Avoiding Armageddon

by Bruce Riedel

  There were other significant successes in thwarting Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. In 2009 a plot to attack the American, British, and Indian embassies in Dacca, Bangladesh, was foiled by effective counterterrorism cooperation. A much more elaborate LeT plot in October 2010 to attack the Nineteenth Commonwealth Games in New Delhi also was disrupted and prevented by good counterterrorism work. If the plot had succeeded, it might have been even bigger than the 2008 Mumbai attack.25

  But there was little discussion about India’s troubled neighbor Pakistan and what India could do to try to help change Pakistani behavior. For example, in the joint communiqué issued in June 2012 after the third round of the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue, an annual summit chaired by Secretary Clinton and her Indian counterpart to review all facets of the bilateral relationship, Pakistan is mentioned only once, in passing. Afghanistan is mentioned seventeen times.26 The biggest challenge facing both India and America in South Asia barely received any public attention in their dialogue. In private, of course, there was more discussion about Pakistan and shared irritation at its continued role in sponsoring and abetting terror. But those conversations did not translate into a strategy on how to leverage India’s strengths to influence Pakistani behavior. The U.S.-India dialogue suffered from malaise—lots of soaring rhetoric, but less substance.

  It would, of course, have been a difficult dialogue under even the best of circumstances. After Mumbai, it was even more difficult, but it was also even more vital. The United States did welcome the cautious resumption of political dialogue between India and Pakistan in 2009 and the visit of President Zardari to India in 2012. It also supported discussion of modest steps to increase trade between the two countries and open more transportation links. But Obama’s approach in his first term was cautious and small. Perhaps he remained trapped in the AFPAK paradigm and ill served by a bureaucracy focused almost exclusively on the Afghanistan imbroglio. He had a wealth of other problems on his plate, given the state of the American economy and the legacy of two wars; nevertheless, it was not a policy designed to alter the game in South Asia.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PROMOTING GAME CHANGE IN SOUTH ASIA

  THE THAR DESERT of Rajasthan, an arid wasteland astride the Indian and Pakistani border, is a forbidding place. In the summer, it can be as hot as any spot on earth. Fortunately, I was staying the night near Jodhpur in a hotel that was once a maharaja’s palace. My delegation, from the United Kingdom’s Royal College of Defence Studies, was visiting the subcontinent for a month in September 2002, and on this particular day we were guests at an advanced Indian air force jet fighter base. After a tour of the MiG-29 jets on the tarmac, we had a briefing and lunch with the pilots. The crisis over the attack on the Indian parliament was now nearly nine months old. More than 1 million Indian and Pakistani troops were deployed along the border, eyeball to eyeball, expecting war.

  The pilots were frustrated. They had been preparing for war for nine months now, and they were ready. As professionals, they were eager to do their job. But the order never came, and a month later they would be told to stand down. As we talked to them, it was clear that they understood that a war with Pakistan would not be a simple or clean affair. They all agreed that it could go nuclear, although most argued that it probably would not. When asked who would win, they were all in agreement, of course. India would prevail rapidly, bringing Pakistan to its knees. Pakistan would be forced to finally abandon any claims to Kashmir and to stop sponsoring terrorism. Would the Pakistani army accept a crushing defeat and not use its bombs, my mates and I asked? Perhaps not, they responded, but India could absorb the cost of a nuclear strike and hit back even harder. From the Thar Desert to Fort Williams in Kolkata, the Indian military academy in Pune, and military headquarters in New Delhi, we heard the same argument: India cannot let Pakistan get away with terrorism; it must pay a price. Nonetheless, in 2002, Pakistan got away with it.

  When the Royal College team met with General Musharraf in Rawalpindi a couple of weeks later, his tone was triumphant. A graduate of the college himself, he was eager to talk with members of the current class. When asked how it was possible for Pakistani terrorists to attack the very heart of Indian democracy in New Delhi, Musharraf was evasive, saying only that such clandestine affairs are always complicated. But his main message was simple: Pakistan had prevailed in the year-long crisis after the New Delhi attack. India had been forced to back down; Pakistan’s deterrent had worked. His implicit message also was simple: if it chose, Pakistan could do it and get away with it again.

