The meeting between North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and South Korea’s Moon Jae-in is certainly one of the most dramatic and momentous events in the recent history of East Asia. Beyond the symbolism of cross-border handshakes and tree planting (not to mention a controversially decorated mango mousse that briefly ticked off Japan), the joint declaration that a peace treaty will be agreed this year and that the two countries share a goal of denuclearisation marks the most important development in inter-Korean relations since the Armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953.

The first real opportunity for this dialogue seemed to come when South Korea hosted the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in February this year. But in practice, it’s unlikely that a conveniently located sporting event was the only catalyst for such a dramatic shift in North Korean foreign policy.

Among analysts of Korean affairs, a few theories are circulating. Some think that the Kim government made its overtures because it genuinely fears that economic sanctions could become an existential threat; others surmise that the regime’s programme of weapons testing has now provided it with sufficient reassurance that it could deter a serious attack. A third theory suggests that Donald Trump’s unpredictable approach to international relations gave the north a sense of urgency.

But whatever the precise stimulus or concatenation of circumstances, the north has turned out to be rather more diplomatically sophisticated than many observers thought. When Pyongyang first reached out to Seoulabout the possibility of a meeting via its emissaries to the Winter Olympics, it was unclear how such a historic summit could be organised in such a short space of time. Such events ordinarily take months of planning and negotiation over the finest of details, yet the two sides gave themselves just a matter of weeks in which to arrange it.

Kim Jong-un’s visit to Beijing – his first overseas trip as North Korea’s leader – proved to be pivotal. Kim left reassured of his most important ally’s support, and he eased Beijing’s growing fear of being sidelined in the process. This summit also provided the first example of Kim’s previously unappreciated diplomatic skills as he played the role of junior partner perfectly with Xi Jinping.
Still, for all the outpouring of emotion on all sides, a dose of realism is in order.

The long game

Despite the declaration of Kim and Moon that the complete denuclearisation of the peninsula is the goal, it’s not yet clear whether two sides take that phrase to mean the same thing. Whether or not Pyongyang is willing to accept a reduction in its capability of any level is unclear, but even if it engaged to the fullest extent in a denuclearisation deal, its weapons programme is ultimately irreversible: North Korea now knows how to produce these weapons, and it will still know how even if the ones it has are destroyed.

Another notable declaration at the summit was the two leaders’ undertaking to “actively pursue” meetings either with the US or with the US and China. This nods to an uncomfortable truth: any discussion about inter-Korean relations can never be purely bilateral. As historic as this summit was, the issues at the core of Korea’s division cannot be resolved without the direct involvement of the US and China.

China will not tolerate being marginalised by the US, and will do all it can to ensure that the next step is a four-way dialogue. Similarly, North Korea will need the support of its most significant economic partner if it is to rebuild its economy. Ultimately, China’s interests are best served by peaceful coexistence between the two Koreas rather than reunification, which would deprive it of a buffer state between its border and that of a US military ally. It is likely that Xi will continue to support Kim and provide assistance in economic development rather than encourage a formal dissolution of the border with the south.

Similarly, regardless of the wishes of those south of the border, concrete progress with the north cannot be achieved without the US’s contribution. As things stand, the south needs Washington’s security guarantees, and the north’s various priorities all revolve around safeguarding itself against hypothetical US military action.

So, as momentous as the Kim-Moon meeting was, the two men alone do not hold the key to their countries’ futures. But despite this stark geopolitical reality, it would be wrong not to acknowledge the magnitude of this tremendous step forward. That the two Koreas are talking again is progress in itself – and that it seems likely they will keep talking and building trust is the very best anyone could have hoped for from this unprecedented meeting.

This article was first published on theconversation.com.
 

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This article was first published in Waging Nonviolence.

The seven members of the Kings Bay Plowshares, who entered the Georgia naval base on April 4 2018 to protest nuclear weapons, white supremacy and racism. Credit: Waging Nonviolence/Kings Bay Plowshares. All rights reserved.

