In My View

Defending the indefensible

Poland, like India, is one of the two admiring nations of the US President, George W. Bush. (Don’t believe it? Check the 2005 poll data of the US-based Pew Research Institute.) And Poland is now getting missile defence installations, once the Russians under an irascible Vladimir Putin get persuaded. The argument in favour of the missile defence runs thus: Poland and Czechoslovakia have to fear from the missiles lobbed from Iran, targetting them and their American way of life!

Defence against incoming missiles is a hot button issue in the capitals of the nuclear weapon states. In lay terms, the scope of the issue can be explained thus; by the curious logic of nuclear theology, the prospect of mutually assured destruction (MAD) is what holds up the nuclear deterrence posture. Any defences erected against such nuclear holocaust threatens to upset the apple cart in favour of the defending country as it provides it the capacity to launch a nuclear first strike without the fear of a retaliation. This unfair advantage tilts the global scale of instantaneous justice thus nullifying offensive deterrence against nuclear weapons.

During the Cold War, one may recall, this kind of devilish rationale had held up the prospect of peace in the most important battleground of the War. Both sides, Warsaw Pact countries and the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) nations were armed to the teeth, facing off each other; but peace had held as both feared the Armageddon.

But after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War, when the American strategists scoured the world for prospective enemies whose presence could justify their multi-billion dollar armaments industry, they found that the enemy in the post-rationalist world is a fungible mass that takes shape in the oddest of times. So they propounded the logic of ‘rogue nukes,’ nuclear weapons in the hands of the nation-states outside the nuclear non proliferation realm or nuclear weapons that could potentially land in the hands of non-state actors, inimical to the interests of the USA and its allies.

Considering that conventional deterrence did not provide solutions to the rogue nuclear weapons, the US sought defence behind missile shields that would ward off the danger. But the problem with the missile shield lay in the fact that they could also ward off weapons belonging to the conventional nuclear powers, which followed the deterrence logic to base their defences and attain stability in international affairs. They protested.

But the USA was not in a mood to listen. Under the Bush Administration, the country went about dismantling the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) it had signed with then Soviet Union. Russia and China were against the abrogation of the Treaty. They feared that the USA would become world’s nuclear hegemon in the absence of the checks and balances. India, under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government of Atal Behari Vajpayee – suddenly finding virtue in aligning with the USA after the Pokhran II blasts – had acquiesced with the cancellation of the Treaty, without any debate in the country on the strategic implications of the US action.

Now the USA has decided to place anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and Czechoslovakia, on the borders with Russia. This is clearly a provocation to the Russians who have had historically rocky relationship with Poland, and have only recently ceded control of this part of Europe.

The US logic that Iran could target Poland and Czechoslovakia sounds facetious at best, as no strategic rationale can be found for such fear. It is like saying that Taiwan needs a missile shield because Papua New Guinea could threaten the island; or providing a missile defence to Bangladesh because Myanmar could hold out a rogue nuclear threat.

The US intention behind such a façade is clear. It is to extend its hegemony over vast stretches of the world. The question is whether the triumvirate, India, Russia and China should turn over and accept that line of thinking. For today it may be Poland and Czechoslovakia, tomorrow, it could be Taiwan and Japan and Bangladesh. That shield could metamorphose into a subversive weapon behind which, nations could plan and enact offensives against neighbours when their strategic interests collide.

Worse, it could trigger arms races in various continents as the Russians have concluded and threatened by their stated objective of withdrawing from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), a cornerstone of the Cold War East-West detente. For, the remaining nuclear weapon states that do not belong to the Western bloc would need to maintain the credibility of their deterrence by countervailing the technological and strategic developments of the US anti-missile programme.

They would have to closely watch the potent concoction of missile shields, coupled with American projects of unilateral, indiscriminate regime changes and extraneous nation building projects across the world. It poses a clear and present danger to the global political stability. With the NATO too expanding its mandate by going beyond their territorial demarcations and conducting peacemaking operations further afield, it could pose problems of gigantic proportions to the other powers of the world. Rest of the world cannot just roll over and ask for more.

Pinaki Bhattacharya, currently located in Kolkata, is a Special Correspondent with Mathrubhumi, Kerala. He writes on Strategic Security issues. He can be contacted at pinaki63@dataone.in .