[sacw] [ACT] saanp (24 March 00)

Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Fri, 24 Mar 2000 14:06:20 +0100


South Asians Against Nukes Post
24 March 2000
_________________________
#1. India's Nuclear Ambition: Ahmad Rashid reviews Perkovich's Book
#2. Achin Vanaik and Praful Bidwai's Book 'South Asia on a short fuse' revie=
wed
_________________________

#1.

The Nation Online (Opinion Page)
=46riday, March 24, 2000
Last update 6:00 GMT - 11:00 PST

The Indian nuclear ambition

by Ahmed Rashid

India's Nuclear Bomb, The Impact on Global Proliferation by George Perkovich
University of California Press, 1999, price $39.95

If anyone is naive enough to think that in this era states may acquire
nuclear weapons because of some long, comprehensive debate about national
security or perceptions about insecurity vis-a-vis more powerful
neighbours, then forget it. States go nuclear for the most unstrategic
reasons. And then get stuck with a nuclear arsenal they have not made plans
about what to do with.
George Perkovich, for several decades one of the gurus of South Asia's
escalating arms race, has written a book which will undoubtedly stand as
the last word on how and why India went nuclear in 1998 - without even
being sure how nuclear weapons would fit into its defence strategy. The
staggering 28 per cent increase in New Delhi's military budget announced
this month is India's surreal afterthought of having gone nuclear and not a
precondition for doing so.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) decision in May 1998 to detonate five
nuclear devices under the sands of the Rajasthan desert has undoubtedly
made South Asia the most dangerous place in the world. Pakistan tested its
own nuclear devices less than a month later, and then Kashmiri Mujahideen
used the potential of the nuclear umbrella to launch the Kargil operation
in 1999. Recent statements from Indian politicians and Generals seem to
suggest that once President Clinton's trip to South Asia is over, the
Indian army may indulge in a limited war in order to gain revenge for
Kargil.
Both India and Pakistan boasted that by going nuclear they had effectively
created a deterrent against all war. In fact their nuclear weapons have
become the raison d'etre to carry out limited conventional wars - which
could go nuclear in a moment of stress, miscalculation or defeat. The
proximity of India and Pakistan makes the risk of accidental nuclear war
and radiation fallout even more dangerous.
When India tested its first 'peaceful' nuclear device in 1974, the US
Ambassador in New Delhi Daniel Patrick Moynihan delivered a prophetic
letter to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. "India has made a huge mistake. Now
in a decade's time some Pakistani General will call you up and say I have
four nuclear weapons and I want Kashmir. If not, we will drop them on you
and we will all meet in heaven. And then what will you do?"
For decades India held a strong moral international stance against all
nuclear weapons. But as Perkovich in his meticulous and mammoth work points
out, this moral high ground was constantly undermined by a small but
increasingly powerful "strategic enclave" of scientists and engineers. They
had no overarching strategic defense theory, but merely wanted to prove
themselves equal to the task and outwit their fellow scientists in the West.
In 1945, even before the partition of the Subcontinent, Homi Bhaba, the
father of the Indian bomb, had opened an atomic institute with funding by
the Tatas - India's leading industrial family of the time. By 1946, Bhaba
was heading the Atomic Energy Research Committee, which after independence
became the Atomic Energy Commission. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's founding
father and ostensibly an ardent non-proliferationist, became a close friend
and secret supporter of Bhaba's efforts.
Perkovich blows the myth that India's bomb is indigenous. India's early
start benefited from the West's sole aim in the 1950s to sell nuclear
technology to the Third World, without effective controls. The US, Canada
and Britain all helped India's nuclear start up. After China tested nuclear
devices in 1964, Bhaba even asked Washington for the blueprint of a bomb,
saying he could build a bomb in six months - otherwise it would take him 18
months.
Perkovich also shows how, despite India's public claim that China is the
real nuclear threat to India, New Delhi's nuclear ambitions have been
ultimately guided by its hostile relations with Pakistan. In 1981 the
Indian Air Force, inspired by Israel, conducted a study on the feasibility
of attacking Pakistan's nuclear installations in a pre-emptive strike.
=46ortunately New Delhi came to the conclusion that it could succeed, but
that Pakistan would declare war. He explores in depth the nuclear scares
between the two countries in 1987 and 1990 when war was only just averted.
Perkovich details how and why US policy has been so ineffective in
reducing India's motives in acquiring nukes. Since the 1950s, Washington
mistrusted India as it aligned with the Soviet Union and the US cemented
close ties with Pakistan. US Secretary of State John Dulles described Nehru
in 1953 as "an utterly impractical statesman." As a consequence India has
never trusted US policies - which has been sharply reflected in
Washington's current failure to persuade India to sign the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty - after nearly two years of negotiations.
US intelligence appears to have only succeeded in 1995, when it discovered
that Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had authorised a nuclear test. The US
warned India and Rao cancelled the test. In return, in 1998 India
blindsided US satellites and duped visiting US dignitaries, thereby
surprising the world with its nuclear tests. Perkovich demonstrates how
little real debate there ever was about India's nuclear options. The
=46oreign and Defense Ministries were never included in the debate. The
army's subordination to civil control may have stabilised democracy in
India - unlike in Pakistan - but by not including the army in the debate,
even in the BJP's final decision to go nuclear in 1998 India could not hope
to build up a plausible nuclear strategy.
The strategic enclave - Bhaba and his successors - essentially considered
nuclear technology as "a shortcut to modernity and major power status".
That was also the driving force behind the BJP's long-term desire to take
India nuclear. "The BJP wanted the bomb and the strategic enclave wanted to
give it to them," says Perkovich.

