The Times of India on 20 May 2016 quoted an article from Dawn titled ‘India may fail to defend itself from Pak missiles’ of 19 May 2016 indicating the over concern and wishful thinking of Pakistan on the subject. The author Baqir Sajjad Sayed, extensively referred to a view of  a senior researcher Petr Topychkanov of Russia speaking in Islamabad. The author has conveniently ignored the analysis about the deterrence caused by Indian Second Strike capability, the conventional edge of Indian Armed Forces to overcome the Pakistan’s bluff of use of tactical nukes to avoid conventional war, and the Indian compulsion of building adequate nuclear defence due to China being another nuclear neighbour .  The Russian researcher does not seem to be comfortable with the cooperation between India and Israel on BMD, as Russia and Israel are  competitors for such defence production projects with India. The worry of Pakistani author comes out clearly as Pakistani author Ali Osman on 16 May 2016 in his article in Dawn states “The development of India’s BMD is a cause of concern for Pakistan, as an effective system would to a certain degree negate Pakistan’s strategic strike capability”.

Some countries do not seem to be comfortable with India getting the waiver from NSG following an India-US Civilian Nuclear Agreement, and its entry into NSG, bringing up the old debate of India be made to sign NPT, despite adequate justification by India on its stance of it being discriminatory. India as a responsible state has well proven record of non proliferation. In fact some of the countries need to answer why the nuclear weapon technology has been proliferated in the past by some countries, despite signing NPT, and why bulk of the world overlooked it, taking no worthwhile action? In any case these NPT and NSG are two separate issues and can be progressed separately.

Gen Asthana

The links to the referred  articles