The 1998 Nuclear Tests

In the spring of 1998, for the first time in India’s history, Hindu nationalist parties under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) received a plurality of the national vote.

They had a mandate to declare India as a nuclear power and push their traditional hard line on Pakistan.

On May 11 and 13, 1998, India conducted a series of nuclear tests.

International pressure mounted on Pakistan not to reciprocate.

But Indian Home Minister L. K. Advani menacingly urged Pakistan to roll back its anti-India policy, especially with regard to Kashmir.

He threatened that ‘India would chase insurgents from Kashmir back into Pakistan’.

• If Pakistan did nuclear weapons tests, it would have to pay relatively greater economic costs, which the nearly bankrupt economy could barely afford.

• If it refrained from nuclear tests, the Sharif government would face domestic opposition.

Sharif wavered for a few days. But he soon agreed with the military leadership that nuclear deterrence was much more important than economic sanctions.

The 1970s until the nuclear tests in 1998 provides 4 major insights about Pakistani security policy.

1. As belief in nuclear weapons grew more popular, it became institutionalised among all relevant government agencies.

The quest for nuclear weapons evolved from a modest and ambiguous political directive into the highest national priority and ultimately the core of its national security.

Before 1971, fear of US opprobrium was viewed as a compelling reason for Pakistan not to pursue a full-blown nuclear program.

Pakistan preferred sanctions, economic embargoes, and conventional force degradation to any move to neutralise its deterrent capability.

2. Pakistan developed its nuclear capability when it was a crucial American ally against the communism.

For the United States, the goal of bleeding the USSR through asymmetric means was greater than Pakistan’s nuclear activity and democratic deficit.

As the end of the Cold War made US interests in the region wane Pakistan continued with the same regional policies to advance its objectives in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Throughout the two decades since the late 1970s, Pakistan followed a nuclear policy of denial and ambiguity, as its scientific establishment vigorously continued to procure nuclear materials and technology from all possible sources.

3. During Pakistan’s deep crises with India in the 1980s and 1990s, nuclear weapons ironically did not play a major role in the country’s security.

This is because military thinking in Pakistan remained focused on conventional war fighting.

Even with the possession of an existential nuclear deterrent capability, defence planners preferred to rely on asymmetric strategies that were deemed to be cheaper options in Kashmir and Afghanistan via the Taliban.

Pakistani planners failed to understand the implications of pursuing a proxy war strategy in their own neighbourhood.

Supporting these insurgencies under the nuclear shadow as a regional policy had the risk of blowback.

This strategy was dangerous given the fact that the possession of nuclear capabilities itself was isolating Pakistan and evoking sanctions.

4. Pakistan’s policy of acquiring nuclear weapons helped nuclear proliferation.

Pakistani policymakers did not expect their lax nuclear oversight would create the permissive environment which enabled A. Q. Khan and his colleagues to establish his far-reaching nuclear supply network.

The Pakistani ambition was to secure its interests along its borders, relaying on a nuclear capability to deter a far superior adversary from escalating a low-intensity conflict.*