Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998, by Rodney W. Jones, Mark G. McDonough, Toby Dalton, and Gregory Koblentz

 

South Asia and East Asia: India

India breached the international taboo on "going nuclear" in 1998, by testing a series of nuclear explosive devices on May 11 and 13 and officially declaring itself as a new "nuclear-weapons power." These events triggered Pakistan’s nuclear explosive testing response two weeks later, suddenly springing on the world stage two additional self-declared nuclear-weapon states and radically challenging the efficacy of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The damage done to the nuclear non-proliferation regime was limited only slightly by the fact that both states had long been viewed as de facto nuclear-weapon states and neither had joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or such other legally binding nuclear non-proliferation instruments as full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

The profound international outrage over India’s action was all the stronger because of the absence of credible nuclear security threats to India as a justification for its nuclear testing—and because of India’s own early aversion to nuclear weapons and its once prominent leadership in seeking non-proliferation and disarmament measures. In reacting to India, other nations objected that India’s nuclear tests and self-declaration ran counter to the prevailing world tide of nuclear arms reductions, the negotiated 1996 ban on nuclear weapons testing, and accumulated non-proliferation successes in other regions.

India had demonstrated a nuclear weapons capability in May 1974, nearly a quarter century earlier, by detonating a nuclear device in what it called a "peaceful nuclear experiment." Officially, India thereafter claimed, until 1998, that it did not possess and had no plans for nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, India maintained a nuclear weapons research program and a nuclear posture of ambiguity from the early 1970s, and actively pursued the development of space launchers and nuclear-capable ballistic missiles for over two decades. Consequently, in the years between 1974 and 1997, India was regarded as a threshold nuclear-weapon state that could "go nuclear" on short notice.

An original sponsor of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) principles, India nonetheless refused to sign the document that emerged from NPT negotiations in 1968—arguing that it did not fulfill the original mandate. Thereafter, India consistently opposed regional nuclear-weapon-free-zone (NWFZ) and other non-proliferation proposals for South Asia, calling instead for global nuclear disarmament. Similarly, India had long championed the development of a global nuclear test ban treaty and contributed positively to early drafts of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) of 1996, but finally rejected the CTBT as well.

A recent technical analysis estimated that, as of the end of 1995, India’s safeguards-free nuclear weapons potential involved enough separated weapons-grade plutonium for at least 65 early-generation nuclear weapons; it also projected that this stockpile will rise to the equivalent of 85 to 90 weapons by the year 2000. Unseparated plutonium residing in unsafeguarded spent fuel in India could, if reprocessed, at least double this inventory. India has also been developing uranium-enrichment facilities that could enable construction of hydrogen bombs.

India began to make investments in a space program as early as 1970. It has since developed both space-launch vehicles and satellites and is beginning to launch its own heavy-satellite payloads. The design and engineering of space rockets has provided India with many of the essentials for developing nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. India has been testing two such missile types—the Prithvi short-range missile (150-250 km) and the Agni medium-range missile (1,500-2,500 km)—for several years. It is now testing space launch vehicles of sufficient range and capacity for converted versions to become prototypes of long-range ballistic missiles. India is not an adherent to the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) guidelines. Indeed, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) actually was a target of related U.S. sanctions in 1992-94.

Those in India’s own small circle of strategic analysts who believe that China poses a nuclear military threat to India have regarded India’s long-range missile development program as a basis for the nuclear deterrence of China. Insofar as perceived security threats have mattered to the Indian public at large, however, it is India’s preoccupation with threats posed by weaker Pakistan that has served as the main driving factor—politically and psychologically—in the day-to-day, public orchestration of India’s nuclear and missile development programs. For the senior elected officials and a larger domestic constituency, the motives for India’s nuclear, space, and missile development have arisen more from status than security needs. Developing India’s scientific and technological capacity—civilian and military—is seen as the means of demonstrating India’s world-class leadership potential and of satisfying India’s pressing need to have advanced technology to modernize the nation’s still underdeveloped infrastructure and economy.

 

Background

Nuclear Weapons Program

India was an early beneficiary of the U.S.–sponsored "Atoms for Peace" program launched in 1953. This program was intended to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons by offering access to civil uses of nuclear technology in exchange for pledges not to apply the technology to weapons purposes. Based on the prevailing atmosphere of trust in the early Atoms for Peace years, Canada in 1955 supplied the Cirus 40 MWt heavy-water-moderated research reactor from which India later derived the plutonium for the 1974 nuclear explosive device. In lieu of IAEA safeguards, which did not exist until after the Agency was founded in 1957, Canada required only written "peaceful assurances" that the reactor would be used exclusively for peaceful purposes. The United States sold India some of the heavy water needed for Cirus operations under the same assurances. Before the mid-1950s, there was only slight evidence that India had any interest in nuclear weapons.

