Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Category: Non-Proliferation

  • The Challenge Posed by India and Pakistan

    In a three-week period, India and Pakistan conducted nuclear tests, thus becoming new members of the nuclear weapons club. Their tests have brought forth broad, even jubilant, support among the Indian and Pakistani people. Following the Pakistani tests, one Pakistani clerk effused, “Pakistan is now a superpower.”

    It is not surprising that India and Pakistan would view nuclear weapons as a path to international security and prestige. The five original members of the nuclear weapons club – the U.S., UK, France, Russia, and China – have treated their possession of nuclear weapons this way for decades.

    The major problem is not that India and Pakistan have conducted nuclear tests. It is that they, like the other members of the nuclear weapons club, have indicated by their tests that they now choose to rely upon nuclear weapons to maintain their national security.

    The Indians and Pakistanis are doing no more – in fact, much less – than the United States and the former Soviet Union did throughout the Cold War in relying upon their nuclear arsenals for deterrence. The policy of nuclear deterrence – despite the end of the Cold War and ostensibly friendly relations – continues to be the official policy of the U.S. and Russia, as it is of the other nations in the nuclear weapons club.

    The nuclear weapons states claim that there has been no nuclear war because of their nuclear weapons rather than in spite of them. If deterrence is a viable theory, however, there should be no problem with it being adopted by all states, including India and Pakistan.

    Deterrence Is Only a Theory

    The truth is that deterrence is only a theory, and not one that is believed to work universally. If deterrence were in fact considered reliable, nuclear weapons proliferation should in theory be encouraged rather than opposed.

    I doubt if anyone believes that the Indian subcontinent is safer now that India and Pakistan have demonstrated their nuclear weapons capabilities. It is generally and rightly recognized that the region has become far more dangerous with this new capacity for nuclear annihilation.

    Imagine, for example, that the Indians decided to respond to the Pakistani threat by a pre-emptive first-strike to destroy Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems. Should the Indians fail, the Pakistanis might respond with a nuclear attack. Even the fear of such pre-emptive action by the Indians might lead the Pakistanis to themselves launch a pre-emptive first-strike against India. There are many other possible scenarios that might lead to nuclear war.

    Just as the problem is not the nuclear weapons tests, but the policies that they represent, the danger is not limited to South Asia. By the Indian and Pakistani tests, we are reminded of the danger that exists from all nuclear weapons in the world – those in the hands of all nuclear weapons states. We are also reminded that nuclear weapons proliferation remains a serious threat to regional and global stability.

    There are not responsible and irresponsible nuclear weapons states. All are irresponsible because they base their national security on weapons which have the capacity to murder millions of innocent people.

    A Worst Case Scenario

    As a worst case scenario, and one that has been long understood, a large-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia could result in ending human civilization, such as it is, and destroying the human species and most life on earth. Being willing to run this risk does not demonstrate a high level of responsibility – quite the opposite.

    The choice before us is whether to deal with India and Pakistan as an isolated regional problem, or whether to view their nuclear tests as a wake-up call to commence international negotiations to achieve a treaty to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world.

    The first option is not viable. India and Pakistan will not reverse their course unless the other nuclear weapons states clearly demonstrate their commitment to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. Following its tests, India issued a statement appealing for such a commitment in the form of a Nuclear Weapons Convention: “India calls on all nuclear weapons states and indeed the international community to join with it in opening early negotiations for a Nuclear Weapons Convention so that these weapons can be dealt with in a global, nondiscriminatory framework as other weapons of mass destruction have been, through the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention.”

    Nuclear “Haves” and “Have-Nots”

    I have long maintained that a world with a small number of nuclear “haves” and a much larger number of nuclear “have-nots” is unstable and unrealistic. This instability has begun to manifest itself in a detrimental way through nuclear proliferation. We will continue in this direction unless the course is reversed by serious negotiations among the nuclear weapons states to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the world.

    The United States is capable of providing the leadership to attain a world free of nuclear weapons. The U.S., however, has shown no inclination to assert this leadership. In fact, U.S. policies under the current administration have all been directed toward maintaining the existing structure of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots”. This must change. It is our best hope for preventing a nuclear holocaust in the 21st century.

    One other possibility exists. It is for other nations of the world, without the U.S. but including other nuclear weapons states, to move forward on a treaty banning nuclear weapons in the way that the treaty to ban landmines was created without U.S. participation. Unless the U.S. steps forward as a leader on this issue, I would hope that other nations will proceed without us.

    At the edge of a new millennium, the nation state system is challenged on many fronts to solve global environmental and security problems. The greatest of these challenges is posed by weapons of man’s own creation, the most dangerous of which are nuclear weapons capable of destroying humankind. Will we meet this challenge? Are there leaders among us capable of picking up where Gorbachev left off that can lead the world to end the nuclear weapons era?

    Such leaders will have to pierce the illusions of security that have been created to manipulate the people, now including the people of India and Pakistan, into believing that nuclear weapons should be a source of national pride. Nuclear weapons are quite simply weapons of mass destruction, meaning mass murder, and should be viewed as a national disgrace. But where are the leaders to say this?

    Leadership from the People

    As in all great issues of social change, the leadership for a nuclear weapons free world will have to arise from the people. This grassroots leadership is already emerging from Abolition 2000, a global network working to eliminate nuclear weapons, which is now composed of nearly 1100 citizen action groups from around the world.

    The challenge posed to the world by the two new members of the nuclear weapons club is nothing less than creating a world free of nuclear weapons. It is a challenge of finding new means of achieving security and settling our differences without resorting to weapons of mass destruction.

  • Appeal for Negotiations to Eliminate Nuclear Arms

    The nuclear tests in South Asia have jarred the world into new awareness of nuclear danger. They have demonstrated unmistakably the peril of nuclear proliferation and the weakness of international measures of control. They have also cast harsh new light on the persistence of the arsenals of the United States, Russia, China, Great Britain, and France, who jointly possess some 35,000 nuclear weapons. These two main components of nuclear danger-proliferation on the one hand, and the remaining cold war arsenals on the other-can no longer be considered in isolation. They must be addressed together.

    To this end, we call for negotiations to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons in a series of well defined stages accompanied by increasing verification and control. We direct our appeal especially to the nuclear powers, to confirm and implement their existing commitment to the elimination of nuclear weapons in Article VI of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. India has declared a moratorium on tests and its willingness to give up nuclear weapons in the context of a global plan for their elimination. Today, only a commitment to nuclear abolition can realistically halt nuclear proliferation.

    The tests of South Asia pose great danger but, against the background of the end of the cold war, they have also created an opportunity that must not be missed to take action that can at last free the world of nuclear danger. The hour is late, and the time for action is now.

    Signatories are:
    Oscar Arias, Alan Cranston, Daniel Ellsberg, Mark Hatfield, Joseph Rotblat, Admiral Eugene Carroll, Richard Barnet, Mikhail Gorbachev, Marcus Raskin, Bishop Walter R. Sullivan, Jimmy Carter, Jonathan Dean, Morton Halperin, Douglas Roche, David Cortright.

     

  • The End of Imagination

    “The desert shook,” the Government of India informed us (its people). “The whole mountain turned white,” the Government of Pakistan replied. By afternoon the wind had fallen silent over Pokhran. At 3.45pm, the timer detonated the three devices. Around 200 to 300m deep in the earth, the heat generated was equivalent to a million degrees centigrade – as hot as temperatures on the sun. Instantly, rocks weighing around a thousand tons, a mini mountain underground, vapourised… shockwaves from the blast began to lift a mound of earth the size of a football field by several metres. One scientist on seeing it said, “I can now believe stories of Lord Krishna lifting a hill.”

    India Today, May 1998.

    It’ll go down in history books, provided of course we have history books to go down in. Provided, of course, we have a future. There’s nothing new or original left to be said about nuclear weapons. There can be nothing more humiliating for a writer of fiction to have to do than restate a case that has, over the years, already been made by other people in other parts of the world, and made passionately, eloquently and knowledgeably.

