After the Cold War		South Asian Security
by Jed C. Snyder
Note
Conclusions
Recommendations

The U.S. Approach to the Indian Sub-Continent
	Asymmetries dominate South Asia, explaining much of the region's tension, andcomplicating the U.S. approach to its major powers, India and Pakistan.  Disparities in geographicsize, population, military capability, and economic markets leave the Pakistanis feeling inferior toIndia and reinforce India's view of itself as an emerging major power. 
	For much of the last five decades, South Asia was of episodic strategic interest to theUnited States.  The region's strategic value was measured almost solely in terms of the Cold Warstruggle with the Soviet Union and varied with the mercurial cycles of U.S.-Soviet geopoliticalcompetition.  Even at the height of the region's relevance for U.S. global policy, in the 1950s andagain in the 1980s, the link between Washington and South Asia was never comfortable.
	The region's two key powers, India and Pakistan, were on opposite sides of the Cold Warstruggle.  In the 1970s and 1980s, India was among the most important of the Soviet Union'sThird World allies, while Pakistan's security orientation was consistently pro-Western.  Thispresented an awkward problem for the United States.  The world's largest democracy andnon-sectarian nation (therefore a seemingly natural ally), India, led the "non-aligned" movementand became alienated from the United States, while Pakistan, a nation with little natural politicalaffinity with America, saw its strategic connection improve even as its government becameincreasingly autocratic and Islamic under General Zia ul Haq.
	The importance of Afghanistan as a factor in Pakistan's strategic prominence for U.S.policy makers throughout the 1980s cannot be overstated.  The Soviet invasion in 1979 marked aturning point in U.S. strategic policy for Southwest Asia, and the Persian Gulf.  Not since thedays of John Foster Dulles' "Northern Tier" strategy was Pakistan so prominent as a U.S. regionalsurrogate with a disproportionately large share of U.S. security assistance.  During this criticalperiod, Islamabad's leaders were left with the impression that Pakistan's covert nuclear weaponsprogram would not be a serious impediment to close relations with the United States.  All of thisreassured them vis-a-vis India.  With the collapse of the Soviet position in Afghanistan andMoscow's eventual withdrawal, Pakistan's preferential treatment ended.
	Legislative prohibitions on U.S. assistance (brought about through the Pressleramendment to the Foreign Assistance Act) triggered by U.S. concerns over Pakistan's nuclearweapons program, essentially halted economic and military aid after 1990.  Pakistan regarded thisas a betrayal.
	Pakistan's perception that the U.S. had abandoned it was particularly powerful in light ofAfghanistan.  Pakistan's willingness to allow its territory to be used as a conduit for U.S. weaponsto the Mujahidin not only created the perception of a lasting closeness with the United States, italso exacted large long-term social, economic, and political costs, including refugee waves,Islamic extremism, terrorism and narcotics production on a large scale.  U.S. support for Pakistanhas ceased as these problems have become worse, compounding the country's ability to cope withthem.

The New Context of South Asian Security
	South Asia is the only region where three nuclear competing powers share frontiers and arecent history of four wars.  Their rivalries have fueled conventional and unconventional armsraces, unrestrained by arms control regimes.  Moreover, the USSR, China, and the United Stateshave involved India and Pakistan in their own rivalries, as well as having been brought into theIndo-Pakistani disputes.  Moscow was New Delhi's constant patron; Beijing assisted Islamabadand the U.S. position fluctuated.  Finally, the uncertainties of the post-Cold War world, increasingdomestic discontent, and politically weak governments exacerbate a tendency of India andPakistan to incite separatist movements on each other's territory_Indian  meddling in Sindh andPakistani involvement in Punjab and in Kashmir.

	India's loss of its superpower benefactor, the Soviet Union, and the demise of the"non-aligned" movement has left it without its foreign policy anchors, which provided a degree ofindependence from the United States.  India  has thus found itself more dependent on the goodwillof the United States, with whom it had never enjoyed a close relationship.  In addition, New Delhirecognizes that India's long-term power is dependent in large part upon economic growth and acloser relationship with the United States, and with Western economic institutions and investors.  
	Pakistan had hoped that with the demise of the Soviet Union, the anticipated weakening ofIndia regionally, and its close ties with China and Iran that it could pay less attention to India as athreat.  A number of factors combined to erase this hope: 

- (1)	a building U.S.-Indian rapprochement; 
- (2)	tentative signs of reduced hostility between India and China;
- (3)	increased attention by New Delhi to improving indigenous military programs and acontinuing arms relationship with Russia; 
- (4)	U.S. imposition of the Pressler aid cutoff;
- (5)	Chinese pledges to support the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and theMissile Technology 	Control Regime (MTCR), which portended a diminution in Chineseefforts to assist Pakistan in its efforts to modernize its military capabilities (particularlyballistic missiles) and thus hedge against the effects of the Pressler restrictions on U.S.assistance; 
- (6)	a refusal by Washington to intervene diplomatically in the Kashmir conflict, and;
- (7)	India's new status with other states (e.g., Iran) as a key growing economic power.