India’s first atomic energy chief, Homi Bhahba, however, already understood the dual uses of many nuclear technologies—especially that of plutonium separation. In 1958, India began to acquire the equipment for its Trombay plutonium-reprocessing facility—even then justifying it as a scheme to pave the way in the civilian power program for breeder reactors. The plant was commissioned in late 1964, shortly before China detonated its first nuclear explosive device in October of the same year. When fully operational, the plant had the capacity to separate up to 10 kg of plutonium annually (enough for at least two bombs a year). Ten years later, India’s nuclear explosion—using plutonium generated in Cirus and separated in the Trombay reprocessing facility—demonstrated India’s nuclear weapons option.

India single-mindedly pursued self-sufficiency in atomic energy and, with few exceptions, rejected the imposition of IAEA safeguards, even on its indigenous electric power plants. As a result, IAEA safeguards are missing from every component of the Indian nuclear research program and from all but two pressurized heavy-water reactors (PHWRs) in the civil power program. Virtually all fuel-cycle facilities have been kept outside safeguards. India thus faces few constraints in using fissile materials for military as well as civilian purposes, and India’s civil PHWRs and fast-breeder reactors could be (and some believe intermittently were) diverted to produce weapons-grade materials.

The estimate that India’s plutonium stockpile at the end of 1995 probably was sufficient for about 65 weapons, and would rise to 85 or 90 weapons by the year 2000, is derived from cautious analysis by David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker. Their estimate of 330 kg in India’s safeguards-free separated plutonium inventory at the end of 1995 could be low by as much as 30 percent; India’s actual plutonium stockpile then might have been sufficient for 80 to 90 weapons. Their estimates of high-quality plutonium are based primarily on India’s decades-long operation of two unsafeguarded, heavy-water-moderated research reactors (the 40-MWt Cirus and 100-MWt Dhruva, both located at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center), but they also take into account the more recent start-up operations of five unsafeguarded 220-MWe PHWRs (Madras I and II, Narora I and II, and Kakrapar I) constructed indigenously by India for its civil program. They omit, however, the most recent Kakrapar II power plant start-up in 1995.

India’s stockpile of separated plutonium has been constrained by the capacity of its three existing reprocessing facilities. Hence the estimates are based on what is known about the operational history of India’s current reprocessing facilities at Trombay, Tarapur (Prefre), and Kalpakkam. With additional reprocessing capacity, the plutonium stockpile could be increased at a much more rapid rate from existing as well as future spent fuel. India reportedly has a second and larger (commercial scale) reprocessing facility under construction at Kalpakkam with a planned capacity to handle about 1,000 tons of spent fuel a year, or nearly four times the amount (275 tons of spent fuel) that India’s three smaller facilities together can currently handle each year.

The generation of weapons-quality plutonium in spent fuel could also be expanded significantly by fast-breeder reactors, which can "produce" more plutonium than they "consume." The Indian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) began its breeder program with the pilot-scale (15-MWe) Fast-Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR), based on French cooperation and the Phénix design during the 1970s. The FBTR was kept free of safeguards and commissioned at Kalpakkam in south India in 1987. The IAEC recently announced that India soon would break ground for a long-envisaged 500-MWe Prototype Fast-Breeder Reactor (PFBR) with a hoped-for completion date of 2007.

India also has a centrifuge-based, uranium-enrichment program that could eventually augment the fissile material stockpile for weapons by producing highly enriched uranium (HEU). HEU is believed to be useful for thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb) development. India has had no need to enrich uranium for its indigenous civilian reactors, which operate on natural uranium fuel. The capacity of India’s two enrichment facilities—one at the Trombay (BARC) complex and the other at Rattehalli, near Mysore, in Karnataka state—has not been disclosed. However, these plants are presumed to be pilot rather than commercial in scale.

Setbacks to Civil Nuclear Program

India’s autarkic approach to its civil nuclear program, resistance to IAEA safeguards, and rejection of the NPT all played some part in distancing the advanced nuclear supplier countries from expanding peaceful nuclear cooperation with India, but the biggest blow came from the Indian nuclear explosion in 1974. The test seemed to defy the Atoms for Peace premises at the heart of early U.S. and Canadian peaceful nuclear cooperation with India. To develop, demonstrate, and protect its nuclear weapons option, India paid an unexpectedly high diplomatic and economic price. Part of that price was severe, cumulative setbacks to India’s civil nuclear power program. The lost electric power supply opportunities that were a consequence slowed natural growth in India’s industrial base and economy as a whole and have reached crippling levels today.

India’s nuclear explosion of 1974 shocked the institutionalized system of peaceful nuclear cooperation and was the primary catalyst for decisions by the advanced nuclear supplier states to upgrade their export control policies—by forming the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and adopting more stringent export criteria. Canada tried for two years to persuade India to accept additional non-proliferation constraints, and, having failed, terminated peaceful nuclear cooperation with India altogether in 1976. Although the United States did not sever its Tarapur contractual relationship with India for the supply of low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuel to the Tarapur nuclear power plant, it sought to persuade India to adopt new non-proliferation measures—at least IAEA safeguards on civilian facilities. When this approach failed, U.S. interest in new nuclear cooperation projects with India dropped off sharply and eventually ceased.