    I am prepared to grovel. To humiliate myself abjectly, because, in the circumstances, silence would be indefensible. So those of you who are willing: let’s pick our parts, put on these discarded costumes and speak our second-hand lines in this sad second-hand play. But let’s not forget that the stakes we’re playing for are huge. Our fatigue and our shame could mean the end of us. The end of our children and our children’s children. Of everything we love. We have to reach within ourselves and find the strength to think. To fight.

    Once again we are pitifully behind the times – not just scientifically and technologically (ignore the hollow claims) but more pertinently in our ability to grasp the true nature of nuclear weapons. Our Comprehension of the Horror Department is hopelessly obsolete. Here we are, all of us in India and in Pakistan, discussing the finer points of politics and foreign policy, behaving for all the world as though our governments have just devised a newer, bigger bomb, a sort of immense hand grenade with which they will annihilate the enemy (each other) and protect us from all harm.

    How desperately we want to believe that. What wonderful, willing, well-behaved, gullible subjects we have turned out to be. The rest of humanity may not forgive us, but then the rest of the rest of humanity, depending on who fashions its views, may not know what a tired, dejected, heart-broken people we are. Perhaps it doesn’t realise how urgently we need a miracle. How deeply we yearn for magic. If only, if only nuclear war was just another kind of war. If only it was about the usual things – nations and territories, gods and histories. If only those of us who dread it are worthless moral cowards who are not prepared to die in defence of our beliefs. If only nuclear war was the kind of war in which countries battle countries, and men battle men. But it isn’t. If there is a nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth herself.

    Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun. The earth will be enveloped in darkness. There will be no day – only interminable night. What shall we do then, those of us who are still alive? Burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous carcasses of our children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we breathe?

    The Head of the Health, Environment and Safety Group of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay has a plan. He declared that India could survive nuclear war. His advice is that in the event of nuclear war we take the same safety measures as the ones that scientists have recommended in the event of accidents at nuclear plants.

    Take iodine pills, he suggests. And other steps such as remaining indoors, consuming only stored water and food and avoiding milk. Infants should be given powdered milk. “People in the danger zone should immediately go to the ground floor and if possible to the basement.”

    What do you do with these levels of lunacy? What do you do if you’re trapped in an asylum and the doctors are all dangerously deranged? Ignore it, it’s just a novelist’s naiveté, they’ll tell you, Doomsday Prophet hyperbole. It’ll never come to that. There will be no war. Nuclear weapons are about peace, not war. “Deterrence” is the buzz word of the people who like to think of themselves as hawks. (Nice birds, those. Cool. Stylish. Predatory. Pity there won’t be many of them around after the war. Extinction is a word we must try to get used to.) Deterrence is an old thesis that has been resurrected and is being recycled with added local flavour. The Theory of Deterrence cornered the credit for having prevented the cold war from turning into a third world war. The only immutable fact about the third world war is that, if there’s going to be one, it will be fought after the second world war. In other words, there’s no fixed schedule. The Theory of Deterrence has some fundamental flaws. Flaw Number One is that it presumes a complete, sophisticated understanding of the psychology of your enemy. It assumes that what deters you (the fear of annihilation) will deter them. What about those who are not deterred by that? The suicide bomber psyche – the “We’ll take you with us” school – is that an outlandish thought?

    How did Rajiv Gandhi die? In any case who’s the “you” and who’s the “enemy”? Both are only governments. Governments change. They wear masks within masks. They moult and re-invent themselves all the time. The one we have at the moment, for instance, does not even have enough seats to last a full term in office, but demands that we trust it to do pirouettes and party tricks with nuclear bombs even as it scrabbles around for a foothold to maintain a simple majority in Parliament.

    Flaw Number Two is that deterrence is premised on fear. But fear is premised on knowledge. On an understanding of the true extent and scale of the devastation that nuclear war will wreak. It is not some inherent, mystical attribute of nuclear bombs that they automatically inspire thoughts of peace. On the contrary, it is the endless, tireless, confrontational work of people who have had the courage to openly denounce them, the marches, the demonstrations, the films, the outrage – that is what has averted, or perhaps only postponed, nuclear war. Deterrence will not and cannot work given the levels of ignorance and illiteracy that hang over our two countries like dense, impenetrable veils.

    India and Pakistan have nuclear bombs now and feel entirely justified in having them. Soon others will too. Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Nepal (I’m trying to be eclectic here), Denmark, Germany, Bhutan, Mexico, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bosnia, Singapore, North Korea, Sweden, South Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan… and why not? Every country in the world has a special case to make. Everybody has borders and beliefs.

    And when all our larders are bursting with shiny bombs and our bellies are empty (deterrence is an exorbitant beast), we can trade bombs for food. And when nuclear technology goes on the market, when it gets truly competitive and prices fall, not just governments but anybody who can afford it can have their own private arsenal – businessmen, terrorists, perhaps even the occasional rich writer (like me). Our planet will bristle with beautiful missiles. There will be a new world order. The dictatorship of the pro-nuke elite.

    But let us pause to give credit where it’s due. Who must we thank for all this? The men who made it happen. The Masters of the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America! Come on up here folks, stand up and take a bow. Thank you for doing this to the world. Thank you for making a difference. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for altering the very meaning of life. From now on it is not dying we must fear, but living.

    All I can say to every man, woman and sentient child in India, and over there, just a little way away in Pakistan, is: take it personally. Whoever you are – Hindu, Muslim, urban, agrarian – it doesn’t matter. The only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, you will not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be indiscriminate. The bomb isn’t in your backyard. It’s in your body. And mine. Nobody, no nation, no government, no man, no god has the right to put it there. We’re radioactive already, and the war hasn’t even begun. So stand up and say something. Never mind if it’s been said before. Speak up on your own behalf. Take it very personally.

    In early May (before the bomb), I left home for three weeks. I thought I would return. I had every intention of returning. Of course things haven’t worked out quite the way I had planned.

    While I was away, I met a friend whom I have always loved for, among other things, her ability to combine deep affection with a frankness that borders on savagery. “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said, “about The God of Small Things – what’s in it, what’s over it, under it, around it, above it…”

    She fell silent for a while. I was uneasy and not at all sure that I wanted to hear the rest of what she had to say. She, however, was sure that she was going to say it. “In this last year – less than a year actually – you’ve had too much of everything – fame, money, prizes, adulation, criticism, condemnation, ridicule, love, hate, anger, envy, generosity – everything. In some ways it’s a perfect story. Perfectly baroque in its excess. The trouble is that it has, or can have, only one perfect ending.”

    Her eyes were on me, bright with a slanting, probing brilliance. She knew that I knew what she was going to say. She was insane. She was going to say that nothing that happened to me in the future could ever match the buzz of this. That the whole of the rest of my life was going to be vaguely unsatisfying. And, therefore, the only perfect ending to the story would be death. My death.

    The thought had occurred to me too. Of course it had. The fact that all this, this global dazzle – these lights in my eyes, the applause, the flowers, the photographers, the journalists feigning a deep interest in my life (yet struggling to get a single fact straight), the men in suits fawning over me, the shiny hotel bathrooms with endless towels – none of it was likely to happen again. Would I miss it? Had I grown to need it? Was I a fame-junkie? Would I have withdrawal symptoms?

    The more I thought about it, the clearer it became to me that if fame was going to be my permanent condition it would kill me. Club me to death with its good manners and hygiene. I’ll admit that I’ve enjoyed my own five minutes of it immensely, but primarily because it was just five minutes.

    Because I knew (or thought I knew) that I could go home when I was bored and giggle about it. Grow old and irresponsible. Eat mangoes in the moonlight. Maybe write a couple of failed books – worstsellers – to see what it felt like. For a whole year I’ve cartwheeled across the world, anchored always to thoughts of home and the life I would go back to.

