Confronting the bomb

In this age of market dictatorship, superficial bestsellers have trivialised the book world. However, every now and then one comes across a work that can not be reviewed in one go. Confronting the Bomb: Pakistani & Indian Scientists Speak Out is exactly one such masterpiece. Edited by physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy, this anthology of essays by Indian and Pakistani scientists on the nuclear madness in the subcontinent should be essential reading at all educational institutions. The word ‘scientists’ often scares readers like myself who find science incomprehensible. However, this anthology is written in surprisingly accessible idiom, for a general audience. While M Ramana and Zia Mian skilfully situate the Indian and Pakistani nuclear programmes in an historical perspective marked by ambitious politics, Nobel laureate John Polanyi adds a universal touch to the debate.

However, it is Pervez Hoodbhoy’s own essays that particularly engage the Pakistani reader. He shatters popular nuclear myths, and deconstructs the dominant discourse. Describing Trotsky’s brilliance in slaughtering his opponents by the pen, George Bernard Shaw once observed, “When he cuts off his opponent’s head, he holds it up to show that there are no brains in it.” This is exactly what our professor does with the country’s nuclear preachers.

Acknowledging the recent scaremongering regarding the US stealing the Pakistani nukes, he concedes that this perception is not ill-founded in view of the “decade-long attention given to the issue in the US mainstream press, and by war-gaming exercises in US military institutes.” In fact, “a weapon-snatch skyrocketed after the Bin Laden raid.” As a matter of fact, when John Kerry visited Islamabad two weeks after the Bin Laden operation, Gen Kayani used a private session with Kerry to demand a written assurance that “under no circumstances – even chaos in Pakistan – would the United States enter the country to grab or secure (the) country’s nuclear treasure.” Dismissing such fears, Hoodbhoy points to the $100 million US grant for securing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Even more importantly, he thinks “an American attack on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities is very improbable.” First, because even the US cannot exactly locate the highly-disguised coordinates of the mobile units to manage Pakistan’s 100-150 nuclear warheads. Second, our nuclear facilities are jealously guarded. The US will not be able to disable Pakistan’s nuclear ability Abbottabad-style. Third, a US raid may in fact trigger a nuclear holocaust. Instead of fearing a US raid, he warns against the “internal threat”: security officials and nuclear experts sympathising with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

He also raises another very important point regarding weapon-snatch. “Chances of nuclear sabotage and accident decrease if readiness levels are reduced. It certainly helps if the fissile core and bomb mechanisms are stored separately in safely guarded vaults, and if it takes some appreciable amount of time to assemble the pieces together.” This implicitly is an argument for normalising Indo-Pakistani relations to avoid a nuclear holocaust.

His essay on the myth of the ‘Islamic bomb’ is equally argumentative. While he does not mock the fact that Pakistan’s “Islamic” bomb was conceived through infidel Dutch origins or that Iran’s soon-to-be-born nuclear baby has American DNA, he points out the contradictions in the Muslim world that render absurd any notion of an Islamic bomb. For instance, Saudi Arabia fears an Iranian bomb as much as Israel. On the contrary, when the American ambassador told Musharraf’s foreign minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri that “the US expects Pakistan to vigorously support the US action” to dissuade Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold, Kasuri (now a chivalrous PTI stalwart), readily agreed. “By 11 pm that night a statement had been issued, and Kasuri followed this up with a call to the Iranian foreign minister urging Iran ‘to announce an immediate suspension of its enrichment programme in order to give dialogue a chance.’

This phone call was, again, promptly reported to the American ambassador, who commented that ‘Kasuri may be wildly worried that he has gone out on a limb by endorsing [the US secretary of state’s] statement so vigorously.’”

Similarly, Gen Musharraf in 2006 told the Iranian first vice president Parviz Davoodi that Iran “should stop all efforts to enrich uranium now, adding that Tehran was making life difficult for its neighbour, Pakistan.” Later that year, Kasuri told the Americans that over the past three years he had “made it his mission to persuade Tehran not to provoke a conflict over Iran’s nuclear programme, thus endangering regional [security] – and Pakistan’s domestic security.” So much for the Islamic bomb! That the bomb unites Pakistan is yet another cliche Hoodbhoy explodes. The bomb has failed to weld a country bitterly divided on ethnic, sectarian and provincial lines. As an aside, Hoodbhoy also challenges the assertion of the ‘Father of the Bomb’ that “if we had nuclear capability before 1971, we would not have lost half our country.” Hoodbhoy counters, “Could the bomb have been used on the raging pro-independence mobs in Dacca? Or used to incinerate Calcutta and Delhi, and have the favour duly returned to Lahore and Karachi?” He also points out that 30,000 nukes could not save the USSR.

Hoodbhoy does not buy the myth of nuclear deterrence either. Since the nuclear explosions, India and Pakistan have not merely gone to war over Kargil but have twice deployed troops on the common borders.

True, each time they have stepped back from the brink, yet “what has worked a few times might, or might not, work the next time. Repeated cycles increase fear-fatigue, reducing the value of deterrence. However, even more dangerously, the notion of nuclear deterrence has triggered a mad nuclear race. Neither India nor Pakistan wants to set an upper limit on the nuclear arsenal. In one instance, retired PAF official Air Commodore Jamal Hasan justifies 40 bombs to “maintain our minimum deterrence.” However, on another occasion, the same defence strategist argues for 1,000 bombs to maintain minimum deterrence. It seems it does not bother our generals how much it costs to maintain “minimum deterrence.” In 2009 alone, nuclear weapons programme spending amounted to about $2.2 billion. Imagine the cost if we were to maintain 1,000 bombs!

The writer is a freelance contributor.Email: mfsulehria@hotmail.com