For India, the unexpected loss of Canadian cooperation was particularly costly. India found it impossible to complete on schedule the second power plant that Canada had contracted to supply. It also experienced serious technical and operational setbacks with both of the Rajasthan power reactors that Canada was no longer willing to help remedy. Moreover, India had in the late 1960s decided to standardize its planned construction of a large number of indigenous power plants on the CANDU (Canadian deuterium-uranium) PHWR design, but it found that implementing this plan after 1974, without continued Canadian technical support, was both more expensive and technically difficult than expected. By 1995, nearly a quarter century after the start of domestic procurement of indigenous PHWR plants in 1967 and 1971, the Indian power program had installed only six additional CANDU-type, 235-MWe (220-MWe net) power reactors—two at each of three sites. Although the first indigenously built reactors at the Madras site got off to a reasonably good start, their performance in later years was disappointing. The performance of the twin reactors at the other sites, Narora and Kakrapar, has been troubled, partly due to turbine defects, leading in one case to a serious fire.

While nuclear power installation and operational delays are not uncommon in the advanced states, the Indian setbacks have been exceptionally severe. By the late 1980s, together with increasing disclosure of safety problems, the setbacks had begun to throw official cost-effectiveness calculations into doubt and threatened to discredit the role of nuclear power in India. One measure of the severity of the setbacks is how far India fell behind its planned targets for the installation of nuclear electric capacity. In the early 1970s, the IAEC target for installed nuclear power capacity by 1981 had been 8,000 MWe; the actual nuclear capacity achieved by that year, with four installed power reactors, was only 600-800 MWe, or less than one-tenth the goal. By 1985, capacity had been boosted slightly, to 1,095 MWe, and in that year the target was reset to 10,000 MWe of operating nuclear capacity installed by the year 2000—requiring a tenfold increase from the 1985 base.

By 1995, however, after completing the six new power reactors first planned in 1980, India’s rated nuclear-electric capacity had risen to only 2,200 MWe and its actual (operating) output to no more than 1,500 MWe—slightly more than doubling, but still well under one-fourth of the 1981 target. This installed nuclear capacity represented only about 2.7 percent on the high side (less on the low side—1.9 percent—when the actual operating nuclear electric-output figure is used) of India’s total of 80,000 MW electricity generating capacity instead of the 10 to 15 percent nuclear-electric proportion once hoped for.

Nuclear Exports

India has played a very limited role in the nuclear export arena, partly as a matter of policy and partly because its domestic nuclear equipment and materials production capacity has been fully absorbed by domestic requirements. Having rejected the NPT, India is not legally bound by the Treaty’s prohibition against assisting non-nuclear-weapon states to acquire or develop nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive capabilities. India has not joined the International Nuclear Export (Zangger) Committee, and it has been a target rather than a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. However, India has never—as a policy—encouraged nuclear proliferation elsewhere. It has been generally cautious in its approach to nuclear exports.

India has not published a formal and transparent nuclear export control system that clearly allocates licensing authority, or itemizes regulations or criteria that would explain what it regards as permissible exports and how it deals, if it does, with recipient end-use certifications. India has, however, made diplomatic representations to the United States and to other parties that it will not engage in sensitive nuclear transactions in troubled regions, particularly in the Middle East.

Missile Program

As with nuclear technology, India has striven to achieve self-sufficiency in military armaments production and in allied areas, especially modern electronics and the exploration of the upper atmosphere and outer space. In 1970, at the initiative of then Department of Atomic Energy chief Vikram Sarabhai, India’s electronics and space programs were given separate organizational and budgetary footings—enhancing their ability to take advantage of foreign cooperation and technology transfer. India’s surface-to-surface ballistic missile program was organized under defense department auspices but has benefited from the technology transfer opportunities, personnel expertise, and development of rockets and launch vehicles within the space program.

In developing its space and missile programs, India profited as early as the 1960s from extensive cooperation with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and subsequently with Britain, France, West Germany, and the former Soviet Union. India’s initial exposure to space-launch propulsion came from access to U.S. Scout sounding rockets, which utilized solid-rocket motor technology and could be reconfigured for use as short-range missiles, although not readily for typical nuclear payloads. India was able to purchase off-the-shelf rocket engines and their technology from France, and it has obtained Russian assistance with cryogenic rockets for heavy space-lift vehicles.

India’s indigenous missile development began in the 1970s and was accelerated by an integrated development program beginning in 1983. By the late 1980s, India had work under way on prototypes for nuclear-capable, short-range ballistic missiles (for service against Pakistan) as well as nuclear-capable, medium-range ballistic missiles (presumably to deter potential threats from China). The shorter-range missile, Prithvi, which began initial testing in 1989, is a liquid-fueled, single-stage missile designed to be fired from a mobile launcher and comes in two versions. Prithvi I, the Army version, is said to have a range of 150 km with a 1,000-kg warhead. The other version for the Air Force is designed to carry a 500-kg warhead to a range of 250 km, which could strike most of urban Pakistan, especially in the north. The Prithvi is a derivative of the Soviet-supplied SA-2 surface-to-air missile (SAM) designed for high-altitude air defense.