“Our grandma is in jail,” Madeline tells a woman wrestling a shopping cart at Target.

“She went over a war fence and tried to make peace,” Seamus adds helpfully. “They arrested her, and she is in jail now.”

“Where?” the woman asks, looking from them to me in disbelief and maybe pity.

“We don’t remember,” the kids say, suddenly done with their story and ready to make passionate pleas for the colorful items in the dollar section over the woman’s shoulder.

“Georgia,” I say, but I don’t have a lot of energy to add detail to my kids’ story. They hit all the high points.

“There’s a lot going on these days,” she says. I agree, and we move on into the store and our separate errands.

I was happy not to say more at that moment, happy to avoid a sobbing breakdown at Target, happy to wrestle one little bit of normal out of a very abnormal day.

My mom, Liz McAlister, who turned 78 in November, had been arrested deep inside the King’s Bay Naval Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Along with six friends, she carried banners, statements, hammers and blood onto the base. They started their
action on April 4: the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination.

Their statement made connections between nuclear weapons, white supremacy and deeply embedded racism. It is a long statement, but given that they were carrying it into a free-fire zone—where military personnel are authorized to use deadly force—there was no particular need for brevity: “We come to Kings Bay to answer the call of the prophet Isaiah (2:4) to ‘beat swords into plowshares’ by disarming the world’s deadliest nuclear weapon, the Trident submarine. We repent of the sin of white supremacy that oppresses and takes the lives of people of color here in the United States and throughout the world. We resist militarism that has employed deadly violence to enforce global domination. We believe reparations are required for stolen land, labor and lives.”

They walked onto King’s Bay Naval Station just hours after Saheed Vassell was shot and killed in a barrage of bullets by New York City police officers, just hours after hundreds of demonstrators filled the streets of Sacramento for another day, shouting “Stephon Clark, Stephon Clark, Stephon Clark” and demanding accountability after the young father of two was killed by police officers on March 18. These seven white activists know that when you are black in this country, your own corner, your grandmother’s own backyard, is a free-fire zone more dangerous than any military base.There is indeed a lot going on these days.

The statement continues: “Dr. King said, ‘The greatest purveyor of violence in the world (today) is my own government.’ This remains true in the midst of our endless war on terror. The United States has embraced a permanent war economy. ‘Peace through strength’ is a dangerous lie in a world that includes weapons of mass destruction on hair-trigger alert. The weapons from one Trident have the capacity to end life as we know it on planet Earth.”

Kings Bay is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world at about 16,000 acres. It is the home port of the U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet’s Trident nuclear-powered submarines. There are eight in total, two guided missile submarines and six ballistic missile submarines. These submarines were all built in Groton, Connecticut—right across the river from our home in New London. Each submarine, my mom and her friends assert, carries the capacity to cause devastation equivalent to 600 of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima, Japan.

“Nuclear weapons kill every day through our mining, production, testing, storage and dumping, primarily on indigenous native land. This weapons system is a cocked gun being held to the head of the planet. As white Catholics, we take responsibility to atone for the horrific crimes stemming from our complicity with ‘the triplets’ [of evil]. Only then can we begin to restore right relationships. We seek to bring about a world free of nuclear weapons, racism and economic exploitation.”

That is not the end; you can read the whole statement and their indictment of the United States on their Facebook group. These sorts of actions—called Plowshares— have a nearly 40-year history, since my father and uncle and six others broke into the King of Prussia plant in Pennsylvania in 198o to “beat swords into plowshares.” They struck at nosecones with hammers and marked the weapons with blood to reveal the human costs and mess and suffering the weapons are built to wreak in the world.

My father participated in five of these Plowshares actions in his lifetime and helped organize countless others. Committed conspirers, steeped in active nonviolence, have carried out more than 100 of these actions since 1980. This is my mom’s second action. She and her current co-defendant Clare Grady, were part of the 1983 Griffiss Plowshares in upstate New York.

