Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: India

  • Stoking an Asian Cold War?

    This article was originally published by In Depth News.

    Proxy wars between countries was one of the more tragic features of the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR. Both super-powers fuelled the conflicts supplying military materiel and political support while they piously claimed that nuclear deterrence worked so that they themselves never went to war. The U.S. in particular claimed that the George Kennan doctrine of the “containment” of the USSR worked and ere long the Communist giant imploded obligingly.

    Fast forward two decades, and a declining U.S. super power, trapped in economic woes of its own making, is groping for ways to contain a rising China. Proxy wars are no longer possible especially for a super power mired in the morass of Iraq and Afghanistan and encumbered by the unending and ubiquitous “war against terrorism” fighting an unseen enemy.

    What better then than to outsource the task of the containment of China to ambitious India and reluctant Japan? That, essentially, is the subtext of the unusually lengthy Joint Statement that came out at the conclusion of President Obama’s recent visit to India and the rationale for his Asian tour. Unsurprisingly both Japan and now India are the chosen candidates of the U.S. for permanent member status in the UN Security Council.

    The scenario has been a long time in gestation and operation and spans the presidencies of Bush the Son and of Barak Obama giving it the bipartisan support it needs as national security policy. For India — the world’s most populous democracy unable to match China’s poverty alleviation record and bedevilled by home-grown terrorism — the opportunity to escape the stigma of ostracism following the 1998 nuclear blasts was too good to be true.

    The Nehruvian vision of Non-alignment and moral superiority as the key to Great Power status had failed to unlock the door. Now it was self-built economic muscle (and a clever manipulation of the U.S. political system by the wealthy Indian lobby) and a replay of the old “Yellow Peril” cry replayed as a “string of pearls” theory that secured a place at the high table.

    The sophistication of Indian diplomacy will ensure that the new game will be played with finesse and without any of the crudity of the earlier proxy wars. It will garner huge bilateral trade and technology-transfer benefits for itself while maintaining normal relations with China competing at the same time for economic payoffs and political influence with China in Asia and Africa with U.S. support.

    Japan was settling into a low-key role after brief episode of assertiveness under Koizumi and a succession of bland Prime Ministers with little impact on the international political and economic scene. But China’s ill-conceived saber-rattling over the Diaoyu Tai or Senkaku islands plus Medvedev’s ill-timed visit to the Kuril Islands has made her ready to question China on its intentions in the East and South China Seas, recall its Ambassador from Moscow and play hard ball in the Six Nation Talks over North Korea’s nuclear weapon programme.

    It is a dangerous game to play especially since China is able to revive old animosities against the Japanese with its domestic audience and apply economic pressures as well. For the U.S. the revitalization of its old alliance with Japan on the eastern flank of China was long overdue and the rebuff over Okinawa was a sign that Japan had to fall back in line.

    While the speculation over the shift of the global centre of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific goes on, the Atlantic powers — the U.S. and NATO militarily and the U.S. and the EU economically — are not ready to abdicate their role in global affairs. The logical — and inexpensive — way to continue to exert influence in the Pacific and the Indian Oceans is through allies justifying their selection as a natural alliance among “democracies” with a common allegiance to human rights, anti-terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation (giving the Obama slogan of “a nuclear weapon free world” a rest).

    The side benefits are to break Non-aligned and G77 solidarity in the UN and other forums like the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations and the upcoming Climate Change talks in Cancun isolating China at the same time. Possible irritants in the newly forged U.S.-EU-Japan-India axis will continue to be India’s stance regarding Iran’s nuclear programme, China’s human rights record and Myanmar or Burma’s military junta. The adroit management of this will be a small price to pay rather than giving the Republicans the satisfaction of shredding Obama’s foreign policy as they have done with his domestic policies.

  • Space Weapons Should be Part of Upcoming US-India Strategic Dialogue

    2010_06_04_hoey_space_weapons.pdf

  • Another Nuclear Anniversary

    Once upon a time making nuclear bombs was the biggest thing a country could do. But not any more; North Korea’s successful nuclear test provides rock-solid proof. This is a country that no one admires.

    It is unknown for scientific achievement, has little electricity or fuel, food and medicine are scarce, corruption is ubiquitous, and its people live in terribly humiliating conditions under a vicious, dynastic dictatorship. In a famine some years ago, North Korea lost nearly 800,000 people. It has an enormous prison population of 200,000 that is subjected to systematic torture and abuse.

    Why does a miserable, starving country continue spending its last penny on the bomb? On developing and testing a fleet of missiles whose range increases from time to time? The answer is clear: North Korea’s nuclear weapons are instruments of blackmail rather than means of defence. Brandished threateningly, and manipulated from time to time, these bombs are designed to keep the flow of international aid going.

    Surely the people of North Korea gained nothing from their country’s nuclearisation. But they cannot challenge their oppressors. But, as Pakistan celebrates the 11th anniversary of its nuclear tests, we Pakistanis — who are far freer — must ask: what have we gained from the bomb?

    Some had imagined that nuclear weapons would make Pakistan an object of awe and respect internationally. They had hoped that Pakistan would acquire the mantle of leadership of the Islamic world. Indeed, in the aftermath of the 1998 tests, Pakistan’s stock had shot up in some Muslim countries before it crashed. But today, with a large swathe of its territory lost to insurgents, one has to defend Pakistan against allegations of being a failed state. In terms of governance, economy, education or any reasonable quality of life indicators, Pakistan is not a successful state that is envied by anyone. Contrary to claims made in 1998, the bomb did not transform Pakistan into a technologically and scientifically advanced country. Again, the facts are stark. Apart from relatively minor exports of computer software and light armaments, science and technology remain irrelevant in the process of production. Pakistan’s current exports are principally textiles, cotton, leather, footballs, fish and fruit.

    This is just as it was before Pakistan embarked on its quest for the bomb. The value-added component of Pakistani manufacturing somewhat exceeds that of Bangladesh and Sudan, but is far below that of India, Turkey and Indonesia. Nor is the quality of science taught in our educational institutions even remotely satisfactory. But then, given that making a bomb these days requires only narrow technical skills rather than scientific ones, this is scarcely surprising.

    What became of the claim that the pride in the bomb would miraculously weld together the disparate peoples who constitute Pakistan? While many in Punjab still want the bomb, angry Sindhis want water and jobs — and they blame Punjab for taking these away. Pakhtun refugees from Swat and Buner, hapless victims of a war between the Taliban and the Pakistani Army, are tragically being turned away by ethnic groups from entering Sindh. This rejection strikes deeply against the concept of a single nation united in adversity.

