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...Kashmir and the Siachen Glacier, well as concerns over nuclear proliferation, and evaluates the measures that have been taken so far in relation both to processes of arms control and of political negotiation. Keywords: security, confidence building, arms control, India, Pakistan.
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Confidence- and security-building measures (CSBMs) are practical actions aimed at creating attitudes of cooperation. The primary objective of this concept is to generate confidence between rivals (enemies) or nations in competition--the sense that cooperation is both possible and is better than confrontation. Scholars working in this area argue that national interests can be promoted when two countries use political and diplomatic means to defuse mutual tension and that conflict can be avoided if fair steps are taken by both sides and that a win-win strategy is better than a zero-sum game, where the gains of one party result in losses for the other. (1)
In their most general sense, CSBMs are instruments for the prevention of war and conflict and for the resolution of existing conflicts between regional neighbors or parties to the kind of long-standing confrontation, exemplified by the Cold War, in which normal channels of communication are weak or have broken down. (2) The utility of CSBMs is perceived to derive from their gradual creation of an atmosphere of mutual trust, transparency, and predictability in slow and incremental steps in order to provide alternatives to confrontation and conflict where differences between states recur or have been inflamed or where new points of contention have arisen. (3)
Thus, CSBMs are a complex phenomenon. They have been useful, however--primarily in constructing new forms of military and civilian relationships to change the nature of hostility and mutual misperceptions. (4) Moreover, in the absence of strong political commitments, peace activists and security institutions have proposed CSBMs as a starting point for a process of mutual familiarization and willingness to move beyond confrontation and competition to cooperation and reconciliation. (5) CSBMs are a conceptual and procedural tool based on the assumption that parties to a conflict have a mutual interest in pursuing at least some cooperative solutions in order to realize a shared goal. The rationale underlying CSBMs is that a gradual process of confidence building is the key to overcoming obstacles on the way to realizing a mutually beneficial goal. (6)
This article is a modest contribution to the effort to promote CSBMs as a tool for cooperative security in South Asia, focusing primarily on India-Pakistan and on the potential contribution of CSBMs to the regional arms-control process. It begins by addressing the intellectual and academic foundations for a confidence- and security-building approach to conflict management in general and arms control in particular. It briefly describes the origin and evolution of CSBMs in the superpower and European contexts, the defining characteristics of CSBMs, and the role they are designed to play. I then consider the general conditions necessary for CSBMs, insights from the cumulative CSBM experience, as well as the relevance of CSBMs outside the European context in which they originally emerged.
After assessing the role that CSBMs could play in the Indo-Pakistan context, I offer some reflections on the empirical data gained from the multilateral CSBM negotiations that have been carried out between India and Pakistan.
Socioeconomic Background of South Asia and CSBM Experience
Many of the international structures of the Cold War have been dismantled, much of the world is heading toward regional integration, market economies are said to be reshaping a new world, and democratic forces are replacing many repressive regimes; relations nevertheless remain very chilly in South Asia, which remains one of the most volatile and explosive regions in the world. Not only is South Asia one of the poorest regions in the world but it is also the region where the probability of an accidental nuclear war is greatest.
South Asia covers approximately 4,468,000 square kilometers (about 1,725,000 sq. miles). The inhabitants of South Asia number more than one billion (one-fifth of the world's population), making this one of the world's major population clusters. It has the world's biggest concentration of poverty-stricken people and is dominated by heavily militarized and bureaucratized polities thriving on regional confrontations and state-sponsored terrorism. After fifty years of independence, increasing numbers of people are still suffering from hunger, illiteracy, and preventable diseases. The worst affected are children, who should be the hope for the future. The majority are suffering from malnutrition; millions are engaged in labor, and many are afflicted with lung diseases and brain deformities related to poisonous emissions and the physical hazards at workplaces. According to one survey, by almost every measure of human development most of the people of India and Pakistan are poor, illiterate, malnourished, and disadvantaged.
India has nearly one-half of its population living in absolute poverty and has an illiterate population more than 2.5 times that of sub-Saharan Africa. More than one-half of India's children over the age of four are malnourished. (7) Pakistan's overall socioeconomic situation is similarly depressing. Pakistan's GDP growth rate has gradually fallen to a precarious level--2.9 percent; it has external debt of about $40 billion; its illiterate population is more than 75 percent, and its health facilities are the poorest in the world. (8) Neither country is capable of providing basic amenities--drinking water, schools, jobs, communication developments--for its people. Furthermore, the region suffers from complex and often violent ethnic loyalties cutting across borders, from economic blockades of human and natural resources, from disruptions of ecological systems, and, worst of all, from wars and persistent skirmishes.