    Contrary to all the enquiries and predictions about my impending emigration, that was the well I dipped into. That was my sustenance. My strength. I told my friend there was no such thing as a perfect story. I said that in any case hers was an external view of things, this assumption that the trajectory of a person’s happiness, or let’s say fulfilment, had peaked (and now must trough) because she had accidentally stumbled upon “success”. It was premised on the unimaginative belief that wealth and fame were the mandatory stuff of everybody’s dreams.

    You’ve lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible, honourable, sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth. There are plenty of warriors I know and love, people far more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in advance that they will fail. True, they are less “successful” in the most vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.

    The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead. (Prescience? Perhaps.) “Which means exactly what?” (Arched eyebrows, a little annoyed.) I tried to explain, but didn’t do a very good job of it. Sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin. This is what I wrote: To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

    I’ve known her for many years, this friend of mine. She’s an architect too. She looked dubious, somewhat unconvinced by my paper napkin speech. I could tell that structurally, just in terms of the sleek, narrative symmetry of things, and because she loves me, her thrill at my “success” was so keen, so generous, that it weighed in evenly with her (anticipated) horror at the idea of my death. I understood that it was nothing personal… Just a design thing. Anyhow, two weeks after that conversation, I returned to India. To what I think/thought of as home. Something had died but it wasn’t me. It was infinitely more precious. It was a world that has been ailing for a while, and has finally breathed its last. It’s been cremated now. The air is thick with ugliness and there’s the unmistakable stench of fascism on the breeze.

    Day after day, in newspaper editorials, on the radio, on TV chat shows, on MTV for heaven’s sake, people whose instincts one thought one could trust – writers, painters, journalists – make the crossing. The chill seeps into my bones as it becomes painfully apparent from the lessons of everyday life that what you read in history books is true. That fascism is indeed as much about people as about governments. That it begins at home. In drawing rooms. In bedrooms. In beds.

    “Explosion of self-esteem”, “Road to Resurgence”, “A Moment of Pride”, these were headlines in the papers in the days following the nuclear tests. “We have proved that we are not eunuchs any more,” said Mr Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (Whoever said we were? True, a good number of us are women, but that, as far as I know, isn’t the same thing.) Reading the papers, it was often hard to tell when people were referring to Viagra (which was competing for second place on the front pages) and when they were talking about the bomb – “We have superior strength and potency.” (This was our Minister for Defence after Pakistan completed its tests.)

    “These are not just nuclear tests, they are nationalism tests,” we were repeatedly told.

    This has been hammered home, over and over again. The bomb is India. India is the bomb. Not just India, Hindu India. Therefore, be warned, any criticism of it is not just ant-national but anti-Hindu. (Of course in Pakistan the bomb is Islamic. Other than that, politically, the same physics applies.) This is one of the unexpected perks of having a nuclear bomb. Not only can the government use it to threaten the Enemy, they can use it to declare war on their own people. Us.

    When I told my friends that I was writing this piece, they cautioned me. “Go ahead,” they said, “but first make sure you’re not vulnerable. Make sure your papers are in order. Make sure your taxes are paid.”

    My papers are in order. My taxes are paid. But how can one not be vulnerable in a climate like this? Everyone is vulnerable. Accidents happen. There’s safety only in acquiescence. As I write, I am filled with foreboding. In this country, I have truly known what it means for a writer to feel loved (and, to some degree, hated too). Last year I was one of the items being paraded in the media’s end-of-the-year National Pride Parade. Among the others, much to my mortification, were a bomb-maker and an international beauty queen. Each time a beaming person stopped me on the street and said “You have made India proud” (referring to the prize I won, not the book I wrote), I felt a little uneasy. It frightened me then and it terrifies me now, because I know how easily that swell, that tide of emotion, can turn against me. Perhaps the time for that has come. I’m going to step out from under the fairy lights and say what’s on my mind. It’s this:

    If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and anti-national, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic. I am a citizen of the earth. I own no territory. I have no flag. I’m female, but have nothing against eunuchs. My policies are simple. I’m willing to sign any nuclear non-proliferation treaty or nuclear test ban treaty that’s going. Immigrants are welcome. You can help me design our flag.

    My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing. India’s nuclear tests, the manner in which they were conducted, the euphoria with which they have been greeted (by us) is indefensible. To me, it signifies dreadful things. The end of imagination. On the 15th of August last year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of India’s independence. Next May we can mark our first anniversary in nuclear bondage.

    Why did they do it? Political expediency is the obvious, cynical answer, except that it only raises another, more basic question: Why should it have been politically expedient? The three Official Reasons given are: China, Pakistan and Exposing Western Hypocrisy.

    Taken at face value, and examined individually, they’re somewhat baffling. I’m not for a moment suggesting that these are not real issues. Merely that they aren’t new. The only new thing on the old horizon is the Indian government. In his appallingly cavalier letter to the US president our prime minister says India’s decision to go ahead with the nuclear tests was due to a “deteriorating security environment”. He goes on to mention the war with China in 1962 and the “three aggressions we have suffered in the last 50 years [from Pakistan]. And for the last 10 years we have been the victim of unremitting terrorism and militancy sponsored by it . . . especially in Jammu and Kashmir.”

    The war with China is 35 years old. Unless there’s some vital state secret that we don’t know about, it certainly seemed as though matters had improved slightly between us. The most recent war with Pakistan was fought 27 years ago. Admittedly Kashmir continues to be a deeply troubled region and no doubt Pakistan is gleefully fanning the flames. But surely there must be flames to fan in the first place?

    As for the third Official Reason: Exposing Western Hypocrisy – how much more exposed can they be? Which decent human being on earth harbours any illusions about it? These are people whose histories are spongy with the blood of others. Colonialism, apartheid, slavery, ethnic cleansing, germ warfare, chemical weapons, they virtually invented it all. They have plundered nations, snuffed out civilisations, exterminated entire populations. They stand on the world’s stage stark naked but entirely unembarrassed, because they know that they have more money, more food and bigger bombs than anybody else. They know they can wipe us out in the course of an ordinary working day. Personally, I’d say it is arrogance more than hypocrisy.

    We have less money, less food and smaller bombs. However, we have, or had, all kinds of other wealth. Delightful, unquantifiable. What we’ve done with it is the opposite of what we think we’ve done. We’ve pawned it all. We’ve traded it in. For what? In order to enter into a contract with the very people we claim to despise.

    All in all, I think it is fair to say that we’re the hypocrites. We’re the ones who’ve abandoned what was arguably a moral position – ie. We have the technology, we can make bombs if we want to, but we won’t. We don’t believe in them.

    We’re the ones who have now set up this craven clamouring to be admitted into the club of superpowers. For India to demand the status of a superpower is as ridiculous as demanding to play in the World Cup finals simply because we have a ball. Never mind that we haven’t qualified, or that we don’t play much soccer and haven’t got a team.

    We are a nation of nearly a billion people. In development terms we rank No 138 out of the 175 countries listed in the UNDP’s Human Development Index (even Ghana and Sri Lanka rank above us). More than 400 million of our people are illiterate and live in absolute poverty, more than 600 million lack even basic sanitation and more than 200 million have no safe drinking water.

    The nuclear bomb and the demolition of the Barbi Masjid in Ayodhya are both part of the same political process. They are hideous byproducts for a nation’s search for herself. Of India’s efforts to forge a national identity. The poorer the nation, the larger the numbers of illiterate people and the more morally bankrupt her leaders, the cruder and more dangerous the notion of what that identity is or should be.

    The jeering, hooting young men who battered down the Babri Masjid are the same ones whose pictures appeared in the papers in the days that followed the nuclear tests. They were on the streets, celebrating India’s nuclear bomb and simultaneously “condemning Western Culture” by emptying crates of Coke and Pepsi into public drains. I’m a little baffled by their logic: Coke is Western Culture, but the nuclear bomb is an old Indian tradition? Yes, I’ve heard – the bomb is in the Vedas [ancient Hindu scriptures]. It might be, but if you look hard enough you’ll find Coke in the Vedas too. That’s the great thing about all religious texts. You can find anything you want in them – as long as you know what you’re looking for.