While the Prithvi is theoretically nuclear-capable, the official line is that both versions will be fielded with conventional warheads. The mission of the Army version of the Prithvi is suppression of concentrated armored vehicles and personnel by bombardment with warheads that contain clusters of submunitions. The Air Force version is to be used for air base attack, to destroy aircraft in the open, and to hamper runway repairs. It is clear from the lack of enthusiasm of India’s military services for these missile systems that their military effectiveness as conventionally armed systems is dubious. Armed with nuclear warheads, however, they unarguably would pose a mass-destruction threat to Pakistan’s urban areas and population. In any case, production of the Prithvi and its storage near Pakistan conveyed just such a political signal.

Agni, the medium-range ballistic missile, has been described as a "technology demonstrator." In fact, it is an experiment in rocket hybridization. It combines a solid-fuel first stage (based on the American Scout’s first-stage, solid-rocket motor) with the Prithvi liquid-fuel booster (derived from the Soviet SA-2 SAM) as the second stage. Agni was tested in 1994 to a range of approximately 1,500 km. After further development, it is to be capable of traveling 2,500 km with a payload of at least 1,000 kg. Based in eastern India, it could therefore reach some targets beyond Tibet, in southwestern China. Presumably, the same missile with a smaller but still nuclear-capable payload of 500 kg could reach farther east into more urbanized parts of China.

In the early 1990s, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) sought to obtain assistance and technology transfer from the Soviet Union’s space agency, Glavkosmos, to enable India to enter the field of cryogenic (cooled liquid-fueled) engines. While this was for heavy-lift, space launch vehicles, cryogenic engine technology happens to be what the United States, the Soviet Union, and China each adopted for their first ICBMs. Since the Soviet-Indian deal involved transfer of technology proscribed by the MTCR, the United States objected strenuously and, on May 11, 1992, imposed sanctions on Glavkosmos and ISRO for two years. Russia then modified the $250-million deal to provide no more than seven off-the-shelf cryogenic engines and dropped the commitment to transfer production technology. This permitted removal of U.S. sanctions on Russia’s Glavkosmos; those on ISRO ran their full two-year course.

Nuclear-Capable Aircraft

India has had nuclear-capable aircraft delivery systems for more than two decades. Its advanced nuclear-capable aircraft from the 1980s includes the British-French Jaguar, French Mirage 2000, and Soviet-supplied MiG-27 and MiG-29 strike aircraft.

Regional Tensions and U.S. Policy

Over the past decade, Indo-Pakistani relations have been marked by cycles of military tension as New Delhi has accused Islamabad of supporting militant separatist movements in Punjab and in Kashmir. In the winter of 1986-87, and again in the spring of 1990, and once again in 1993, it was widely feared that India and Pakistan might go to war. By the time of the 1990 crisis, both countries presumably possessed the ability to assemble and deploy nuclear weapons quickly, triggering concerns that if war erupted, it might lead to a nuclear confrontation or exchange.

India and Pakistan have adopted a number of limited, bilateral confidence building measures—e.g., pledges not to attack each other’s nuclear facilities, hot-line communications links, and military exercise notifications—that are intended to reduce the risk of inadvertent military conflict. These are described more fully in the Pakistan chapter of this book. India and China also have eased tensions along their border, with small steps dating back to Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Beijing in December 1988 and, more recently, through their agreement to a partial troop pullback by the end of 1995.

In recent years, the United States had shifted the focus of its non-proliferation policy toward India. From the time of India’s 1974 test until the mid-1980s, it gave priority to persuading India to reconsider joining the NPT and, short of that, to accept IAEA inspection on all of its nuclear facilities (full-scope safeguards). As the goal of convincing India to join the NPT faded under Presidents Bush and Clinton, however, U.S. policy efforts placed higher priority on fostering greater stability in the relationship between India and Pakistan—by means of Indo-Pakistani confidence-building measures, political accommodation, and normalization of relations. Washington also sought to persuade both states to cap their nuclear and missile capabilities as an initial step toward their ultimate elimination. It was assumed that India and Pakistan would recognize the end of the Cold War, deep reductions in U.S. and former Soviet strategic arsenals, and the commitment to a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty as strong incentives for curtailing their nuclear competition with one another.

Despite the shock to the non-proliferation regime of India’s 1974 test, Washington had never backed up its non-proliferation diplomacy toward India with the same kind of far-reaching sanctions on arms transfer and security assistance that it imposed on Pakistan in unsuccessful attempts to head off its development of nuclear arms in the 1970s and 1980s (see Pakistan chapter). In late 1992, however, the U.S. Congress added new provisions to the Foreign Assistance Act (Section 620F) calling on the U.S. president to pursue regional nuclear non-proliferation initiatives in South Asia and requiring the president to submit twice-yearly reports, beginning in April 1993, on the nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs of China, India, and Pakistan. The law expected the president to determine whether either of the two South Asian states of concern possessed a nuclear explosive device. While not imposing specific sanctions, this U.S. legislation for the first time specifically treated India on a par with Pakistan as a proliferation concern.