=A9The Nation Group of Publications Pvt Limited
_______

#2.

=46IGHTING THE BOMB - AND FRIENDS

J. Sriraman

(Indian Review of Books, February 2000)

THIS is about differences over what may appear to be a
dead issue. But, it is provoked by the need to keep a
movement alive and undivided. A movement of
life-and-death importance. The anti-nuclear-weapons
movement.

Of course, what the latest book by two leading and
long-time Indian participants in the movement - Praful
Bidwai and Achin Vanaik - should provoke, above all,
is something else. Mainly, a rethinking among the
middle class intelligentsia rapidly being won over to
nuclear militarism and national jingoism. At the very
least, an informed debate over questions on which an
Indian consensus has been proclaimed so often that it
threatens to become an unquestionable presumption. It
is these same objectives, however, that this
reviewer's critique of the authors' argument on a
single but significant count also aims to serve.

The book is not merely "an outstanding reference
work", as former Chief of the Naval Staff Adm. L.
Ramdas has described it, but much more. It adds
scholarship to activism, militancy to meticulous
academic research. The authors seek, as they put it
succinctly, "to attack the nuclear mindset not just at
its weakest point (its immorality) but also at its
supposedly strongest point - its claim to promoting
strategic security through reliance on the wondrous
powers of nuclear deterrence". Both the aims are
brilliantly achieved. Most people will share the moral
outrage at a militarism based on mass-destruction
weapons, if told about these in such credibly
informed terms. The counter to the deterrence theory
can also convince quite a few outside the camp of
nuclear-weapon fundamentalism who have been deluded
into the belief that national security makes the bomb
a necessary evil. All the more reason why the authors
could have well done without an undue stress on an
argument that does not find total acceptance within
the anti-nuclear-weapons front.

A thread running through their entire thesis is a
passionate argument for the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty (CTBT) and against opposition to it,
particularly the Left. The argument is indeed marked
by a moral indignation that, to many others in the
peace movement, may appear misdirected.