    But returning to the subject of the non-vedic 1990s: we storm the heart of whiteness, we embrace the most diabolical creation of western science and call it our own. But we protest against their music, their food, their clothes, their cinema and their literature. That’s not hypocrisy. That’s humour.

    It’s funny enough to make a skull smile. We’re back on the old ship. The SS Authenticity & Indianness. If there is going to be a pro-authenticity/anti-national drive, perhaps the government ought to get its history straight and its facts right. If they’re going to do it, they may as well do it properly.

    First of all, the original inhabitants of this land were not Hindu. Ancient though it is, there were human beings on earth before there was Hinduism. India’s tribal people have a greater claim to being indigenous to this land than anybody else, and how are they treated by the state and its minions? Oppressed, cheated, robbed of their lands, shunted around like surplus goods. Perhaps a good place to start would be to restore to them the dignity that was once theirs. Perhaps the government could make a public undertaking that more dams of this kind will not be built, that more people will not be displaced.

    But of course that would be inconceivable, wouldn’t it? Why? Because it’s impractical. Because tribal people don’t really matter. Their histories, their customs, their deities are dispensable. They must learn to sacrifice these things for the greater good of the Nation (that has snatched from them everything they ever had).

    Okay, so that’s out.

    For the rest, I could compile a practical list of things to ban and buildings to break. It’ll need some research, but off the top of my head here are a few suggestions.

    They could begin by banning a number of ingredients from our cuisine: chillies (Mexico), tomatoes (Peru), potatoes (Bolivia), coffee (Morocco), tea, white sugar, cinnamon (China) . . . they could then move into recipes. Tea with milk and sugar, for instance (Britain).

    Smoking will be out of the question. Tobacco came from North America. Cricket, English and Democracy should be forbidden. Either kabaddi or kho-kho could replace cricket. I don’t want to start a riot, so I hesitate to suggest a replacement for English. (Italian? It has found its way to us via a kinder route: marriage, not imperialism.)

    All hospitals in which western medicine is practised or prescribed should be shut down. All national newspapers discontinued. The railways dismantled. Airports closed. And what about our newest toy – the mobile phone? Can we live without it, or shall I suggest that they make an exception there? They could put it down in the column marked “Universal”? (Only essential commodities will be included here. No music, art or literature.)

    Needless to say, sending your children to university in the US, and rushing there yourself to have your prostate operated upon will be a cognisable offence.

    It will be a long, long list. It would take years of work. I could not use a computer because that wouldn’t be very authentic of me, would it? I don’t mean to be facetious, merely to point out that this is surely the short cut to hell. There’s no such thing as an Authentic India or a Real Indian. There is no Divine Committee that has the right to sanction one single, authorised version of what India is or should be.

    Railing against the past will not heal us. History has happened. It’s over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don’t. There is beauty yet in this brutal, damaged world of ours. Hidden, fierce, immense. Beauty that is uniquely ours and beauty that we have received with grace from others, enhanced, re-invented and made our own. We have to seek it out, nurture it, love it. Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn’t matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.

    India’s nuclear bomb is the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people.

    However many garlands we heap on our scientists, however many medals we pin to their chests, the truth is that it’s far easier to make a bomb than to educate four hundred million people.

    According to opinion polls, we’re expected to believe that there’s a national consensus on the issue. It’s official now. Everybody loves the bomb. (Therefore the bomb is good.)

    Is it possible for a man who cannot write his own name to understand even the basic, elementary facts about the nature of nuclear weapons? Has anybody told him that nuclear war has nothing at all to do with his received notions of war? Nothing to do with honour, nothing to do with pride. Has anybody bothered to explain to him about thermal blasts, radioactive fallout and the nuclear winter? Are there even words in his language to describe the concepts of enriched uranium, fissile material and critical mass? Or has his language itself become obsolete? Is he trapped in a time capsule, watching the world pass him by, unable to understand or communicate with it because his language never took into account the horrors that the human race would dream up? Does he not matter at all, this man?

    I’m not talking about one man, of course, I’m talking about millions and millions of people who live in this country. This is their land too, you know. They have the right to make an informed decision about its fate and, as far as I can tell, nobody has informed them about anything. The tragedy is that nobody could, even if they wanted to. Truly, literally, there’s no language to do it in. This is the real horror of India. The orbits of the powerful and the powerless spinning further and further apart from each other, never intersecting, sharing nothing. Not a language. Not even a country.

    Who the hell conducted those opinion polls? Who the hell is the prime minister to decide whose finger will be on the nuclear button that could turn everything we love – our earth, our skies, our mountains, our plains, our rivers, our cities and villages – to ash in an instant? Who the hell is he to reassure us that there will be no accidents? How does he know? Why should we trust him? What has he ever done to make us trust him? What have any of them ever done to make us trust them?

    The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man’s challenge to God. It’s worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created. If you’re not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is four thousand, six hundred million years old.

    It could end in an afternoon.

     

  • A Plea Not to Revive Nuclear Arms Race

    AS EARLY AS 1985, President Reagan and I, at our first summit, said that nuclear war can never be won, and must never be fought. Even then we knew something very important about the inadmissibility of nuclear war.

    Today, it is just as true that if nuclear war, on any scale, were ever to be unleashed, or were ever to become a reality, it would threaten the very existence of life on earth.

    It is particularly important to keep this in mind, in the wake of the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan. All must condemn those tests and the dangerous era which they rekindle.

    What is not being discussed by the established nuclear powers today is that the process of nuclear disarmament has been stalled for several years now; it is just marking time. I believe we have not been properly using the opportunities that were open since the end of the Cold War, the possibility to move toward a really new world order based on stability, democratic cooperation and equality, rather than on the hegemony of one country.

    Instead, the geopolitical games are continuing; we are seeing those old geopolitical games in places such as Bosnia, and we know the dangerous potential of such conflicts.

    During the Cold War, many of those wars in small places festered for decades and became worse because the two superpowers and the two military alliances were self-interestedly fueling the hostilities.

    During the years of the arms race, the United States and the Soviet Union spent $10 trillion each on weapons production. It is true that the danger of nuclear war has significantly diminished, but it has not disappeared for good. The so-called conventional wars and regional wars are still claiming thousands of lives and tremendous resources, as well as ravaging nature, the unique source of life on our planet.

    After the Cold War, instead of defense conversion, we are still seeing the continuation of defense production, of the arms trade and weapons-export policies.

    After the breakup of the Soviet Union, while Russia was immersed in its domestic problems, the United States captured 70 percent of the world weapons-trade market, while not doing much for defense conversion.

    The result is that Russia, too, has decided to step up the production and transfer of the most sophisticated weapons, and is pushing in the same direction and trying to capture that market.

    Behind this is the underlying assumption of defense and security planning in most countries: that all the time we should consider the possibility of war.

    Thus we see the arms race, weapons production and also the increasing sophistication of arms, including very exotic weapons.

    And at the same time we see poverty, backwardness and disease in territories that account for almost two-thirds of the population of the world. So, as we face the 21st century, let us think about what is happening.

    It is a trap to perpetuate those systems that existed during the Cold War — relaunching the arms race and planning on the supposition of a resumption of war.

    We must say very firmly to the United States and Russia that in dragging their feet on further nuclear disarmament, they are setting a bad example for others.

    We should also once again raise the issue of missiles, intermediate- and shorter-range missiles, because those are weapons of a particularly regional nature. We should do more not just to limit the nuclear-arms race, but to move even further, toward the elimination and abolition of nuclear arms.

    Certainly we should bear in mind, in cooperating with less-developed countries in the area of commercial nuclear power, that we should always be vigilant that this is not taken further, and does not stimulate the production of nuclear weapons.