In a significant overhaul of U.S. non-proliferation legislation in 1994, Congress passed the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act (NPPA). This legislation for the first time contained financial sanctions that would be triggered by Indian acts of proliferation, such as a nuclear test, an official declaration of a nuclear weapons program, and certain other stipulated possibilities. Clinton Administration diplomacy toward India assumed that the Indian economic policy liberalization measures of 1991 could open up new ways of dealing with proliferation and security problems in the Subcontinent. Priority was given to dissuading India from developing and deploying nuclear-capable ballistic missiles.

 

Developments

India is one of the handful of countries in which proliferation [developments?] steadily worsened between early 1995 and 1998—a trend few acknowledged until India resumed nuclear testing in May 1998. Although not a party to it, India lobbied behind the scenes against indefinite extension of the NPT. India also showed signs in 1995 of readiness to resume nuclear testing; pressed forward with the fast-breeder reactor program; turned against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Material Cutoff initiative; reopened a former Soviet (now Russian) deal to supply nuclear reactors; provocatively moved Prithvi missiles to locations near its border with Pakistan; and began a major new buildup in acquisition of strike aircraft, smart bombs, and defensive missiles—with destabilizing implications for its relations with the presumably nuclear-armed Pakistan.

Nuclear Weapons Program: The Test Scare

In the mid-1990s, India moved into a condition of governing-party instability at the national level and came close to reversing its official policy of disclaiming nuclear weapons in 1995 and 1996 before breaking out openly with fresh nuclear testing in 1998. Maintaining denial of a nuclear weapons posture, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee of the outgoing Congress Party government stated in late 1995: "We have the capability but we have deliberately opted not to manufacture nuclear weapons." This official line was maintained by the two successor United Front coalition governments of Deve Gowda and I. K. Gujral. But pressure from domestic pro-nuclear interest groups and electoral competition with the pro-nuclear Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1995-96 brought India to the verge of new nuclear explosive testing. U.S. detection and disclosure of that effort temporarily checked it at that time.

In December 1995, the New York Times reported that U.S. spy satellites had detected increased activity at Pokaran, the site of India’s 1974 nuclear test, and intelligence experts inferred that the activity signified preparation for another nuclear test. India’s Foreign Ministry described the report as "highly speculative" and later denied that India was intending to stage a nuclear test. The NPPA contained automatic, no-waiver sanctions for any "non-nuclear-weapon state" that might detonate a nuclear device. In January 1996, after warning India about the consequences of a nuclear test, the United States accepted Indian assurances that no test was planned. However, India did not remove the monitoring equipment it installed at the test site before international pressure forced it to suspend work at the site, and the same equipment probably was used for the May 1998 tests.

The testing controversy preceded India’s April-May 1996 parliamentary elections, which pitted the ruling Congress Party against the ultra-nationalist BJP. The BJP has stated it would deploy nuclear weapons and both the Prithvi and Agni missiles, and that it would refuse to sign any international non-proliferation agreements. In the elections, the BJP won the largest bloc of parliamentary seats and attempted to form a government under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but he could not assemble a majority coalition to support his government and relinquished power within two weeks. It has since been reported that Vajpayee tried to initiate the nuclear tests then, but could not get his orders carried through because the BJP could not win a vote of confidence. The United Front, which then took over the national government, was a fragile center-left coalition of numerous parties. It vowed to retain the "nuclear option" until there is global nuclear disarmament but showed no enthusiasm for any major nuclear policy shift.

In the meantime, India’s nuclear energy establishment renewed its commitment to the fast-breeder and plutonium-reprocessing programs. In early 1997, Rajagopal Chidambaram, chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC), announced that the 500-MWt Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR), then still at the proposal stage, "could be built in seven years" once given the go-ahead. The PFBR, he said, "will be used to breed, not burn up, plutonium." The PFBR will use plutonium separated from the unsafeguarded spent fuel from India’s "indigenous" pressurized, heavy-water reactors (PHWRs), although it may take many years for the Kalpakkam facility to separate enough plutonium from unsafeguarded PHWR spent fuel for the core of the PFBR. The Department of Atomic Energy has requested funding to begin construction of the PFBR in 1999, aiming to have the reactor ready for operation in 2007.

In 1996, India significantly increased its ability to reprocess plutonium free from safeguards by commissioning a large-scale separation facility at Kalpakkam. A year before, IAEC Chairman Chidambaram had announced that the semi-commercial-scale reprocessing plant at Kalpakkam, India’s third plutonium-separation facility, was "nearly completed" and would undergo trial operations "in less than one year’s time." The new reprocessing plant at Kalpakkam was then officially inaugurated in March 1996 and began "cold" commissioning the following quarter. Rated with a capacity of 125 MTHM/year, the Kalpakkam plant is to separate plutonium for India’s PFBR as well as for the future commercial-scale, fast-breeder reactor. The most recent reports indicate that the Kalpakkam plant will begin operation in 1998.