    As for the Baloch, they deeply resent that the two nuclear test sites — now radioactive and out of bounds — are on their soil. Angry at being governed from Islamabad, many have taken up arms and demand that Punjab’s army get off their backs. Many schools in Balochistan refuse to fly the Pakistani flag, the national anthem is not sung, and black flags celebrate Pakistan’s independence day. Balochistan University teems with the icons of Baloch separatism: posters of Akbar Bugti, Balaach Marri, Brahamdagh Bugti, and ‘General Sheroff’ are everywhere. The bomb was no glue.

    Did the bomb help Pakistan liberate Kashmir from Indian rule? It is a sad fact that India’s grip on Kashmir — against the will of Kashmiris — is tighter today than it has been for a long time. As the late Eqbal Ahmed often remarked, Pakistan’s poor politics helped snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Its strategy for confronting India — secret jihad by Islamic fighters protected by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons — backfired terribly in the arena of international opinion. More importantly, it created the hydra-headed militancy now haunting Pakistan. Some Mujahideen, who felt betrayed by Pakistan’s army and politicians, ultimately took revenge by turning their guns against their sponsors and trainers. The bomb helped us lose Kashmir.

    Some might ask, didn’t the bomb stop India from swallowing up Pakistan? First, an upward-mobile India has no reason to want an additional 170 million Muslims. Second, even if India wanted to, territorial conquest is impossible. Conventional weapons, used by Pakistan in a defensive mode, are sufficient protection. If mighty America could not digest Iraq, there can never be a chance for a middling power like India to occupy Pakistan, a country four times larger than Iraq.

    It is, of course, true that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons deterred India from launching punitive attacks at least thrice since the 1998 tests. Pakistan’s secret incursion in Kargil during 1999, the Dec 13 attack on the Indian parliament the same year (initially claimed by Jaish-i-Muhammad), and the Mumbai attack in 2008 by Lashkar-i-Taiba, did create sentiment in India for ferreting out Pakistan-based militant groups. So should we keep the bomb to protect militant groups? Surely it is time to realise that these means of conducting foreign policy are tantamount to suicide.

    It was a lie that the bomb could protect Pakistan, its people or its armed forces. Rather, it has helped bring us to this grievously troubled situation and offers no way out. The threat to Pakistan is internal. The bomb cannot help us recover the territory seized by the Baitullahs and Fazlullahs, nor bring Waziristan back to Pakistan. More nuclear warheads, test-launching more missiles, or buying yet more American F-16s and French submarines, will not help.

    Pakistan’s security problems cannot be solved by better weapons. Instead, the way forward lies in building a sustainable and active democracy, an economy for peace rather than war, a federation in which provincial grievances can be effectively resolved, elimination of the feudal order and creating a society that respects the rule of law.

    It is time for Pakistan to become part of the current global move against nuclear weapons. India — which had thrust nuclearisation upon an initially unwilling Pakistan — is morally obliged to lead. Both must announce that they will not produce more fissile material to make yet more bombs. Both must drop insane plans to expand their nuclear arsenals. Eleven years ago a few Pakistanis and Indians had argued that the bomb would bring no security, no peace. They were condemned as traitors and sellouts by their fellow citizens. But each passing year shows just how right we were.

    Pervez Hoodbhoy teaches nuclear physics at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan.

  • For Nuclear Sanity

    This article was first published by the Transnational Institute

    President Barack Obama’s April 5 speech in Prague calling for a world free of the scourge of nuclear weapons is a major foreign and security policy initiative that deserves applause. If he pursues its logic through to the end with the same since rity and passion with which he outlined his commitment “to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons”, he could be the first United States President to go beyond nuclear arms control and to put nuclear weapons elimination on the global agenda. That would mark a turning point for strategic thinking the world over and open up new avenues through which to seek security.
    This remains a big “if”. Obama has not yet worked out the doctrinal, strategic and practical consequences of his fundamental premise that a secure world without nuclear weapons is both possible and desirable. His speech only outlines some necessary steps but without specifying their sequence or time frame, numbers (of weapons to be de-alerted or destroyed), the roles of different actors, the function of legally binding treaties, and so on.
    But Obama has stated some premises upfront and emphasised their moral-political rationale in a way no major global leader has done in recent years. Thus, he said, “the existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War”; these are “the ultimate tools of destruction”, which can erase the world “in a single flash of light”. The global non-proliferation regime is in crisis and “the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up”; soon, “we could reach the point where the centre cannot hold”.
    “We are not destined,” said Obama, “to live in a world where more nations and more people possess [nuclear weapons]. Such fatalism is a deadly adversary, for if we believe that the spread of nuclear weapons is inevitable, then in some way we are admitting to ourselves that the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable.” Logically, fighting fatalism means putting “an end to Cold War thinking” and reducing “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy”.
    This sets Obama miles apart not just from George W. Bush but also from Bill Clinton. Obama is effectively reversing a long tradition beginning with the Ronald Reagan presidency towards either a hardening of the U.S. nuclear posture, or the development of new weapons such as “Star Wars”-style ballistic missile defence (BMD), itself premised on even more dangerous doctrines than that of nuclear deterrence, which is fatally flawed.
    Thus, the U.S. has failed, even two decades after the Cold War ended, to move beyond relatively paltry reductions in its nuclear arsenal through the Moscow Treaty of 2002. Under Bush, it refused to take 2,200 weapons off “launch on warning” alert. The U.S. military establishment wants to develop a Reliable Replaceable Warhead for existing ones, find new uses (for example, bunker-busting) for old weapon designs, and has yielded to pressures from the nuclear weapons laboratories to modernise and refine existing armaments and do experimental work on fusion weapons at the expensive National Ignition Facility.
    Bush was not only obsessed with perpetuating America’s nuclear superiority. He gave it a particularly deadly edge through BMD deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic, thus exacerbating tensions with Russia and destabilising strategic balances worldwide. Bush also blurred vital distinctions between conventional and nuclear weapons, unsigned the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia.
    Bush’s BMD programme will militarise and nuclearise outer space, in which the U.S. seeks “full-spectrum” dominance. His paranoid response to the September 11 attacks resulted in the worst-ever fiasco in the history of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) at its important review conference in 2005, liquidating all the significant gains made at the 2000 review.