    Finally, we should put an end to the myth that nuclear weapons guarantee peace. Everyone, for example, should understand that security on the Indian subcontinent has not improved because of recent developments; it has deteriorated sharply.

    We should do all we can to help Pakistan and India understand that they’re not gaining anything. They’re actually losing a lot by embarking on the nuclear path. In the context of the conflict that has been festering in that region, this is an ominous development. We should work hard to ensure that India and Pakistan sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty without delay. The 20th century has seen more bloodshed and cruelty than the whole rest of human history, and has left us a complex and challenging heritage. The tradition of resolving national and international problems by force, violence and arms is a political disease of our epoch.

    We must do away with it — which is the great and noble imperative of our time.

  • Chronology of the India-Pakistan Conflict

    NEW DELHI, July 26 (Reuters) – Following is a chronology of major events involving arch-rivals India and Pakistan, whose prime ministers meet in Colombo on the sidelines of a regional conference in Sri Lanka on Wednesday.

    October 27, 1947: War breaks out between India and Pakistan in disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir barely two months after their independence from Britain.

    January 1, 1949: Ceasefire, ordered by United Nations Security Council, takes effect in Kashmir.

    September 6-22, 1965: Full-scale India-Pakistan war over Kashmir, which ends after a U.N. call for ceasefire.

    January 3, 1966: Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Pakistani President Ayub Khan sign Soviet-mediated peace pact.

    December 3-17, 1971: India-Pakistan War over East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) which ends when 90,000 Pakistani troops surrender.

    July 2, 1972: Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and counterpart Zulfikar Ali Bhutto sign peace accord in Shimla.

    Nov 1, 1982: Gandhi and Pakistani President Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq agree to begin talks on a non-aggression treaty.

    May 18, 1974: India detonates first nuclear device, but says it is for atomic research and not weapons.

    January 20, 1986: Talks between Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries end inconclusively in Islamabad. But both agree on “desirability” of a peace treaty and non-aggression pact.

    December 31, 1988: India and Pakistan sign agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities.

    February 5, 1989: Pakistan army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg says Pakistan has successfully test-fired its first long-range surface-to-surface rockets, named Hatf-1 and Hatf-2.

    Feb 6, 1992: Pakistan says it has acquired knowledge to make a nuclear bomb but will not do so.

    January 1-3, 1994: Foreign secretaries of the two countries fail to narrow differences on Kashmir. Pakistan rules out more talks unless India stops alleged human rights violations in Kashmir.

    August 23, 1994: Then former premier Nawaz Sharif tells rally in Pakistan-ruled Azad (Free) Kashmir, forming a third of Jammu and Kashmir, that Pakistan has an atomic bomb. The government denies this.

    January 30, 1996: Pakistani and Indian military officers meet on ceasefire line dividing Kashmir to ease tension after clashes.

    June 4, 1996: Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto urges Indian counterpart H.D. Deve Gowda to resume dialogue. Deve Gowda responds positively, but Pakistan drops idea when India holds local elections in Jammu and Kashmir.

    March 28-31, 1997: Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries open the first round peace talks in New Delhi, agree to meet again in Islamabad.

    April 9: Indian Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral and Pakistani counterpart Gohar Ayub Khan meet in New Delhi. India says several hundred fishermen held by each side will be freed.

    May 12: Prime Ministers Inder Kumar Gujral and Nawaz Sharif hold separate talks at SAARC summit in Maldives.

    June 19-23: After second round of talks in Islamabad, Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries announce eight-point agenda for peace talks, including Kashmir issue, and say they will set up mechanism to tackle it.

    August 14-15 : India and Pakistan mark 50 years of independence.

    Aug 26 – India rejects U.S. offer to mediate to end Kashmir border clashes, saying differences should be solved in bilateral talks.

    September 18 – Talks between foreign secretaries end in stalemate, but both sides say they will meet again.

    Sept 22 – In a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif offers to open talks on a non-aggression pact with India, proposing that both nations strike a deal to restrain their nuclear and missile capabilities.

    Sept 23 – Sharif meets Gujral for talks in New York which end with no breakthrough.

    Oct 26 – Gujral says he is cautiously optimistic that personal friendship with Sharif will help ease tension over Kashmir, but their meet on the fringes of a Commonwealth summit achieves little.

    Feb 4, 1998 – Pakistan warns it might review its policy of nuclear restraint if India’s new Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government redeems election pledge to make nuclear weapons.

    April 6 – Pakistan tests its longest range, 1,500 km (932 mile) Ghauri missile.

    May 11 – India conducts three underground nuclear tests in the western desert state of Rajasthan near the border with Pakistan.

    May 13 – India conducts two more tests and says its series of tests is complete.

    May 14 – U.S. President Bill Clinton says the tests ae a “terrible” mistake and orders sanctions that put more than $20 billion of aid, loans and trade on ice. Japan orders a block on around $1 billion of aid loans, followed by a host of European nations.

    May 28 – Pakistan conducts five nuclear tests in response to the Indian blasts. President Clinton, his request to Sharif not to test rebuffed, vows sanctions.

    May 30 – Pakistan conducts one more nuclear test and says its series of tests is complete.

    June 6 – U.N. Security Council condemns India and Pakistan for carrying out nuclear tests and urges the two nations to stop all nuclear weapons programs.

    June 12 – India and Pakistan invite each other for talks, but fail to agree on the agenda.

    Group of Eight Nations (G-8) imposes a ban on non-humanitarian loans to India and Pakistan as punishment for their nuclear tests.

    June 23- India suggests talks between the two countries’ prime ministers at South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

    June 24 – Pakistan agrees to talks with India in Colombo.

    July 10 – Vajpayee offers Pakistan a no-first-use pact, economic cooperation, and appeals for its participation in joint efforts to achieve universal disarmament. Pakistan in turn says it is ready to sign a non-aggression treaty with India.

    July 25 – Vajpayee says in a magazine interview that India is committed to resolving differences with Pakistan through a bilateral dialogue. He also indicates that India could conduct further tests of its Agni intermediate-range missile.

  • Humanity at a Crossroads

    In response to the nuclear tests conducted by India and Pakistan, Henry Kissinger provided new insights into his “realist” view of rationality. Referring to Indian and Pakistani tests, he said: “They live in a rough neighborhood. They don’t think the number of bombs makes war more likely. In a perfectly rational world, you’d think more nuclear weapons makes war less likely.”Self-proclaimed “realists,” including Henry Kissinger, have argued that nuclear weapons cannot be eliminated. But these same realists have been responsible for creating and maintaining some basic nuclear fictions that have been with us for decades. The first of these, a legal fiction, was written into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. This fiction said that the only states to be considered nuclear weapons states were those that had detonated a nuclear device prior to January 1, 1967; in other words, the only nuclear weapons states were the US, USSR, UK, France, and China.

    The fiction proclaimed by the “realists” was that only these five states were nuclear weapons states. Israel, India, and Pakistan, all widely understood to have nuclear weapons, were referred to as “threshold” states, meaning states with the capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

    Another fiction of the “realists” was that it would be possible to simultaneously promote the peaceful atom and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In fact, nuclear programs for supposedly peaceful purposes have served as the cover for efforts to develop nuclear weapons in Argentina, Brazil, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea, South Africa and elsewhere. These efforts succeeded in India, Israel, South Africa, and possibly North Korea.

    With the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan, it has become far more difficult to maintain these fictions. It cannot be denied that India and Pakistan are nuclear weapons states, regardless of the date set forth in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Conducting nuclear weapons tests is a solid indicator that a state has nuclear weapons. And Israel, as has been adequately revealed, is a nuclear weapons state with or without tests.

    So where does this leave us? On one level, we are in an Alice in Wonderland world of “realists” who create fictions to serve their view of reality. On another level, most people in the world can now clearly see that the number of nuclear weapons states is growing.

