Jonathan Power
Obama and Medvedev's summit is an opportunity for bold action
The first summit between President Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev is only days away and so far there has only been perfunctory mention of this in the media. Odd, not to say irresponsible.
If played right this could be the most important summit since presidents Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush, having torn down the Iron Curtain, decided that they had enough confidence in the other side to introduce unilateral nuclear arms cuts, a valuable ancillary to what they formally agreed.
In the opinion of Georgi Arbatov, Gorbachev’s (and before that Brezhnev’s) foreign affairs advisor, the time is overdue for more unilateral cuts. “Being honest”, he told me two summers’ ago, “we in Russia are not right in our approach. We have so many weapons we could decrease the numbers unilaterally and set an example. We could dismantle our rockets, take others off alert, and the Americans would be obliged to follow us.”
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Jonathan Power
A nuclear-capable Pershing I missile, from the 1960s: the start of the end?
However tense the relationship between India and Pakistan becomes, the government of Manmohan Singh is highly unlikely to initiate or participate in a nuclear war with Pakistan. That would go against the deeply held moral beliefs of the prime minister. Both he and Congress party chairman, Sonia Gandhi, have told me privately that they are utterly repelled by the idea of such an act. Nevertheless, Singh has had few qualms about supporting the build-up of India’s nuclear deterrent, regarding it as an inevitable process given India’s place in the world; and he has been a passionate advocate of the new nuclear deal with the US that has resulted in Washington lifting its 30-year-old embargo on nuclear supplies for India.
Immediately after the Mumbai atrocities, tough talk seem to billow out of quarters of India’s military and foreign affairs establishment. Singh quickly fanned it away. On the Pakistani side, President Asif Ali Zardari also appeared to be in a peace-making mood. Just before the atrocities, he publicly abandoned his country’s â€first use†doctrine, which had meant that Pakistan could use its nuclear weapons even without an Indian attack. He has also, like his predecessor General Pervez Musharraf, reached out for a deal on the central flash point, the disputed state of Kashmir. Neither he nor Musharraf (once he was in power) ever showed they were the type to reach for their nuclear guns.
But does this mean we don’t have to fear a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? Well, it helps. But India could get more warlike if Singh and Congress are defeated in the coming elections. The main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is the one that first publicly demonstrated India’s nuclear deterrent. Meanwhile, on the Pakistani side, there is a growing chance that the war in Afghanistan and the American attacks inside the borders of Pakistan will fan the militancy of a growing part of Pakistani public opinion, with hysterical consequences.
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