How Vulnerable Is India To Pakistani Coercive Diplomacy Or Vice Versa?
Washington, D.C., Wednesday, July 29, 1998 - Last week New York Times columnist, William Safire, commenting on the recently released report by a bipartisan Commission on the ballistic threat to the United States, (headed by former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld), offered some food for thought to the American people (and perhaps for the power-drunk morally repugnant BJP fundamentalist lndian government which has opened a nuclear Pandora's box in South Asia with their May 11 nuclear test) by suggesting some spine-chilling scenarios.The nine member bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission, (consisting of former high U.S. government officials, military officers and scientists of unassailable credibility) was named by the U.S. Congress six months ago to get a second opinion about U.S. vulnerability. The Commission was cleared for every national secret and its members with command experience had the advantage denied to compartmented C.I.A. analysis.
The unclassified summary of the 300-page report was released last week, and according to Safire's New York Times column; "The direct threat to our (U.S) population is broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by the intelligence community". The Rumsfield Commission was charged only with assessing the new threat and not about what should be done to meet the danger.
"Imagine you are the next U. S. President", William Safire writes in his New York Times column, "and this crisis arises": -
"The starving army of North Korea launches an attack on South Korea, imperiling our 30,000 troops. You threaten massive air assault; Pyongyang counter threatens to put a nuclear missile into Hawaii. You say that would cause you to obliterate North Korea; its undeterred leaders dare you to make a trade. Decide.
Or this crisis: Saddam Hussain invades Saudi Arabia. You warn of Desert Storm II; he says he has a weapon of mass destruction on a ship near the U.S and is ready to sacrifice Baghdad if you are ready to lose New York. Decide.
Or this: China, not now a rogue state, goes into an internal convulsion and an irrational warlord attacks Taiwan. You threaten to intervene; within 10 minutes, ICBM's are targeted on all major U. S. cities. Decide.
You have no missile defense in place. The C.I.A. assured your predecessor you would have five years warning about other nation's weapons development before you would have to deploy a missile defense. But the C.I.A. record of prediction is poor."
Here is some food for thought. If the United States, with all its resources, its power and its majesty, has no defense in its place against missiles at this point in time, to counter surprise nuclear blackmail a question immediately comes to mind. How vulnerable is dirt-poor medieval India in general, and Bombay With its Trombay nuclear complex in particular, if Pakistan, for example, steels its spine and mounts a wee bit of "coercive nuclear diplomacy" on the tip of a GHAURI missile?
India with its ignorant, and arrogant, ruling elite (Indian Foreign minister -designate Jaswant Singh, an idiot savant who tries to ape upper class spoken English, was all gung-ho for the May nuclear tests under the dumb assumption that Pakistan's nuclear programme was a bluff) is headed for a nuclear disaster if the International community - the United States in particular- does not persist on a Nuclear roll-back in the squalidly South Asian states of India and Pakistan where, in this day and age, the majority of the population - over six hundred million in India and sixty million in Pakistan- is even denied clean drinking water and the privacy of a latrine leave alone schools and hospital etc.
What if the Pakistani leadership indeed discovers its latent Muslim political will and acts out the scenario being repeatedly articulated by the anti-Pakistan Indophile U.S. Senator from New York, Daniel Moynihan? Will the fascist BJP leadership sacrifice Bombay to hold on to its burdensome Muslim colony of Kashmir?
We Sikhs, whose homeland sits smack in the middle of India and Pakistan (and currently under Indian occupation) would make an ideal Buffer state as well as a convenient nuclear battlefield, have no nuclear ambitions (although we have many Sikh nuclear scientists) and would like to see all of South Asia as Nuclear and missile free zone engaged in the pursuit of happiness.
Unfortunately the fascist BJP Brahmin "junta" in Delhi is bent upon making a nuclear battlefield by deploying Prithvi missiles in East Punjab and carrying out the ongoing nuclear weapons program in the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) laboratory located in Chandigarh in the Sikh homeland thus offering the Sikhs as a target for Pakistani missiles. We therefore urge the United States, and the international community not to relax the sanctions regime until and unless India and Pakistan roll back their nuclear programmes under U. S. Supervision, a la Iraq.