    We have reached a crossroads. The choice before us is to continue to live in the world of make believe, as the “realists” would encourage us to do, or to work for an unequivocal commitment from all nuclear weapons states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals under strict and effective international controls.

    The unrealistic dream that the “realists” profess to believe in is that the nuclear weapons states can keep their arsenals forever without these weapons ever being used by accident or design. This view was implicitly criticized by the prestigious Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, which stated in its 1996 report, “The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used – accidentally or by decision – defies credibility. The only complete defence is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.”

    The good news is that the Indians have made clear that they would prefer a world with no nuclear weapons states, and that they are willing to work for this. The Chinese have also made this commitment. Leadership is lacking primarily from the three Western nuclear weapons states and Russia. It is in these countries that the so-called “realists” have maintained their grip on the national security apparatus.

    What is real for the twenty-first century is what we will make real. If we choose to continue to maintain the fiction that nuclear weapons provide for our security, this will be our reality right up until the time a nuclear weapon explodes in one of our major cities or until a nuclear war breaks out.

    On the other hand, if we choose to accept the reality that a nuclear weapons-free world is possible, we will take the necessary steps to achieve such a world. We will begin the good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament promised in the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We will negotiate a plan for the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons on Earth, and we will begin “systematic and progressive efforts” to implement this plan.

    Moving ahead to achieve this new reality are eight nations, led by Ireland, calling themselves the New Agenda Coalition. They have urged us to enter the third millennium with an unequivocal commitment in place to achieve total nuclear disarmament. The call of the New Agenda Coalition is in line with the goal of the more than 1100 citizen organizations around the world supporting the Abolition 2000 Global Network’s goal of a treaty banning nuclear weapons by the year 2000.

    There is no doubt that this path is the one that humanity must choose to assure its future. The choice should be easier now that the fictions of so-called “realists” have been exploded along with the detonations by India and Pakistan.

  • No Time to Think

    Reprinted with permission from Himal Magazine, Kathmandu, Nepal, July Anti-Nuke Issue

    For decades, military planners in the United States, former Soviet Union, and the other nuclear weapons states have convinced themselves that their nuclear weapons are a deterrent. The nuclear annihilation that would follow if these weapons were used was supposed to make any enemy stop, think, and decide that war was not worth the consequences. To make sure that an enemy had no doubt about these consequences, all the nuclear weapons states created nuclear arsenals designed to fight a nuclear war. Nuclear deterrence was built on assuming that one day the simple fear of nuclear weapons would not be enough and the weapons would have to be used.

    The reliance on nuclear weapons that could be used in a real war led each nuclear weapons state to live in perpetual fear of a surprise attack that would make their weapons useless. This fear was greatest during the Cold War, when each side thought the other could not be trusted. The US and Soviet Union addressed their fears by building enormously complex early warning systems that would let them know they were about to be attacked and give them time to launch their nuclear weapons before they were destroyed.

    The early warning systems of the superpowers had another crucial role. Since any war would have meant nuclear war, both sides wanted to make sure that war did not begin by accident. Early warning systems created time during which people could make decisions using real information about what was actually happening rather than responding simply on the basis of fears of what might be about to happen.

    The US built and still operates the biggest and most sophisticated early warning system. It is based around a missile warning system and works by collecting information from satellites that can detect the launch of missiles from another country and radars around the world that can follow the missiles to see where they are going. The information is transmitted from these satellites and radars to where it can be processed by computers and then analysed and interpreted by people. To make sure that this is done seriously and properly, this assessment is done at several places separately. If the information is determined to be reliable, it is sent to more senior people who are supposed to decide how to respond.

    When the satellites and radars say that missiles may have been launched towards the US, there is a Missile Display Conference among the commanders of the places where the analysis of the information is carried out. If they decide that the danger is serious, and not a mistake made by the satellites, or radar, or somewhere along the communication system, or a mistake by one of the people who is supposed to interpret the information, then a Threat Assessment Conference is called. This includes the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and senior military commanders.

    At the same time as a Threat Assessment Conference is called, a state of alert is declared, fighter aircraft take off, nuclear-armed bombers are told to start their engines, and missiles are readied for launch. This is the last step before a Missile Attack Conference. This is where the President is told what has happened, and asked to decide what is to be done.

    Both the US and the Soviet Union, now Russia, had these multiple levels of decision making because they had the time to check, and double check, to make sure that they knew what was happening. Their satellites and early warning radar systems gave them information within one and a half minutes of the possible launch of a missile. They took about two and a half minutes to work out what was happening from this information. A meeting could be called and a threat determined a few minutes after this. In other words within about six or seven minutes, it was possible to decide if a nuclear attack may have started. Since the missiles would have taken about 25 minutes to travel from the US to the Soviet Union or in the other direction, there was still time for a final confirmation that the missiles were real. There was even time left to find out if there had been an accidental launch of the missiles, and to decide what to do.

    False Alarms

    Given the terrible consequences of nuclear war, enormous financial and technical resources were invested in setting up and running these early warning systems, and trying to make them fool-proof. However, history shows that these systems failed. Not once, or twice, but frequently. There is no real history of all the failures. It is known, however, that between 1977 and 1984 the US early warning system showed over 20,000 false alarms of a missile attack on the US. Over 1000 of these were considered serious enough for bombers and missiles to be placed on alert.

    Some of these incidents give terrifying insights into how easily even the most carefully designed and technologically advanced warning systems can go wrong. Two instances will suffice. In November 1979, the US missile warning system showed that a massive attack had suddenly been launched. Jets were launched, and a nuclear alert declared. There was no attack. There were no missiles. The warning was due to a computer that had been used to test the warning system to see how it would behave if there was an attack. Somebody had forgotten to turn off the computer after the exercise.

    A second example was even more dramatic. In June 1980, the early warning systems showed that two missiles had been launched towards the US. This was followed by signals that there were more missiles following the first two. A Threat Assessment Conference was called. The situation was considered to be sufficiently serious that the President’s special airplane was prepared for take-off. Again there was no attack, nor any missiles. The reason for the mistaken signals, and interpretations, was eventually traced to a computer chip that was not working properly. The repeated failures of the US early warning system led at one time to an official enquiry which reported that the system “had been mismanaged… by the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Department of Defence”. In other words, every institution assigned to make sure the system worked had failed in its task.

    It was not just the US system that failed. While there is little information yet on how the Soviet Union managed its nuclear weapons warning systems, there is at least one example from recent years that suggests it cannot have worked any better than the US system. On 25 January1995, a Norwegian rocket was launched to take scientific measurements. The Norwegian government told the Russian government in advance that this would happen. Nevertheless, when the rocket was picked up by Russian radar it was treated as a possible missile attack. It seems a warning was sent to the Russian defence minister’s headquarters, the Russian military leadership, and to the commanders of Russian missiles that an attack may be underway. A message was then sent to Boris Yeltsin, the Russian President, and an emergency conference called with nuclear commanders over the telephone. Boris Yeltsin has confirmed that such an emergency conference did take place.

    Fear and Paranoia

    The lessons for India and Pakistan are obvious. Experience shows that in any real crisis involving the two, fear and paranoia soon become overwhelming. One need look no further than the recent panic about a possible pre-emptive attack on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities by India. The fear was there despite a nearly ten-year-old agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities. In the absence of basic trust, generals on each side will always assume those on the other side might want to launch a surprise attack, and will want, in turn, to be prepared to respond with nuclear weapons.

    The need for early warning systems is therefore clear. But, even if Pakistan and India had the technology for early warning, and even if it worked reliably, they could not use it, geography has made sure of that. The time to take decisions will not be available to either Pakistan or India. Instead of the 25 minutes that the US and the Soviet Union had, it would take a Prithvi missile somewhere between three and five minutes to reach almost anywhere in Pakistan. It would take the Ghauri missile about five minutes to reach Delhi. In such a short time, an early warning system could give warning of what might be happening, a meeting could be called, and then time would run out. There would be no time to decide whether the warning was real, or a mistake. The decision would have to be made on either launching the missiles immediately or taking the risk of the missiles being destroyed before they could be used.