    Obama promises to change course, radically. He has spoken more boldly and honestly in favour of a nuclear weapons-free world than any other U.S. President in decades. He has gone further than any other in acknowledging that the U.S. bears a “moral responsibility” for nuclear disarmament because it is the only power to have used the horror weapon. This speaks of exemplary moral clarity, as does his statement that the U.S. must take the lead on disarmament. However, that cannot be said about four other propositions in Obama’s speech. First, he betrays an unpardonably naive faith in nuclear deterrence: “Make no mistake. As long as [nuclear] weapons exist, the U.S. will maintain a safe, secure and effective arsenal to deter any adversary.…” He also believes in extended deterrence – deploying nuclear weapons in non-North Atlantic Treaty Organisation countries.
    This column has dissected the fallacy of nuclear deterrence far too often to warrant further comment other than that it is a fallible, fragile and unreliable basis on which to premise security (via a balance of terror). It involves unrealistic assumptions about capabilities and doctrines, symmetrical perceptions by adversaries of “unacceptable damage” means, and the complete absence of miscalculations and accidents – 100 per cent of the time.
    Second, Obama continues to repose faith in BMD – he congratulated the Czech for their “courage” in hosting it – although he qualifies his support by saying BMD must be “cost-effective and proven”. This ignores BMD’s primitive, as-yet-premature status in intercepting missiles, and worse, the danger of escalating military rivalry to uncertain and risky levels where an adversary could feel tempted to neutralise a putative BMD advantage by amassing more missiles or launching wildcat strikes.
    Third, Obama, like Bush and Clinton, makes a specious distinction between responsible/acceptable/good nuclear powers (the Big Five-plus-Israel-plus-India-plus-non-Taliban-Pakistan) and irresponsible/dangerous ones (Iran, North Korea). This permits double standards and detracts from the universal urgency of abolishing all nuclear weapons. Obama’s endorsement of Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative – unilateral interception at sea of suspect nuclear-related materials – follows from this.
    Finally, Obama believes that disarmament may not be achieved in “my lifetime”. Such pessimism is unwarranted. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s thoughtful plan for global nuclear disarmament, presented to the United Nations General Assembly in 1988, set a 15-year timeline for complete nuclear elimination. This is realistic – if the U.S. and the international community musters the will for an early disarmament initiative.
    If Obama effects deep cuts in U.S. nuclear weapons through the promised Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia this year, and launches a drive for banning nuclear testing and ending fissile production worldwide, the momentum can be accelerated, especially if U.S. policy shifts to no-first-use. After all, even the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – George P. Schulz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn – believe that nuclear weapons abolition can be achieved in the foreseeable future.
    Obama’s speech provides an opportunity to all those who believe in complete nuclear weapons elimination, a cause kept alive by the peace movement, a coalition of states, and several expert commissions. India too professes a commitment to this goal and must seize this opportunity.

    India’s lukewarm response
    Regrettably, Indian policymakers have extended a lukewarm, if not cold, welcome to Obama’s speech. So fearful are they of pressure on India to sign the CTBT that they are clutching at straws. One such is Obama’s statement that “my administration will immediately and aggressively pursue U.S. ratification of the CTBT”. This is different from what he wrote in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh before he was sworn in: “I will work with the U.S. Senate to secure ratification of [CTBT] at the earliest practical day, and then launch a major diplomatic initiative to ensure its entry into force.” (The letter was suppressed by South Block.)
    Indian policymakers are also reportedly relieved that Obama has not reiterated his letter’s reference to India’s “real responsibilities – [including] steps to restrain nuclear weapons programmes and pursuing effective disarmament when others do so”. They are also pleased that Obama has appointed Ellen Tauscher, a Democrat Congresswoman, as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security rather than Robert Einhorn, described by India’s nuclear hawks as “an ayatollah of non-proliferation”.
    Such timidity is unbecoming of a nation that claims to be proud of its pro-disarmament record and has pledged to fight for a nuclear weapons-free world. India opposed the CTBT in 1995-96 not for its intrinsic flaws or demerits but because it wanted to test nuclear weapons. Having done so in 1998, India should sign and ratify the treaty. Even Arundhati Ghose, who famously declared that India will not sign it “not now, not ever”, now says that she sees no problem with its signature. This may show a deplorable level of cynicism, but it is nevertheless a ground for correcting course and returning to the disarmament agenda.
    Logically, this includes several steps such as the CTBT, Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty, regional nuclear risk-reduction and restraint measures (including forswearing missile test-flights and keeping delivery vehicles apart from warheads) and, of course, deep cuts in nuclear weapons by all the nuclear weapons states, beginning with the U.S. and Russia.
    India must boldly seize the initiative by updating the Rajiv Gandhi plan, opposing BMD and proactively arguing for rapid strides towards the complete elimination of nuclear weapons. Here lies the litmus test of India’s commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world and of its creative and principled diplomacy.

    Praful Bidwai is a journalist and author living in India.

  • New Deal on South Asian Nukes

    This article was originally published on www.truthout.org

    Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari came out last Saturday with yet another series of statements to cause more than mere ripples in South Asia. He did so especially with pronouncements on the nuclear weapons issues between India and Pakistan that have made many sections in the subcontinent sit up and take notice.

    Do these statements, however, add up to a real promise of a new deal for the region, which has continued to be a dangerous place ever since the two rival nations became nuclear-armed neighbors in May 1998?

    Addressing India from Islamabad, at a video-conference in New Delhi at “Summit 2008,” organized by the leading daily The Hindustan Times, Zardari offered nothing less than Pakistan’s cooperation in turning South Asia into a nuclear-weapon-free zone, an objective to be achieved through a “non-nuclear treaty.” As he put it challengingly, “I can get around my parliament to this view, but can you get around the Indian parliament to this view?”

    He made an even greater impact by his answer to a question about the no-first-strike nuclear policy of India and the possibility of Pakistan adopting the same stand. His response was prompt and positive. He did not stop with saying that Pakistan would not use its nuclear weapons first. He went on to declare that he was opposed to these weapons anyway and to assert: “We do not hope to get into any position where nuclear weapons have any use.”

    The official Indian reaction was that Zardari’s statements were not quite official. Voices from India’s establishment, echoed in various media reports, wondered: Whom was the Pakistani president speaking for, anyway? Tauntingly, they asked whether he had the tacit support of Pakistan’s army on this subject.