My parents estimated that they spent 11 years of their 27-year marriage separated by prison, and it was mostly these actions that kept them apart and away from us. Countless life events in our family—birthdays, graduations, celebrations of all kinds—were stuttered by the absence of one of our parents. I say this with pain and loss, but no self-pity. Dad was able to attend my high school graduation, but not my brother’s. We went straight from my college graduation to visit my dad in jail in Maine.

I missed all the raging keggers, sweaty dance parties and tearful goodbyes that marked the end of college for my friends to sit knee-to-knee with my father in a cramped and soulless room. On chairs designed for maximum discomfort, I tried to share my momentous day and all my 22-year-old big feelings while ignoring the guards and the room crowded with a dozen others doing the same thing. We wrote thousands of letters. They often crisscrossed each other so that there was a constant weaving of story and sharing across the miles.

So, when I explained that grandma was in jail to my kids—11-year-old Rosena, 5-year-old Seamus and 4-year-old Madeline—I felt the weight of a lifetime of missing and provisional family experiences, frequently lived in prison visiting rooms and through urgently scrawled letters.

I tried to figure out a way to talk to them that would make sense and, in thinking it through, I realized that none of this should make sense to anyone! Nuclear weapons? Absurd! Police brutality and white supremacy? Senseless! Plowshares actions with their symbolic transformation and ritual mess-making? A foolhardy act of David versus Goliath proportions!

So, I didn’t try to make it make sense. I just forged ahead, grateful that they had some context: We had participated in the Good Friday Stations of the Cross organized by Catholic Worker friends at our local submarine base a few days earlier, and—the night before—we had gone to hear a dramatic reading of Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

“Hey guys, know how we went to the sub base on Friday? Grandma was arrested in a place like that late last night. She is in jail now. She and her friends broke onto the base to say that nuclear weapons are wrong. Remember how Dr. King talked about just and unjust laws?” They nodded and remembered that King said “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” I told them that Grandma thinks that nuclear weapons—things that can destroy so much life on our planet—shouldn’t be built and protected and paid for when so many people are hungry, so many kids don’t have good schools to go to, so many people don’t have good homes. I went on and on.

“Wait, these nuclear weapons…They are war things?” Seamus asked.

“Yep, they are war things, bud.”

“Good for grandma,” he said, and that was the end of our serious conversation.

Mom and her friends are charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass and two felonies: possession of tools for the commission of a crime and interference with government property.

The kids and I didn’t talk about the kind of jail time that could mean for their grandma. It is all I am thinking about right now, but they moved on, imagining out loud and with a lot of enthusiasm how grandma got by the attack dogs and police officers they had seen at the Groton Submarine Base. They were sure there was a similar set up in Georgia. “Grandma needed a ladder and a cheetah,” said Madeline. “A cheetah is the only animal that can outrun dogs and police officer’s bullets.”

I am pretty sure no cheetahs were involved in the Kings Bay Plowshares, but I am happy my daughter sees her grandmother as a fierce and powerful anti-war activist astride a wild cat.

Frida Berrigan is a columnist for Waging Nonviolence and serves on the National Committee of the War Resisters League. She lives in New London, Connecticut with her husband Patrick and their three children, Madeline (2 months), Seamus (21 months) and Rosena (7 years).

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Two out of three categories of weapons of mass destruction – biological and chemical weapons – as well as landmines and cluster munitions already have strict conventions that largely ban them. The starting point for these conventions was the humanitarian impact; these weapons are so devastating that they should never be used.

But strictly speaking, the use of nuclear weapons – arguably the most destructive of them all – is currently not necessarily prohibited under international law. And countries that do not possess nuclear weapons, together with NGOs, have wanted to have them banned for a long time.

