DISARMAMENT-ASIA: Nuclear Tensions Muddle Security Picture

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Satya Sivaraman

BANGKOK, May 28 1998 (IPS) - Amid heightened tensions unleashed by India’s surprise nuclear tests, South-east Asia’s response seems to be as much confusion as indignation.

In the long run however, citizens’ groups are worried that the tests could spark off increasing rivalry and tensions between Asian giants China and India, to the detriment of economic development and peace in the region.

U.S. intelligence reports say Pakistan has completed physical requirements for its own tests, which can happen any time. Late on Wednesday, Islamabad claimed that India had been preparing an attack on its territory.

Disarmament experts say that while India did not break any international law by testing, it violated the “spirit” of the non-proliferation regime and revived fears of a nuclear row. But on Wednesday, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said India was not interested in an arms race.

In the initial flush of events, governments in the region joined western countries and Japan in condemning the tests as a violation of an international consensus against actual nuclear testing.

But in subsequent days opinion among them has been divided — especially on the issue of imposing economic sanctions against India. The World Bank has also suspended loans to the country.

Caught in the midst of a serious economic crisis — as also political change in Indonesia and the Philippines — leaders and policy makers in the region are also still pondering the true implications of India’s emergence as a nuclear power for peace and the balance of military forces.

“We oppose any plan to develop nuclear weapons. We disagree with India conducting nuclear tests and wish to see this region free from nuclear weapons,” Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan said a day after the first round of three tests were carried out on May 11.

But on May 16, after the second round of two low-yield tests were conducted by India, Thailand’s deputy foreign minister Sukhumband Paribatra urged the international community not to impose sanctions on India “because it is unlikely they would have a major impact”.

Thailand, with other members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), is a signatory to a treaty creating a South- east Asian Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ).

Despite its political troubles, Indonesia found time to express concern over the tests. Malaysia called them a serious setback to efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons.

In Singapore, the response has been more muted. A recent editorial in the ‘Straits Times’, considered a mouthpiece of the government, called the tests a “dramatic statement on nuclear weapons as a guarantor of India’s national security and a means of establishing the country as a world player”.

South-east Asian officials in Manila to prepare for the 21- member ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in July discussed a response to the Indian tests, but could not agree on the wording of a paragraph to be put in the statement of the ARF Chairman.

“We have to have a harmonised ASEAN position of senior officials on the tests before we meet with the other non-ASEAN ARF participants,” Philippine undersecretary of foreign affairs Lauro Baja was quoted as saying.

India is a member of the ARF, a regional forum launched in 1994 to discuss security issues and resolve conflicts.

Indian diplomats said ARF members would be inconsistent if they singled New Delhi out for condemnation. Other ARF member states had conducted tests in the past, but were not the subject of formal statements, they said.

Divided opinion over the true threat posed by the nuclear tests to Asia was also evident within the media in places like Thailand, whose two main English-language dailies the ‘Bangkok Post’ and ‘The Nation’ took divergent views.

While the ‘Bangkok Post’ accused India’s Bharatiya Janta Party government of “populist nationalism and arrogance”, an editorial in ‘The Nation’ called the uproar over the tests “global hypocrisy” because the five established nuclear powers are still clinging to their vast arsenals.

“Though ASEAN is keen to keep its own region free of nuclear weapons, it is also interested in maintaining a balance of forces between various regional powers — and hence the Indian nuclear blasts are being seen partly as a counter to China’s nuclear capabilities,” said an Indian official based in the region.

ASEAN members such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei are embroiled in sovereignty disputes with China and Taiwan over the strategic and potentially oil-rich Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Indian officials say New Delhi’s admission into the ASEAN Regional Forum in 1996 was part of a move by ASEAN to bring in an Asian counterweight to China.

South-east Asian countries were also seeking India’s role as a “balance” to China in the formation of new regional grouping consisting of Bangladesh, India, Burma, Sri Lanka and Thailand.

Though the group, called BIMSTEC, was meant to promote economic ties, some analysts also see it as an attempt by both India and Thailand to curb China’s growing influence over Burma.

While such realpolitik considerations seem to be uppermost in the minds of diplomats and politicians, there is concern among activists that India’s tests could tempt some South-east Asian governments to copy India and develop secret nuclear weapons programmes on their own.

But a more realistic worry is perhaps the damage done by the nuclear tests on India-China relations, which have been on the mend for the past decade after years of acrimony due to a border war in 1962.

With the two governments engaged in a war of words over the nuclear tests, economic ties are certain to suffer. South-east Asia is also likely to be affected if the fate of planned regional projects — including a railway linking India and China via Burma — become uncertain.

“Nuclear bombs are not a sign of strength,” said Supalak Ngampongsa, a university student protesting the tests outside the Indian embassy in Bangkok.

“Both India and China should put aside their bombs and concentrate on improving the quality of life for their citizens- which is what will make them really strong nations,” he said.