    They had a point. By all accounts, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal has remained mainly under the control of the army, which is possessively proud of them. Officially, up to now, Pakistan has not altered its policy by which it has retained the right of first nuclear strike. While India has made much play about its renunciation of this option, Pakistan has maintained from the outset that it could not do so because it lacked parity with its bigger neighbor in conventional weapons.

    Pakistan’s new democratic dispensation has apparently kept its distance from the army but not demonstrated its dominance over the generals. Quite the reverse is the message sent out by the government’s attempt sometime ago to acquire control of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the army’s infamous and important arm, and Islamabad’s hasty retreat from the reform under obvious pressure.

    Rather surprisingly, there has been no other serious Indian response, not even from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose leadership may have to do business with Zardari with the party’s return to power in the general elections due early next year. The statements, however, elicited more reactions within Pakistan.

    Zardari has drawn much flak in his country before for statements considered overly friendly to India. He and the government of his Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) also had to beat a retreat after his statement in a media interview suggesting that the Kashmir issue could be kept on the back burner. In the video conference, he did not say the same thing about Kashmir but repeated his other controversial remark about seeing no “threat” from India. He may come in for criticisms again on these counts. His stand on the nuclear issue, however, has attracted no opposition offensive for the moment.

    Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League(N), the main opposition, in fact, was quick to claim that he had made the proposals for nuclear peace first. Sharif, who had presided over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons tests a decade ago, let his party clarify: “This was Nawaz Sharif’s proposal as prime minister. On the Pakistan side, the position has always been consistent. But because India refuses to abandon its nuclear weapons, this proposal has been in the doldrums.”

    The PML(N) also claimed that the proposal was contained in the Lahore Declaration signed between Sharif and former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on February 1, 1999. While the claims are open to question, observers in Pakistan actually expect the opposition to unleash an offensive against the government on the presidential pronouncements. Front-ranking newspaper The Daily Times, for example, forecasts that a “chorus of criticism will now most probably overwhelm Mr. Zardari’s overtures to India and make them look like ‘concessions.’ “

    As for the reactions from uncommitted quarters, they are asking the same questions as India’s establishment. Lieutenant-General (retired) Talat Masood, a political commentator and head of the Pakistani chapter of Pugwash says:”The big question is, can President Zardari take along Pakistan’s ruling establishment, especially the military?” He adds, “Even if (Zardari) was not fully familiar with the nuclear vocabulary, what he possibly meant was that there has to be a strategic restraint regime between the two countries.”

    The fact is, the ruling establishments of the two countries have never been ready to consider any “strategic restraint regime” that envisages any reduction of their nuclear arsenals or any reversal of their nuclear weapons programs. They have been ready, in other words, to cooperate only in order to present a picture of “responsible” nuclear armed neighbors to the rest of the world.

    This, actually, was the larger purpose also of the Lahore Declaration, signed just nine months after nuclear weapons tests in both countries. The declaration recognizes “that the nuclear dimension of the security environment of the two countries adds to their responsibility for avoidance of conflict between the two countries.” The document voices commitment, not to regional peace as such, but to the “objective of universal nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.”

    The declaration calls upon the two countries only to “take immediate steps for reducing the risk of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons and discuss concepts and doctrines with a view to elaborating measures for confidence-building in the nuclear and conventional fields, aimed at prevention of conflict.”

    India and Pakistan are said to have made much progress in their “peace process” initiated in 2004. New Delhi and Islamabad, however, have made sure that the nuclear part of the process made no advance beyond what the declaration mandated. The confidence-building measures (CBMs) – which have never gone beyond steps like notification of each other before tests of nuclear-capable missiles – were somehow supposed to create confidence that the people of the two countries were safe even when such missiles stayed in military deployment.

    Setting up a hotline between designated officials of the two armies, in order to avert chances of nuclear accidents among other things, has not exactly made the people of the subcontinent safer than before. It has not done so because the nuclear hawks of the two countries have not desisted from threatening use of the weapons by design. Terrifying nuclear threats have been traded, as we have recalled more than once in these columns, between the two countries during the Kargil conflict of 1999 (following on the heels of the Lahore Declaration) and the fearsome confrontation of 2002.

    The peace process has not prevented the nuclear militarists in both countries from pursuing their projects. The period since the declaration has seen both participating in a missile race, displaying no coyness about its nuclear dimension at all. In 2004, former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf boasted: “My government has spent more money in the last three years on enhancing Pakistan’s nuclear capability than (spent for this purpose) in the previous 30 years.” We do not know whether the country’s current economic crisis has made any difference in this regard. Successive Indian governments may not have been forthcoming with similar figures. There is little doubt, however, that under the shroud of secrecy, they have swelled with the same pride over their misuse of taxpayers’ money to build weapons of mass-murder.

    At one point In the course of talks on CBMs, the rulers of India and Pakistan even agreed to seek “parity” with nuclear powers (P5), “consultations” with them “on matters of common concern,” and development of a “common nuclear doctrine.” The idea has not been pursued seriously, but has not been abandoned officially.

    This strange partnership of sworn nuclear rivals does not make the proposal from Pakistan’s president sound like a reliable promise for the peace-loving people of the region.

    J. Sri Raman is a freelance author and peace activist in India. He is the author of ” Flashpoint.”
  • Congress Has the Last Chance to Say No to the US-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

    Congress Has the Last Chance to Say No to the US-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

    India never joined the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Instead, it developed and tested nuclear weapons. It is a known nuclear proliferator. India is now thought to have an arsenal of some 60 nuclear weapons, and India’s first nuclear test in 1974 led Pakistan to also develop and later test nuclear weapons. India’s 1974 nuclear test also led to the formation of a Nuclear Suppliers Group, a group of 45 countries that agreed to ban nuclear technology transfers that would make nuclear proliferation more likely, particularly to countries such as India and Pakistan that were outside the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Despite the obvious implications for nuclear proliferation, George W. Bush put forward a plan in 2005 to transfer nuclear technology and materials to India. For this plan, which is best characterized as the US-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal, a special waiver was needed from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, requiring the consent of all members. This deal ran into trouble when Austria, Ireland and New Zealand initially sought to uphold the obligations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and held out for tighter proliferation controls, at a minimum a commitment by India that it would conduct no further nuclear tests. Although India would not make this commitment – only going so far as to say it would engage in a voluntary moratorium on testing – arm-twisting diplomatic pressure from the US caused these last hold-outs against proliferation to capitulate. The only barrier remaining to this Nuclear Proliferation Deal going through is the US Congress.