    In order to avoid such a situation, some people may suggest that India and Pakistan find a way to create time for the generals to make sure they know what is happening in any future crisis. It may be possible to create such time by an agreement whereby each side would keep its warheads stored separately from missiles and airplanes and let the other side check to make sure this was indeed the case. Any nuclear attack could then only come after the warheads were taken out of storage and then loaded onto missiles or planes, and an attempt to do so would be detected.

    But this is, at best, a desperate measure. The lack of trust is so great that making sure a agreement was being honoured would require an extraordinary system of allowing inspections of each other’s missile and airforce bases and nuclear facilities. There is no prospect of that happening. But, any agreement without such inspections would mean the generals on each side, fearing their counterparts had secretly hidden a few nuclear warheads with some missiles, would do the same. The nuclear dangers would remain despite an agreement, and might actually become greater.

    The alternative is simple. No nuclear weapons mean no nuclear crises. No nuclear crises mean no danger of nuclear war.

  • Resolution on Nuclear Testing by India and Pakistan

    The European Parliament,

    -having regard to its previous resolutions on nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear testing and the work of the Canberra Commission for a nuclear weapon-free world,

    -having regard to the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),

    -having regard to the terms of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT),

    -having regard to the statements made by the Council of the European Union, the G7, the UN Security Council and the meeting of the five permanent members of the Security Council,

    A. whereas the signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty have committed themselves to the objective of the elimination of all nuclear weapons,

    B. whereas over the past decades the two main nuclear powers have reduced the number of their nuclear warheads and envisage continuing this reduction through a number of bilateral agreements,

    C. whereas these reductions do not, as yet, point to rapid progress towards full elimination of these weapons,

    D. noting with great concern that India carried out five nuclear tests during the period 11-13 May 1998,

    E. noting with great concern that Pakistan then carried out six nuclear tests during the period 28-30 May 1998,

    H. noting that a number of countries, including some EU Member States, the United States and Japan, have decided to impose sanctions on both countries in response to these nuclear tests,

    I. noting that both countries already allocate a disproportionate part of both their GNP and their budget on military spending and on military, nuclear research and development,

    J. whereas the nuclear tests are likely to damage both the Pakistani and Indian economies, in view of their effect on foreign loans and investment, which in turn will affect the already low social condition of the population,

    K. emphasizing that in order to strengthen stability and security in the region and in the world as a whole it is necessary for India and Pakistan on the one hand to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without any modification thereof, and on the other hand to adhere to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty immediately and unconditionally, thus facilitating its entry into force,

    L. noting the unanimous conclusion of the International Court of Justice that there is an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict international control,

    1. Condemns the recent nuclear tests carried out in May 1998 by India and then by Pakistan and expresses its deep concern about the danger to peace, security and stability in the region and in the world as a whole provoked by these tests; remains convinced that the NPT and the CTBT are the cornerstones of the global non-proliferation regime and the essential bases for progress towards nuclear disarmament;

    2. Urges the Indian and Pakistani governments to refrain from any further nuclear tests, to adhere to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty without any modification of this Treaty and to adhere to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty immediately and unconditionally;

    3. Calls on the Indian and Pakistani governments to give a commitment immediately not to assemble or deploy nuclear weapons and devices, and to halt the development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads;

    4. Calls on the Indian and Pakistani Governments to start talks immediately to reduce tension in the region, to establish a framework for reconciliation and cooperation and thus to promote peace, security and stability in South Asia and throughout the continent; calls on the Council and the Member States to assist the Governments of India and Pakistan, where necessary and possible, in this process of reconciliation and cooperation, possibly by (co-)sponsoring a regional conference on security and confidence-building measures;

    5. Calls on the Council and the Member States to prevent the export of equipment, materials and/or technology that could in any way assist programmes in India or Pakistan for nuclear weapons or for ballistic missiles capable of carrying such weapons;

    6. Calls on Member States which have not yet done so to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty immediately, in order to facilitate its entry into force as soon as possible;

    7. Calls on the five nuclear weapons states to interpret their Treaty obligations as an urgent commitment to the total elimination of their nuclear weapons;

    8. Asks the Council and the Commission to examine ways and means to promote further progress towards the gradual elimination of nuclear weapons and calls on the Council to present a regular progress report to Parliament;

    9. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council, the UN Security Council, the governments of the Member States and the governments and parliaments of India and Pakistan.

  • Nuclear Fears, Nuclear History

    Published in Communalism Combat, Bombay

    Atul Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif have two things in common. Both of them have ordered five nuclear tests, and both of them justified their orders by claiming that their nuclear weapons are defensive. This argument was invented by the Americans to justify their nuclear weapons, after the Soviet Union started to build its own nuclear weapons. It was such a convenient argument that all the nuclear states started to use it once they built nuclear weapons. Now every country with nuclear weapons claims that its weapons are defensive, it is just other countries’ nuclear weapons that are a threat.

    How are nuclear weapons a threat? The first answer given is that an enemy may threaten to use nuclear weapons as way to intimidate or blackmail and so win a war. As the most destructive weapons ever made, nuclear weapons should make states that have them invincible. They should be able to win all their wars. In fact, no one should want to fight such states because they have nuclear weapons.

    The facts of the last fifty years tell another story. Nuclear weapons states have elected to fight wars on many occasions. They have lost many of them. Britain fought and lost at Suez, even though they it had already developed nuclear weapons. The United States suffered significant defeats during the Korean war and the war ended with a stalemate. The French lost Algeria, even though they had their nuclear weapons. China’s nuclear weapons did not help against Vietnam. The most famous examples are of course the defeat of the United States in Vietnam, and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan despite having enormous numbers of nuclear weapons. In all these cases, a non-nuclear state fought and won against a nuclear armed state.

    Another fact from the last fifty years is that having nuclear weapons offers no protection against nuclear threats. During the Cold War, both the US and the Soviet Union made nuclear threats numerous times, with the United States making around twenty such threats and the Soviet Union making five or six. Even though both sides had nuclear weapons, this did not change the fact they were threatened by the other side. If a state with nuclear weapons is going to make a threat, it will do so regardless of whether the state being threatened has nuclear weapons of its own.

    The only other use for nuclear weapons that has ever been claimed is that nuclear weapons are supposed to deter attacks by other nuclear weapons and so prevent war between nuclear armed states. This is what is usually meant by nuclear deterrence. The normal example of nuclear deterrence that is used is between the superpowers during the Cold War. The absence of war between them is widely attributed to both sides having nuclear weapons. This cannot however be proven. All that can be said is that the absence of war coincided with both sides having nuclear weapons. It is not logical to deduce that nuclear weapons prevented a war that would otherwise have taken place. The absence of war between the United States and the Soviet Union may simply have been due to neither side wanting a war. The experience of total war in World War II was so terrible that this may have been sufficient to prevent a major war. It is worth remembering over 20 million Soviets were killed in that war.

    The history of the Cold War is in fact the history of the elusive search for deterrence. As the years passed and became decades, the amount of destructive power needed to create deterrence kept on increasing. From a few simply atom bombs, it became hundreds of bombs, then thousands and then came the hydrogen bomb, with a destructive power a hundred times greater than an atom bomb. But, even having a few such hydrogen bombs was not enough. McGeorge Bundy, who was an advisor in the White house during both the Cuban Missile Crisis, has argued that deterrence works only if “we assume that each side has very large numbers of thermonuclear weapons [hydrogen bombs] which could be used against the opponent, even after the strongest possible pre-emptive attack.” It is this kind of nuclear arsenal that is credited by Bundy, and other American supporters of deterrence as being responsible for maintaining the Ñnuclear peaceâ between the United States and Soviet Union. The urge to have weapons that could survive a pre-emptive attack is why both sides developed nuclear submarines and specially hardened silos for missiles. This effort to create deterrence cost the United States at least $4 trillion ($,4000,000,000,000) to develop, produce, deploy, operate, support and control its nuclear forces over the past 50 years.

