|
Maleeha Lodhi
Ambassador of Pakistan to the United States
I know it's not fashionable to quote him, but former President Bill Clinton described South Asia as the most dangerous place on earth.
It is ironic that people from South Asia who are hard-working, enterprising and have achieved such extraordinary success in their endeavors abroad, including in their ability to work with each other, have been unable to overcome their mutual differences or to harness and realize the enormous economic potential of the region, as well as their individual countries in South Asia.
The people of South Asia urgently need to overcome the bitter legacies of the past in order to create an environment for peace and security and build a better tomorrow of economic prosperity for our people. The twin phenomena of strategic peril and economic promise throw a daunting challenge to all of us. But it's a challenge that must be met, so that South Asia can be in sync with the great global transformations of our times.
Since the nuclear tests by India and the response by Pakistan in May 1998, the focus on this region has been almost exclusively on the nuclear dimension of the confrontation between our two countries. In reality, South Asian security is challenged by the interplay of several factors operating at different levels.
First, the domestic level: After over half a century of foreign dependence, the nations of South Asia have been unable to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty, deprivation and underdevelopment. Very few have access to clean drinking water. Fewer have a permanent roof over their heads. Only the fortunate have access to education. Life in these conditions is really nasty, brutal and short.
Within our society, we have seen ethnic, religious and sectarian intolerance. As a result, tensions abound within and between our people, and frequently reinforce tensions between Pakistan and India. We in Pakistan, now negotiating one of the most critical transitions in our history, see national security in the broadest sense of the term - encompassing and embracing economic and social security. Economic security is an indispensable component of peace and stability within our frontiers and without.
At the regional level, pursuit of domination by one state over its neighbors has been a recipe for insecurity and instability. India maintains the world's fourth largest military machine. Its nuclear explosions in May 1998 were status-driven, from our perspective. In response, my country has been constrained to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent to ensure its security against India's nuclear and conventional capabilities.
If the past is any guide, the future is fraught with risk. Within a year of the nuclear explosion, India unveiled an ambitious nuclear doctrine. The fact that India also increased its massive defense expenditure by a whopping 28 percent - an increase larger than Pakistan's entire defense budget - to fuel both its indigenous strategic and conventional defense program, as well as its foreign military acquisitions, demonstrated to us that New Delhi had already started working to implement this strategic doctrine.
Ostensibly aimed at acquiring a minimum nuclear deterrent based on a second-strike capability, the doctrine is a matter of deep concern for Pakistan. It should be for the international community as well.
While our neighbor's efforts to acquire greater conventional capability have proceeded apace, my country's modest efforts to replace and modernize its worn-out conventional weapons inventory has been seriously affected by U.S. sanctions. The U.S. has historically been the traditional source of our conventional weapon supply. In this growing asymmetry, Pakistan will be increasingly forced to rely on strategic capabilities.
Meanwhile, the Kashmir dispute remains a flash point of tensions between the world's newest nuclear powers. The risks of escalation through accident or miscalculation cannot be discarded. The Kargill crisis of 1999 was the latest example of escalatory exchanges along the line of control. The crisis followed the nuclear sabre-rattling over Kashmir by Indian leaders who, immediately after the nuclear tests, demanded that Pakistan accept new realities vis à vis Kashmir.
While the primary lesson of Kargill was that nuclear deterrents ultimately compelled both sides towards restraint, de-escalation and disengagement, the other lesson was that their is little reason to be sanguine about the future - especially in a nuclearized environment characterized not by a cold peace, but by a hot front in South Asia's own long-running "Cold War." This danger is dramatized by recent Indian pronouncements about a limited conventional war, a possibility signaled by none other than India's army chief. This, to Islamabad, is dangerous brinkmanship. How a spiral of escalation could be controlled if such hostilities erupted remains an open question.
All of this points to the urgency of finding a peaceful negotiated resolution of Kashmir. No military solution is possible of the Kashmir dispute. But the Indian approach to a dialogue with Pakistan on Kashmir has been aimed in the recent past at formalizing the status quo, instead of ascertaining the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
The status quo is the problem. It cannot be part of the solution. But India continues to prevaricate on resuming a dialogue with Pakistan. Meanwhile, the effort by some to define the Kashmiri struggle in terms of terrorism is, to us, a travesty of the facts. The Kashmiris are engaged in a legitimate freedom struggle, and have the right to defend themselves against a foreign occupying force.
It's obvious that this precarious state of play in South Asia has an impact on the international environment, and on security in adjacent regions. The reverse also holds true. There can be little doubt that the economic and trade benefits that would accrue to the global economy from a peaceful and stable Asia, are the peace dividend.
But at the same time, we have to recognize that the pursuit of a lopsided approach in South Asia by the world's primary power, as well as the rest of the major powers, could have the unintended effect of undermining security and compounding regional tensions. For instance, the advocacy by some to build India as a counterweight to China can prove to be destabilizing and counterproductive for the region, and indeed, for global-U.S. interests.