    The Bush administration has given three justifications for pursuing this deal with India. First, it will forge a strategic partnership with the world’s largest democracy. Second, it will help India meet its increasing energy demand in an “environmentally friendly” way. Third, it will open a market for the sale of billions of dollars of nuclear technology to India.

    Forging a strategic partnership with India is fine, but why do it on a foundation of nuclear weapons proliferation? Surely, other countries will be looking at this Nuclear Proliferation Deal as a model that will serve their own interests as well. If the US can do it with India, why not China with Pakistan? Or Russia with Iran? Or Pakistan with Syria? The possibilities for nuclear proliferation are endless, and this deal makes them more likely.

    It is also fine for the US to help India to meet its growing energy demand in an environmentally friendly way, but it is absolute hypocrisy to classify nuclear energy “environmentally friendly.” No one knows what to do with the long-lived radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants – not the US, not anyone. And these wastes are truly long-lived. In the case of the highly toxic and leukemia causing by-product of nuclear power production, plutonium 239, the wastes will gradually decline in danger over a period of 240,000 years. Not the best gift to bestow on future generations.

    There are other reasons as well to be skeptical of nuclear power plants. They are capital intensive, subject to accidents and tempting targets for terrorists. They also require large societal subsidies, such as the underwriting of liability insurance. The uranium used in these plants, if highly enriched, not a technologically difficult feat, provides the basic ingredients for nuclear weapons. The plutonium generated in these plants, if reprocessed, also not difficult technologically, provides another fissionable material for nuclear weapons. Why not support India to produce truly environmentally friendly energy sources, such as wind or solar energy?

    The third reason for the US-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal sounds to me like the real one – that it will open a market to sell billions of dollars of nuclear technology to India. There will be a small number of corporations and their chief executives that will profit big-time from this deal, but they will be doing so at a heavy cost to the people of the world. This Nuclear Proliferation Deal has “double standards” written all over it. Can you imagine the US pushing the same deal with Iran, Iraq or North Korea? Of course not! This deal puts a hole the size of a nuclear explosion through the heart of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    Very soon the US-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal will be back before the US Congress for a final vote. If the Congress approves the deal as it stands, it goes through. If Congress votes it down, it doesn’t go through. This deal, initiated and promoted heavily by the Bush administration, will undermine the security of the American people and people everywhere, if Congress allows it to go through.

    The Bush administration was able to pressure the members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, but the American people should not allow Mr. Bush to proceed with this final cynical act to enrich the few at the expense of national and global security. If you care about the dangers of nuclear weapons proliferation, it’s time for action. Let your representative in Washington know that you expect a No vote on the US-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal.

    David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).

  • Ten Years of the Bomb

    Article originally appeared in The International News (Pakistan)

    It is 10 years since India and Pakistan went openly nuclear. The dangers of a nuclear south Asia are becoming more and more apparent, yet the governments of the two countries continue to build their arsenals. Both countries continue to produce plutonium for more and more bombs, both countries have been testing new kinds of delivery vehicles and both countries have conducted war games assuming the use of nuclear weapons. The pursuit of nuclear weapons is beginning to take, as elsewhere in the world, a logic of its own. South Asia awaits a strong peace movement that will make the governments of India and Pakistan see reason.

    In the 10 years since the May 1998 nuclear weapons tests by India and Pakistan, the bomb has largely faded from view in south Asia. But the bomb is not gone. The nuclear logic continues to unfold relentlessly.

    In both India and Pakistan, the nuclear tests were sold to the public as guaranteeing national security. It did not take long for both countries to discover that the bomb was no defence. The Kargil war followed barely a year after the nuclear tests. The war proved that the bomb would not defend India from attack and was no guarantee of victory for Pakistan. It only showed that two nuclear armed countries can fight a war and that in such a situation leaders in both countries will threaten to use nuclear weapons.

    But Kargil was not enough to teach caution and restraint. A little over two years later, India and Pakistan prepared to fight again. An estimated half a million troops were rushed to the border, and nuclear threats were made with abandon. What lessons have been learned? None, other than that they need to be better prepared to fight a war. Both countries have carried out major war games that assumed the possible use of nuclear weapons. effects of a Nuclear War Political leaders and military planners seem impervious to the fact that a war between Pakistan and India in which each used only five of their nuclear weapons on the other’s cities could kill several million people and injure many more. The effects of a nuclear war could be much worse if India and Pakistan use about 50 weapons each. They have made more than enough nuclear weapons material to do this. Recent studies using modern climate models suggest that the use of 50 weapons each by the two countries could throw up enough smoke from burning cities to trigger significant cooling of the atmosphere and land surface and a decrease in rainfall that could last for years. This could, in turn, lead to a catastrophic drop in agricultural production, and widespread famine that might last a decade. The casualties would be beyond imagination.

    India and Pakistan are still producing the plutonium and highly enriched uranium that are the key ingredients in nuclear weapons. Nuclear policymakers in both countries obviously do not think they have enough weapons. They have never explained how they will decide how many weapons are enough.

    For the past decade the two countries have also been waging a nuclear missile race. Both India and Pakistan have tested various kinds of missiles, including ones that would take as little as five minutes to reach key cities in the other country. Some of the tests are now carried out by the military, not scientists and engineers. These are user trials and field exercises. They are practising for fighting a nuclear war.

    There is more to come. Pakistan has been testing a cruise missile that could carry a nuclear warhead. India has tested a ballistic missile that can be fired from a submarine. It is reported that the plan is eventually to have a fleet of five submarines, with three deployed at any time, each armed with 12 missiles (perhaps with multiple warheads on each missile) with a range of 5000 km. Pakistan already has a naval strategic command and has talked also of putting nuclear weapons on submarines. It is a familiar logic that south Asia has still not learnt. The search for nuclear security is a costly and dangerous pursuit that will take on a life of its own and knows no end. It took almost 20 years to go from an American president declaring the bomb to be the “greatest thing in history”, to a successor recognising that nuclear weapons had turned the world into a prison in which man awaits his execution. This hard-won recognition has still not come to south Asia.

    Only when an active and sustained peace movement is able to awaken people and leaders to this terrible truth can we move to the next stage in resisting and eliminating the bomb and all that it represents.

    Zia Mian is a professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, USA.

