Dialogue the only way out

The “accidental” intrusion of an Indian supersonic unarmed missile deep into Pakistani air space on March 9 underscores the need for an urgent India-Pakistan dialogue on pre-notification of missile testing comprehensive regime between the two nuclear- armed adversaries.

It took New Delhi nearly two days to admit that one of its missiles had malfunctioned during maintenance and was accidently launched towards Pakistan. That the missile was flying at the altitude of nearly 40,000 feet at supersonic speed and its flight path was detected by Islamabad’s air-defence system is the most worrisome aspect of this mishap in recent memory. Fortunately, no human casualties were sustained when the missile’s debris fell in Mian Channu, causing damage to civilian buildings in the area.

Islamabad has strongly protested to the Indian government in the wake of this “accidental” firing and has demanded a credible explanation of this egregious blunder.

For its part, New Delhi has deeply regretted this “technical malfunction” and has ordered a high-level enquiry.

Pakistan’s National Security Advisor, Dr. Moeed Yousaf, has called upon the international community to take notice of this blunder and has questioned the credibility and reliability of India’s nuclear command and control systems. He has accused India of being an “irresponsible power” that cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has called for full international investigation of this aviation disaster, which posed a serious danger to national and international commercial flights. Mr Qureshi further said that Pakistan would decide its next steps after receiving India’s explanation, adding that envoys of P-5 countries (permanent members of the United Nations Security Council) would be called to the Foreign Office for a briefing on the incident.

Assuming that New Delhi’s self-characterization of this dangerous episode was an “accident” and there were no hidden motives – such as testing of Pakistan’s level of preparedness for future launches, gauging Islamabad and world’s reaction to this “bolt from the blue” scenario – what can be done to prevent the occurrence of such mishaps in future?

One answer to this conundrum is the immediate resumption of India-Pakistan dialogue focusing on how to enhance strategic stability between nuclear-armed adversaries as they increase their inventories of missiles and deploy them close to their vulnerable and contested borders.

Because of the breakdown of India-Pakistan dialogue ever since the rise of BJP in India, the nascent CBM regime between New Delhi and Islamabad has remained still born and no effort has been undertaken by either side to negotiate new CBMs in an era of competitive force modernization.

In November 2005, Pakistan and India signed the ballistic missile notification agreement under which the country’s defense ministries are obligated to provide their counterparts at least a 72-hour notice before conducting a ballistic missile flight test. They are not to allow trajectories of tested missiles to approach or land close either to their accepted borders or the LOC. They are not to allow tested missiles to fly closer than 40 kilometers from these boundaries or land closer than 70 kilometers away. This warning does not extend to cruise missiles.

Since 2005, both countries have developed a wide array of cruise missiles that directly threaten the fragile strategic stability order in South Asia. As a recent Stimson Centre study notes: “Compared to ballistic missiles, cruise missiles are more difficult to track on the ground or in flight; have a smaller launch and radar cross-section flight signature; and can more easily evade interception measures through low-flying trajectories, supersonic speed potential, and flight paths that circumvent air defense installations. If ballistic missile defenses (BMD) are deployed, a high-value enemy target can be concurrently attacked by cruise and ballistic missiles, or by a cruise missile barrage arriving from multiple directions.”

By excluding cruise missiles from the notification accord of 2005, coupled with its pursuit of active cruise missile program, featuring the 1,000-kmrange Nirbhay and 600-km-range hypersonic Brahmos missiles, with both platforms featuring land, air, and sea variants, has given Islamabad solid reasons to believe that its cruise missiles are posing a direct challenge for “Pakistan’s nuclear survivability.”

In response, Pakistan has developed its own cruise missiles such as the ground-launched Babur, air-launched Ra’ad and a 450-km-range Babur-III submarine-launched dual capable cruise missile. The Pakistani thinking is informed by the belief that its inventory of “cruise missiles would ensure a sustained, credible nuclear strike capacity in light of India’s emerging BMD capabilities.”

South Asia’s security landscape is becoming more complex, more volatile, and more dangerous because of the opacity surrounding the force postures of India and Pakistan. In this rapidly evolving context marked by high tensions and absence of dialogue, occurrence of “mishaps” like the Mian Channu incident of March 9, 2022 could unleash a chain of events that would have dire consequence for the region.

To avoid the risks inherent in this spiral of “inadvertent escalation”, India and Pakistan must re-commit themselves to evolving a strategic restraint regime in which there should be zero-tolerance for nuclear brinksmanship. Pakistan had proposed this regime as early as 1998 following South Asian nuclearization. That regime cannot be sustained alone by Pakistan. Pakistan needs a negotiating partner. For that New Delhi must overcome its ideological animus against dialogue with Pakistan and joins hands with Islamabad to negotiate a robust and sustainable nuclear CBM regime for South Asia.

The writer is a political scientist and defence analyst