August 11, 2005 ☼ Foreign Affairs ☼ Security
This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.
In what is described as a birthday gift for Gen Musharraf, Pakistan has tested a cruise missile that it claims is indigenously built. India, which only last week concluded an agreement on missile testing with Pakistan last week, was not told about the celebrations and the fireworks display.
When Indian and Pakistani officials reached an agreement on nuclear confidence-building measures on 6th August 2005, they agreed to set up a hotline between their foreign secretaries and more importantly, agreed to notify each other ahead of missile tests.
A joint statement said the two sides reached an understanding on the proposed agreement on pre-notification of flight testing of ballistic missiles.
“The proposed agreement commits both sides to pre-notify in a structured format flight testing of ballistic missiles, with the objective of enhancing mutual confidence and engendering predictability and transparency of intent.[Dawn]The Pakistanis may be correct in saying that since the missile they tested was a cruise missile, and not really a ballistic one. But that is only splitting hairs. As the joint statement says, the whole point is to enhance ‘mutual confidence and engender predictability and transparency of intent’. Testing a cruise missile and claiming that it falls outside the purview of the agreement reached only days ago is now way to achieve that objective.
Indeed, the timing of Pakistan’s nuclear tests suggests that it is neither interested in engendering predictability and nor in establishing transparency of intent. An environment where it’s actions remain unpredictable coupled with the retention of nuclear first-strike option give it a strategic umbrella under which it can carry out conventional and sub-conventional aggression. It is in Pakistan’s interest to raise the bogey a nuclear mishap or a nuclear war in the subcontinent, causing the international community to retain its attention on the world’s ‘nuclear flashpoint’.
India for its part appears content to respond to Pakistan’s policy of deliberate irrationalism by its own policy of rational engagement. While that may be the appropriate diplomatic response, the Indian foreign secretary’s red phone may not ring every time the Pakistanis are in the mood for some fireworks.
‘To wholesomely distrust Musharraf is to miss new opportunities’. Really?
Update: The US State Department thinks that there is nothing provocative or threatening about Pakistan’s missile testing.
Asked how the Pakistani test met the criterion of not being provocative or threatening, Mr Ereli said: “My understanding was that it was done in a way that was not alarming, that was not a surprise.†[Dawn]
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