India, Pakistan haven’t invested in peace

It might be too early to conclude that the India-Pakistan peace process is back on the rails, though with the two foreign secrecies meeting in Thimphu, after an unfriendly encounter during SM Krishna’s visit to Islamabad last July, a degree of civility seems to have been restored.

Instead of talking to each other, the estranged neighbours may now be talking with each other.

Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao has infused a degree of confidence with heart-warming statements such as, “Instead of living in divergence, living with the threat of conflict, it is sensible, intelligent to transact dialogue with Pakistan and Pakistan to transact dialogue with India.”

Making peace is always more sensible than thinking of war. When concerned citizens used to emphasise the need of peace, they were dubbed as ‘peaceniks’ having little appreciation of the complexities involved in Indo-Pak relationships by the ever sceptical mandarins.

Now with hardboiled bureaucrats describing an Indo-Pak dialogue as intelligent and sensible, it bodes well for peace in the region.

And in case India and Pakistan’s leaders have finally realised that “keeping in abeyance the peace process for too long did not help either”, it can be safely assumed that the dialogue will not be derailed and that a sustained effort will be made to find solutions to the problems threatening peace in the sub-continent.

However, the peace-loving general public and experts of Indo-Pak affairs are not overenthusiastic, unlike in the past when even a hint of a peace process was enough for them to paint a rosy picture of imminent friendship.

They are doubtful that the sprouts of peace will bloom into fruit-yielding trees. And there are reasons for this pessimism.

Irrespective of the many past failures and an unknown factor engrained in the two countries’ relationship, which have destroyed every peace process thus far, what dampens hopes is the fact that both India and Pakistan have failed to invest in peace.

The mere realisation that a war between two nuclear-armed neighbours is unimaginable will not make peace prevail.

Peace will prevail the day both the countries invest in it, not only psychologically but economically also, and the process will become irreversible when both start decreasing their ever-rising defence budgets.

It is an irony that the day the foreign secretaries announced that “for the next few months, things are not going to remain dormant; there will be a lot of activity... the intention is to resume the process”, Pakistan tested its nuclear capable cruise missile Hatf-VII (Babur), which has a range of 600 km.

Defence minister AK Antony announced that due to “violent disturbances” in the neighbourhood posing a security challenge, Indian defence will grow increase manifold.

Pakistan has enlarged its nuclear arsenal at a brisk speed and is widely believed to have ‘deployed weapons from the mid-90s to more than 110’; two-years ago, Pakistan nuclear weapons deployed were in ‘the mid-to-high 70s’ range.

Rationality is the first casualty when countries decide to engage in an arms race; unwittingly, they become prisoners of the arms industry.

Devoid of reason, it becomes difficult to decide what is sufficient to maintain the basic level of deterrence. This is irrespective of the fact that Pakistan’s economy is on the verge of collapse and its population so overburdened with foreign debt that it cannot sustain the arms race.

Or that in India, with 70% of its population still forced to live on less than two dollars a day and with the world’s maximum number of underweight children, it needs to use its economic resources better.

A question that needs to be asked to the strategic community, even at the risk of sounding silly, is: What is the basic level of preparedness that is sufficient for the country’s defence?

There is no limit to the arms build- up. During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union had more than 10,000 nuclear weapons each while only a few thousands were sufficient to destroy the entire world several times over.

We may abhor war and love peace, but investments in war machines will eventually [only] lead to unforeseen destruction.

Every penny saved in defence budget is an investment in peace and the accelerated pace of development will be an added bonus. Thus, it is imperative that we build our stakes in peace rather than rely on war machines for preserving peace.