Operational Deterrent

Musharraf took over as Army Chief in October 1998 in tense regional and domestic circumstances.

Pakistan was under international sanctions because of the nuclear tests.

Relations with India were tense due to the ongoing Kashmir uprising and arrival of the Hindu nationalist party.

Domestically Pakistan was also in a burgeoning crisis.

The Sharif government was trying to gain absolute dominance by waging political war on multiple fronts, including the Presidency, the Judiciary, and the Parliament (opposition parties).

The economy was faltering due to extravagant economic policies and corruption.

Civil-military relations were under severe strain following the removal of Musharraf’s predecessor Army Chief Jehangir Karamat.

After a summer of high-intensity conflict in Kargil and breakdown of civil-military relations, the military finally took over power on October 12, 1999.

Nuclear weapons played a prominent role in President Pervez Musharraf’s policy focus and strategic orientation.

The economic revival of Pakistan became his singular focus. 9/11 made Pakistan again a front line state. He saw an opportunity to jumpstart the economy with new aid and cash flows

In a few years, he had turned the economy around evident in Pakistan’s 8% annual GDP growth by 2006.

Immediately after 9/11, he joined the US-led coalition, abandoning the Taliban, to preserve Pakistan’s strategic assets.

After the 13 December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, he changed Pakistan’s strategic orientation towards India from active hostility to dialogue and conflict resolution.

Before the coup, Musharraf had taken command of a conventional army that now had proven nuclear weapons though the nuclear arsenal was not under military command.

Musharraf made major changes in the Army’s leadership and brought a more proactive approach to address the Army’s problems and low morale.

On the suggestion of his new military command, Musharraf approved a plan to secretly occupy positions vacated by India along the LoC, specifically in the Kargil sector.

Exploiting vacant positions and jockeying for tactical dominance has been an ongoing practice between the 2 militaries along the LoC since the mid-1980s, beginning with India’s 1984 occupation of the Siachen Glacier.

Musharraf briefed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who in turn visited the military command area in late January and February 1999.

Sharif approved the Kargil operation even if he was making peace overtures to India.

By the spring of 1999, less than a year after Pakistan’s nuclear tests, Pakistan embarked on 2 contradictory approaches:

• Pakistani soldiers crossed the LoC to occupy abandoned positions.
• Yet Sharif received the Indian Prime Minister after a dramatic bus ride to Lahore.

This led to an upbeat summit culminating in an agreement that promised peace and security.

By the summer of 1999, a mini-war had broken out on the Kargil heights, bringing the 2 nuclear neighbours to the brink of major conflict.

The international community intervened to bring an end to the crisis.

Pakistani soldiers were forced to withdraw, which brought a humiliation of sorts.

This led to the deterioration in the country’s civil-military relations and paved the way for the October 1999 coup.

Kargil underscored incoherence in Pakistani governance and strategic decision-making. This was a very shaky beginning for Pakistan as a nuclear power.

Among the multiple challenges that Musharraf faced was the problem of managing an overtly nuclear armed Pakistan.

The Kargil episode revealed that Pakistani strategic thinking was still dominated by conventional military logic. The true meaning of the nuclear revolution took many years to mature.

India and Pakistan may be facing an even greater time lag in reaching this understanding. Kargil was a learning experience for Musharraf.

As head of state he adopted a pragmatic and mature approach, which was later demonstrated during the 2002 military standoff with India—a crisis that also risked escalation to full-scale war and with it the possibility of nuclear use.

This parallels to some degree the US experience of the Bay of Pigs followed by the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Musharraf issued a directive to study the implications of Pakistan’s overt nuclear status. Confronted with a choice between declaring a nuclear command authority or a nuclear use doctrine, he eventually approved the former.

To Pakistani defence a planner declaring command and control was a reflection of responsibility. The underlying motivation was to quash the perception of nuclear irresponsibility.

At the same time, neither the military nor the civilian bureaucracy had any experience in dealing with the critical questions raised by being a nuclear power.

The military had no acquaintance with issues such as nuclear force planning, strategy, targeting, integrating conventional forces, or developing a command-control infrastructure. The civil bureaucracy had been conducting nuclear diplomacy for decades but did not understand the nuances of international relations as a declared nuclear power.

Pakistan was still at an early point along a steep nuclear learning curve.

On 2 February 2000, Musharraf announced Pakistan’s command and control setup, making its Secretariat the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), located at the Joint Services Headquarters. The Pakistani war direction is conducted from the National Military Command Center (NMCC), which houses in it the civil and military leadership and integrates operations and intelligence of conventional armed forces.

The nuclear command-control set up is an overlay of the existing national command structure and has two segments.

The apex body is the Employment Control Committee, a senior leadership group comprising both military and civilian policy-makers, which gives policy direction and is the authority over strategic forces.

The subordinate body is the Developmental Control Committee, which is comprised of military and scientific elements and which is tasked to optimise the technical and financial efficiency of the whole program to implement the goals set by the Employment Control Committee.

The foremost decision taken early on by the Pakistani government was to determine the purpose of nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are for deterrence purposes, but deterrence is not believed to come automatically.

Deterrence requires a mixture of credible force, demonstrative capability and a manner to convey its will to the opponents. Further, Pakistanis recognise that deterrence works primarily in the eye of the beholder, and as a political weapon, nuclear force can only be credible once it is perceived as militarily usable.

