[sacw] The Economist: India’s nuclear dilemmas

[aiindex@mnet.fr]

6 November 2000
FYI
(South Asians Against Nukes)

==============================

From:
The Economist print edition
Nov 2nd 2000 | DELHI

INDIA'S NUCLEAR DILEMMAS

More than two years after declaring itself to be a nuclear power, India is 
unsure what to do with its bombs

"WE HAVE a big bomb now," boasted Atal Behari Vajpayee, India's prime 
minister, shortly after his government tested five nuclear devices in May 
1998. With a fresh but shaky mandate from parliamentary elections, Mr 
Vajpayee blundered into proclaiming India's nuclear status from motives 
that mixed political calculation with a fear of China, India's 
nuclear-armed neighbour, and a feeling that India should not be denied the 
prestige enjoyed by the five declared nuclear powers.

He has since danced skilfully away from the diplomatic mess created by the 
tests. Relations with China, briefly rent, have been mostly mended. An 
incursion by Pakistan into Indian territory last year, followed by a 
military coup, have helped persuade the world that India is the saner of 
the battling pair. The United States deplored India's tests, but after 
reciprocal visits by Bill Clinton and Mr Vajpayee relations are better than 
they have been in decades. The bomb lobby can argue that its strategy has 
worked.

Yet there is now a dilemma. The hard-won goodwill depends partly on India's 
keeping a low nuclear profile that threatens neither its neighbours nor 
international efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. India is being 
harangued by doves at home, and anti-proliferators abroad, who insist that 
any further development of its nuclear arsenal would weaken, not 
strengthen, its security. It would anger China, and goad Pakistan, which 
answered India's tests with its own, to escalate its nuclear buildup.

Yet India's desire for a deterrent that could survive a first strike and 
worry China argues for more and bigger nuclear weapons deployed in 
potentially risky ways. The murkiness of India's nuclear programme makes 
either choice look possible. "South Asia is at a nuclear crossroads," 
according to Samina Ahmed, an authority on Asian security at Harvard 
University.

It is also the world's likeliest venue for a nuclear war. India and 
Pakistan have fought three full-scale wars and came close to fighting a 
fourth last year, when Pakistan-backed forces occupied territory on India's 
side of the "line of control" in the disputed state of Kashmir. Pakistan 
hinted that it would use its bomb if India crossed into its territory, a 
threat it repeats with indecent frequency. India put its nuclear forces on 
alert, according to a recent study. The perils of enmity are compounded by 
relative proximity and correspondingly abbreviated warnings of any nuclear 
attack, by India's refusal to talk to Pakistan and by both countries' 
inexperience in handling nuclear weapons.

These risks will be heightened if India and Pakistan move beyond the small, 
low-tech deterrents they are thought to possess now to larger, dispersed 
forces that could be launched at short notice on missiles as well as by 
aircraft. The more fully deployed the weapons are, say analysts, the more 
vulnerable they are to theft or launch by accident or in panic. For such 
reasons, writes Gregory Jones of RAND, a think-tank in California, 
America's "policy to try to stop nuclear weaponisation in India and 
Pakistan is eminently sensible."

India's answer is a mix of reassurance, obfuscation and drift. The two 
pillars of its policy are a pledge not to be first to use nuclear weapons 
against any country, and a commitment to a "minimum credible deterrent", 
which could inflict unacceptable damage on any country that strikes first. 
Much of the edifice, though, is missing or invisible. A body called the 
National Security Advisory Board published a sketchy draft nuclear doctrine 
in August 1999, which proposed that India become capable of launching 
nuclear weapons by land, sea and air. The government has neither accepted 
nor rejected it.

A more authoritative statement came from the foreign minister, Jaswant 
Singh, who told The Hindu newspaper in November 1999 that India would not 
keep its weapons on hair-trigger alert, though he suggested that they would 
be dispersed and made mobile to improve their chances of surviving a first 
strike. India does not need the same number of nuclear warheads as 
potential nuclear aggressors have, he said, nor a "triad" (aircraft, 
missiles plus submarines or ships) to launch them.

So far, so reassuring. But India gives the impression that behind such 
generalities lies not confidentiality but confusion. This is partly because 
India has done little to upgrade its policy-making structure since becoming 
a declared nuclear power. The National Security Council (NSC), a body of 
top ministers formed in April 1999 to plan long-range strategy, has never 
met; its secretariat consists of the top intelligence-assessment agency, 
which continues to fulfil that function. The national-security adviser, 
Brajesh Mishra, doubles as Mr Vajpayee's top aide. K. Subrahmanyam, 
convenor of the National Security Advisory Board, describes the NSC as 
"stillborn". If so, then nuclear policymaking may well remain an affair 
between a few top politicians and the nuclear-science establishment, 
uninformed by wider security considerations.

What little is known about command and control, a devilishly complex 
function that involves everything from who is authorised to push the 
nuclear button to the telecommunications networks by which his orders are 
transmitted, does not inspire confidence. Mr Vajpayee's knee surgery last 
month put out of commission temporarily the one person known to be 
authorised to launch India's nuclear weapons.

Indian strategic thinkers retort that the doctrine of no first use answers 
many of these concerns. Since India would use nuclear weapons only after 
being attacked, it would have time to assess whether it has actually been 
the victim of a nuclear attack and to prepare a response.

Even if India is being prudent, it must do more to convince others, 
particularly Pakistan. For the moment, India refuses to talk to Pakistan 
until it ceases "cross-border terrorism" in Kashmir. That is 
understandable, but it means that no one is discussing the sort of 
confidence-building measures that could lessen the danger that one side 
might misinterpret action by the other as hostile. There is now "such an 
extreme form of opacity that either side has to assume the worst," says 
Scott Sagan, co-director of Stanford University's Centre for International 
Security and Co-operation.

There are hints, perhaps, of a thaw. "Track 2 diplomacy" (between 
ex-officials and non-officials) is under way, and India's defence minister, 
George Fernandes, says that Pakistan's recent decision to back an Indian 
non-proliferation initiative at the United Nations "indicates a possibility 
of discussions" there.

The tenor of any accord with Pakistan could depend on the nuclear face 
India turns to China. This is the biggest mystery. India lost a war to 
China in 1962 but still holds some territory that China claims, and 
vice-versa. Part of India's proclaimed reason for testing nuclear weapons 
was to stand up to the region's superpower. Yet Indo-Chinese relations have 
been improving, and India may fear that nuclear deployment is more likely 
to provoke China than deter it.

India may also lack the means. Some analysts contradict its claim that it 
successfully tested a hydrogen bomb powerful enough to flatten Chinese 
cities, and question whether India yet has the expertise to load a bomb on 
to a missile, the only way to threaten China seriously. India's government 
refutes this scepticism. Its moratorium on further nuclear testing is based 
on the belief that it has enough data to build H-bombs and nuclear-tipped 
missiles. Mr Fernandes says that the medium-range Agni 2, the main means of 
delivering a nuclear warhead to China, is "due for testing".

Perhaps, though, the confusion surrounding India's nuclear programme is a 
sign that it has chosen the studied ambiguities of diplomacy over the 
uncertain benefits of an advanced deterrent. India will "do everything 
short of saying our nuclear programme has stopped," says V. R. Raghavan, a 
former director of military operations who now heads the Delhi Policy 
Group. If true, India's bomb may not be much bigger than it was before it 
shocked the world by testing. But India, and the world, could be safer.