  The stakes in South Asia are huge. There is a very real chance of another Mumbai or Kargil. There is the risk of nuclear war. There is also the potential for one and half billion people to live a better life and create a zone of economic prosperity and democracy unrivaled on the planet. South Asians will determine which path they follow; Americans will be mostly observers. But the United States can help.

  America would be wise to first organize itself properly to deal with South Asia. Poor organization has been a consistent problem for decades. South Asia was the stepchild of the Near East until Congress forced the first Bush administration to set up a separate bureau in the State Department in 1992. The second Bush administration then tried to merge it into East Asia, inadvertently leaving Afghanistan homeless. The Obama team partitioned the subcontinent again, splitting Afghanistan and Pakistan from India. The right answer, which is also a simple one, is to see the region as a whole and create an organizational structure that does the same. A South Asia bureau should be created in the National Security Council, and the rest of the executive branch, including the uniformed military services, should be instructed to follow suit. A new Indian Ocean command should be created to make sure that the U.S. military—the largest part of the American national security apparatus with the biggest throw weight in policy formulation outside the White House—has a holistic view of South Asia. With the right bureaucracy in place to plan, analyze, and implement strategy, the United States can then turn to substantive policy matters.

  Today South Asia is at a unique moment in its history. India is more prosperous and democratic than ever before; it is growing rapidly, and its democracy is deeply ingrained in the national psyche. A military coup in New Delhi is unthinkable. Hundreds of millions of Indians are escaping dire poverty, and hundreds of millions more are becoming middle-class consumers. Despite a recent slowdown in its economic growth rate, in the new millennium India is certain to be one of the most important countries in the world, as it was for so much of human history.

  Pakistan’s progress has been less certain but nonetheless important and impressive. Despite all the odds, President Zardari has survived as a democratically elected leader, the first elected Pakistani head of state to serve a full term in office. Although behind the scenes the army wields excessive power and influence and controls the national security agenda, it has not been able to oust Zardari or to convince Pakistanis that the generals should rule again. A coup is still a real danger, especially if it brings back a twenty-first century version of Mohammed Zia ul-Haq, but it is by no means inevitable. Pakistan’s economy is not consistently growing as fast as India’s, but it has shown some promise.

  A wealth of good books about Pakistan’s future have been published in the last several years, with some arguing that Pakistan is a failing state and others maintaining that the case for the collapse of Pakistan is overstated.1 In any event, there are good reasons to be concerned about its future. Violence, terrorism, and political assassinations have become all too common. The civil-military relationship is poisonous. The ISI’s flirtation with terrorists has made Pakistan the terrorism capital of the world; it was no accident that Osama bin Laden spent the last decade of his life in Pakistan. According to the Pakistani government, since 9/11 almost 45,000 Pakistanis, including 7,000 soldiers, have died in terrorism-related violence, defined to include sectarian and ethnic terrorism in Pakistan’s major cities and borderlands. Much of the violence has take
n place in the major cities of Karachi, Lahore, and Islamabad. While there was one suicide bombing in Pakistan before 9/11, there have been more than 300 since.2

  Pakistanis themselves are increasingly fed up with the political gridlock that has stymied the country’s progress for years. In a sense, every national election in Pakistan since 1988 has had the same two candidates: Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, or her husband as a stand-in. The lack of choice is frustrating, and one consequence is the increasing search for an alternative. The country’s former star cricket player, Imran Khan, has attracted huge interest recently as a possible alternative.3 Even A. Q. Khan is considering some kind of political future as well, sensing the desire for change in the country.

