Strategy Before Diplomacy

Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh are clearly fine people. Their dignity and rapport can only do much good to a US-India relationship, which has plummeted, despite many good people on both sides. Talbott has articulated his views clearly on what India needs to do, at his speech to the Brookings Institution on December 12 - mentioning specifically five points. But before doing so he reiterated that the 'starting point for diplomacy is that India and Pakistan need security, they deserve security, and they have a right to determine what is necessary to attain security'. Having said that, the sincerity of these words have to be matched against Talbott's third point (of the five mentioned), where he has urged India and Pakistan to 'consider strategic restraint measures, a package of prudent constraints on the development, flight testing and storage of missiles, and also on the basing of nuclear-capable aircraft'. In making this suggestion, Talbott has taken a giant leap from the field of diplomacy into the field of nuclear strategy.

The Gordian knot that has to be cut before diplomacy can be given a chance is the answer that India and Pakistan have to arrive at, on what is their nuclear strategy. Nuclear weapons, more than any other, are influenced by the trajectory of technology. This trajectory, which has been written about extensively by the Tofflers, is pretty near autonomous. Man buys a new toaster, Hi-Fi, television, computer or a car with expanded capabilities, computing power and engineering not because he asked for them, but because the frontiers of technology expand on their own. A societal attempt to curb technology is a non-starter, because societal leaders can barely distinguish a Hi-Fi from an inertial navigation system.

India and Pakistan are nuclear weapon powers and within these omnibus terms are concealed thousands of technologists working on rocketry, new materials, guidance systems, inertial navigation, nuclear physics, explosive engineering and reactor technology. Activities in these fields are running, possibly galloping; what the Americans want is for India and Pakistan to place an artificial barrier on technology and fix it at some primitive level. Is this possible?

The Ambassador car is a good (or bad) example of inadvertent meddling in the technology trajectory. Pompous socialists pontificated in the '60s that what India needed was a well-lubricated, ball-bearinged bullock cart. Today, the technology trajectory has caught up with a vengeance, as automobile production went up from 150,000 to 650,000 in three years, leaving both Indians and Indian roads choking in their wake.

The theory of deterrence is founded on the calculation of 'payoffs'. This calculation is necessary because the future of a nation and the safety of its people cannot be left to Aristotelian arguments like, 'I think he will be deterred' or 'surely he will be deterred' or 'don't you think he will be deterred...?' To elevate the fixing of nuclear deterrence beyond fragile, verbal levels some quantitative analysis is necessary. It's not perfect, but far superior to arguments in words. Nuclear deterrence is achieved between two powers, when both calculate the payoffs separately, but arrive at near equal answers, with which they are satisfied. Periodic recalculation of payoffs should not result in wide variations. What Talbott and the West are worried about, justifiably, are the possibilities of accidents, particularly in South Asia where a semi-hostile relationship exists. Among the situations in which nuclear accidents can occur, the most dangerous is undoubtedly nuclear instability in crises, of the creation of conditions that induce the threat of a first strike.

It is here that the Indian side needs to marshal its facts coherently. An undeclared, uncapped furtive nuclear capability on both sides will generate a pattern of payoff calculations that will fluctuate wildly and are therefore dangerous. Crises occur, not because of nuclear weapons but because of the pattern of international relationships. In a crisis, fluctuating payoffs can create windows of apparent opportunity for a first strike; unless nuclear arsenals are fixed, promulgated and openly declared with clearly articulated reserves for the technology trajectory. This is why the 'walk in the woods' agreement between Nitze and Kvitinsky in Switzerland on the inf treaty produced a quick answer, although Reagan then let Nitze down.

The Talbott-Jaswant talks must remain the diplomatic overarch under which N-strategists can talk. Their dialogue will be more precise and less likely to wander into the theory of international relations. Talbott and his team were presumably not here to see the Taj. Could India muster its strategists, operations analysts and nuclear physicists and simulate the possible scenarios being negotiated? Best of all, can they meet their Pakistani counterparts to get an idea where deterrence can be fixed? If we can't make these extensive preparations that signify discipline, rigour and clear-headedness, why not ask the Americans to lend us one of their fine institutions, like rand, to do the simulation? Most of all, can the preparation for Jaswant to meet Talbott be structured at all levels instead of leaving it to only a high level - like the mating of elephants?

The practical Americans want us to articulate our nuclear strategy, and we can't because we don't have one. Only the armed forces could write one, with their background, but they are not part of the government. The Americans are bewildered, because the Indian strategy they've pieced

together from press statements terrify them. Talbott wasn't being patronising when he suggested a reading list for South Asia. We have the people who are familiar with Talbott's reading list, so finalising our strategy before bringing diplomacy into the picture shouldn't be difficult.