#13
The Russia Journal
June 21-27, 2002
History lesson for newest nuclear rivals
By ANDREI PIONTKOVSKY

During the 1960 U.S. presidential election campaign, John F. Kennedy tried to get the better of his opponent, then-Vice President Richard Nixon, by actively promoting the idea that there was a "missile gap" between the United States and the Soviet Union, in favor of the latter.

No one knows now whether the future president was sincerely misled by the Soviet successes in space, or whether he was deliberately misleading voters. But, in October 1962, when the Cuban missile crisis broke out, Kennedy had pretty accurate information about his opponent, thanks to super spy Oleg Penkovsky. And there was no question of any nuclear missile gap – the United States still had a considerable advantage in this area.

The problem was in using this advantage. The United States could defeat its ideological and geopolitical rival by wiping out its military and industrial potential, but the cost would be the destruction of New York and Washington. This was the choice Kennedy faced, and the question was whether he was willing to achieve victory at such a price.

This wasn’t just an academic question, either, considering that Kennedy’s entourage included military officials ready to seek just such a victory. But Kennedy wasn’t ready, and his refusal gave rise to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which really did became the cornerstone of strategic stability throughout the decades of the Cold War.

This threat of mutual destruction not only prevented a nuclear war between the two superpowers, it also prevented a conventional war, though there were more than enough pretexts over the years for such a war to begin. This showed the dual nature of nuclear weapons. The consequences of their use are so horrific that their very existence can prevent a military conflict from breaking out. For the U.S. and Soviet leaders, the shared experience of going through the Cuban missile crisis and teetering on the brink of nuclear war was a moment of truth, after which war of any kind between the two countries became impossible.

Now, 40 years after Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev went toe-to-toe, the leaders of the two adolescent nuclear states of India and Pakistan are going through a similar coming-of-age rite.

Though not identical, the crisis between the South Asian neighbors is reminiscent of the Soviet-U.S. tete-a-tete of the early ’60s. There is an acute geopolitical – and, to some extent, religious – conflict over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Both sides are nuclear-armed. With both nuclear and conventional supremacy, India has the obvious edge at all levels of possible conflict escalation.

Some Indian military and political figures are fed up with the conflict over Kashmir and are tempted to sort it out once and for all by launching a rapid military attack using conventional weapons. It’s not clear, though, what they would do with this "victory," which would give New Delhi control of a sizable territory with a Muslim-majority population that is hostile to its presence.

Worse still, an Indian triumph in Kashmir would put Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in a desperate and hopeless quandary.

Faced with the defeat of his army, Musharraf would be obliged to use nuclear weapons. If he didn’t, he would be simply swept aside by Islamic radicals, for whom a nuclear bomb dropped on Delhi is no different from the explosives strapped to the torsos of young fanatics who blow themselves up in markets and on buses in Israel.

Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee now has a clear choice. A large-scale conventional war will inevitably lead to nuclear escalation. This would destroy Pakistan as a state but provide a solution to Kashmir – only at the cost of millions of Indian lives. Are India’s leaders ready to pay such a price?

Vajpayee undoubtedly will make the same choice as Kennedy did 40 years ago. Let us hope that India and Pakistan will emerge from this crisis wiser and enriched by their experience, as their superpower predecessors did.

The Soviet Union and the United States continued their fierce geopolitical rivalry for almost 30 years after the Cuban missile crisis, but never again did they come to the brink of war with each other. The Kashmir conflict will also smolder on, but, having gone through the current crisis and seen into the abyss, India and Pakistan won’t come to the edge again.

The writer is director of the Center for Strategic Research.

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