For over a decade now, after three major crises, Pakistan’s National Command Authority has matured in formulating strategic doctrines, thresholds, targeting, and survivability techniques.

Pakistan’s strategic forces continue to grow. Its fissile material consists mainly of highly enriched uranium; but the PAEC also has developed the capability to produce weapon-grade plutonium on a small scale.

On the delivery side, Pakistan’s mainstay consists of ballistic missiles, especially solid-fuel ballistic missiles such as Hatf-3(Ghaznavi) and Hatf-4 (Shaheen) with ranges from 290 to 650 kilometres respectively.

Further, for deeper targets Pakistan has the Hatf-5 (Ghauri) and Hatf-6 (Shaheen 2), which can target key Indian cities and garrisons, and which have estimated ranges of up to 1,250 kilometres and 2,200 kilometres, respectively.

As the Pakistan force posture grew under a coherent development plan based on an array of strategic assessments, the primary belief that nuclear weapons are essential for national security, was deeply internalised in the Pakistani state by this time.

Nuclear weapons had been tested and the financial costs had already been paid. However, the auxiliary assertions about the role of nuclear weapons were still in flux. What were the ‘influencing’ dimensions of being a country that obtains a political status of becoming a nuclear power, especially in terms of regional and international affairs? Further, for Pakistan it was unclear how to determine the military feasibility of nuclear weapons, especially how to integrate these capabilities into its conventional war planning and deterrent postures.

In terms of nuclear policy planning and strategic thinking, after the 1998 nuclear tests Pakistan had only a vague notion of an existential nuclear deterrence. Under the leadership of Lt. Gen. Khalid Ahmad Kidwai, the SPD proceeded to develop clearer concepts and guidelines on force structure and planning and on prioritising force goals within the parameters of financial and resource constraints.

Though the command and control system is still evolving its functioning and efficacy is still shrouded in secrecy. During the 1999 and 2002 crises, nuclear weapons were not openly brandished though some preparations or passive dispersive measures for survivability may have been taken. During this period, Pakistan also developed the art of signalling deterrence through declaratory statements and ballistic missile testing, but nuclear weapons did not play an overt role during the 1999 and 2002 crises.

Nevertheless, the nuclear arsenal did play its primary deterrent role: crises remain limited in action, and escalation to general war was avoided.

There were however other factors, such as US intervention, which probably played a critical role in easing India-Pakistan tensions.

Musharraf inherited a nuclear program that had developed sufficiently but lacked a coherent direction. Worse, an uncontrolled procurement network had unravelled under his watch. The command and control system was made more effective after the firing of A. Q. Khan, with rapidly upgraded security and oversight and the enactment of export control legislation. Meanwhile, the nuclear arsenal continued to grow both in quantity and quality.

Pakistan’s delivery means were expanded and diversified, including in the arena of cruise missiles, which were tested recently.

American defence analyst John H. Gill describes Pakistan’s current nuclear strategy concisely: ‘Pakistan seeks to maintain sufficient conventional and nuclear strength to deter an Indian attack, or if deterrence fails, to prevent a catastrophic defeat long enough for the international community to intervene and halt the conflict.’

Nuclear weapons are now so deeply embedded in Pakistani security thinking that any attempt to dissuade it from this path—towards disarmament or towards a weapon-free world—would be met with stiff resistance from the entire spectrum within the state.

Today, the Armed Forces, civilian bureaucracy, scientific community, and entire political spectrum, from the religious right to liberal left, all support Pakistan’s continued nuclear weapons capability.

Also, there is a strong consensus that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are under threat from hostile countries, which include the United States, Israel and India. Pakistanis believe that their nuclear arsenal remains vulnerable to preventive or pre-emptive attacks and thus even a slight hint of threat or rumour prompts the Armed Forces to take precautionary measures. The West often accused Pakistan of issuing nuclear threats as during Kargil.

This tendency has existed since the mid-1980s when reports about a joint Indo-Israeli attack against Kahuta circulated inside Pakistan, only to be later confirmed when it became evident (at least to Pakistani defence planners) that India seriously contemplated such a plan.

The Pakistani Armed Forces have integrated nuclear weapons into their war plans and deterrence strategy. However, other Pakistani elites have contested the military’s limited conception of the role of nuclear weapons.

Religious opposition parties, such as Jamaat-e Islami (JI), articulate the role of nuclear weapons in a different light and have demonstrated nuclear symbolism by placing models of missiles in prominent public places.

The party’s think-tank contends that the value of Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent extends beyond countering India. According to JI Senator Khurshid Ahmad:

Pakistan as an Islamic state has a responsibility to the broader Umma…

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons will inevitably be seen as a threat by Israel, and therefore Pakistan must include Israel in its defense planning… Under the circumstances, the future of the Muslim world depends on Pakistan.

To date, no serious planning has occurred in Pakistan that would indicate that the Islamic myth of nuclear influence had taken hold or that the government is thinking in terms of extending deterrence or proliferating nuclear weapons in order to profit from their value as an ideological weapon.

However, the rhetoric that Pakistan was the first Muslim country to acquire nuclear weapons remains a popular notion in domestic political culture.