Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, sometimes behaves like a man with a death wish. With India demanding that he take action against Islamic terrorists carrying out attacks across the border in Kashmir, he last week stressed his support for those resisting Indian rule in the disputed province–and vowed to move into “the enemy’s territory” if India dared to take military action against Pakistan.
As if that weren’t enough to infuriate his foe, whose army is twice the size of Musharraf’s, his speech came right after Pakistan had carried out tests of missiles capable of hitting Indian cities. Musharraf has also pledged to answer any Indian attack “with full might.” Indians took that as a threat that he would meet a conventional incursion with nuclear weapons.
Pakistan could certainly inflict millions of casualties on India by pulling the nuclear trigger–but only at the cost of seeing its cities obliterated by India’s own nuclear warheads. With tensions rising by the day, Musharraf seems determined to precipitate a war his country is bound to lose.
The Pakistani ruler is not suicidal. He is simply trying to use brinkmanship to advance his own political ends. But it’s a dangerous game regardless.
Brinkmanship was risky enough when it was conducted by the United States and the Soviet Union–superpowers separated by half a world, with no territorial disputes. It’s far more perilous for India and Pakistan, neighbors who have fought two wars over Kashmir and whose enmities go as deep as any in the world.
The Islamabad government faces a painful dilemma. For years, it has provided covert support to the Kashmir insurgency against Indian rule, including working with groups tied to Al Qaeda. Musharraf abandoned his support for the Taliban in Afghanistan under U.S. pressure, but cracking down on the “freedom fighters” in Kashmir would be far more unpopular at home. It could even provoke a revolt by the army, which installed him.
Some experts say his bellicose speech to the nation last week was a classic effort to prove his toughness to domestic critics even as he takes steps to appease India and the United States. A less optimistic reading is that he hopes to scare Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee into backing off by convincing him that Musharraf is just crazy enough to go nuclear. The latter worry may not deter India from launching attacks across the Line of Control that divides Kashmir, but it could keep the attack limited and brief.
The problem is that bluffs can be called. If Musharraf refuses to block cross-border terrorism from Pakistan, he is inviting war with India, whose parliament suffered a bloody attack by Islamic extremists last December. And fighting could quickly snowball out of anyone’s control.
India has every right to demand that Pakistan cut off help to terrorists. But it needs to offer Pakistanis some hope of resolving the Kashmir crisis by means short of violence. New Delhi compares its fight against terrorism to that of the U.S. after Sept. 11. If the Taliban had possessed nuclear weapons, however, President Bush might have had to accept the need for compromise, however distasteful.
The governments of Pakistan and India have understandable reasons for the saber rattling that has gone on in recent weeks. But if war breaks out and ends in a nuclear holocaust, those purposes will look awfully inadequate.
