Terror By Clerical Error
By Jawed Naqvi
21 December, 2007
DawnIndia's top missile scientist unveiled plans last
week to build a ballistic missile defence by 2010
that should effectively tackle the threat from
Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Dr V.K. Saraswat was
also quoted as saying that the proximity of
Pakistan's assets would give India just three to
four minutes to respond to a perceived attack.The missile defence system now on the anvil would
protect 'high-value' assets and major cities like
Delhi and Mumbai.Informed people would consider the plan
delusional, and therefore dangerous. Russia and
the United States, with far greater lead-time to
respond to each other's nuclear threat and with a
highly refined command and control mechanism,
still do not have a completely trustworthy system
in place.The official doomsday scenario written by the US
government during the Cold War - called The
Emergency Plan Book - would make countries like
India and Pakistan look not just ill-prepared to
consider the use of nuclear weapons but also
ill-advised to flaunt them. For all its
sophistication and years of preparedness for
nuclear attack on its territory, the United
States looked pretty vulnerable as recently as
Sept 11, 2001. How the administration went round
like a headless chicken in the aftermath is
nicely recorded in The Doomsday Scenario, a 2002
book based mostly on the Emergency Plan, which
author L. Douglas Keeney wangled from a library
during a brief period when it was declassified.During the Cold War, more than $45bn was spent to
protect both senior US government officials and
the general public in the event of a nuclear
attack. This funding supported everything from
the production and distribution of films and
pamphlets instructing citizens how to mitigate
the effects of a nuclear blast and fallout to the
secret construction of massive underground
facilities to allow the government to continue to
operate during and after a nuclear war.The extensive and extremely expensive plans to
build massive blast and fallout shelters for the
populace were systematically rejected by US
presidents on the grounds that they did not want
to create a national panic. The Congress balked
at the price tag and the military leaders argued
that it was more sensible and cost-effective to
invest in offensive weapons to deter war and, if
need be, wage war. One fallout of the Sept 11
attacks was that for the first time the United
States activated its Continuity of Government
plans (COG), some of which have been lampooned in
Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11.But the real emergency envisioned in The Doomsday
Scenario, cited by Keeney, pertained to "kiloton
and megaton-sized bombs" that would "pummel our
industrial, transportation, communication, and
financial centres in a sustained downpouring of
warheads". The national landscape, according to
the American response plans, "would be blurred
with smoke and haze and littered with death and
destruction and contamination, with only the most
rudimentary fragments of community and government
surviving".Said the Emergency Plans Book, "12,500,000 are
suffering from blast or thermal injuries and have
an immediate and evident need for treatment." The
surviving labour force is "engaged in large
numbers in disposing of the dead".America's shipping ports would be clogged with
sunken ships; it would be a nation of people
scrounging for food, "with crematoriums working
around the clock".Ironically the current discourse on nuclear
weapons in Islamabad and Washington DC and Dr
Saraswat's plans to defend India's high-value
assets, whatever that means in the context of
millions dead, are so obviously unreal. America's
headache stems from the fear of Muslim extremists
taking control of the nuclear trigger. That the
bomb looks any more secure with the followers of
other faiths is one of the big fallacies of our
times.We did feel (or know) during the 2002
India-Pakistan stand-off that a more real nuclear
threat could come from any 'mad major' lurking
within the chain of command of either country.
And why blame the mad major when the political
leadership of that period on both sides looked
quite prepared to do the job of, let's say,
Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper?Do we remember
the delusional commander of a US air force base
in Dr Strangelove who initiated an attack plan to
strike the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons? He
had set out to thwart what he believed was a
Communist conspiracy to "sap and impurify" the
"precious bodily fluids" of the American people
with fluoridated water which he believed had
caused his impotence. Change the bodily fluids
with some other catchphrase that sells with our
people and we are in the same league with Stanley
Kubrick's villainous brigadier.The advent of Al Qaeda as the all-pervasive ogre
out to destroy the world tends to lull us into
the false belief that the messianic zeal of the
president of the United States is any less
threatening. The readiness to use tactical
nuclear weapons against Iran or any other country
(don't forget the Seventh Fleet flexing its
muscles in the Bay of Bengal not too long ago) is
at par with the clarion call for "aar paar ki
larai" (fight unto finish) that emanated from the
Indian leadership.Pakistan's nuclear doctrine too comes ironically
from a highly disciplined and professional army,
not gun-toting mullahs. It signals the readiness
to be the first one to stage a nuclear strike.
Add to this conundrum the bristling tensions
between the United States and Europe on the one
side confronted by an increasingly insecure but
militarily powerful Russia, and we have a serious
problem on our hands.In our self-absorption with Narendra Modi in
India and the hurly-burly of January elections in
Pakistan, there has been a tendency to miss out
on the subversive action underway in our
vicinities that is of equal if not more serious
consequence to the region. Last month Russia's
parliament voted to suspend compliance with a key
Cold War treaty limiting conventional forces in
Europe as Moscow signalled it was weighing new
force deployments on its western flank. Last week
Russia's defence officials warned that any
Iran-bound missile from Europe travelling over
Russian air space could be read as enemy action
by its trigger-ready retaliatory system.Stanley Kubrick's film was loosely based on Peter
George's Cold War thriller novel Red Alert, also
known as Two Hours to Doom. Dr Strangelove
satirises the Cold War and the doctrine of mutual
assured destruction. For India and Pakistan, with
just three to four minutes to take evasive
action, if Dr Saraswat's count is right, there
won't be any time for Brigadier General Ripper to
deliver all his humorous lines before doom
strikes us suddenly. Whether the threat comes
from a Muslim cleric or a clerical error of a
secular nature, it would still spell disaster for
millions.The writer is Dawn's correspondent in New Delhi.
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