Indo-Pak Nuclear CBMs: Time to Move Forward

Brig. (r) Gurmeet Kanwal

The aim of instituting confidence building measures (CBMs) is to avoid tensions arising from mistrust, misperception, accidents and military brinkmanship. India and Pakistan are unlikely to have such high stakes in a future conventional conflict that they would be prepared to risk nuclear exchanges. It was due to this realization that India and Pakistan agreed at Lahore to engage in bilateral consultations on security concepts, and nuclear doctrines, with a view to developing measures for confidence building in the nuclear and conventional fields, aimed at avoidance of conflict. They also agreed to provide each other with advance notification in respect of ballistic missile flight tests and this has been the practice since then.

Both the countries committed themselves to undertaking national measures to reducing the risks of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons under their respective control and agreed to continue to honor their respective unilateral moratorium on further nuclear test explosions. Coming merely nine months after the tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May 1998, the Lahore CBMs were a remarkable development. Unfortunately, the Pakistan army's reckless adventurism in Kargil and the conflict that followed in the summer months of 1999 froze the process and no further progress was made in instituting practical and verifiable nuclear risk reduction measures (NRRMs). Hence, it is crucially important for both the countries to act with sincerity and maturity during the forthcoming talks on nuclear CBMs so that if the nuclear genie is to ever emerge from the bottle again, it must not happen on the Indian Sub-continent.

A number of nuclear CBMs and NRRMs need to be considered for implementation by India and Pakistan. The first of these should be an agreement on de-mating nuclear warheads from their delivery systems. This implies that missiles like the Indian Agni and the Pakistani Ghauri and Ghaznavi should not be capped with warheads, which should be stored separately. As a corollary to this, the warheads should also be stored in a disassembled form, i.e., the atomic core and the conventional high explosive (HE) bomb casing, including the trigger mechanism, should be stored separately during peacetime. With its first use doctrine Pakistan will have a problem with this measure during war but should be willing to accept it during peacetime to reduce the risk of inadvertent or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons.

Another viable measure would be to enter into an agreement on the non-use of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) for nuclear deterrence. SRBMs like India's Prithvi (range 150-250 km) and Pakistan's Hatf series (derivative of China's M-11, range less than 300 km), are extremely destabilizing due to their greater mobility, ability to deploy quickly and the short time of flight that gives virtually no reaction time before the missile impacts. These missiles ought not to be nuclear capped and India and Pakistan would do well to exclude this class of missile completely from their nuclear arsenals.

De-alert status of a nation's nuclear arsenal is another stabilizing feature. Agreement could be reached on the non-deployment of intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) regiments and their logistics support elements during peacetime. As India and Pakistan do not have the satellite surveillance capability to continuously track each suspected ballistic missile storage site and the numerous highways and railway lines on which the missiles can be moved, the deployment of missile regiments would be inherently destabilizing. In due course, it should be possible to agree to make a distinction between missiles inducted but not deployed. Such an arrangement would be precursor for a de-targeting agreement.

Of course, the best nuclear CBM between India and Pakistan would be to negotiate and sign a mutually acceptable no first use treaty but this is unlikely to be acceptable to Pakistan at present. Nevertheless, India must make a formal offer to this effect and wait for official as well as public opinion in Pakistan to coalesce in this direction. It should also be possible to obtain Pakistani concurrence on the setting up of national-level risk reduction and monitoring centers with a suitable communications infrastructure as a permanent measure. Such a centre would act as a hotline between the strategic forces commands of the two countries. Subsequently, nuclear CBMs and NRRMs could be upgraded to include measures that might appear fanciful today: verifiable deployment restrictions and limitations; shared early warning arrangements, prior information about the movement of nuclear-capable air force squadrons from one base to another, identification and notification of training and testing areas for nuclear forces units to distinguish them from deployment areas

Nuclear CBMs and NRRMs would not amount to much without credible verification regimes. In the initial stages of mutual confidence building it would be advisable to desist from insisting on foolproof verification regimes. Gradually, as confidence levels increase and the political and diplomatic climate improves, stringent verification regimes can be progressively incorporated. For example, verification could involve intrusive techniques such as over-flights up to an agreed depth inside each other's territory and, eventually, intrusive onsite inspections at mutually agreed intervals. Later, even surprise inspections of each other's facilities and storage sites should be possible. We are not there yet and will not be for many years to come, but it is time to make a substantive beginning.

Nuclear CBMs and NRRMs are difficult to negotiate and institute because of lack of trust and challenges inherent to nuclear deterrence. Since the issue at stake is one that is critical for national security, it is important that both the countries overcome the negative aspects with concerted efforts. The de-alert status that India maintains should go a long way towards reassuring its nuclear-armed neighbors of its lack of hostile intentions. India's no first use doctrine should also inspire confidence while simultaneously reducing the risks of accidental or inadvertent launch of nuclear weapons.

(The author is Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. This piece has been reproduced here with the permission of the author.)