  • Ten Years After India’s Nuclear Tests: Deeper Into the Morass

    Article originally appeared in The Hindu

    Since Pokharan, we have been witness to an opportunistic shift in the stance of the government, from an outright condemnation of nuclear deterrence to an unabated enthusiasm for the development of a full-fledged arsenal.

    Hand in hand, expenditures on non-nuclear military activities and acquisition of conventional weapons have also increased dramatically…The impact of these expenditures, of course, falls primarily upon the poor and the vulnerable.

    In 1996, the International Court of Justice offered a historic Advisory Opinion where it ruled that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of international humanitarian law” and endorsed unanimously a legal obligation on all States “to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” Earlier, as the case was being considered, India submitted a Memorial where it argued that nuclear deterrence should be considered “abhorrent to human sentiment since it implies that a state, if required to defend its own existence, will act with pitiless disregard for the consequences of its own and adversary’s people”. This description is apt. Though just an unproven assumption, nuclear deterrence relies on the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction aimed at killing large numbers of people in the wishful hope that such annihilation would deter another country from attacking because of fear.

    Some years later, in January 2003, the Indian government issued a nuclear doctrine which explicitly stated that the country is pursuing nuclear deterrence, though this was qualified as a minimal one. But the doctrine also warns that “nuclear retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict unacceptable damage”. Unacceptable damage, in plain English, means that these nuclear weapons would be dropped on cities, each killing lakhs or millions of innocent people. The few years between the clear and forthright condemnation of deterrence and the enthusiastic invocation of deterrence are among the most important in recent Indian history.

    The biggest event occurred 10 years ago, on May 11, 1998, when three nuclear devices exploded in the Pokharan desert. Two days later, two more explosions were conducted and Prime Minister Vajpayee proudly announced that India was now a nuclear weapon State. Pakistan’s leaders, showing that they too subscribed to the twisted logic that drives the acquisition of nuclear weapons, conducted six explosions of their own on May 28 and 30. With those tests, the half-century-old conflict between India and Pakistan acquired a nuclear edge.
    Nuclear threats

    The edge was to be seen soon. Contrary to the claims of nuclear weapons advocates, who promised peace and a cessation of war, India and Pakistan fought over Kargil bitterly within a year of the tests. Though limited geographically, the war is estimated to have cost about 1,700 Indian lives and nearly 800 Pakistani ones. Indian and Pakistani officials delivered indirect and direct nuclear threats to one another at least 13 times. There are also plausible, though not convincing, reports that the two countries did prepare their nuclear arsenals for potential use.

    Kargil was the first major confrontation between two nuclear powers. Indeed, the war may even be the first caused by nuclear weapons. The late Benazir Bhutto stated that in 1996 Pakistani military officers had presented her with plans for a Kargil style operation, which she vetoed. It would therefore seem that the 1998 tests convinced Pakistan’s political and military leaders that the operation might be feasible with nuclear weapons to restrict any possible Indian riposte.

    The pattern of nuclear intimidation seen in Kargil was to be repeated during the major military crises that followed the militant attack on the Parliament in December 2001. Even Prime Minister Vajpayee warned: “no weapon would be spared in self-defence. Whatever weapon was available, it would be used no matter how it wounded the enemy”. On the other side of the border, former chief of the Pakistan Army, General Mirza Aslam Beg, declared: “We can make a first strike, and a second strike or even a third”.

    Although it did not develop into war, a number of factors make the 2002 crisis more dangerous than the Kargil war. Unlike Kargil, where Pakistan is clearly seen to have lost, especially politically, both sides claim the 2002 crisis as a victory. On the one hand General Musharraf’s promise that he would rein in Pakistan-based militant organisations is seen as proof that India’s “coercive diplomacy” worked. Pakistan’s case is simpler. Despite the huge build-up of forces by India, and much talk of attacking so-called terrorist camps within Pakistan, no military attacks actually occurred. That a massive military confrontation with strong nuclear overtones is seen by both sides as a victory increases the likelihood that similar incidents will occur in the future.

    Nuclear costs

    The obvious lesson of these two military crises, that nuclear weapons cause insecurity, has been ignored by nuclear advocates. Instead, they claimed that just testing nuclear weapons is insufficient for deterrence and called for the kinds of steps that India had earlier criticised nuclear weapons States for taking. Following their advice, India has not only adopted use-doctrines and practices similar to those of nuclear weapon States, but has also embarked on developing the paraphernalia needed for the adoption of these doctrines. These include a triad of delivery vehicles, including aircraft capable of dropping nuclear bombs, missiles launched from land and sea, and a nuclear submarine; training the military to use these; a command and control structure to oversee the deployment and use of nuclear weapons; components of an early warning system and an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defence system. No one has been keeping count of the crores of rupees being spent in this process. Hand in hand, expenditures on non-nuclear military activities and acquisition of conventional weapons have also increased dramatically. This is in direct contradiction to the erstwhile claims of nuclear advocates that the acquisition of nuclear weapons would reduce expenditure on conventional weapons. The impact of these expenditures, of course, falls primarily upon the poor and the vulnerable.

    A growing arsenal

    One of the adjectives appended to deterrence in India’s nuclear doctrine is minimal. (The other adjective – credible – is superfluous. A deterrent that is not credible cannot deter.) When asked to delineate what constitutes minimal, policy makers resort to obfuscation. Minimal, they claim, is a dynamic concept and one which cannot be specified in advance. Given the massive destructive power of nuclear weapons, it should be obvious that a dozen or so suffice to obliterate several cities and millions of people in Pakistan or China. But going by current public estimates, the fissile material stockpile just from CIRUS and Dhruva, the two reactors reportedly assigned for making plutonium for weapons, should be sufficient for over a hundred nuclear weapons. Perhaps the meaning of minimal is simply that it is not maximal.

    That the future arsenal size sought by policymakers is much larger was made clear during the negotiations and public debates surrounding the nuclear deal that is being negotiated with the United States. As a report from the International Panel of Fissile Materials, which the author is a part of, shows, the number of reactors that the DAE strenuously kept outside of safeguards can produce several dozen nuclear weapons worth of plutonium every year (available at www.fissilematerials.org).

    New attitudes

    During the 1990s, one oft-heard argument from those espousing nuclear weapons was that while these were evil, they were a necessary evil. To the extent that the pressures of this lobby were resisted, India acquired weapons only reluctantly. That was then. What is on display today is unabated enthusiasm for the ongoing development of a full fledged arsenal. And all the attitudes that go with being a State possessing nuclear weapons.