The Nuclear Option and Regional Deterrence
	Pakistan and India must be regarded as de facto nuclear powers; their programs haveprogressed to the point where each possesses the critical components of atomic weapons, andcould assemble and deliver them in short order. 
	The rationales for Indian and Pakistani acquisition of nuclear weapons (or other massdestruction arms) are distinct although not dissimilar.  India's initial venture into nuclear armsattempted to convey regional and global prestige and influence, but was more immediately ananswer to India's defeat in the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict and the subsequent 1964 Chinese nucleartest.  Pakistan's nuclear weapons effort is a political-military instrument directed principallyagainst India, whose larger conventional force can never hope to be matched by Pakistan.  ThePakistani nuclear effort has reportedly been aided by China, with nuclear weapons designinformation, materials, and reactors.  Islamabad's interest in a nuclear capability was initiallysparked by the 1971 war with India and over time became a symbol of prestige and influence, likeits rival India.  Most Pakistani strategists and military leaders regard the nuclear choice as aprudent strategic bargain.  As Pakistan's former Army Chief of Staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg,noted, a nuclear deterrent for Pakistan represents "the cheapest option for peace," balancingIndia's other advantages.  Apart from the consuming bilateral rivalry, both Indians and Pakistanissee nuclear weapons as an instrument of independence from the United States and other outsidepowers.
	Neither India nor Pakistan regards the current international nonproliferation regime (theNPT and the IAEA system of safeguards) as relevant or helpful to its security problems.  India hasalways regarded the NPT as the centerpiece of a conscious U.S. policy of denying lesser nationsaccess to the fruits of economic and industrial development, to which the world's largestdemocracy should be entitled.  In addition, India prefers a global arms control approach whichplaces India on the same strategic level as the five acknowledged nuclear powers, and whichwould consequently discount Pakistan's presumption to equal status.  Pakistan is not enthusiasticabout the NPT, although its leaders have offered conditions under which it would sign the Treaty. Like India, Pakistan also accuses the United States of discrimination in application of arms controlprinciples.  
	Pakistan regards the Pressler amendment as discriminatory as it holds Pakistan to a highernonproliferation standard than Israel or India.  Islamabad also considers the MTCR asdiscriminatory, because it penalizes nations dependent upon imported technology and weapons(Pakistan) and effectively grants those with indigenous weapons development programs (India), arelative advantage.  This "double standard" serves to reinforce in the minds of many Pakistanis thesuspicion that Pakistan's status as a friend of the U.S. has disappeared.
	India and Pakistan have both come to recognize the dangerous escalatory potential of theirnuclear competition.  For the moment, both governments seem to support a doctrine of"non-weaponized deterrence" whereby neither has moved toward further testing, final assembly,or deployment of nuclear weapons.  The key security question is whether this condition can besustained.

An Emerging Ballistic Missile Race
	Among the gravest security threats on the Indian subcontinent are the programs, by bothIndia and Pakistan, to develop surface-to-surface ballistic missiles, and in the case of Pakistan, theprobable import of Chinese missiles as well.  These missiles could carry either conventional orunconventional (nuclear, biological, chemical) weapons.  Ballistic missiles are the weapon ofchoice for many developing nations.  Their technical characteristics--speed to target, relativeinvulnerability to defenses, mobility, increasing accuracy, adaptability for carrying WMDwarheads--contribute to their inherently destabilizing nature in regional rivalries, where therelatively short distances between borders allow even tactical-range systems to have a significantimpact upon regional balances.
	India has developed both short-range (Prithvi; 150-250 kms) and medium-range (Agni;1500-2500 kms) missiles, although progress with the latter lags behind the former.  Onceoperational, the Agni would have sufficient range to reach targets throughout Pakistan, into partsof China, the Arabian peninsula and the Persian Gulf, and the southern portions of the formerSoviet Union.  The Agni could be deployed in the south, beyond the range of Pakistan's currentaircraft and missiles.  Either missile could reach the population and industrial centers alongPakistan's eastern border with India.  Prithvi has reached the operational stage where somemissiles could be deployed in positions near the Pakistani border, once the political decision istaken.  This has created great anxiety in Pakistan since it could circumvent Pakistan's air defenses. Most troubling, is the attraction of using ballistic missiles to deliver *unconventional* payloads(nuclear, biological, chemical) due to their relative inaccuracy.
	Pakistan's short-range missile, the HATF, has been developed in three variants (tested intwo), with ranges of from 80-600 kms.  However, it is less accurate and reliable than the Prithvi. The short range limits the missile's reach to portions of Northern India.  Islamabad has alsoapparently purchased, but not deployed, Chinese M-11's, whose range is estimated at 300 kms,the limit of the MTCR.  Pakistan's public position is that the missiles have not yet been delivered,although that is a subject of intense debate in the U.S. intelligence community.

Kashmir
	The roots of the Kashmir dispute go back to the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan.  AHindu Maharajah accepted Indian military assistance and union with India to quell a Pakistanieffort to incorporate the Moslem-majority princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.  The result wasIndian control of roughly two-thirds of Kashmir, with Pakistani jurisdiction over the remainingthird (Azad Kashmir), separated by a UN-negotiated Line of Control.  After two more wars andthe signing of the 1972 Simla agreement between India and Pakistan (mandating a bilateralsettlement to resolve the Kashmir issue), there has been relatively no progress toward resolution. Today, this dispute is the most critical Indo-Pakistani security concern, and the most likely flashpoint in the region.  Neither India nor Pakistan is satisfied with the status quo and furthereruptions are likely.
	Since 1989 a continuing insurrection in Kashmir has evolved into a simmering crisis,fueled by assistance from Pakistan to a Kashmiri insurgency (aided by Afghan Islamic groupsthrough what Indians label as a terror campaign) and by Indian human rights abuses anddeployment of several hundred thousand Indian troops.  Neither government is enthusiastic aboutan independent Kashmir and neither is very anxious for a plebiscite since there is considerableuncertainty as to the result.
	India insists that the Kashmir issue must be settled through bilateral discussions withPakistan, while Pakistan encourages international involvement.  Washington is not regarded byeither side as a honest broker on this very complex issue and is poorly positioned to mediate.