'Self-serving sanctimoniousness: Indian criticism of
the CTBT' is the indignant caption of an earlier paper
of the authors published as one of the appendices
here, and it does not target the pro-bomb critics of
the treaty alone. The reviewer takes the liberty of
reading it with a recent article by Vanaik under the
angry title 'A shameful reaction' (The Hindu, November
2). The article is about the reaction to the US
Senate's rejection of the proposal to ratify the
treaty, considered especially shameful when coming
>from the CTBT's opponents within the anti-bomb camp.
The authors may agree that it may be a dead issue for
all practical purposes but argue that any undismayed
reaction to the apparently imminent death of the
treaty is incompatible with an honest opposition to
nuclear weaponisation. The argument needs to be
answered.

It is an open secret that there have been differences
within the movement on two issues in the main: nuclear
energy and the CTBT. Differences on these, in fact,
exist even within many of the organisations or fora
(including the Journalists Against Nuclear Weapons)
that constitute the movement. While the debate over
nuclear energy is not going to be over in a day, that
over the CTBT -- or, more correctly, what it signified
-- is not going to die with the non-ratified treaty.
Little is gained by concealing the differences, but
nothing will be lost by a friendly discussion of what
should be non-antagonistic contradictions. The attempt
should be to understand each other. The authors show
insufficient understanding of the point of view of
those opposed to Pokharan II as well as the CTBT.

This stems from an apparent unawareness or
under-awareness of the opposite point of view -- of
those who have been ardent supporters and aggressive
sellers of both Pokharan II and the CTBT. Vanaik, in
his article, asserts: "The outcome of the post-1994
CTBT debate in the country represented simply the most
shameful, decitful and dishonestly arrived-at elite
consensus on almost any single issue since
Independence.'' What seems to evade his attention is
the post-May 1998 attempt by this powerful section of
opinion -- official and avowedly non-official -- to
sell a Pokharan II-CTBT package as the product of a
"national consensus". And, a passing notice is all
that the authors take, almost as an afterthought, of
this cynical sales pitch.

Among the first official pronouncements to follow the
first part of the five-test series were those of
India's readiness, at last, to consider signing the
CTBT. The point was repeated and reiterated until the
Prime Minister committed India to signing the treaty
by the target date then set by the United States
Administration. Precisely the same course of action
was meanwhile strongly advocated by the same sections
of the media as had hailed India's abandonment of
"nuclear hypocrisy".

On May 12, the day after the first three tests, the
BJP-led government made another notable departure from
India's long-held nuclear policy: it announced its
"willingness to subscribe to certain elements" of the
CTBT. The main grounds for the policy change, as given
out on the morrow of Pokharan II and repeated several
times since then, were two. The first was that the
tests had given India "a database that should preclude
the need for further testing, except in computer
simulations". The second was that the tests had made
India a nuclear-weapons state and that the new status
was ludicrously incompatible with the old opposition
to the CTBT.

The first ground was supposed to have become
unquestionably strong with the two further tests on
May 13. With these, India was also supposed to have
gained a definite nuclear lead over Pakistan, which
the CTBT would do nothing to take away. So confident
was New Delhi on this score, or so it sought to sound,
that it announced its decision to unilaterally
forswear all further testing.

If the professed need for no more testing was the
negative sanction for CTBT-toeing, the second ground
cited was positive. Now that India was a
nuclear-weapons state, so the argument ran, it was
time it gave up its earlier opposition as a
non-nuclear-weapons state to the treaty as
discriminatory. Instead, it was time to join
nuclear-weapons powers as a peer and a partner, as a
co-signatory to the CTBT. Time, in other words, to
join the 'nuclear club'.

Off and on, in the immediate aftermath of Pokharan II,
it was also officially given out that India's
readiness to sign the treaty was conditional. But, the
sole condition to be spelt out was recognition of
India as a nuclear-weapons state. The unreadiness of
the USA, in particular, to accord such recognition was
also announced more than once. This was officially
indicated again as the reason for the tardy progress
on the treaty. Subsequently, however, significant
advance has been claimed by New Delhi in the
continuing dialogue with Washington.