Another contemporary challenge that is posed to security in South Asia comes from the decisions being made now in Washington to develop and deploy a national missile defense and theater defense systems. The effect on South Asia is apparent if such systems provoke the widely predicted nuclear and missile buildup by China.
Such developments at the international level could therefore further complicate and exacerbate the security environment in South Asia, while undermining any effort to restrain the nuclear arms race and build a strategic restraint regime to stabilize the nuclear deterrent in South Asia.
Also affecting South Asian security is the interaction of the regional states with external powers or adjacent regions. Stabilizing Afghanistan should be seen to be in the long-term economic and strategic interests of both Pakistan and India because this is, after all, the best route for access to Central Asia's energy and other resources and markets for exports.
Regional stability in South Asia and the success of moderate forces in Pakistan would be of vital importance for the adjacent Gulf-Middle East-Southwest Asian region, which is once again facing a period of turbulence and violence.
Finally, China and India are seeking to normalize relations, but any setback in this process could greatly destabilize our region's security environment. It could also accelerate the nuclear and conventional arms race between India and Pakistan.
We have a vision of the security architecture for South Asia that seeks to address the sources of insecurity in all the three interdependent levels. This security architecture has four main pillars: nuclear and missile restraint by Pakistan and India; an agreement for conventional arms control in South Asia; the peaceful resolution of all outstanding disputes and sources of tensions, especially Kashmir; and the economic and social revival of South Asia through regional cooperation and global integration in order to address our problems of poverty and deprivation.
While the acquisition of nuclear capabilities by Pakistan and India cannot be reversed, it has become imperative to ensure a stable and credible deterrence at the lowest possible level. Accordingly, in 1998, Pakistan proposed to India a strategic restraint regime. The broad parameters of this regime include a bilateral commitment to observe a moratorium on nuclear tests.
Secondly, for neither side to deploy nuclear weapons, and thirdly, avoiding or preventing a nuclear and ballistic missile race. Fourth, a commitment not to induct submarine-launched ballistic missiles and anti-ballistic missiles into the region. Fifth, evolving and agreeing to risk-reduction mechanisms and confidence-building measures.
And finally, evolving a nuclear doctrine of minimum deterrent capability. We feel such measures of nuclear restraint will be far more effective in preventing the use of nuclear weapons than a mere declaration of 'no first use,' which is rhetorical, has only rhetorical or symbolic value, and can be revoked at any time.
The second pillar entails measures for conventional arms control, which we feel are essential to preserve the stability of nuclear deterrents, and also to restrain wasteful expenditure.
Pakistan has made many proposals in this regard, but it has been disappointed that our proposals have not evoked active support from the United States and the international community. They have, of course, been repeatedly rejected by India. And no efforts have been directed to restrain, for example, Russia from their open-ended supply of advanced weapons to India.
The third pillar of the security architecture concerns the peaceful resolution of outstanding disputes. To attain this objective, Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf proposed at the UN Millennium Summit last October a no-war pact. He also offered to engage with India any time, at any level, any place. As for the fourth pillar, the realization of durable peace will not be possible without simultaneous and sustained economic progress.
The persistence of social deprivation will intensify the forces of chauvinism, religious extremism or intolerance, and ethnic particularism in all of South Asia. It is imperative that Pakistan and India create an enabling environment for mutually beneficial economic and trade relations.
The possibilities for economic growth and prosperity in South Asia can be enhanced by innovative measures of support from the international community as well. These could include effective poverty-reduction strategies for South Asian countries sponsored and supported by the IMF World Bank and the OECD countries: Trade and transit arrangement should be concluded and implemented as soon as we can, linking Central Asia and South Asia by a five-dimensional corridor (oil, gas, electricity, roads and railways) through Afghanistan and Pakistan - the conclusion of preferential trading arrangements by the EU, NAFTA and Japan.
Notwithstanding the humility with which President George W. Bush wishes to conduct foreign policy, the U.S., as the primary world power, has the capacity and the responsibility to play an effective role in promoting the construction of the security architecture for South Asia. U.S. relations with our region should not be a zero-sum game. At the same time, these relations ought not to be pursued or built with one state at the expense of the other.
The improvement in relations between Washington and New Delhi can encourage responsible Indian behavior and help construct an effective security architecture for our region.
The U.S. can also assist our region by broadening and balancing the scope of its overall economic engagement with all the South Asian countries in order to promote regional economic growth and prosperity in the area.
The Bush administration can and should play an active role in promoting durable peace and stability in the world's major crisis areas, including South Asia. It should move from the past approach of crisis management to effective and timely preventive diplomacy. A new U.S. policy paradigm towards Pakistan should be evolved within the framework of broad U.S. objectives and priorities, not only in South Asia, but also Central Asia and the Gulf.
My country's geo-political location positions Pakistan to play an influential role in all these regions. It is a role that we hope to play in the future.
