aslam Beg, Hamid Gul, and Professor Khurshid Ahmed to signing the treaty. It is also evident that the CTBT is unlikely to come into force any time soon due to reservations from several key countries, including the United States. However, Islamabad’s willingness to move forward on the test ban treaty would be a significant indictor of its flexibility and ability to accept strategic compromises.

The big question now is: what are the chances for success of Pakistan’s new moderate stance? Ironically, the answer to that question to an extent lies in New Delhi’s response to Islamabad’s attempts to end its Indo-centricism. If the hardliners in India prevail, Pakistan’s efforts to affect a conventional weapons freeze and nuclear weapons-related strategic restraint regime will be dismissed as a long overdue corrective. They will be viewed as the outcome of economic bankruptcy and an end to the surreal politics of pseudo-parity in the region; an indirect acknowledgement of India’s natural preponderance in South Asia. Worse, Indian hardliners might be tempted to encourage a conventional and nuclear arms race in the region as a backhanded means of bringing the Pakistani state to its knees.

But on the other hand, if statesmanship and long-term self-interest become the preferred choice of Indian policymakers, then Pakistan’s efforts could be seen as an attempt to reign in the strategic competition in South Asia. Admittedly, the Musharraf regime’s current moderate approach is more likely the result of economic bankruptcy and political isolation abroad. There is no guarantee that succeeding Pakistani governments will not return to the bad old ways of the profligate and irresponsible competition of the past. However, political common sense and rationality demand that India explore the possibility of institutionalizing strategic stability in South Asia.