Facing Up to Nuclear Reality by Fareed Zakaria

June 8, 1998, U.S. Edition

Facing Up to Nuclear Reality
Washington must accept that the rules have changed since the end of the cold war. Here's what should be done now.
By Fareed Zakaria

It has taken 10 bombs, detonated in the deserts of South Asia, to explode a central myth about the world in which we live: that through an elaborate set of international treaties and laws, the acquisition, testing, proliferation and, eventually, even possession of nuclear weapons were on the wane. After all, we were told, a resounding 168 countries have signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The Nonproliferation Treaty has been extended indefinitely, it was repeatedly pointed out. Keep racking up countries on these lists, the experts said, and we will have a safe world. Then the governments of India and Pakistan, undeterred by all this paperwork, set off their weapons. Now the United States must devise a policy to confront the new world of nuclear proliferation -- a policy based not on comforting myths but on geopolitical realities.

International treaties usually reflect reality rather than shaping it. For the past 50 years, the real engine behind nonproliferation was the cold war. During their global struggle, the United States and the Soviet Union had at least one goal in common: maintaining their nuclear preponderance. To reduce the instability brought about by new nuclear challengers, they promised protection to some countries and threatened punishment to others. It worked; despite access to high technology, many countries chose not to "go nuclear." The treaties dealt awkwardly with the exceptions. The great powers that went public -- Britain, France and China -- were smuggled into the nuclear club. Others -- India, Pakistan and Israel -- were simply not discussed much. The dirty little secret of nonproliferation was that many of the countries most likely to want nuclear weapons actually had them.

Now the desert explosions have destroyed the facade of nonproliferation, revealing a new world in which the old guarantees and threats of the cold war no longer work. Depressingly, the one country that does not seem to have recognized this is the United States. Washington still clings to the legal trappings of its nonproliferation policy. Both Congress and the Clinton administration have taken an essentially juridical approach to India and Pakistan's tests. Testing is illegal under international treaties (though neither country had signed the relevant accords); they tested, so they must be punished. Washington has clamped economic sanctions on India and Pakistan and asked them to renounce their weapons programs forthwith. Of course, there is no prospect of either country casting aside programs built up over decades. So American policy is exposed for what it is -- a futile attempt to wish away reality.

Under international law, all states are alike. In the real world they are not. India, Pakistan and Israel are very different from Iraq, Iran and Libya. The former are countries with stable, legitimate regimes and reasonable security concerns. The Indians face a Chinese Army three times larger than their own, the Pakistanis in turn are threatened by India's might and Israel faces an array of Arab countries that have repeatedly tried to destroy it. Nuclear weapons may not be their best deterrent, but it's understandable why they would want them. After all, NATO kept nuclear weapons in Europe to offset the Soviet Union's conventional superiority.

If it wants to stabilize this new world, America must stop playing the judge and become a politician. It must tailor different policies for these two groups of states. With the rogue states the United States should do more than international law requires, aggressively using its power and diplomacy to deny them access to technology and funds for weapons of mass destruction. With countries like India, Pakistan and Israel it should do less, ignoring leather-bound protocols and accepting their nuclear status. Finally, America must maintain a healthy nuclear arsenal itself. Germany, Japan and others have not worried about their own security because they are protected -- explicitly or implicitly -- by the American nuclear umbrella. Were the strength and resolve of the American deterrent to fade, these states would surely start taking care of themselves. Ironically, American nuclear disarmament could well result in global nuclear proliferation.

For the crisis at hand, a simple deal is possible. Washington and the other nuclear powers could ask India and Pakistan to sign the various treaties, particularly the Test Ban and the proposed fissile-materials ban -- but as declared nuclear-weapons states. In return, all sanctions against them should be lifted. More important, Washington should begin a series of discussions with their governments aimed at establishing secure command-and-control operations and other such safeguards. The real danger of a nuclear exchange on the Subcontinent lies not so much in an authorized exchange of missiles -- each country is deterred from this by the other's arsenal -- as in an unauthorized or accidental launch. The United States has an impressive body of technological and operational know-how, developed during the cold war, and could help both countries stabilize their arsenals.

This is not a best-case scenario. A nuclear-arms race on the Indian Subcontinent would be expensive and nerve-racking. Recall the high tension, chills and near misses that filled the first two decades of the U.S.-Soviet arms race -- the Cuban missile crisis, the crises in Berlin, Korea, the Taiwan Strait. It is, however, the only scenario that is based on what has happened in the last three weeks. In fact, it's quite likely the United States will face a similar dilemma in another part of the globe. Like France and China and Pakistan before them, rising powers in troubled areas might well feel they need to develop the ultimate military insurance policy, a nuclear deterrent. The United States has two options. It can rail against the waves like King Canute and seek to turn back the tide. Or it can accept the new world and try to make it more secure. It is time to point out to all those who still hope to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle that genies in bottles only exist in fairy tales.