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The West has finally woken up to something that strategic analysts in India have been saying for decades: Saudi Arabia funded the Pakistani nuclear programme, and probably had a pact with Pakistan that either these weapons would be used in the defence of Saudi Arabia, or handed over to Saudi Arabia if the situation arose. Yet again, it has not been Indian claims over the decade that seem to have clinched the story. BBC attributed the trigger to be a senior Nato official who claimed he had "seen intelligence to this effect" and former head of US military intelligence Amos Yadlin.
Irrespective, we have three questions to analyse; First, how valid is this information? Second, how is it then that Saudi Arabia gets away with so much? Third, why is Nato and Israeli intelligence taken seriously but not the Indians?
With respect to the first question, there are many arguments and counter-arguments. Here are the facts: One, Saudi Arabia funded much of Pakistan's nuclear programme, some directly and others indirectly. The indirect funding came in the form of Saudi bailout packages every time Pakistan landed in economic doldrums due to its military adventurism. Two, in the 1980s, Saudi Arabia bought the 2,700km range CSS-2 missile from China. The circumstances of this deal were curious but unusually successful — China transferred a missile system to its new friend, a system it had never offered to its tried-and-tested ally Pakistan. Chinese technology at the time was still primitive and one can safely speculate that given the date of design and construction, these are inaccurate missiles. This inaccuracy means that firing them makes no sense whatsoever without a nuclear warhead, as the latter would compensate for the lack of accuracy with its sheer destructive power.
But having one's chess pieces in order still does not mean one is ready to play chess. As Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies has argued, Pakistan already has a bad rap sheet on this with the AQ Khan network. However, that has not prevented it from carrying out self-destructive actions. Take, for example, Afghanistan or Kashmir, where Pakistani support to the Taliban and terrorists is acknowledged across the board. In spite of its bad reputation, Pakistan has done little to clamp down on these jolly jihadis even though they have now become Pakistan's biggest internal security menace. Similarly, in spite of the AQ Khan revelations, we still have the Chinese supplying nuclear reactors to Pakistan. In public, the West ignores these transfers accepting that these are civilian. In private, they are the first to acknowledge that some of what China transfers to Pakistan is purely military and not remotely dual-use, which is why certain countries now refuse to supply China with spare parts. So Mr Fitzpatrick's analysis that the Pakistanis would somehow place reputational concerns over realpolitik, doesn't hold water.
This will not be your typical proliferation, where traceable centrifuges, signature isotopes, and easily identifiable buildings will be transferred. This is not a transfer of know-how and infrastructure, it is a transfer of a nuclear weapon — not much bigger than a large travel suitcase, and not much heavier than an armoured jeep. In effect, a transfer, when it happens, will be difficult to detect.
The counter-argument is that this is a news story planted by the Saudis to force a more robust approach on Iran. This leads us to our second question: Why does Saudi Arabia get away with things no other country can? For example, no other country could have received the CSS-2 missiles without howls of indignation ensuing. Given that Saudi Arabia is embarking on an ambitious civil nuclear plan, it is the only country which could plant the intelligence that it was serious about acquiring nuclear weapons, and yet get a subdued, almost indulgent, reaction from the West. Fifteen of the 19 suicide bombers who struck on 9/11 were Saudis, and yet Afghanistan was the country that was bombed. No other country can run nationally televised fund-raisers for Palestinian suicide bombers, routinely raising millions of dollars each, due to contributions by the Al Saudi family princes. Yet these same princes enjoy unfettered access to the US, which cracks down on irrelevant Muslim charities for simply expressing sympathy with jolly jihadis. Even Pakistan's support to terrorists is less overt than the Saudis'; and the first thing people in the know will tell you, off the record, is that the level of support, especially among the Al Saudi princes, is blatant and open, but also go on to say words to the effect, "Forget about punishing them; no one has the guts to do that". In effect, for the last 30 to 40 years, Saudi Arabia has been given a sense of exceptionalism so that it might now think that crossing the nuclear threshold is another exception the West is willing to tolerate. Hence, Mr Fitzpatrick's reputational argument is a bit of a stretch.
But for India there is a lesson here too — introspection. India's intelligence is something of a joke. It is mismanaged and unprofessional and is not taken seriously. But most importantly, it is actually bad. If Indian opinions are to be taken seriously in international fora, then India needs to get serious about its intelligence set-up. The sine-qua-non of strategic autonomy is strategic autonomous intelligence. As long as we don't have credible, deep and independent sources of information acquisition and analysis, strategic autonomy will remain a strategic farce.
By Special Arrangement with : Observer Research Foundation (www.orfonline.org)