[sacw] South Asian Mode of Weaponisation

[Harsh Kapoor]

=46YI
(South Asians Against Nukes)
________________________

EPW Reviews

March 11-17, 2000

South Asian Mode of Weaponisation

M V Ramana

India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation by George
Perkovich; University of California Press,
published in India by Oxford University Press, pp 597, Rs 645.

History...is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
=96 James Joyce in Ulysses

Studying India=92s nuclear history and policy is no easy task. With the
government unwilling to allow access to most of its records
and the imposition of secrecy through the 1962 Atomic Energy Act and the
Official Secrets Act, obtaining documentary evidence is
all but impossible. For the most part, what passes off as history, as
scholar Itty Abraham points out, is the Indian state=92s =93sanitised
official narrative of scientific and peaceful progress... interspersed
with diplomatic feats of non-aligned and non-nuclear India=94.

In the face of such odds, George Perkovich has produced a detailed
history of India=92s nuclear policy from the 1940s to the May 1998
tests. Perkovich utilises a variety of sources, ranging from Indian
Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) publications to documents
from the National Security Archives (an NGO in Washington, DC that sets
a great example in using the American Freedom of
Information Act to bring out facts otherwise not publicised) to
interviews with Indian and US policy-makers. What results are 468
absorbing pages (not to mention 130 pages of useful notes), at the end
of which one is left wanting more =96 the mark of a well-written
book.

The broad contours of the story are well known enough: the collusion
between Homi Bhabha, theoretical physicist and chief
architect of India=92s nuclear complex, and Jawaharlal Nehru in creating a
nuclear programme that was nominally oriented towards
peaceful purposes, but never ruled out the potential application of this
infrastructure for military purposes; the growth of a nuclear
estate that is covered with a thick veil of secrecy; The cynical
manipulation of so-called security threats by a pro-bomb lobby; the
hypocritical, multiple-standards followed by the US in its foreign
policies; and decision-making by a small coterie of scientists and
other advisors around the prime minster=92s office in ordering both the
nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998 (and the aborted test in the early
1980s). But, as one would expect in a work of this magnitude, several
hitherto unfamiliar facts are revealed.

One example (pp 36-37) should suffice to whet the appetite of the
reader.

In 1960, K D Nichols, a US military engineer and an important
participant in the Manhattan Project, had come to India to sell
American (light water) nuclear reactors and met with Nehru and Bhabha.
After his 45-minute presentation about the advantages of
American reactors, Nehru, according to Nichols, turned to Bhabha and
asked him if he could develop an atomic bomb and how long
it would take him to build it. Bhabha replied that he could do it in
about a year. Upon which Nehru turned to Nichols and asked him if
he agreed with Bhabha. An astonished Nichols replied in the affirmative.
Whereupon Nehru turned to Bhabha and said: =93Well, don=92t
do it till I tell you to=94. With the benefit of hindsight, and perhaps
the scepticism that comes easily to anyone who examines the
Department of Atomic Energy=92s record, Perkovich also notes that Bhabha=92s
claim had =93no basis in fact=94.

Though impressive in its detail and evidence that it has marshalled,
Perkovich=92s book, probably for reasons of size, does not touch
upon a few aspects of India=92s nuclear history. One of the more glaring
omissions has been that of the peace and anti-nuclear
movement, perhaps small and weak, but nevertheless real and persistent.
If it were simply a case of not recording one aspect of
history, the loss would not be great. After all, the anti-nuclear
movement operates completely in the open (unlike the pro-nuclear
operators who often resort to behind-the-scenes activity to achieve
their ends) and it would be easy to trace their history. But by not
including this factor, Perkovich does miss out on an important
explanatory variable, whose effect in a contested area of
policy-making like nuclear policy may have been of greater significance
than apparent at first sight. If Perkovich has considered the
movement and found it ineffective, he doesn=92t tell us about it.

This brings me to a somewhat problematic idea in the book. Perkovich
ascribes decisions at various junctures to restraint on the
part of Indian policy-makers. One is led to ask the question of how one
measures restraint. Is there a standard pattern of behaviour
that leaders are compared with to see if they are more or less
aggressive in their pursuit of nuclear weapons? The implicit base
pattern used seems to be that of leaders in the five nuclear weapon
states, especially the US, rather than the vast majority of
non-nuclear states. Ironically, the base pattern is the one that would
have been predicted by most Realist theories of International
Relations =96 the ones that Perkovich=92s study quite convincingly
demolishes. The related question that comes up is whose behaviour
is counted in this saga of restraint. Is it just the prime minister=92s?
What about leaders of opposition parties? Does this include the
heads of the =91strategic enclave=92 comprising the nuclear and missile
programmes? These are important questions because domestic
politics (what realists like Kenneth Waltz term =91second image=92 effects)
is the key explanatory variable for Perkovich. In the absence
of consensus within the domestic political spectrum, distribution of
power between the different factions and the salience of the
nuclear issue would seem more likely explanations for events (or
non-events) than restraint. It is in this context that some attention
to the grass roots peace and anti-nuclear movements would have been
useful =96 both to understand the power they may or may not
have exercised in the past and to find ways of getting out of the
nuclear abyss that we seem to be heading towards.

