The Hindustan Times
Armageddon's not localised
By ID Swami
After Harry Truman's monumental decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, the world has not witnessed the use of nuclear weapons against another nation. The world came close to nuclear holocaust during the 1951
Korean War.
It came closest in 1962 when US spy planes discovered Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy, who inherited the Cold War from Eisenhower, imposed a blockade on Cuba but promised not to invade. The Soviet Union dismantled the missile bases.
The world heaved a sigh of relief when the Cold War spluttered to an end. One was getting comfortable with the prospect of a nuclear war-free era — until Pentagon insider Bruce Riedel revealed that the Pakistani army had planned to nuke India without its then
prime minister's knowledge. And the person behind that plan was none other than Pervez Musharraf.
Musharraf has the power to use nuclear weapons and in no uncertain terms has threatened to use Pakistan's arsenal against India — not once, but twice.
The disturbing disclosure made by The Sunday Times of London, based on a paper to be published by the University of Pennsylvania, stated that the Pakistani army had mobilised its nuclear arsenal during the Kargil war without the knowledge of the then PM, Nawaz
Sharif.
Bruce Riedel, advisor to the then US President Bill Clinton on India and Pakistan, recalled how the president was told that "there was disturbing information about Pakistan preparing its nuclear arsenal to strike Indian cities”.
A CIA report, "Global Trends 2015”, predicts that by next year, Pakistan is likely to have between 50 and 75 nuclear warheads. The real threat is when even one of them comes in the hand of an undependable leader pushing the world into a mutually assured destruction
zone.
Musharraf's first statement: "If Pakistan's security is threatened, it could use its nuclear bomb”. His second statement: "Pakistan will use nuclear weapons, if necessary to resolve the Kashmir dispute”. Now read what he is saying in juxtaposition with Riedel's
disclosure.
The sheer destructiveness of nuclear weapons invokes a moral imperative on the part of Musharraf to apologise to the world for what he had planned and uttered. The sooner world leaders recognise that Musharraf is a threat not only for India but for the entire
world, the better it will be for everybody.
Intelligence experts informed Riedel that "a Pakistani strike on just one Indian city, Mumbai, would kill between 150,000 and 850,000 alone”. Urban conglomerations like Mumbai and Delhi have populations of over 12 and 13 million respectively.
Pakistan is emerging as a dangerous rogue State. The danger becomes greater when a dangerous general envisions triggering the nuclear device. What if Pakistan's nuclear capability proliferates to the theocratic Muslim States ruled by dictators? Will not that
create more small rogue States armed with nuclear capable missiles?
Nuclear weapons are weapons capable of wiping out civilisations. How can one make statements about the use of such weapons so casually without any provocation and still get away with it? Remember what Truman said about nuclear weapons and its use: "Its production
and its use were not lightly undertaken by this government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster, which would come to this nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to
all civilisation, if they had found it first.
Let's come to the question of security threat. If the general wanted to create a security threat, he can always do so. He planned Kargil and executed it. Later he planned and mobilised a nuclear strike, but did not execute it.
Security concerns are country-specific in nature. If few new arms or planes are added to India's army or air force, Pakistan can claim that the military balance in the region have been altered. Pakistan can always claim that its security is in peril and they
have to defend it with their nuclear weapons. But can that bogey really justify the use of nuclear weapons?
A few days before Riedel's disclosure, I wrote an article in which I said that what Musharraf unwittingly revealed through his two statements is that he will go for a pre-emptive strike against India when the latter least expects it. The world has witnessed
enough individuals or groups indulging in mad suicide acts. It is too small for a similar mad act by a nuclear hawk.
The world has already seen what tragedy an individual's abhorrence towards one nation can bring about. Tomorrow it can be the turn of a rogue nation to do that sort of damage and much more.
The writer is Minister of State, Home Affairs
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