  But Pakistan is not falling apart like Somalia or Syria. The instruments of state power, though corrupt, are still strong. The army and the intelligence services are not likely to collapse in the foreseeable future, nor is the Pakistan Taliban likely to defeat them in battle. A more realistic danger is another coup. It might be a soft one, without tanks in the streets, done largely behind the scenes. If the next coup were to be led by a general in the mold of Zia ul-Haq, it could mean the transformation of Pakistan into a jihadist state. That would be a global nightmare.

  In addition, another small war or another big terrorist attack, like Kargil or Mumbai, could spiral out of control all too easily, precipitating disaster. India and Pakistan’s track record since independence shows that they have gone from one crisis to the next. True, they have not fought a major war since 1971, but they went to the brink in 1987, 1990, 1999, 2001, 2002, and 2008. The two countries are certainly well armed for war. India has the world’s largest volunteer army, with 1,300,000 active duty personnel and another 1 million reserve personnel; its air force has 127,000 personnel and operates almost 1,400 aircraft; and its navy is one of the few true blue-water fleets in the world capable of projecting power. India is also the world’s largest importer of arms today, accounting for almost 10 percent of global arms purchases. Pakistan, with a much smaller demographic and economic base, is stretched to keep up, but it has the seventh-largest military in the world. The army has an active duty force of 700,000 men; the air force has 65,000 full-time personnel and operates 550 combat aircraft and many more transport and training aircraft.4 Both countries spend an enormous amount of their national wealth on their military. For two countries facing huge challenges of poverty and unemployment, it is a tragedy to spend so much on preparing for war.

  They also spend precious resources on their nuclear deterrents. How large their respective arsenals are is a closely guarded secret in both New Delhi and Islamabad. Estimates by various think tanks vary; a safe estimate would put both at no less than a hundred weapons each. Pakistan’s arsenal, the fastest growing in the world today, may be twice that size. Both countries can deliver their weapons by aircraft and missiles. Pakistan’s Ghauri missiles, based on a North Korean design, can strike all of India’s major cities. India’s Agni missile, which was tested in May 2012, flew deep into the Indian Ocean; it can reach all of Pakistan and as far as Beijing. Both are now developing naval delivery systems. India, which already has a nuclear-powered submarine, launched in 2009, has plans to build four more, and it has practiced with leased Russian-supplied nuclear submarines extensively in the past. Pakistan set up a new naval strategic forces command and is developing tactical nuclear weapons.5 It also is building three more Chinese-supplied plutonium reactors to increase its arsenal even faster.6

  Some have argued that the possession of nuclear weapons now has created a more or less stable balance of terror that will preclude Armageddon in South Asia. That argument, which was part of Musharraf’s message to the Royal College group, suggests that just as America and the Soviet Union fought a cold war but never a hot war because of their mutually assured destruction, India and Pakistan, though rivals, will not engage in a nuclear war; they are not suicidal. This argument may prove true over time, but that is an uncertain bet. America and the Soviet Union came very close to nuclear war more than once. The worst scare occurred during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when, according to new research, nuclear war was only narrowly averted;7 however, there were other crises, in Germany and the Middle East, that also threatened conflict between the two superpowers. If John Kennedy had listened to his generals and diplomats in 1962, the world would have been incinerated. Almost all of them recommended invading Cuba, and it is now known that if the United States had done so, the Russians would have used nuclear weapons to defend the island.

  Unlike America and the Soviet Union, India and Pakistan are not separated by the Arctic Ocean. There is no buffer of frozen water between them; they confront each other every day along a long, disputed border. While the border area has been more stable since the end of the Twin Peaks crisis, it remains a source of friction. Pakistani or Indian nuclear-tipped missiles would arrive on target in a matter of a few minutes from launch to explosion. There would be no time for using a hot line to phone the other leader, let alone for reflection or discussion.

