People like Sheikh Rasheed should not be allowed to comment on nuclear strategy—its serious business and should be handled by serious people, argues Umer Farooq
It seems the famous Sheikh Rasheed has again been briefed about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons by a mid-ranking military or intelligence official, whose own knowledge about the country’s nuclear strategy is either rudimentary or he wants to make a fool out of the honorable minister for Railways.
There could be another possibility that Sheikh Rasheed was unable to grasp the gist of what military or intelligence official told him about Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine and what Sheikh sahib said in a television interview was a basically distorted version of what he was told in the background briefing. In other words what Sheikh Rasheed said was an outcome of Chinese whisper, which lost its intended meaning in the second step of the chain.
First let’s consider what Sheikh Rasheed said in a television interview. He claimed that Pakistan will target India with ‘special, calculated’ nuclear weapons’ in case of a war between the two countries. According to the minister, there were no chances of a ‘conventional war’ between India and Pakistan in case of aggression by New Delhi. He further claimed that Pakistan now has nuclear weapons that can reach Assam. “Pakistan does not possess enough conventional weapons, so India knows that [in a war], whatever will happen, will happen.”
Even layman’s comprehension of nuclear strategy and nuclear doctrine is better than the clownish manner in which the federal minister tried to explain his country’s nuclear strategy to his countrymen. What special weapons Sheikh Rasheed is talking about is most probably the tactical nukes that Pakistan developed more than a decade again as a weapon of last resort to stalling the advance of Indian armour columns in case of conventional weapons.
Can these tactical nukes be employed against urban targets as the minister tried to imply in his television interview? These are specifically military weapons designed to be used in the battlefield against the enemy’s advancing columns. NATO and American forces deployed tactical nukes in central Europe during the Cold War to halt the possible advance of much larger Soviet conventional forces towards Western European cities.
Pakistani strategy to make tactical nukes part of war making plans seems to be a copy of NATO’s similar strategy to employ tactical nukes against any possible advance by Soviet forces—which were superior in strength to the NATO forces.
The minister made a fool out of himself when he said that these “special weapons” would be used in a way to protect the Muslim population of India. As if Pakistani nuclear weapons will knock at every door in New Delhi to confirm whether the family living there was Muslim or not and in case the family turns out to be non-Muslim the bomb will explode otherwise it knocks the next door.
True, for many years following the nuclear explosions in May 1998 Pakistan’s military planners continued to bank on the strategy of desperation—in order to convince India that Pakistan’s nuclear threshold is very low the Pakistani military planners used to insert rhetoric from semi-literate political leaders that Pakistan would be desperate to use nuclear weapons in case of a full-fledged conventional attack on Pakistani territory.
These initial years saw many clowns like Sheikh Rasheed make ferocious statements about Pakistani desperation to use its nukes in case its territorial integrity was threatened by the conventional superior Indian military.
But to these statements and these expressions of desperation we can apply the famous law of diminishing utility—much-used law of economic principles, which says that any item of economic use diminishes in utility when it Is used repeatedly over a short period of time.
There is no doubt that these statements or expressions of desperation have diminished in utility over the years as they have repeatedly failed to impress Indian military planners, who twice during the last two decades mobilized their forces to pose a serious conventional threat to the territorial integrity of Pakistan.
That in easy words would mean they loaded their pistols and aimed it, but didn’t press the trigger. Whether their act of not pressing the trigger was the result of Pakistan’s desperate statements threatening the use of nuke or was it the outcome of hectic diplomatic activity by international players, is not a settled issue.
After 2002 mobilization of Indian military and counter mobilization of the Pakistani military in the wake of the attack on the Indian parliament, the situation proved too costly for both sides in financial terms. Pakistan immediately inducted nuclear weapons into its war-making strategy as it had no other option in the face of financial constraints it faced.
This was also the time when news reports also started to appear in American newspapers that US military is keeping its special forces units in Afghanistan to take out Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in order to avert the chances of these nukes slipping into the hands of terrorists or extremists in case Pakistani state melts away.
The journey after Pakistani became a declared nuclear state was not a straight line for those handling these nukes and the doctrine and strategy associated with them. Pakistani nukes proved to be hot potatoes for us as well.
People like Sheikh Rasheed should not be allowed to comment on nuclear strategy—its serious business and should be handled by serious people. Even if somebody thinks that Indians will be impressed by Sheikh Rasheed’s rhetoric, we should think for the sake of Pakistan and its people as a reasonable state and reasonable people, who are more interested in living their full life instead of dying as a result of Indian counter nuclear strikes.
For those who are interested in dying in Indian counter-nuclear strike, there is a suggestion: let’s buy them an island in the Arabian Sea and shift them there with all the bombs and wherewithal and to wait for Indian counter strike. Please let Pakistanis live in peace.