    The Americans were not alone in thinking that large numbers of hydrogen bombs that could survive a nuclear attack were necessary for deterrence.

    All five of the established nuclear weapons state have tried to achieve this kind of nuclear arsenal. None of them has stopped developing their arsenals once they built simple nuclear weapons. they have not even relied on large numbers of such simple weapons. They have gone on to build weapons tens if not hundreds or thousands of times more destructive. Even the smallest nuclear arsenal, belonging to Britain, has 200 thermonuclear weapons with a collective destructive power two thousand times greater than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

    There are, however, some important dissenting voices who say that deterrence never worked. General George Lee Butler, who until a few years ago actually commanded all of the United States strategic nuclear weapons has said the world survived the Cuban missile crisis no thanks to deterrence, but only by the grace of God. If General Butler is right, and even the fear created by “very large numbers” of hydrogen bombs was not enough to stop two nuclear states getting ready to go to war then what purpose is served by this fear? What this fear can do is stop peace. Even though the Cold War is over and the Soviet Union gone, the nuclear weapons are still there. The US still has over 10,000 and Russia about as many. The fear now is not the other state, but the others nuclear weapons. As long as there are nuclear weapons there cannot be real peace.

    History teaches that nuclear fears cannot be calmed with nuclear weapons. The simple truth is that there has never been a weapon that can offer a defense against being afraid. The only defense against fear is courage and courage needs no weapons to make its presence felt.

     

  • G8 Foriegn Ministers Communique on Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Tests

    London

    1. We, the Foreign Ministers of eight major industrialised democracies and the Representative of the European Commission, held a special meeting in London on 12 June 1998 to consider the serious global challenge posed by the nuclear tests carried out by India and Pakistan. Recalling the statement issued by our Heads of State or Government on 15 May, and emphasising the support of all of us for the communiqué issued by the P5 in Geneva on 4 June and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1172, we condemn the nuclear tests carried out by India on 11 and 13 May 1998 and by Pakistan on 28 May and 30 May. These tests have affected both countries’ relationships with each of us, worsened rather than improved their security environment, damaged their prospects of achieving their goals of sustainable economic development, and run contrary to global efforts towards nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament.

    2. The negative impact of these tests on the international standing and ambitions of both countries will be serious and lasting. They will also have a serious negative impact on investor confidence. Both countries need to take positive actions directed towards defusing tension in the region and rejoining the international community’s efforts towards non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament. Urgent action is needed both to halt an arms race on the Sub-Continent, which would divert resources from urgent economic priorities, and to reduce tension, build confidence and encourage peaceful resolution of the differences between India and Pakistan, so that their peoples may face a better future.

    3. With a view to halting the nuclear and missile arms race on the Sub-Continent, and taking note of the official statements of the Indian and Pakistani Governments that they wish to avoid such an arms race, we consider that India and Pakistan should immediately take the following steps, already endorsed by the United Nations Security Council:

    • stop all further nuclear tests and adhere to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty immediately and unconditionally, thereby facilitating its early entry into force;
    • refrain from weaponisation or deployment of nuclear weapons and from the testing or deployment of missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and enter into firm commitments not to weaponise or deploy nuclear weapons or missiles;
    • refrain from any further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices and participate, in a positive spirit and on the basis of the agreed mandate, in negotiations with other states in the Conference on Disarmament for a Fissile Material Cut-Off Convention with a view to reaching early agreement;
    • confirm their policies not to export equipment, materials and technology that could contribute to weapons of mass destruction or missiles capable of delivering them, and undertake appropriate commitments in that regard.

    We believe that such actions would be strongly in the interest of both countries.

    4. With a view to reducing tension, building confidence and encouraging peaceful resolution of their differences through dialogue, India and Pakistan should:

    • undertake to avoid threatening military movements, cross-border violations, including infiltrations or hot pursuit, or other provocative acts and statements;
    • discourage terrorist activity and any support for it;
    • implement fully the confidence- and security-building measures they have already agreed and develop further such measures;
    • resume without delay a direct dialogue that addresses the root causes of the tension, including Kashmir, through such measures as early resumption of Foreign Secretary level talks, effective use of the hot-line between the two leaders, and realisation of a meeting between Prime Ministers on the occasion of the 10th SAARC Summit scheduled next month;
    • allow and encourage progress towards enhanced Indo-Pakistani economic cooperation, including through a free trade area in South Asia.

    We encourage the development of a regional security dialogue.

    5. We pledge actively to encourage India and Pakistan to find mutually acceptable solutions to their problems and stand ready to assist India and Pakistan in pursuing any of these positive actions. Such assistance might be provided, at the request of both parties, in the development and implementation of confidence- and security-building measures.

    6. The recent nuclear tests by India and Pakistan do not change thedefinition of a nuclear weapon state in the NPT, and therefore, notwithstanding those tests, India and Pakistan do not have the status of nuclear weapon states in accordance with the NPT. We continue to urge India and Pakistan to adhere to the NPT as it stands, without any conditions. We shall continue to apply firmly our respective policies to prevent the export of materials, equipment or technology that could in any way assist programmes in India or Pakistan for nuclear weapons or for ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons.

    7. It is our firm view that the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan reinforce the importance of maintaining and strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as the cornerstone of the non- proliferation regime and as the essential foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament. We all, nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states alike, reiterate our determination to fulfil the commitments relating to nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the NPT. These commitments were reaffirmed at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference and included the determined pursuit by the nuclear weapon states of systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons. We note the progress already made in this direction and welcome the firm intention both of the United States and of the Russian Federation to bring START II into force, and to negotiate and conclude a START III agreement at the earliest possible date. We also note contributions made by other nuclear weapon states to the reductions process. We call upon all states to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty rapidly to ensure its entry into force, and welcome the determination of the member governments of the G8 that have not yet ratified the Treaty to do so at the earliest possible date. We continue to look for the accession to the NPT of the remaining countries which are not yet parties to it.

    8. We call on all the member states of the Conference on Disarmament to agree on the immediate opening of the Cut-Off negotiation at the CD.

    9. Both India and Pakistan face enormous challenges in developing their economies and building prosperity. However, the recent nuclear tests have created an atmosphere of regional instability which will undermine the region’s attractiveness to both foreign and domestic investment, damaging business confidence and the prospects for economic growth. The diversion of their resources to nuclear and other weapons programmes displaces more productive investment and weakens their ability to pursue sound economic policies. It calls into question the commitment of both governments to poverty reduction and undermines the regional cooperation between SAARC countries on social and economic issues. In line with the approach to development set out in the Naples, Lyon, Denver and Birmingham Communiqués, we call on both governments to reduce expenditure that undermines their objective of promoting sound economic policies that will benefit all members of society, especially the poorest, and to otherwise enhance cooperation in South Asia.

    10. We believe it is important that India and Pakistan are aware of the strength of the international community’s views on their recent tests and on these other subjects. Several among us have, on a unilateral basis, taken specific actions to underscore our strong concerns. All countries should act as they see fit to demonstrate their displeasure and address their concerns to India and Pakistan. We do not wish to punish the peoples of India or Pakistan as a result of actions by their governments, and we will therefore not oppose loans by international financial institutions to the two countries to meet basic human needs. We agree, however, to work for a postponement in consideration of other loans in the World Bank and other international financial institutions to India and Pakistan, and to any other country that will conduct nuclear tests.

    11. We pledge to convey the common views of our Governments on these matters to those of India and Pakistan with a view to bringing about early and specific progress in the areas outlined above. We plan to keep developments under review and to continue the process of pursuing the goals on which we are all agreed.