At the end of 1997, India’s DAE reported new efforts to upgrade the centrifuge uranium-enrichment program—ostensibly for submarine reactors. U.S. government awareness of these efforts prompted the U.S. Department of Commerce to place the DAE subsidiary, Indian Rare Earths, Ltd. (IRE), which operates the Rattehalli (Mysore) enrichment facility, "on a short list of Indian organizations, which, because of their role in procuring [importing] unsafeguarded nuclear equipment and ballistic missile equipment, were to be denied any transfer of technology or U.S.–origin exports without express permission of the U.S. government after an interagency review."

Civil Nuclear Power Program

India’s Department of Atomic Energy has endeavored to build indigenous nuclear electric capacity to meet its planned goals, but setbacks have forced improvisation in its "go it alone" approach. India’s import options have been constrained since the late 1970s by the reluctance of advanced supplier countries to sell it nuclear equipment. In 1992, all NSG members finally subscribed to the policy of denying nuclear exports to states like India that refuse full-scope IAEA safeguards.

In the early 1990s, however, Indian discussions with Russia resumed on a tentative agreement dating back to 1987 in which the Soviet Union had been prepared to sell India two light-water reactors. The original Indian deal with the Soviet Union was to purchase two 440-MWe VVERs, but the revised deal calls for Russia to provide two 1,000-MWe VVERs on a turnkey basis. Russia intends that these reactors will be under IAEA safeguards but does not insist that India accept full-scope safeguards (on all its nuclear facilities) to complete this deal.

The United States has questioned the legality of this Russian-Indian nuclear supply plan on the grounds that Russia agreed in 1992 to require the NSG full-scope safeguards condition on future nuclear exports. Russia, the nuclear successor of the Soviet Union, has taken the view that this particular agreement is "grandfathered" as a Soviet commitment predating 1992. If Russia fulfills this plan to construct two power reactors in south India, the added capacity of 2,000 MWe will move India a significant step forward toward the goal it set in 1996 of installing 20,000 MWe by the year 2020. This will, however, represent a major break with India’s past policy of attempting to rely exclusively on internal resources for its expansion of nuclear power.

Ballistic and Cruise Missile Programs

India stepped up its ballistic missile activities in the 1995-97 period. The Prithvi was further tested on January 27, 1996, and February 23, 1997, and the Army version was put into low-rate production. Despite international calls for restraint, reports indicated that India might have "deployed" about a dozen Prithvi missiles—said to be equipped only with conventional warheads—in the spring of 1997, at Jullundur, Punjab, near the border with Pakistan. Indian officials later clarified that the missiles were not operationally deployed—presumably, that is, not mounted on mobile launchers or on concrete launch pads, fueled with their liquid propellant, mated with warheads, or ready for immediate launch, but instead stored in military facilities. Whatever the immediate launch status is of these Prithvi missiles, their transfer to deployment areas in the border region implies that they could be put into operation within days, if not hours, and certainly compresses the period of time for diplomatic intervention in a military crisis.

This semi-deployment of Prithvi in early 1997 was a serious setback to years of U.S. policy efforts to avert nuclear-capable missile deployment in South Asia—and was bound to provoke some form of reciprocal military action by Pakistan. One result was soon evident in Pakistan’s announced testing in July 1997 of the Hatf-3 ballistic missile, with a claimed range of 600 km, easily sufficient to strike New Delhi.

Other setbacks to U.S. urging of Indian restraint in missile development appear likely. Domestic pressures mounted in 1997 to revive the Agni program, which had been tentatively shelved in March 1994. Prime Minister Deve Gowda’s government initially seemed to resist pressure in December 1996 when it deferred a decision to revive development of the missile on the grounds that it was not needed and would be very expensive to deploy. In April 1997, however, a BJP-influenced parliamentary panel fought back, demanding that the government revive the Agni program as essential to Indian national security. In late July 1997, Defense Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav bowed to pressure and announced in Parliament that India would revive the Agni medium-range-missile development program.

India claims to be developing a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) known as Sagarika, apparently based on the Prithvi. There have been reports that India began development in 1994 of an intercontinental-range ballistic missile (ICBM) called Surya; an ICBM capability could be derived from the solid fuel stages of its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PLSV). A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, head of India’s missile development program, told the Indian press in the fall of 1997 that India is also developing cruise missiles, i.e., unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) that can carry warheads. One type of Indian UAV, known as Lakshya, is used as a target drone. Another, the Nishant, is designed with sensors as a cross-border surveillance and target-acquisition platform.

Nuclear-Capable Aircraft

India also has been enhancing its nuclear air-delivery capability by purchasing and mass producing under license from Russia the Su-30MK fighter-bomber (supposedly equivalent to the American F-15E). The order was placed in November 1996, and deliveries of the first 8 of 40 aircraft began in 1997. India also has just concluded a $300-million deal with Russia to acquire 6 Ilyushin-78 air-refueling tankers to extend the range of its Su-30MK and other strike aircraft.