The human cost

The international community witnessed the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons as early as 1945 with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But the destruction wrought on these cities by what are by today’s standards very basic nuclear bombs did not lead to their prohibition.
 

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which came into force in 1970 and was indefinitely extended in 1995, merely prohibits the spread of such weapons. But Article IV of the document does call for parties to the agreement to negotiate “a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control”.

Unfortunately, the dynamics of the Cold War meant that nuclear weapons remained a part of international politics and national security. Only since the end of the Cold War have questions about the use of nuclear weapons and their devastating consequences started to be seriously contemplated.

In 1996, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion on the threat or use of nuclear weapons. This stated that it “would generally be contrary” to “the principles and rules of humanitarian law”.

And in 1997, a group of concerned lawyers, scientists, physicians, former diplomats, academics and activists drafted a model Nuclear Weapons Convention. Initiated by international NGOs, such as the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA), the model was ultimately submitted to the UN General Assembly by Costa Rica that same year.

It was revised in 2007 to include key developments since 1997 and was again submitted by Costa Rica and Malaysia to the UN General Assembly that year. It was then circulated as an official document in 2008.
 

In 2010, the president of the International Commission of the Red Cross highlighted the importance of humanitarian considerations in his statement about nuclear weapons in Geneva. And, at the NPT Review Conference the same year, governments officially expressed in the final document their “deep concern at the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons”.

States, international organisations and civil society convened conferences in 2013 and 2014 that focused on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons.

But although the “Humanitarian Pledge” issued in 2014 emphasised that nuclear weapons are simply too dangerous for us to permit their existence, none of the countries that possess nuclear weapons endorsed the idea. Neither did US allies protected under the country’s nuclear umbrella.

Opposing positions

In 2016, three sessions of the UN’s Open-ended Working Group taking forward nuclear disarmament negotiations were held for a total of 15 days. These led to more than 100 countries supporting the start of negotiations on a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.

That, in turn, resulted in a UN General Assembly resolution advising states to pursue multilateral negotiations towards banning nuclear weapons in the next year. Not surprisingly, none of the countries that have nuclear weapons participated in any of the meetings. All of them will presumably not be attending the latest round of talks either.

Meanwhile, two opposing positions became apparent among countries that do not possess nuclear weapons, adding another divide to the existing gap between states that possess nuclear weapons and those that do not.

The first group of countries are those that want a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons based on the common understanding that the humanitarian consequences of their use cannot be ignored. Several members of this grouping have called for the creation of a nuclear weapons convention, while others have called for a stand-alone prohibition or a so-called “ban treaty”.

The second group consists of countries that depend on extended nuclear deterrence. They are calling for “progressive approach” that seeks non-legal and legal measures as “building blocks” towards a nuclear ban. These include reducing the risks of accidental and unauthorised use of nuclear weapons and bringing into force the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

According to their plan, only after a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons becomes a reality would a ban treaty be actually feasible to pursue.
 

While the first group emphasises the importance of negotiating a ban treaty, nuclear-armed states and those that fall under their umbrella are seeking to slow the process. And the gap between these two attitudes is the critical challenge for the process.
 

Non-state actors

Alongside state-to-state negotiations, civil society has also been playing crucial roles on the road to negotiations. The importance of civil society groups and NGOs is recognised in Article 71 of the UN Charter.

Civil society has been active in the moves towards prohibiting nuclear weapons with strong support by grassroots movements such as the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a coalition of prominent and active NGOs.

In the end, governments will make the decisions on the actual wording, demands and breadth of any ban treaty. They will also decide whether to sign and ratify it. But pressure from civil society will contribute the atmosphere for moving forward.

No one in the world can argue against the idea of a world without nuclear weapons or the total elimination of nuclear weapons. And it is not just legal provisions and measures that are important. The norms and atmosphere created by the establishment of a ban treaty, or at least efforts towards concluding one, will be a vital part of the mix.