As noted before, the same arguments have been advanced
by a powerful section of the pro-Pokharan II media, if
even more aggressively. A columnist in a leading
national daily put forward the 'club'-goers' case
quite crudely: "=D6why should the country continue to
cry itself hoarse that the CTBT is discriminatory? The
treaty certainly does not enable, say Togo, to conduct
nuclear experiments, so in that sense it does
discriminate against that paragon of non-alignment.
But then Togo has not conducted nuclear experiments,
and so it does not have the wherewithal to continue
the testing programme using supercomputers and
micro-nukes. Is that something with which India should
be exercised to an order so as to label probably the
most comprehensive international nuclear arrangement
as discriminatory?=D6.On this score, India has always
been isolated by this delightful club of the
destitute." (The Indian Express, July 7, 1998.)

Little doubt has been left that this view of the CTBT
as a passport to the 'nuclear club' has enthusiastic
official endorsement. After talks in Tokyo last
November with Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi,
=46oreign Minister Jaswant Singh announced that "India's
declaration of a voluntary moratorium on further
nuclear testing amounted to a de facto acceptance of
the CTBT". Was this a clever attempt to avoid a de
jure acceptance of the treaty which, as the authors
view it, should be unacceptable to Singh and his
government? No. The Foreign Minister was also reported
to have assured Obuchi that New Delhi was "trying to
build a domestic consensus in favour of the CTBT". The
proposed exercise was clearly part of preparations for
US President Bill Clinton's tour of this subcontinent,
linked in many official pronouncements and media
reports with the CTBT issue.

Leading media campaigner for weaponisation and
strategic analyst C. Raja Mohan had, in an article in
The Hindu on the eve of Singh's Tokyo visit, presented
a strikingly similar case for signing the CTBT in a
newspaper article. He proclaimed: "Having boldly
transformed India into a nuclear weapon power,
successfully reversed the Pakistani aggression across
the Line of Control, and gained world support for the
restraint in the conduct of the Kargil operations, Mr
Vajpayee now has a huge opportunity to put the nation
on the path of a confident global
engagement=D6.Immediately after the nuclear tests, India
outlined the broad parameters of its approach to
nuclear weapons. These included a restrained nuclear
posture and a readiness to join global arms control
regimes, including the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty."
The "process of reconciliation", on the basis of this
approach, was "stalled" by the fall of the previous
Vajpayee government. "Having come back to power with
an improved parliamentary majority, the Government can
no longer afford to delay the process of building a
national consensus on its nuclear policy."

According to the analyst, "=D6it was the reluctance of
>India to press ahead with the nuclear tests in
December 1995 that forced New Delhi into hardening its
rhetoric against the CTBT and argue that the treaty
stood in total opposition to India's national
interests". After the tests of 1998, it is implied,
the treaty became quite compatible with India's
interests as the country's nuclear hawks see them.

A section of opinion, too informed to be ignored, has
questioned the claim about no further testing being
needed for India's nuclear-weaponisation. The two
official answers have been obvious, even if unstated
or understated. First, the claim is unquestionably
valid in relation to Pakistan. Secondly, and more
importantly, the status that membership of the CTBT
can accord will more than make up for the shortfall.

In a critique last year of the pro-Pokharan II
English-language press, this reviewer noted: "The
media was divided on the next step of nuclear
diplomacy. A section was, loudly and clearly, for
India signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
unconditionally to press and preserve the advantage
gained with Pokharan; another was for conditional
signing of the CTBT; and a third was undecided about
how to justify an abrupt about-turn on the treaty,
considering that the political camp of Pokharan, too,
had till recently opposed it as discriminatory. But,
all of them were agreed on one point (or one and a
half points!): that the blasts and the emergence of
India as a nuclear-weapon state somehow bettered the
prospect of global nuclear disarmament (and that the
CTBT would not stall its further development as such a
state)." The situation remains pretty much the same,
and so does the sophistry.

