A declassified Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) document claimed that after returning to power in 1980, the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had considered military action on Pakistan’s nuclear installations to prevent it from acquiring weapons capabilities.
According to a redacted version of the 12-page CIA document titled, “India’s Reaction to Nuclear Developments in Pakistan,” the decision was being made by then Indian Prime Minister as the US was in an advanced stage of providing its fighter jets F-16 to Pakistan.
Indian American Times reached out to Ravi Batra, Chair, National Advisory Council on South Asian Affairs for his reaction to the CIA report (Read full coverage here)
New York – Unlike the Dick Chaney-solicited discredited WMD national intelligence estimate that supported the launch of the Iraq War and Ill-advised regime change (which threw the Sunni-Shia regional balance out of whack), this Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) does our CIA and intelligence services proud – for it is proven to be accurate human intel-based analysis. Given the current disagreement over the historic Iran Nuclear Deal, there is wisdom in this SNIE that ought not be ignored – even as its P5+1 and Iran.
While PM Margaret Thatcher went to war, PM Indira Gandhi disfavored attacking a neighbor to destroy her sovereign nuclear weapons production capacity – and instead chose conservative counter-balancing legal development of nuclear weapons. Nuclear arms race is better than conventional war – is statecraft wisdom. Critical to this laudatory course of action, is India’s SNIE-documented state of mind: nuclear weapons power ends conventional weapons asymmetry among nations and “in time produce a climate conducive to improving (bilateral) relations (albeit, this was in context of China-India relations).
The then role of China and then-Soviet Union, each supporting Pakistan and India, respectively, along with the US’ proposed sale of F-16s to Pakistan, our security partner, is nuanced P3-dimensional chessboard upon which India and Pakistan played and moved. As history happily proved, India & Pakistan proved their bilateral maturity, with the P3 pull & push, and no nuclear weapon war or conventional weapons war occurred. The relative difference in their economies and the disparate wellbeing of the everyday hardworking Indian and Pakistani may be the coefficient of difference in the robust or shrill nature of politics domestic to each such nation. The happier and better off a nation’s population is, less is the sovereign soil fertile for incubating terror, and exporting of same as a tool or unacknowledged asset of statecraft.
This SNIE should reassure the people of Pakistan and India that their governments know not only the sovereign right to war, but better yet have the judgment to read each other well and act in a calibrated manner to avoid a bruising and unhelpful war. Nice to know that India and Pakistan had leaders that were capable to dance to the highest tunes without military or civilian casualties, and indeed served to create a nuclear weapons capacity that in time was conducive to improving bilateral relations.
This SNIE shows that a nuclear arms race is a conservative course of action, rather than a war over another’s nuclear weapons capacity. After all, mutual assured nuclear destruction is a reality no nation can permit a madman to toy with, and such destructive mutuality, with reciprocal maturity, becomes the fertile soil of peace and prosperity for all.
The United States did us proud, and the India civil nuclear deal occurred decades later, obviously supported by this SNIE – as a predicate proof of India honoring its international commitments and the existence of an unappreciated wise and mature bilateral partnership that benefits from P3 on the chessboard with timely sovereign independence, rather than dependence. This SNIE ought encourage these neighbors, India and Pakistan, to embark upon a path of greater trust, with random verification, so that their people can sooner enjoy the fruit of greater peace and prosperity with full and free movement of people and goods – as befits the sons and daughters of a common soil.
Ravi Batra, Esq.
Ravi Batra, starting September 11, 2021, is a publisher ofThe America Times Company Ltd., and since January 2022, is the Editor-in-Chief. He is a member of the National Press Club, in Washington D.C., and a member of its "Freedom of the Press" and "International Correspondents" Teams/Committees.
A member of the bar since 1981, he is the head of a boutique law firm in Manhattan, The Law Firm of Ravi Batra, P.C., that handles complex constitutional, sovereignty, torture, civil and criminal cases, representing governments, corporates and individuals, with landmark legal victories, including, libel in fiction, in “Batra v. Dick Wolf.” He is Chairman & CEO, Greenstar Global Energy Corp., King Danylo of Galicia International Ltd., Mars & Pax Advisors, Ltd., Chairman of National Advisory Council on South Asian Affairs, and since September 2021, Advisor for Legal and Humanitarian Affairs to the Permanent Mission of Georgia to the United Nations. He is invited by various governments to address High Level Ministerial events, including, on Counter-Terrorism, including, Astana (Nur-Sultan), Dushanbe, Minsk and Delhi. He has testified in Congress as an invitee of the Chair, U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, and interacted with U.S. Department of State from 1984 -1990, and then again, from 2006, during the tenures of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo and Antony Blinken.
He has served as Commissioner of New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE), Trustee on New York State IOLA Board, New York State Judicial Screening Committee for the Second Judicial Department, City Bar’s Judicial Committee, Vice-Chair of Kings County Democratic County Committee’s Independent Judicial Screening Committee for the then-2nd Judicial Department of Brooklyn and Staten Island, Chair of NYSTLA’ Judicial Independence Committee, with many more bar leadership roles, including, NYSBA’s House of Delegates for four years. He has served as Advisor for Legal & Human Rights Affairs to the Permanent Mission of Ukraine post-annexation of Crimea till 2021, and Legal Advisor to numerous nations’ permanent missions to the U. N. since 2009, including, India, Pakistan, Honduras and Malta. He has served: as Global Special Counsel to The Antonov Company in Ukraine, a state-owned company, and was registered with the Justice Dept pursuant to FARA; and as Special Global Advisor to Rector/President of both - National Aviation University of Ukraine and National Technical University of Ukraine/KPI. He remains involved in geopolitics and public policy since the mid-1980's, starting with being on House Speaker Tip O’Neill’s Speaker’s Club and appointed member of NACSAA during President Ronald Reagan’s tenure. In 1988, he was part of U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese’s Delegation to Japan to resolve bilateral trade imbalance. He regularly interacts with the multilateral diplomatic community, and during the High Level UNGA Debate, with heads of State/Government. He is sought for his views as a speaker and writer.