The humanitarian consequences of using nuclear weapons play a central part in the international nuclear disarmament initiative now starting. It goes beyond traditional strategic thinking about nuclear policy and appeals to the core of mankind. After all, a single nuclear detonation may set off a chain of events that could become the harbinger for the end of the world as we know it. Clearly, none of us wants to see that.

Wakana Mukai, Assistant Professor at the Security Studies Unit of the Policy Alternative Research Institute, University of Tokyo

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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— Pervez Hoodbhoy 
(Professor of physics at Quaid–e–Azam University, Islamabad)

There are many Kargils to come, I fear. Nuclear weapons have made brinksmanship possible, meaning that one hopes to get as close to war as possible without actually having war. India and Pakistan shall keep playing this game indefinitely until such time as a tragic error or miscalculation rules out further play. Pakistan is totally serious about Kashmir. Call it an obsession if you will, but facts are facts, and all indications are that its support for the militants will increase in times to come. This was the essential content of the speech by the chief of army staff, General Pervez Musharraf, in Karachi on April 10 this year. 

Presently there is much jubilation here in Pakistan about Indian planes and helicopters being downed. Sadly, most people don’t realise how close this pushes us to the brink, and have no idea of how total and final a fall would be. They also do not understand the immense cost which Pakistani civil society has paid for supporting insurgency in Kashmir. 

One should never have had illusions about the Lahore Declaration; it was a mere consequence of international pressure, particularly from the US, for the two prime ministers to look as if they are serious about peace. Even so, it was a good thing and every attempt to reduce enmity and tensions is to be welcomed. The bus service is still doing well, after all. I feel that we must welcome negotiations at all levels even if the results are marginal.

We must, however, also recognise that the basics have not changed, and probably will not change unless something very major happens. If that “something” is less than war, we shall be very fortunate. India and Pakistan are likely to make it past Kargil this time, and to the end of this millenium, with high probability. But unless there is a radical departure from past behaviour, I doubt that we will make it past the next few decades ahead. 

Adopt a dual strategy
— Praful Bidwai 
(A senior journalist and founder member of Movement in India  on Nuclear Disarmament)

The peace movement in both countries should not assume it knows the answer.  Rather, it should adopt a dual strategy: advocate normalisation and progress in all areas,  independently of Kashmir; and call for a  modest beginning at coming to  grips with the Kashmir issue while the general relationship improves.

The first strategy is minimalist and worth pursuing regardless of the second. There is simply no reason why the grotesque conflict at Siachen, which has killed 10,000 and costs Rs. 3 crores a day, should  not be resolved or the Wular, Sir Creek and  trade  issues should remain undecided even though Kashmir is not settled. But this needs a much deeper commitment than was shown at Lahore. “Bus diplomacy” was symbolically welcome, but substantively very thin. The Lahore accords were not even about arms control, only about limited transparency.  India and Pakistan didn’t even agree to slow down  nuclear and missile development or to  stop  testing. Lahore didn’t mark a real breakthrough. We still need one.

As for Kashmir, it is vitally important that a process of discussion begins. But this must be defined and enunciated, first and foremost, by the Kashmiri people themselves.

Fortunately, a beginning seems to have been made. At the Hague Appeal for Peace conference last month, a cross–border dialogue took place among Kashmiris from different political tendencies, from the JKLF and the Hurriyat to Pannun Kashmir. This needs to be built upon.

Durable peace requires Kashmir solution and more
— Zia Mian
(Scientist of Pakistani origin teaching at MIT, USA)

There can be no doubt that both Indians and Pakistanis, must talk about Kashmir, with the Kashmiris, and find a solution. Unless there is a settlement over Kashmir, that the Kashmiris feel reflects their aspirations, any peace between India and Pakistan may not thrive or survive. Until it is erased from the maps and from people’s minds, the Line of Control will always be a place for Lack of Control, especially for demagogues and would be heroes. 
At the same time, it may be un–reasonable to assume that a settlement of the Kashmir issue would in itself create lasting peace. One of the lessons of the end of the Cold War was that even though the Soviet Union is no more, its nuclear weapons remain (about 10,000 are operational), as do those of the United States (about 8,000 are operational). Both are still prepared to fight a thermonuclear war against each other, and in the process obliterate themselves and the rest of us. The Cold War has led to a bitter, resentful, grudging, nuclear armed Cold Peace. At times it is hard to tell the difference between the two. 