Missile Defense Plans

A new phase of missile competition was launched in South Asia by India’s steps to acquire integrated air defense and anti-tactical ballistic missile (ATBM) systems through the restoration of military sales channels with Russia and growing ties with Israeli suppliers. India has reviewed both the Arrow system, being developed by Israel in cooperation with the United States, and Russia’s SA-10 and SA-12 systems. India reportedly will concentrate on a combination of the Russian S-300V (SA-12, Giant) ATBM system (touted as similar to the U.S. Patriot system).

India’s acquisition of a sophisticated air defense system with anti-missile capabilities theoretically could offset Pakistan’s planned reliance on the M-11 ballistic missiles supplied by China and on Pakistan’s high-performance tactical strike aircraft (e.g., F-16 and reconditioned Mirage III) as its primary nuclear-capable delivery systems. Indian anti-missile systems could therefore impair Pakistan’s confidence in the deterrent value of its current nuclear capabilities. If this change occurred suddenly, Pakistan might, in order to restore that deterrent value, feel compelled to adopt a nuclear launch-on-warning (hair-trigger) posture, creating an inherently unstable military relationship. If India’s introduction of defenses took a long time, however, Pakistan—notwithstanding its smaller defense budget and indigenous resource base—probably would respond to this offense-defense challenge from India by building up its nuclear offensive deterrent incrementally. This could entail increasing the number of nuclear weapons available for delivery by both missiles and aircraft, acquiring cruise missiles, and developing decoys and penetration aids to saturate India’s active defenses.

Reaction to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

India’s 1996 decision to oppose the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)—an arms control and disarmament measure India had championed for the past forty years—probably was motivated by fear that compliance with the treaty would deprive it of a militarily meaningful nuclear option. On June 20, eight days before the U.N.–sponsored Conference on Disarmament (CD) was to complete a draft of the CTBT, India announced it would not sign the treaty. The official reason it gave was that the declared nuclear-weapon states refused to agree to the new Indian demand that the treaty must contain a provision for a "timebound framework for nuclear disarmament," obligating the nuclear-weapon states to negotiate the elimination of their nuclear weapons within a fixed period of ten or so years.

Shortly after, India withdrew from the treaty’s verification system in an effort to keep itself off of the list of states that must ratify the treaty for it to enter into force. The entry-into-force provision was then changed to require that the 44 countries that are members of the CD and that operate nuclear reactors must ratify the treaty for it to enter into force. India opposed this provision as an infringement on its sovereignty. Accordingly, on August 20, 1996, India formally vetoed the proposed text of the treaty, which had been negotiated by the CD for over two and a half years. Despite India’s opposition to the CTBT, the text of the treaty was presented to the U.N. General Assembly by Australia and approved overwhelmingly by a vote of 158-3, with only India, Libya, and Bhutan voting against. The treaty was opened for signature at the United Nations on September 24, 1996, and over 130 states, including all 5 declared nuclear-weapon states, had signed it as of late 1997.

India subsequently opposed the proposed Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty to end the production of weapons-usable fissile material; indeed, India’s Ministry of Defense opposed the treaty concept in its annual report for 1995-96.

Kashmir

In October 1996, the pro-India/pro-autonomy National Conference Party led by Farooq Abdullah won handily in the first State Assembly elections held in Jammu and Kashmir since 1990, when New Delhi assumed emergency control over the province and sent in large army and paramilitary forces to help quell uprisings by Muslim insurgents.

In mid-1996, after the United Front assumed power at the center, Prime Minister Gowda offered Kashmir "autonomy" in return for an end to the violence—a sign of potential flexibility not apparent in previous Congress governments. However, the United Front coalition government in Delhi was inherently weak, and Prime Minister Gowda was pushed aside on April 13, 1997, by pressure from the Congress Party, whose support he needed to avoid a parliamentary vote of no-confidence. I. K. Gujral, who succeeded Gowda on April 19, was even more dependent on the Congress Party and was forced to resign on November 28, 1997. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings, the BJP—a rising power in national politics—opposed "autonomy" for Jammu and Kashmir and blocked further flexibility in Delhi. In May 1998, shortly after the BJP formed the new government, L. K. Advani, the BJP minister for Home Affairs (internal security) greatly escalated tension with Pakistan by bellicose statements that India should prepare to recover forcibly the areas of Kashmir under Pakistani control. This and stepped up Indian military pressure along the line of control in Kashmir was said to have been a pivotal factor in forcing Pakistan, instead of taking the high road, to react immediately to India’s nuclear tests of May 11 and 13 with tests of its own.

India’s Relations with Pakistan and China

Following Gujral’s installation as India’s Prime Minister and the February 1997 election of Nawaz Sharif as Pakistan’s Prime Minister, the two had exchanged overtures aiming for a resumption of genuine bilateral dialogue. India and Pakistan began a new series of high-level meetings in March 1997—the first at the foreign ministerial level in four years, and the first at the head-of-government level in eight years. When Gujral and Sharif met at a summit of South Asian leaders on May 12, 1997, they agreed to establish a hot line between the prime ministers’ offices. In a compromise, India agreed to include discussion of Kashmir in a broader agenda of dialogue with Pakistan, while Pakistan agreed to drop its insistence that progress on Kashmir be a prior condition for solving issues in other areas.