South Asia is thus simultaneously the poorest and the most militarized region in the world. The arms race between India and Pakistan is responsible for much of this cruel irony. According to the 2002 United Nations Human Development Report on South Asia, arms expenditure was still rising. India and Pakistan were continuously spending 3.1 and 6.5 percent, respectively, of their GDP on defense. India, which ranks 142nd in the world in terms of per capita income, had the world's biggest arms-import bill. Pakistan, ranking 119th in income levels, had the tenth biggest bill. (9) Interestingly, global military spending declined by 37 percent during the period 1987-1994, but in contrast, military spending in South Asia increased by 12 percent. (10)
In this regard, Pakistan's military budget is estimated to be 125 percent of its combined spending on education and health, and India's military expenditure is approximately 65 percent of its combined education and health spending. An economic and social survey for Asia and the Pacific for 1997 estimates that the number of people living in absolute poverty in India and Pakistan exceeded 350 million. (11) Moreover, in India and Pakistan the quality of social services, education, transport, drinking water, and health is deteriorating. At present, 53 percent of the children in South Asia are malnourished, and 36 percent of the population are deprived of safe drinking water and health facilities. Further, India and Pakistan are ranked at 135 and 134, respectively, out of the 173 states in the UN Human Development Index, and each year both countries move down the list as their people are further deprived of basic necessities. (12)
Problems and Prospects Between India and Pakistan
It is a source of bitter disappointment to the people of the subcontinent, who expected peace and progress, that partition has brought warfare, vituperation, frustration, and fears. (13) Instead of devoting all their resources to economic development, both nations have spent billions of dollars on defense against each other. Although the subcontinent was divided by mutual consent, the mistrust, antagonism, and fear between the two successor states of the British Empire persisted. The primary objective of both countries, to uplift their people's pitiably low standard of living, has been greatly hampered by their corrosive quarrels and conflicts.
In the wake of partition, Mohammad Ali Jinnah (the founder of Pakistan) told a chamber of commerce meeting in Bombay in June 1947: "Let us be practical and divide the subcontinent; we live in Pakistan, you live in Hindustan [India]. We will be neighbours.... We want to live in a friendly way, friends in trade and commerce as two brothers and that is Pakistan." (14) In the same vein, Jawaharlal Nehru declared, in a speech to India's parliament in early 1950, "We cannot be enemies forever and good relations are better than fighting." (15) Jinnah was quite optimistic about the possibility of fruitful relations between India and Pakistan, though at one time he commented: "You do not realise the time factor; reconciliation between the Muslims and Hindus may come sooner or later but if it does not come in good time, bitterness will remain and the Hindus and Muslims, even though working together, will not be good friends if a settlement is not brought about quickly." (16)
The words were prophetic. After the death of Jinnah, the reconciliation he expected did not come, and the gulf that divides Pakistan and India today seems almost unbridgeable. The old rivalry between India and Pakistan remains alive, and the subcontinent continues to be far from achieving a more stable peace. In the past five decades, the two nations have fought three wars (1948, 1965, and 1971). There has also been a serious border clash, in the disputed Kargil (1999), and as outlined below, countless other border clashes.
Kashmir
Kashmir lies in both India and Pakistan. The trouble began when the British partitioned India (1947), leaving Kashmir unresolved, and eventually both India and Pakistan went to war over the mostly Muslim region. Now, once again, it is the focal point of a hostile military standoff between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. The root problem is that many Kashmiris reject rule by New Delhi, and India has worsened the situation by suppressing the people. New Delhi declares that Kashmir is an integral part of India and hence non-negotiable, whereas Islamabad implausibly insists that Kashmir is an unresolved international dispute that must be settled in favor of principles of self-determination or through plebiscite or election as envisaged by UN Security Council resolutions of 1948-1949.
Thus, Kashmir continues to be the major source of animosity between India and Pakistan, and, despite the commitment under the Simla Accord (1972) to find a solution to the dispute, the issue is still an unfinished agenda of Partition. India has persistently accused Pakistan of allowing militants to infiltrate the country and attack the Indian army and civilians. India has also amassed seven hundred and fifty thousand troops on the eighteen-hundred-mile-long border and has threatened war unless Pakistan ends what India calls infiltrations. Pakistan, meanwhile, has taken a number of steps to discourage the "freedom fighters" (India calls them infiltrators) from using its territory, and some analysts hold that India's response to these steps has been arrogantly negative and self-righteous. India has refused to talk to Pakistan to deescalate the tension and to hold negotiations for a peaceful solution of the Kashmir issue. However, the international community is continuing efforts to ease the situation and persuade the parties that any resolution of the dispute over Kashmir should not come from the barrel of a gun but from negotiation and dialogue.
Siachen Glacier
In 1984 the hostility here became more serious when Indian troops discovered the Siachen glacier and decided to establish a permanent military presence at the terminal point of the...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
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