Both these aspects must be kept in mind. A durable peace in the region needs a solution to Kashmir, but it requires far more. This requires that we rid ourselves of nuclear weapons. We must overcome nationalism as an ideology, transform the state as a political institution, and bring justice within society. 

In the situation we are now in, with fighting along the Line of Control and nuclear weapons casting their terrible shadow over the region, there has to be movement towards peace no matter what. If nothing else, it can be narrow and focussed on tiny steps forward, for example restraining nuclear weapons development and deployment, loosening the restrictions on people’s travel across the border, increasing trade and so on. But unless Kashmir is addressed there is always the danger that it will be the kind of movement where for every one step forward there shall be two steps backward. 

This is what seems to have happened with the Lahore Declaration. 
There should however not be too many illusions about the Lahore Declaration. It was the same two leaders who talked peace in Lahore who earlier had ordered the nuclear weapons tests. It was expedient, given international opinion, for them to stop fighting (at least for a while) and make up. Once the world moved on to other issues,  the battle was resumed. 
 

Track two has a limited objective
— J.N. Dixit
(Former Indian foreign secretary)

The thing to remember is that track–two diplomacy has been going on, through various initiatives, for the last ten years. What has been most significantly observed about such intiatives is that they have no impact on government policy at all. On either side, in Pakistan or in India, the power structures of the two governments do not take into account either what is discussed at these fora or the recommendations made. So while track–two diplomacy may be broadly useful, the immediate impact is not noticeable.

What happens at a time when we are faced with a situation like we presently are in at Kargil? Even those individuals who are committed to peace and rational thinking on such issues get disappointed and wonder how to carry on because, when a territorial dispute arises, popular resentment and national feelings are aroused. Even the people who are committed to the improvement of relations between the two neighbours are faced with a wider public opinion that becomes antagonistic. 

In Pakistan, newspapers, television and radio report news of the bombing of “our schools and the killing of our children”. In India, the heavy casualties, the violation of the sanctity of an international agreement — the incursion beyond the LOC seven–ten miles into our territory — all in the face of Pakistan claiming not to have made any mistake raises temperatures.

I do believe that for at least one year, even government–level talks are not going to make serious headway. The foreign ministers may meet several times over — so that the world cannot tell us that we are being unreasonable — but the inner impulses on either side will not contribute to coming to any reasonable compromises on either side.

Track one diplomacy gets vitiated by such developments such as the current situation in Kargil. And track two efforts serve a limited objective: they keep alive trends in public opinion and are important at that level but are limited in their impact and reach. Unfortunately, what is a forgone conclusion today is that even if there was earlier some possibility of imminent solutions, these have been irretrievably delayed further. 
 

The situation will defuse soon
— Dr. Mubashir Hasan
 (Former finance minister, Pakistan)

The process started by both the prime ministers, Nawaz Sharif and Atal Behari Vajpayee envisaged clearly talking on all issues including Kashmir. Unfortunately this unique intitiative, the first of its kind in fifty years, was first put off, or delayed by the dissolution of the Indian Lok Sabha and has now been stalled by the recent operations in Kargil. I foresee that grim though the situation in Kargil today seems, it will defuse within ten–fifteen days time. 