Though popular with many supporters of state policy in India, the notion
of restraint can be faulted on many grounds. Early on in his
account (p 34), Perkovich indulges in an interesting exercise of
analysing several of Nehru=92s pronouncements on nuclear abstinence.
Practising what British historian E P Thompson once described as =93the
close interrogation of texts and contexts=94, Perkovich reveals
that Nehru had almost always been careful enough never to foreclose the
possibility that India would develop nuclear weapons. Had
Perkovich been as discerning with regard to later policy statements and,
especially, some of the claims made by the people he
interviews, his comments about restraint may have indeed been more
tempered.

There are several instances even after the Nehruvian era when material
activities suggest a completely different narrative from the
statements of political leaders, domestically and, especially,
internationally. One does not have to be a cynic to note that Rajiv
Gandhi=92s presentation of his action plan followed on the footsteps of
the maiden flight test of Prithvi, India=92s first nuclear capable
missile, plans for the Agni were also firmly in place. Likewise, in
1995, while on the one hand the submission to the International
Court of Justice arguing against the legality of nuclear weapons was
being prepared, plans were afoot for a nuclear test. As
Perkovich points out when discussing the aborted 1995 nuclear test, =93the
strategic enclave did not need explicit political
authorisation to maintain the [Pokhran test] site or make other test
preparations=94. It appears to be a case of one hand not knowing
what the other is doing. Restraint, then, seems hardly the right concept
to talk about. Incoherence, ad hocism and lack of
coordination seem more applicable.

It may be worth digressing for a moment to point out that the autonomy
afforded to the strategic enclave will be a serious
impediment to any efforts at preventing weaponisation in India. Some
proposals aimed at curtailing further development of nuclear
weapons while not signing international treaties like the CTBT have
suggested passing an act of parliament that bans weapons
development. But they then have to address the question of who will
effectively oversee the nuclear and missile laboratories.
Certainly, as Perkovich observes (p 459), =93independent institutions of
scientific and technical expertise that could check and balance
the work of the strategic enclave=94 are sadly absent.

The pattern of weapons development in India and Pakistan that Perkovich
has (and other authors have in the past) traced, could,
borrowing and mangling a term from Marx, be described as the South Asian
Mode of Weaponisation. Unlike the US, which followed
its atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with ramping up production
capacity of nuclear bombs and bomber aircrafts, the first
Indian test in 1974 was quickly pronounced a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion.
As senior scientists have revealed since then, there were
significant questions about the success of that test. Despite these
questions, there were no actual attempts (with two exceptions)
to conduct full-scale nuclear tests in the 24 years between 1974 and
1998. It was clearly not what any quality management
professional would have recommended. What was displayed in 1974, then,
was the politics of the symbolic. The same style of
functioning is also apparent in the way Agni-I was dubbed a =93technology
demonstrator=94. Where else would you have the head of the
missile programme talk about using a missile to deliver flowers?
Pakistan=92s record is remarkably similar, though more exaggerated.

The efficacy or otherwise of grass roots groups is also of much
relevance to one of the =93exploded illusions=94 that Perkovich brings up
towards the end of the book =96 the =93illusion=94 that democracy facilitate=
s
non-proliferation. Just to be clear, Perkovich is not suggesting
that the two are necessarily opposed. Only that the relationship between
the two may be more complex than usually assumed and
requires more research. In laying out the different possible
relationships, Perkovich does admit that =93perhaps, nuclear policy has
been so shrouded in secrecy and left so dependent on the judgments of a
few insulated military and scientific establishments that
the virtues of democracy have not been adequately applied to nuclear
policy-making=94 (p 463). The irony lies in the fact that this
possibility is resoundingly confirmed by his account of Indian nuclear
policy-making, which, in his own words, =93is the state that has
most democratically debated whether to pursue unproliferation=94 (p 460).
If this is the case with the country that has most
democratically debated, there should be little doubt that this
explanation would apply to all the other states as well, leaving the
democracy vs non-proliferation debate with no empirical case studies to
grapple with.

Notwithstanding this, Perkovich does make two very pertinent
observations in the course of his discussion about democracy and its
effects on non-proliferation. First, =93the =91strategic enclaves=92 within
these states will defend their budgets, jobs, and status, and their
political representatives will fight to retain the economic benefits of
investments in nuclear forces=94 (p 463). And, because democracy
=93gives voice and power to groups that will press their material,
political, and psychological attachments to nuclear weapons
regardless of changes in the international security environment=94 the
task of non-proliferation (or, more desirably unproliferation, i e,
reversing the decision to acquire or enlarge one=92s nuclear arsenal) is
more a domestic one than one of changing the international
security environment. The second important observation is that the
process of acquiring nuclear weapons =93changes the state that
undertakes it. The building of nuclear weapons and related capabilities
creates new interests, bureaucratic actors, beliefs,
perspectives, and expectations. The exact nature of the changes depends
on the form, history, culture, and milieu of the state=94 (p
456).

As Perkovich=92s book narrates, these changes have had a long history but
they have been accelerating in recent years. The
challenge that is upon us is to prevent the institutionalisation of
these changes. With actual deployment of nuclear weapons, for
example, sections of the military would have investments in the
perpetuation of nuclear weapons. This has to be resisted. But the
task, though largely domestic, is also international. Hence, we have to
build bridges to people and movements across the world,
especially in all the nuclear weapon states, that strive to regain
control over their governments and deliver the world from nuclear
danger.