    Such a shift in attitude was on display during the unexpected vote against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005. While much attention was focused on US pressure, there was something deeper too. In an earlier era, Indian leaders would have denounced the hypocrisy of the United States, with its immense nuclear arsenal, lecturing Iran about its small uranium enrichment plant. Now, one heard many policy-makers talking about why nuclear proliferation was dangerous and Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear technology. Non-proliferation, which used to be seen as immoral, has come to take the place of disarmament, the truly worthwhile goal.

    The opportunistic switch in stance is somewhat akin to what has been called the third class railway compartment syndrome. Those waiting on a crowded platform clamour in the name of justice and fairness to be let into compartment. But once inside, the opportunist shuts the door and keeps the others outside, with force if necessary.

    In July 1946, following the US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mahatma Gandhi observed, “the atom bomb has deadened the finest feelings which have sustained mankind for agesŠIt has resulted for the time being in the soul of Japan being destroyed. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see.”

    Unfortunately in our case, the first decade after Pokharan has already started making the impacts quite clear. It is not too late to reverse these.

    M. V. Ramana is Senior Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore, and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream.

  • Diverse Coalition Launches Campaign to Stop US Nuclear Deal with India

    WASHINGTON, DC –Twenty-three organizations today launched a coalition to stop the Bush Administration’s proposed nuclear trade agreement with India.  The proposed agreement would exempt that nuclear-armed nation from longstanding U.S. and international restrictions on states that do not meet global standards to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

    The Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade believes the agreement would: dangerously weaken nonproliferation efforts and embolden countries like Iran and North Korea to pursue the development of nuclear weapons; further destabilize South Asia and Pakistan in particular; and violate or weaken international and U.S. laws, including the Hyde Act, which Congress passed in 2006 to provide a framework for the bilateral U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement.

    “When Congress takes a close look at the Bush Administration’s proposed agreement, it will find a dangerous, unprecedented deal,” said John Isaacs of the Council for a Livable World.  “The proposal undermines over 30 years of nonproliferation policy, will increase India’s capability to produce nuclear weapons and its stockpile of nuclear weapons-material, and sends the wrong message to Pakistan during a time of crisis in that country.  We feel confident that, under the Congressional microscope, the many flaws of this deal will be exposed, and it will ultimately be rejected for the sake of preserving national security and global stability.”

    The U.S.-Indian bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement would allow the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology and material to India.  However, it fails to hold India to the same responsible nonproliferation and disarmament rules that are required of advanced nuclear states. The deal will increase India’s nuclear weapons production capability, exacerbate a nuclear arms race in the region, undermine international non-proliferation norms, and encourage the creation of large nuclear material stockpiles. Its contribution to meeting India’s growing energy needs has been greatly exaggerated and it would create economic opportunities for foreign nuclear industries without any guarantees for U.S. businesses.

    The pact must win approval from the U.S. Congress, which changed U.S. law in December 2006 to allow negotiation of the agreement, under several conditions that have not been met in the final language of the agreement.  Those conditions include a new agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency for safeguarding Indian power reactors and changes to the international guidelines of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group, which currently restrict trade with India.

    Members of the Campaign are working to educate the U.S. Congress and public about the dangers of the deal, and are working with experts and organizations in two-dozen countries to inform deliberation over the deal within Nuclear Suppliers Group and its member state governments.

    The new coalition’s partners include:  Council for a Livable World, Arms Control Association, Federation of American Scientists, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington office, United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Institute for Religion and Public Policy, Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, All Souls Nuclear Disarmament Task Force, British American Security Information Council, Women’s Action for New Directions, Americans for Democratic Action, Peace Action, Peace Action West, Arms Control Advocacy Collaborative, Beyond Nuclear, Bipartisan Security Group, Citizens for Global Solutions, Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and Nuclear Information Resource Information Service.

    Advisors to the coalition include Ambassador Robert Grey (Ret.), former U.S. Representative to the Conference on Disarmament and Director of the Bipartisan Security Group; Dr. Leonard Weiss, former staff director of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation and the Committee on Governmental Affairs; Dr. Robert G. Gard, Jr., Lt. Gen., U.S. Army (Ret.), Senior Military Fellow, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; Subrata Ghoshroy, Director, Promoting Nuclear Stability in South Asia Project, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Dr. Christopher Paine, Nuclear Program Director, Natural Resources Defense Council.

    The Campaign’s website is www.responsiblenucleartrade.com.

    About the Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade

    The Campaign for Responsibility in Nuclear Trade, a partnership project of 23 nuclear arms control, non-proliferation, environmental and consumer protection organizations, opposes the July 2005 proposal for civil nuclear cooperation with India and the additional U.S. concessions made to India as a result of subsequent negotiations because they pose far-reaching and adverse implications for U.S. and international security, global nuclear non-proliferation efforts, human life and health, and the environment.  More information about the campaign can be found at www.responsiblenucleartrade.com.

    Arms Control Experts, Environmental Activists, Consumer Advocates, Religious Groups and Doctors Find Proposed Agreement Would Dangerously Undermine National Security, Global Stability

  • Sanctifying Mass Destruction

    The toxic terms of discourse of the nuclear debate have insidiously intruded into the public’s mind and distorted its moral perspective.