We must also remember that whenever the two governments come close to resolving issues or making a beginning even, something occurs to put a spoke in the wheel. It could be much–publicised news of USA supplying F16s to Pakistan that makes the Indians angry or it could be the news of a big explosion on Pakistani soil that makes the Pakistanis angry! These are the considered machinations of those international powers who do not want regional peace in South Asia. The Sharif–Vajpayee governments were for the first time in the process of co–relating their nuclear policies. An identical nuclear policy is in the interest of both Pakistan and India. This is not what vested international powers want.
 

Await more stable governments
— Nirmal Mukherjee 
(Former Indian cabinet secretary and governor, Punjab)

I don’t believe that the doings of peace groups are undone. I believe the urge for peace remains unchanged. The current situation in Kargil is illustrative of the games regimes play. My own view is that India is going through a situation of political flux (as our former prime minister, V.P. Singh has been saying) except that I feel that the results of the next election will be another pre–final. Until the voice of the oppressed, the vast majority, gets finally heard. In the midst of this flux, with weak governments at the helm, peace activists cannot do too much. They must hold their fire, conserve their energy, remain in touch, gather as many facts, and as much information about each other, as possible. And await a political climax over the next decade when the moves for peace find receptive listeners in government.
 

Peace pressure must continue
— B.M. Kutty
(Convenor, Pakistan Peace Coalition; also secretary, Sind province committee of Pak–India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy)

It is true that the situation  presently looks very bleak and  frustrating. Something like the recent developments in Kargil appear to undermine by months and years the efforts put in by pro–peace organisations and individuals on both sides. But peace groups cannot afford to give up in either country. The argument for people to people contact, the need for increased interaction, remains as valid today as it was before. So, irrespective of what happens at the government level, we should go on pressing for further contacts.

Also peace groups cannot close their eyes to the fact that Kashmir remains a very sensitive issue between the two countries and a resolution of this issue is essential for durable peace. It has acquired a hydra–headed character that cannot be pushed under the carpet. We, therefore, will have to evolve perspectives for a resolution of the problem and thereafter mount pressure on the government on both sides to act on them. 

To begin with, a few things are very clear. The Kashmir problem cannot be solved militarily — neither by India’s military action nor by Pakistan’s intervention through support to this or that group. Both the governments have to agree that the people of Kashmir also count — no agreement will work unless it enjoys the confidence of the Kashmiri people. 

I personally believe that unless people of Kashmir on both sides are given an absolutely free choice, with no Indian troops present and without any Pakistani involvement, there will be no solution possible.
 

Kashmir’s accession to India is final
— Vishnu Bhagwat
(Former Chief of the Indian Navy)

In my mind, there can be no question of any moves towards lasting peace within the region being at all feasible with Pakistan insisting on intervention in Kashmir. This is true not only in the context of the recent infiltration in Kargil but in the context of Jammu and Kashmir as a whole. For India and for me, the question of Kashmir and its accession are final through the instrument of accession and no Indian government has any right to indulge in any kind of bargaining so far as the question of the status of Jammu and Kashmir within the Indian union is concerned. This is because, in more ways than one, Kashmir is not only the symbol of Indian secularism but the sine qua non of both the secular Indian constitution and the secular India state. It is literally the head of the body that is India. The will of the people of Kashmir was behind the accession of Kashmir to India as opposed to the rulers of not just Kashmir but Hyderabad, Junagadh and Jaipur who wanted independent status, their treaties with the British having lapsed. Under no circumstances can any state of the Indian union, be it Punjab, Kashmir or a government at the centre be encouraged or permitted to take on a non–secular, theocratic garb. 

On all other issues like trade and business, people–to–people links, cultural exchanges these are welcome since we are basically the same people. But I strongly feel that Kashmir cannot be a part of these levels of exchanges. Here I would like to quote the example of Abraham Lincoln who held the American union together at the cost of a civil war knowing full well the implications of such a war. Secession was something that was never entertained as a possibility let alone an eventuality. 

Archived from Communalism Combat, June 1999, Year 6  No. 54, Cover Story 2

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