  Moreover, the subcontinent is home to a wealth of terrorists eager to provoke war between India and Pakistan. The Mumbai attack in 2008 demonstrated that most dramatically. The 2000 attack on the Indian parliament was also a vivid warning that there are those in Pakistan who seek a nuclear confrontation to realize their twisted dream of destroying the Indian union. Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, and a host of others want war in South Asia, and they have the ability to create a provocation, a casus belli, as did the Serbian terrorists who started World War I. The events of 1914 were very much on Bill Clinton’s mind at Blair House in 1999; he worried about the danger of escalation—how terrorists could reignite an already dangerous conflict to create disaster. The subcontinent’s terrorists also long to gain direct control of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. George Tenet, a former director of central intelligence, discussed in his memoirs repeated efforts by al Qaeda to acquire nuclear weapons.8 The terrorist organizations in Pakistan have repeatedly attacked military installations where the country’s nuclear weapons are stored. One observer sagely noted that “Al Qaeda and other militant groups are known to be desperate to get their hands on fissile material or an assembled warhead. As Pakistan is apparently increasing its arsenal as fast as it can and investing in smaller and more easily waylaid weapons, the risks are mounting.” At least six nuclear sites have been targets of militant attacks in recent years.9

  The United States has played a key role in all of the recent crises in averting the worst and helping to keep the peace. From Reagan in the Brass Tacks crisis to George H. W. Bush in the 1990 war scare, Clinton in Kargil, George Bush in 2001 and 2002, and George Bush and Obama in 2008, American presidents have been key intermediaries in helping to keep conflict limited and contained. Some scholars have even argued that the United States now has the equivalent of a “playbook” for conflict management in South Asia.10 They are right; the United States does know how to manage a crisis. But that isn’t enough. South Asia is playing Russian roulette, with war as a possible outcome. So far India and Pakistan have fired empty chambers in their revolvers, but it is all too likely that sooner or later, that will end. When the next crisis comes, it will be harder than ever for an Indian prime minister to argue that diplomacy will lead Pakistan to put pressure on the terrorists; it has failed too many times. The next time that it does, the American play book could be useless.

  At the heart of the matter is Pakistan’s twin sense of vulnerability and unfulfilled aspirations. Pakistan is a state that is unsatisfied with its borders and living next to a much-bigger rival. Indeed, Pakistan’s longest borders with its two largest neighbors are unsettled and unrecognized by those neighbors. It is really remarkable that in the twenty-first century such a large country still has two disputed borders, and that fact explains in part why the military has been such a dominant player in the country’s politics. Pakistani generals can make a convincing case that the country faces serious national security thre
ats on multiple fronts and therefore must devote much of its budget to preparing for war. Of course, for decades the generals have made Pakistan’s problems worse by supporting terrorism and schemes like the 1999 Kargil war and Operation Gibraltar, the plot to seize Kashmir in 1965. They also have used the excuse of national security to justify creating a state within the state that is beyond the reach of civil authority and the rule of law. That does not change the fact that Pakistan needs to find a peaceful resolution of its border disputes.

  One way to begin to resolve Pakistan’s border situation would be to encourage more cross-border trade and transit. Since 1947 and especially since 1965, there has been little trade between India and Pakistan and transit between the two has been limited and difficult. For two countries that share a subcontinent, their interaction is minimal. There are occasional joint sporting events, usually cricket matches, and a good many informal academic discussions, but while both are useful endeavors, they are unlikely to change the dynamics of South Asian politics. The goodwill generated by a cricket game in which both prime ministers are cheering in the stands has not changed Pakistani or Indian policies one iota, nor has the host of academic exchanges and track-two conferences in the last few decades, regardless of how worthwhile.

  Increasing trade and transit would be more meaningful; it would build constituencies in both countries that would support an end to conflict and favor peace. Unleashing the economic potential of a unified South Asian market could do for Pakistan and its neighbors what the European Union did for Europe, creating a common sense of identity and a common interest in peace. Tourism between the two would build a healthy mutual understanding and familiarity that could reunite what partition broke apart, creating a subcontinent at peace, not war.