POLITICS-INDIA: Nuclear Tests Lack Strategic Rationale

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, May 15 1998 (IPS) - India’s six-week-old government dominated by the right-wing, Hindu-chauvinistic, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP has outraged the world by conducting five nuclear tests which lack strategic and political rationale.

The tests have demonstrated a destructive technological prowess which has lowered India’s global stature and is likely to cause the people serious economic hardship and compromise the country’s security.

Clearly the tests are unrelated to genuine security considerations. There has been no deterioration in recent years in India’s strategic environment. Rather, there has been some improvement in relation with neighbours especially Bangladesh and, vitally, China.

Neither Pakistan nor China have adopted more belligerent postures towards India. To cite their limited nuclear cooperation is as illegitimate as calling India a Russian client for importing its latest warplanes and wanting to buy Russian nuclear reactors.

Overt nuclearisation violates New Delhi’s own stated policy. Despite many vacillations and many pressures there has been onethread of continuity in this policy : refusal to bestow legitimacy on nuclear weapons.

Even in the heated Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) debate, India did not budge from this stand. In 1995-96, it fervently pleaded before the World Court that the use and threat of use of nuclear weapons be declared violative of international law and that they are not essential to the security of any state.

The present minority government, led by a party which only won a quarter of the popular vote, has broken this thread of continuity without a review of India’s security needs or threat evaluation.

Unlike in 1974 when India’s first nuclear explosion was declared ‘peaceful’ the latest were clearly for developing and refining nuclear warheads. The motive was to gain cheap popularity through a toxic, macho, tub-thumping and belligerent nationalism.

The absence of a democratic mandate for this fateful decision compounds its gravity. And the use of the Buddha image – May 11 was his birth anniversary -speaks of a sinister, perverse mindset at work.

India’s tests are part of the BJP’s project to build a national security state – super-powerful, authoritarian entity where democracy, human rights and pluralism are secondary to order, conformity and artificial homogeneity. This project seeks global stature through mass destruction weapons.

The BJP believes nuclear weapons are an effective currency of power and nucealr deterrence – the threat to cause unacceptable damage without through such weapons – is illegitimate.

But the nuclear currency is devalued -witness the U.S defeat in Vietnam, China’s bloody nose in the same country in1979 and the Soviet Union beating a humiliating retreat from Afghanistan.

In fact, the Soviet Union could not ensure its own survival despite its nuclear arsenal. Nor could ncuelar Britain prevent its progressive marginalisation.

For 50 years, India has rightly called nuclear deterrence an ‘abhorrent’ doctrine: you cannot threaten to incinerate millions of babies into radioactive dust. Deterrence is unstable and degenerates into a runaway arms race as in the cold war.

The World Court has declared use or threat of use of nuclear weapons incompatible with international law. They violate all considerations of ‘justice in war.’ And yet, the BJP proclaims the nuclear tests to be ‘historic achievement,’ a source of ‘joy’ and cause for celebration.

The Indian tests came at a time when the world has expressed its disgust with and evolved a politico-legal norm against nuclear testing. Since the end of the cold war, there has grown a weak but new and real momentum favouring nuclear restraint.

Over 20,000 weapons have been taken off deployment or de- alerted. Nuclear capable South Africa, Brazil and Argentina have dismantled their programmes and Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan have got rid of their weapons.

Even the nuclear five are under rising pressure to disarm. Opinion polls show that between 66 and 64 per cent of Americans and Britons want disarmament.

If India were serious about nuclear disarmament it could have strengthened that momentum along with states such as South Africa,

Malaysia, Japan, Egypt, New Zealand and Australia.But it chose otherwise.

The BJP’s nuclear gambit is self-destructive for another reason. It is liable to trigger a potentially ruinous nuclear arms race – to be precise two races. A minor one with Pakistan and a major one with China whose economy is three times bigger and who has a headstart as a nuclear and missile power.

Already the New Delhi government spends twice as much on the military than it does on health, education and social services. One estimate says maintaining a small nuclear deterrence will bloat military spending by upto 40 per cent.

A nuclear arms race will mean massive cutbacks in vital social spending – to the people’s detriment. This will further undermine India’s security and development potential.

It is bad enough that the government has invited sanctions although the U.S right to impose sanctions is questional in the absence of commitment to nuclear disarmament. But much worse could follow with further loss in India’s stature.

In the event of stiff sanctions, a 1995 Indian finance ministry study forecast that the economy could be set back by five to 10 years. Matters could be even worse today.

There are few damage-control options. India would be foolhardy to look for devious bargains. The most straightforward principled honourable course would be for New Delhi to make a solemn pledge never to use nuclear weapons, test them or deploy them. It should sign the CTBT and strengthen its prohibitory provisions.

And it should return to the global disarmament agenda with sincerity and fervour, supporting every measure of nuclear restraint and disarmament. That is where India’s security – and the path of sanity – lies.

POLITICS-INDIA: Nuclear Tests Lack Strategic Rationale

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, May 15 1998 (IPS) - India’s six-week-old government dominated by the right-wing, Hindu-chauvinistic, Bharatiay Janata Party (BJP has outraged the world by conducting five nuclear tests which lack strategic and political rationale.
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