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Nuclear weapon: the reality and the rhetoric
NEW YORK- When a British scientist was asked in the 1950s to name the fancy weapons that could possibly be deployed in a future World War III, he confessed he simply couldn't visualize the staggering array of high-tech weapons systems the world was capable of producing.

But he did admit he was pretty sure of the type of weapons that are likely to be used in World War IV: sticks and stones.

Any large-scale nuclear war - depending on the quantum of weapons used - would be unimaginably destructive sending civilizations back to a bygone stone age.

At the height of the cold war between the United States and the former Soviet Union, the pro-nuclear right-wingers would always argue that the nuclear weapon had done more for world peace than all of the UN conferences on demilitarization and disarmament.

The lingering fear is that the nuclear weapon is so deadly that it could push warring parties only to the point of nuclear brinkmanship - as it is happening now with arch rivals India and Pakistan - and never to the deployment of the weapons themselves.

But the pessimissts argue that both India and Pakistan have generations of bitter enmity leaving little or no room for political sanity or compromises in their long-standing dispute over Kashmir.

Currently, there are more than 30,000 nuclear weapons with the world's five declared nuclear powers, who are also veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council: the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia.

But at least 5,000 of these weapons are on alert status - meaning they are capable of being fired on 30 minutes' notice.

Besides the Big Five, India, Pakistan and Israel also possess nuclear weapons.

According to a US intelligence report released last week, a full-scale nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan could kill up to 12 million people immediately and injure up to 7 million.

And those are just the immediate casualties from a possible nuclear attack by either of the two parties.

"The humanitarian crisis that would result would be so great that every medical facility in the Middle East and Southwest Asia would be quickly overwhelmed", a Pentagon official was quoted as saying.

India is estimated to have more than 25 to 40 nuclear weapons as against Pakistan's 15 to 20.

And Pakistan has never subscribed to a "no first use" policy regarding nuclear weapons. But India has.

At a press briefing last week, Pakistan's newly-appointed Ambassador Munir Akram virtually justified the use of nuclear weapons against India by citing the charter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

Hinting at nuclear double standards by Western nations, he pointed out that the NATO charter maintains that nuclear weapons provide an effective deterrence against military aggression.

None of the NATO countries, he argued, accepted the doctrine of "no first use" because it perceived its conventional forces to be smaller and weaker than their onetime enemy, the former Soviet Union. Likewise, Pakistan's conventional forces were smaller and weaker than those of India.

"We have not said we will use nuclear weapons, and we have not said we will not use nuclear weapons. We possess nuclear weapons and so does India, and India has a larger army and it is arming itself to the teeth."

Akram admitted that Pakistan did subscribe to what he called "no first use of force".

Currently, the UN charter prohibits the use of force, and India should be committed to the non-use of force. "India should not have a license to kill with conventional weapons while Pakistan's hands were tied regarding other means to defend itself," he said.

But he warned that Pakistan was neither an Afghanistan nor a Palestinian Authority. It was a major military power with the capability of defending itself.

As it watches the sabre-rattling from the sidelines, the United Nations remains helpless, primarily because India does not want to internationalise the conflict.

Although Pakistan has repeatedly called for international mediation, the United Nations has said it cannot intervene without the agreement of both parties to the conflict.

The United Nations is home to two types of resolutions, one under Chapter VI of the charter and the other under Chapter VII of the charter.

All resolutions under Chapter VI require the cooperation of warring parties. But resolutions under Chapter VII are called "enforcement" resolutions which authorise the United Nations to enforce them with or without the cooperation of the countries concerned.

"But I haven't heard anyone mention this as a realistic option at this time," UN Spokesman Fred Eckhard told reporters last week.

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