Tinderbox Fuelled By Religious Extremism

Two nations, historically belligerent and predicated on the necessity of a sovereign ‘enemy’ to justify their regime, ideologies, and political bearings, have been Russia and Pakistan. Formative regimes in both these lands were consumed and charged with expansionist outreach, ambitions, and export of their fundamental anchorage – Marxist-Leninist Revolution in Soviet Union, and religiosity in the ‘land of the pure’ i.e., Pakistan, owing to its ‘two-nation-theory’ rationality.

Essentially undemocratic and intolerant, the fundamental flaw in their sovereign underpinnings was to get exposed soon – the creation of ‘Bangladesh’ in 1971 for Pakistan, and the surreal implosion of the Soviet Union in 1989-1992. Strangely, despite the obvious shortcoming in their existential foundation, neither country introspected, and course-corrected their narratives after their humiliating break-ups.

If anything, both got even more illiberal and intolerant in their own ways. Russia inherited the truncated mantle of Soviet Union and under the Vladimir Putin regime has started showing ‘Stalinesque’ moorings, whereas the post-71 Pakistan has had the dark ‘Shariaised’ period of dictator General Zia-ul-Haq, and has now touched unprecedented levels of puritanical extremism, today.

Interestingly, both countries also invested disproportionately (relative to their economic health) in the realm of nuclear programs and weaponry.

Soviet paranoia started with America dropping two atomic bombs on Japan, which were seen to be as much aimed at sending the Soviets a message for post-war times, as it was directed at breaking the Japanese will. Ideologically incompatible sight of Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR), a consummate capitalist, in an unnatural war alliance with the sour and dour image of an autocratic Stalin was even more sure to go belly-up, after FDR’s sudden death in harness, and the arrival of Harry Truman on the scene.

Truman had exposed the patent transactional approach of American diplomacy with the statement as back as 1941, “if we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and that way let's kill as many as possible.”

Thus, the insecure authoritarian Stalin who is believed to be directly responsible for nine million Soviet deaths (six million deliberate) thought nothing of sparing any resources to safeguard his iron-fisted regime. Acquiring atomic/nuclear weapons at the cost of an already beleaguered, war-torn and suffering Soviet economy and society in the aftermath of WW2, was not a matter of concern.

Pakistan’s trigger to initiate its nuclear program has its roots in the self-created humiliation of the defeat in the 1971 Indo-Pak war, and the creation of Bangladesh. Wily Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto and the shadowy Pakistani ‘establishment’ (read, Military) would not acknowledge its own missteps that had led to the deteriorating situation in the then East Pakistan, and instead made the bogey of ‘Indian threat’, even more shrill.

This smokescreen and political muscularity was important for Bhutto to posture in order to legitimise himself in the post-Military rule Pakistan, and for the ‘establishment’ to assume that the nuclear program would safeguard from a repeat of 1971.

After India’s own blast nuclear testing in 1974 (‘Smiling Buddha’), Bhutto had thundered, “We shall eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own (bomb)”. In 1998 Pakistan shed its pretences of nuclear ambiguity and conducted Chagai-I against multiple advisories as it insisted, “there is no economic price for security” and lo behold Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif concluded, “Dhamaka kar dein” (Conduct the explosion).

Ironically, it was the US-led ‘war on terror’ (post 9/11) that necessitated the Pakistani alliance in Afghanistan (yet again!) that ensured that Pakistanis got a reprieve, temporarily. Pakistan continued its wasteful and nefarious activities across all its borders (on Iran-Pak border, Durand Line and Line-of-Control), as also building a stockpile of nuclear weaponry in the belief that it would guarantee ‘security’.

Pervez Musharraf clarified, “Nuclear weapons are aimed solely at India” and could be used if, “the very existence of Pakistan as a state” – the underlying paranoia being, that trouble for Pakistan could only emanate from across the Line-of-Control, and not within, as it had happened in 1971. Pakistan’s DG of Strategic Plans Division (managing Nuclear Command Authority) illustrated the possible contexts of using Pakistani nuclear weaponry to include a possible Indian attack on Pakistan’s territory or military, “economic strangling” or “domestic destabilisation”.

While India certainly hasn’t attacked Pakistan’s territorial sovereignty – Islamabad is certainly facing unprecedented “economic strangling” (with looming bankruptcy, backbreaking inflation and begging for IMF ‘bails’) and “domestic destabilisation” (surging societal violence from Baluchistan to the rebounding by its own Talibanis).

The purported ‘security’ of Pakistan as believed to be secured by its nuclear program is instead torn asunder, with its own implosive tendencies, and the nuclear weaponry is proving to be of no value or consequence, as the nation goes kaput (like in 1971, owing to its own doings)!

Whereas Russia, with the largest known stockpile (6000-7000 warheads) in the world, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponry has been stuck in an embarrassing stalemate against Ukraine, a nation which has no nuclear wherewithal, anymore. In February, the Ukraine invasion completes exactly one year since the Russians launched “special military operations” seeking “demilitarisation” of Ukraine – a pipedream so far, as the Russian bravado has come a cropper, so far.

Even attempts by Russia to conduct ‘nuclear terrorism’ by shelling areas around Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant or recurrent sabre-rattling invoking ‘all options’, the reality of stalled Russian offensive and stout Ukrainian resistance, begs the question of ‘security’ prowess afforded by its nuclear weapons. If anything, the hubris afforded to Vladimir Putin (by presiding over the largest weaponry known to humankind) has led to thousands of deaths with the accompanying energy crisis that could push up to 150 million worldwide into extreme poverty.

Russia is decidedly more ‘pariahised’, wounded, economically hurt and embarrassed with the ‘progress’ of its invasion of Ukraine. Russian nuclear weapons have been no deterrent to supplies from the ‘West’ to Ukraine.

Two of the nine countries with nuclear capabilities i.e., Russia and Pakistan, are staring at havoc and destruction that is its own doing and the overinvestments in nuclear weapons, have been inefficacious. This is not to suggest that Russia needed no nuclear program as history would have been very different if there were to be no balance of power post-WW2.

But the question is to what extent it determines the credible minimum (optimum) level of deterrence? And at what cost or priority? Just as Pakistan’s much touted ‘Islamic Bomb’ that ostensibly safeguarded the ‘security’ interests of the likes of Saudi Arabia and even ironically, Libya – didn’t exactly guarantee any ‘security’.

It wasn’t exactly the Indian or Israelis who attacked with nuclear weapons, but the tinderbox of its own creation with religious extremism, illiberality and contradictions that blew up the Pakistani storyline as also the Arab countries, which were sought to be secured by the ‘Islamic Bomb’.

Security is a multidimensional attribute that requires prudent sovereign choices, governance, impulses and even priorities that guarantee a holistic and robust development of the national narrative – nukes by themselves, are never enough.

Lt General Bhopinder Singh (Retd), is the Former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry. Views expressed are the writer’s own.