    Whatever the final fate of the India-United States nuclear deal, it is undeniable that the media-driven debate over it has had a profound impact on public consciousness. Thus, not just television anchors, but even college students, are mouthing phrases like the “historic opportunity” (the agreement offers to India to become a world power) through a “strategic partnership” with the U.S., and promoting India’s “national interest” (which self-evidently lies in superpowerdom and in containing China) and “energy security” via nuclear power development (as if there were no alternatives).
    One notion that is rapidly becoming part of middle-class commonsense is that the deal undoes the iniquitous technology-denial sanctions imposed on India since the 1970s and rewards it as a “responsible” nuclear weapons state (NWS), or, as the July 2005 agreement put it, “a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology”.
    “Responsible” nuclear weapons state? Can this be anything but an oxymoron? NWSs not only possess the ability to kill millions of non-combatant civilians instantly but are prepared and willing to use that capability in cold blood. Indeed, they make their security dependent upon keeping scores of these weapons of terror ready to be fired at short notice.
    All NWSs, regardless of intent or the size and lethality of their arsenals, and despite their professed faith in nuclear deterrence, have doctrines for the actual use of nuclear weapons to incinerate whole cities — that is, to commit unspeakably repulsive and condemnable acts of terrorism against unarmed civilians. The world’s greatest terrorist act was not the Twin Towers attack (which killed 3,600 people), but Hiroshima (where 140,000 perished).
    Yet, those who erase this terrible, yet fundamental, truth from their consciousness still justify the idea that India is a “responsible nuclear power”. They advance six claims in support. First, India has an impeccable non-proliferation record and has never diverted civilian nuclear materials to military use or participated in clandestine nuclear commerce. Second, India practices exemplary nuclear restraint through its “minimum deterrence” doctrine and its policy of no-first-use.
    Third, India has always responded positively to, if not advocated, proposals for non-discriminatory and equal treaties for arms control and disarmament. Fourth, India’s foreign policy orientation is strongly multilateralist; New Delhi rejects collusive bilateral agreements in favor of multilateral, universal treaties leading to disarmament. This derives from the view that the nuclear threat/danger is global.
    A fifth claim is that India abhors any policy or action that will start or aggravate a nuclear arms race, especially in its neighborhood. It has not triggered such a race and will never do so. Finally, India is a peaceful, mature, stable and law-abiding democracy, which respects human rights and can be trusted to act with restraint – unlike, say, Pakistan.
    All these claims are questionable, if not altogether specious. True, India has never run an A.Q. Khan-style “nuclear Wal-Mart” or willingly proliferated nuclear technology. But, India has been an active proliferator and has participated in clandestine as well as open nuclear commerce with a host of countries to develop its military and civilian programs.
    Right from its very first nuclear reactor, Apsara, to the latest pair under construction (at Koodankulam), India has bought, borrowed and both overtly and covertly procured nuclear technology, equipment or material from states as varied as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and later Russia, France, China, and even Norway.
    The basic design of its mainline power generator is Canadian – the pressurized heavy water reactor named CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium). India’s very first power reactors, at Tarapur, were donations from the U.S. Agency for International Development and were executed as a turnkey job by General Electric and Bechtel. The much-touted Fast Breeder Test Reactor, the only such reactor to operate in India, was developed with French assistance.
    India used spent fuel from CIRUS (Canada-India Research Reactor, to which the U.S. supplied heavy water, adding to the acronym) for military purposes by reprocessing plutonium from it. This was used in the 1974 Pokhran blast. CIRUS was designed and built by the Canadians.
    A condition for Canadian and U.S. assistance was that the products of CIRUS would only be used “for peaceful purposes”. India blatantly violated this and, to evade legal liability, declared Pokhran-I a “peaceful nuclear explosion”.
    India also clandestinely imported heavy water from Norway and, later, from China. We do not know what price was paid for these transactions, but it is unlikely to have been purely monetary in the Chinese case.
    None of this speaks of “responsibility” or strict adherence to legality, leave alone of India’s “clean hands” as far as dubious nuclear trade goes. In truth, nuclear materials are among the world’s well-traded/transferred commodities. Many countries have participated in such trade. India is no exception and cannot pretend to be Simon-pure.
    Second, the restraint claim is belied by India’s official nuclear doctrine, which commits it to a large triadic (land, sea and air-based) nuclear arsenal with no limits whatsoever on technological refinement. This super-ambitious plan sits ill with the profession of “minimum nuclear deterrent”, which is generally understood as a few dozen weapons. (How many does it take to flatten half-a-dozen Chinese or Pakistani cities?)
    India has also diluted its no-first-use commitment by excluding from it states that have military alliances with NWSs and including retaliation against other mass-destruction weapons. In practice, given the lack of strategic distance from Pakistan, it is doubtful if no-first-use has much meaning.
    Besides, the nuclear deal will allow India to expand its nuclear arsenal substantially by stockpiling huge amounts of weapons-grade plutonium.
    Third, India has refused to sign any multilateral nuclear restraint/disarmament agreement since the mid-1960s. In the 1980s and 1990s, India also turned down at least seven Pakistani proposals for regional nuclear restraint or renunciation, including mutual or third-party verification — without making a single counter-proposal to “call Pakistan’s bluff”.
    Fourth, the very fact of India’s signature of the bilateral nuclear deal with the U.S. puts paid to its professed multilateralist commitment. The deal marks a major departure from New Delhi’s earlier insistence on international and universal non-discriminatory treaties on arms control/disarmament. But this bilateral agreement is now meant to be imposed upon the multilateral International Atomic Energy Agency and the plurilateral Nuclear Suppliers 7; Group for their approval — a procedure that India would have strongly objected to in the past.
    India has taken a parochial course, which in future could mean giving the go-by to multilateral approaches in favor of expedient bilateral ones.
    Fifth, a considerable likely expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal, which the deal facilitates, will inevitably escalate the regional nuclear arms race. There is evidence that in response to the India-U.S. deal, Pakistan is building at least one (and probably two) plutonium reprocessing plants, which will help it maximize the production of weapons-grade material with its limited uranium reserves. That is what a nuclear arms race is all about.
    More worrisome, as India builds up its arsenal to the same level as the lower range of estimates of China’s nuclear weapons (250 or so), Beijing can be expected to make more warheads and missiles. This spells a dangerous nuclear arms race. Yet, as U.S. strategists see it (see Ashley Tellis’s quote in Frontline, August 10), a major purpose of the deal is precisely to help India amass more nuclear weapons to deter China — via an arms race.
    Finally, it stretches credulity to contend that India’s behavior towards its neighbors has been exemplarily benign and peaceful. India’s past record of belligerence towards Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal (on which it imposed an economic blockade in the late 1980s) negates that claim, as does its annexation of Sikkim in 1975.
    India is, of course, a democracy, but it is by no means a rule-of-law state. India’s human rights record is deeply flawed — not just in Kashmir and the northeastern region, but also in respect of religious minorities, Dalits and Adivasis, and more generally, numerous underprivileged groups. One only has to recall the 2002 Gujarat carnage, the 1992-93 Mumbai communal clashes, the savage repression under way against the tribals of Chhattisgarh through Salwa Judum, and police brutality against mere suspects in countless terrorist attacks.
    Our history of strategic misperception and miscalculation (for instance, during 1987-88, 1990 and 1999) also bears recalling. At any rate, having a democratic government is no guarantee that a country will not use mass-destruction weapons.
    The only state to have ever used nuclear weapons was the democratic U.S. It would be tragic if our citizens look for Washington’s recognition of India as a “responsible” nuclear power while deadening their own moral sensibilities against weapons of terror.