That is what
happened during the exchange of hostilities between Pakistani and US
troops in Southern Waziristan when Washington asserted its "right" of
"hot pursuit" in the "war against terrorism" and went on to bomb a
madrassa.

The US has once again shown just how disdainfully it treats its
allies. This is not the first time it has done this, least of all to
a state outside its core-alliance, NATO. America routinely treats
NATO members much like an emperor treats his vassals. Within an
alliance which is asymmetrical and demands unquestioning obedience
from the top, the minor allies are at best "consulted", or simply
told what to do.

For instance, there has never been a "dual trigger" on NATO's
weapons, one operated by the host member-state, and the other by the
US. Operationally, there has always been a single, unified, line of
command. Therefore, it's not for nothing that the UK, America's most
loyal ally, has been called its "Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier". The
latest report of a Pakistan-US deal on "hot pursuit", albeit to be
conducted "quietly", underscores the same asymmetry.

India may soon experience Pakistan's sense of hurt and humiliation
thanks to its two latest acts: signing away some of its sovereign
rights in Washington's favour, and doctrinally emulating the US. On
December 26, India signed a "bilateral" treaty with the US which
gives impunity to their citizens who may be wanted by multilateral
agencies or third countries for human rights offences including
genocide or crimes against humanity. By signing it, India has joined
the ranks of states like Gambia, Tajikistan, East Timor and Israel.

These bilateral pacts are worse than Status of Forces Agreements.
They are meant to sabotage the worthy global effort to bring into
force the International Criminal Court, to try crimes against
humanity. As of now, 139 states have signed the ICC's Rome Statute;
87 have ratified it. Notable exceptions are the US, China, India and
Pakistan. The US was originally a signatory, but "unsigned" the
Statute under Bush.

That isn't all. America blackmailed the UN into delaying the
functioning of the ICC and is asking a host of states to bypass the
Court altogether. That means that, say, if Henry Kissinger were to be
hauled up for war crimes while on a visit to India, New Delhi would
refuse to surrender him. This will work against the interests of
Indian (and American) citizens-as the Bhopal case shows.

The second example, of imitation, is worse. On January 4, India's
Cabinet Committee on Security offered a general commitment to
no-first-use (NFU) of nuclear weapons. But closely following the
December 2002 US "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass
Destruction", it said India would use nuclear weapons in response to
"a major attack against India or Indian forces anywhere" made with
"biological or chemical weapons" too. This means killing lakhs of
non-combatant citizens in response to chemical or biological weapons
which kill on a smaller scale ie, a few hundred soldiers.

This further dents India's claim to nuclear "restraint" and
sobriety-even assuming that the embrace of horror weapons, and search
for "security" based on them, is compatible with "restraint". This is
part of New Delhi's further plan to "operationalise" its "nuclear
deterrent" by setting up a Nuclear Command Authority.

The NCA announcement validates this Column's assessment that India
and Pakistan are "hurtling towards inducting nuclear weapons into
their armed forces" and getting into a form of rivalry from which
they will find it hard to extricate themselves. The establishment of
India's NCA comes almost three years after Pakistan set up its own
command. The principal difference between the two NCAs pertains to
two items.

First, in India, authorisation for a nuclear strike is solely vested
with the civilian leadership, the Political Council, chaired by the
Prime Minister. The Executive Council, which is expected to have
military personnel and bureaucrats on it, will have a limited role:
eg, advise on security threats, etc.

In Pakistan, the military is unlikely to easily give up its
hitherto-unquestioned control over nuclear weapons and policy. In
February 2000, Islamabad announced that the NCA would be chaired by
the Head of Government. Then, the head was Chief Executive Musharraf.
Today, he is Prime Minister Jamali. But going by the NCA meeting last
Monday, which Jamali "attended", declaring Pakistan's nuclear weapons
to be in "good hands", he seems loath to assert his authority over
the NCA.

Exclusive control over nuclear weapons by the military poses a
problem: no military has the popular mandate to take a life-and-death
security decision, although civilian control doesn't guarantee
"responsible" decision-making-witness Hiroshima-Nagasaki.

The second difference is doctrinal. Pakistan has a nuclear
first-strike policy. India doesn't, but is under pressure to abandon
NFU. According to one report, the last National Security Advisory
Board-whose first avatar in 1999 produced the "Draft Nuclear
Doctrine"-had recommended that New Delhi rescind NFU. In practice, it
is unclear, given the lack of "strategic distance" between India and
Pakistan, if NFU will mean much once hostilities break out. The
temptation to retaliate the moment a strike is considered imminent
will be high. Differences notwithstanding, both India and Pakistan
face three similar problems in operationalising their "deterrents";
neither says how it proposes to resolve them. First, there is the
question of survivability of nuclear "assets", and, very important,
command structures. This problem is acute in a situation of
"decapitation" of military and political leaderships.

Second, and related to this, is succession within the command
authority and the ability of each state to install uninterruptible
communications channels between different levels of succession. The
general technological backwardness and accident- or
disaster-proneness of both societies will complicate matters here.

Third, India and Pakistan will inevitably have to move towards
demonstrating their capacity to inflict "unacceptable damage" upon
each other. This means they must be far more transparent in
projecting their capabilities: through deployment and high-alert
readiness to pull the trigger. This will impel both to escalate from
a state of "existential deterrence" to actual threats, backed by
battle-readiness.

Given the secrecy prevalent in the subcontinent's military
establishments, the absence of adequate testing of many sub-systems,
and lack of symmetrical perceptions of each other's specific
capacities, this could make for terrible strategic miscalculation and
panic reaction, greatly raising the chances of a pre-emptive or
launch-on-warning response.

The only way to contain these risks is to undertake Nuclear
Risk-Reduction Measures, discussed in this Column (July 4). But that
presumes a high degree of transparency and the will to negotiate.
That seems infeasible in today's situation, marked by the lowest
point in bilateral relations-lower even than in 1971.

This makes a Nuclear Armageddon likelier than before-unless India and
Pakistan urgently pull back from the brink. Kargil happened barely a
year after they overtly crossed the nuclear threshold. With their
NCAs and their ramshackle nuclear deterrents, the present situation
may be infinitely worse-to the collective peril of 1.3 billion South
Asians.