Nevertheless, talks in the summer and fall of 1997 made little progress. By November, moreover, crisis had overtaken both governments: Nawaz Sharif was caught in a tri-cornered battle with the president and chief justice of Pakistan, and Gujral’s United Front coalition government was ousted by Congress Party pressure, setting the stage in India for mid-term parliamentary elections. Roughly as foreseen at the end of 1997, the BJP, which has a very hard line on Kashmir, won enough parliamentary seats in April 1998 to be able to form a government with the help of several small, allied parties.

With respect to China, India’s relations had been improving slowly but markedly for over a decade. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had initiated a rapprochement with China by visiting Beijing in December 1988—in the first visit by an Indian head of government since his grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru. Limited improvements in official exchange and local cross-border trade had begun in the late 1980s, and working-level discussions of the boundary disputes followed. Sino-Indian relations continued to improve after early 1995 with the December 1996 visit of Chinese President Jiang Zemin to India, where the two sides signed an agreement to reduce border tensions. India’s May 1998 nuclear tests appear to have taken China just as much by surprise as they did other members of the international community. Early Indian cabinet-level statements justifying the tests on the basis of a nuclear threat from China threatened to undo years of confidence-building between Beijing and Delhi.

Chemical and Biological Weapons

India, an early signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), hurriedly ratified the convention on September 3, 1996, taking a place as chair on the CWC’s executive council. On June 26, 1997, the last day allowed by the CWC provisions for such declarations, India announced that it had a hitherto secret chemical weapons stockpile as well as production facilities and declared that it would eliminate them. Although previously not known to be producing chemical weapons, India’s well-developed chemical industry was known to have produced and exported certain precursors necessary for chemical weapons agents to countries of concern. An Indian firm has been accused of assisting Iran’s chemical weapons program. India is also a party to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and is assessed by the Pentagon to have the technical capability to develop offensive biological warfare agents—although, in the case of biological weapons, India is believed to have worked on defensive measures only.

 

Prospects

Even before conducting its May 1998 nuclear tests and declaring itself a nuclear-weapon power, India had been pressing ahead with sensitive nuclear activities in enrichment, plutonium reprocessing, and breeder reactor installation, as well as with ballistic missile development. India apparently was barely restrained by diplomatic intervention from new nuclear testing in 1995 and again, during the uncertainty of the BJP’s 13-day tenure, in early 1996. India was poised to quickly resume nuclear and medium-range missile testing and to step up production and deployment of short-range missiles before the BJP came to power in April 1998. Pakistan was responding in 1996-97, trying to match each nuclear and missile development in India. Most hesitated then to label the South Asia action-reaction cycle as a full-fledged nuclear arms race, but that conclusion was unavoidable after May 1998. The immediate issue now is whether this nuclear and missile arms race can be slowed and eventually capped, short of actual war.

Since the Kashmir issue is still unresolved, the India-Pakistan nuclear arms competition brings the Subcontinent closer to the edge of a nuclear catastrophe. The nuclear tests triggered U.S. 1994 Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act (NPPA) sanctions on India, and then on Pakistan. Since the tests, the primary efforts of the U.S. Administration and of other leading states in the United Nations and in the Group of Eight (G-8) have been designed to contain the effects of India’s and Pakistan’s proliferation, to begin looking for the means to defuse the root problems between India and Pakistan (including the Kashmir dispute), and to stabilize the arms race pressures between both countries.

Undoubtedly, efforts will be made to commit both India and Pakistan, notwithstanding the changed situation, to engage in serious bilateral dialogue and to return to arms control and non-proliferation measures that are in their interests. India hinted right after its May 1998 detonations that it may, under certain conditions, be prepared to commit itself to certain provisions of the CTBT. This contorted posture should be explored warily, if at all; bait and switch has often been the rule in India’s positioning on international non-proliferation treaties. No one should now be surprised to find that India’s conditions for joining just pieces of the CTBT will detour and bog down, rather than smoothe, that treaty’s entry into force.

The most far-reaching danger in need of policy attention is that India’s defiance of the non-proliferation regime, unless stemmed, will continue a chain reaction of nuclear proliferation, propelling weak NPT adherents and problem states not only to step up their own efforts to acquire nuclear weapons but to leave the NPT, or threaten to, arguing that the Treaty and regime enforcement mechanisms are no longer viable. Repairing this damage is going to be a difficult job, but a necessary one. Unless this is done, the non-proliferation regime may actually begin to wither. Repair and reconstruction of the regime will require a sustained review of non-proliferation policies and tools and the development of more effective approaches. Otherwise, as The Economist of London depicted on a recent cover, the 1998 detonations on the Subcontinent may lead to "a bomb in every backyard."

 

Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998