Is it not a dishonest and deceitful consensus,
achieved among this section of the media and being
attempted at the national level, that the cause of
nuclear disarmament is served by the creation of
nuclear-weapon states that find it safe at last to
sign the CTBT? Carrying this argument to its logical
conclusion, every nuclear test by a hitherto
non-nuclear-weapon state is a step towards nuclear
disarmament as it can eventually lead to the state's
endorsement of the CTBT. The more the nuclear-weapon
states, in other words, the merrier for the
anti-nuclear-weapons movement!

The argument about no further testing being needed was
advanced, it must be noted, also by the US
Administration in every one of its repeated pleas for
the CTBT's ratification by the Senate. President
Clinton, in his unsuccessful appeal to the Senate,
cited high-level expert opinion that the treaty would
not at all affect any required upgradation of the
American nuclear arsenal. The authors assert that a
ban on explosive testing will seriously restrain the
US ability to develop ever more advanced nuclear
weaponry. They cite support o this position from
governments, including those of Russia and China,
physicists in the world anti-nuclear movement and the
extreme militarists behind the Republican rejection of
the treaty. The fact remains that the US
Administration's claim was also backed by the top
scientists and military experts quoted by Clinton. Is
there a good reason why the former opinion should be
accepted and the latter rejected?

There is one, if we believe that Clinton's claim (as
well as the $450-billion "stockpiles stewardship
programme" of safeguards announced by him) was only
tactical, just the sales pitch he adopted with a
recalcitrant Senate. Such a belief, however,
presupposes unreserved acceptance of the US
President's peace credentials or, at least, commitment
to the anti-nuclear-weapons cause. Those who sincerely
cannot share this belief do not stand convicted of
dishonesty in their campaign for nuclear disarmament.
Not any more than those who cannot believe that the
Vajpayee government's claim (about no further tests
being needed), too, is tactical -- or that its
readiness to sign the CTBT shows only its resolve to
strengthen a global nuclear disarmament regime.

The question is not one of the CTBT in the abstract.
Individual provisions of the treaty cannot be cited as
proof that support for it as a whole is indispensable
for any anti-nuclear-weapons activist. Non-essential
parts cannot justify the whole in such matters. Can
one say that the provision of India's Nuclear Doctrine
that promises safety measures is a positive feature
that makes it wrong to denounce the document as a
whole? Is it not the big picture, the larger design
and motive behind such documents that should matter?

The authors' grievance is that the anti-CTBT opinion
fails to differentiate between Clinton's Democratic
Administration and its domestic adversaries. The
difference between the Democrats and the Republicans
cannot, of course, be dismissed. Nor can it be denied
that some "arch-imperialists" think the US can well do
without nuclear weapons. Does this, however, disprove
the existence of a US nuclear policy? And, can that
policy be claimed to be one for genuine nuclear
disarmament? During the Kargil conflict, the extreme
jingoists of India demanded the use of the bomb on
Pakistan (and have opposed the signing of the CTBT).
The Indian government, proud of Pokharan II,
proclaimed its unwillingness to oblige (and claims to
be trying to build a consensus on the treaty). Does
the differentiation warrant an acceptance of the
anti-nuclear-weapons credentials of the regime?

All this does not mean that the view of leading peace
campaigners like Bidwai and Vanaik can be ignored.
This, on the contrary, is an attempt to answer them.
Also, to explain to the section of opinion they
represent a disagreement with the pro-CTBT argument
that appears to have anguished them.

All this does not mean, again, that there is no need
for measures to prevent further explosive nuclear
tests by India and the rest of the world. In India's
case, the much-trumpeted moratorium may not suffice,
but the objective may be better served by an act of
Parliament. For the peace-loving world, a concerted
movement for a non-discriminatory nuclear disarmament
regime will hold a credible promise of life beyond the
CTBT.