‘West’s strategic partnership with India to disturb regional stability’

ISLAMABAD: The strategic experts have expressed fear that the West’s so-called “strategic partnership” with New Delhi can disturb the region’s fragile deterrence stability although Pakistan’s nuclear programme has prevented India from imposing a large-scale conventional war on Pakistan since 1998 nuclear tests.

They were speaking at a discussion hosted by the Strategic Vision Institute (SVI), titled Pakistan’s Nuclear Programme: Guarantor of National Security. The event was held to celebrate the progress made by the country’s nuclear programme that not only ensures national security but also contributes to its economic development.

Brig (retd) Dr Tughrul Yamin Malik, associate dean of the Centre for International Peace and Stability at the National University of Sciences and Technology, said Pakistan’s nuclear capability had become the core of the national security doctrine as it was believed that nuclear weapons were the best protection against the existential threat posed by India. He pointed out that India’s nuclear programme was growing at a much faster pace than that of Pakistan as manifested by its efforts to develop cruise missiles and operationalization of its nuclear submarines. He emphasized the need for improving economy and ensuring welfare of people for better security.

Dr Zafar Khan, executive director of Balochistan Think Tank Network, said the primary aim of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons was to maintain deterrence stability and they had successfully deterred India in the past 24 years. India’s growing strategic partnership with several countries including Israel, France, Russia and more importantly the United States was affecting the deterrence stability of South Asia in general and Pakistan’s security in particular. He urged the countries having strategic ties with India to adopt a balanced approach and refrain from taking sides in South Asia. He said that such an approach would restore strategic stability which in turn could benefit all those having geopolitical and geostrategic interests in South Asia.

Dr Rizwana Abbasi, an International Relations professor at National University of Modern Languages, too expressed her concerns about the region’s strategic stability which she said was in a flux. She said the growing weapons asymmetry, absence of confidence building measures and deepened mistrust were driving the region close to the brink. She said Indian ambitions of greater India and the ongoing great power rivalry in which India was being promoted to counter China were undermining the region’s strategic stability.

SVI Executive Director Dr Zafar Iqbal Cheema said the nuclear programme was not only a guarantor of national security but also a contributor to socio-economic development through power generation. It was playing its part in the fields of medicine, agriculture and climate change. Pakistan, he maintained, had not only acquired expertise in these fields but was also well positioned to export these civilian use technologies to other countries. He underscored the safety and security aspect of Pakistan’s nuclear programme as compared to India that suffered multiple errors including the recent firing of a BrahMos missile that landed in Pakistan.