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International Affairs
July 1998
International Nuclear Relations After The Indian And Pakistani Test Explosions
By William Walker *
After India’s refusal to endorse the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in August 1996, the possibility that it might test nuclear warheads was widely discussed, especially in light of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) long advocacy of the ‘Hindu bomb’. 1 The explosions on 11 and 13 May nevertheless came as a great shock. Although no legal undertakings had been broken, there was a palpable sense of violation, of hard-won and cherished norms being trampled by an exultant India, and of neighbours being threatened with intimidation. The sense of crisis was accentuated by the after-shock of Pakistan’s own tests in late May, and by the coincidence of these events with upheavals in Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia. Anxious questions are now being asked. What kind of India, and what kind of Asia, are emerging in these late years of the century? Are we threatened by a renewed militarization—and nuclearization—of interstate relations?
Nuclear history can be seen as a history of shocks, of the illuminations that they have provided, and of reactions to both the shocks and the illuminations. In their effects on currents in international relations, some have been largely positive (the Cuban missile crisis), others both positive and negative (the revelations about Iraq’s nuclear weapon programme), and others largely negative (perhaps controversially, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Although shocks are always sui generis, outcomes are shaped by their natures and contexts, by prior developments in the international system (including developments in norms and institutions), by great powers’ contemporary relations, interests and capacities, and by expectations of what may lie ahead. 2
On each of these counts, the Indian and Pakistani explosions present exceptional dangers. Relations in South Asia are highly conflictual and volatile, deterrence is unlikely to be stable given India’s and Pakistan’s proximity and common borders, the history of efforts by the United States and other powers to bring peace to the region is a depressing one, China’s involvement in the region adds numerous complications, and there are risks that other states (Iran is often mentioned) might try to emulate India and Pakistan. Furthermore, there have been some signs of growing uneasiness in relations between great powers, in the UN Security Council and other contexts, and there are many concerns over political stability in the wake of economic setbacks in the former Soviet Union, East Asia and elsewhere.
To make matters still worse, international nuclear relations had already suffered a marked deterioration which began in the mid-1990s after the great advances that followed the end of the Cold War. Negotiated treaties were not ratified, proposals for new treaties lay dormant, and the air was again filled with recrimination. Just two days before India’s first test explosions, a meeting in Geneva of states parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) had ended in disarray. 3 The full implications of the events in South Asia can only be grasped if we understand why so little went right in 1995-8. The explanation will be found partly in the renewed military and political utility attached to nuclear weapons by key states, partly in a complacent attitude towards the non-proliferation regime that took root in some capitals after the successful NPT extension conference, and partly in a set of problems that began to beset diplomacy as the nuclearized world was reduced to a ‘hard core’ of eight states.
It is easy to lapse into pessimism over the outlook. In the main body of this article, I wish to stress the opportunities for arms control that can now be opened up in the aftermath of the crisis in South Asia. Indeed, governments have to seize these opportunities if a fatal descent into an international order based on nuclear threat and counterthreat is to be averted. They have to re-dedicate themselves to implementing the set of agreements reached at the 1995 extension conference of the NPT. But their responsibilities go further than this. They have to make a deliberate effort to transform the climate and processes of international nuclear relations, and to clear a path to the establishment of new norms and institutions (including treaties). Above all, they have to react positively and creatively.
The great advance, 1987-1995
The greatest of all periods in nuclear arms control (broadly defined) opened with the meeting of Gorbachev and Reagan at Reykjavik in October 1986 which marked the end of the nuclear Cold War. 4 In the years that followed, a deeply conflictual relationship was replaced by one that was essentially cooperative; strategic doctrines and military practices were revised; nuclear forces were withdrawn from central and eastern Europe; and huge programmes to eliminate the bulk of the nuclear hardware assembled during the Cold War were initiated, guided by treaties and other agreements. 5
Contemporaneously, equally significant advances occurred in the non-proliferation regime, which acquired new instruments and attracted many more adherents. 6 Two particular trends lay behind these advances. One was the recasting of many states’ external relations in the 1980s and 1990s, partly as they freed themselves from Cold War allegiances, partly as they gave emphasis to economic and political modernization through liberal economic policies and, in some contexts, democratization. In the countries and regions that followed this course (Latin America prominent among them), efforts to acquire nuclear weapons or the options to produce them came to be regarded as costly distractions. Alongside the advances in conventional weapons technology that were so vividly demonstrated in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, nuclear weapons began to appear anachronistic and irrelevant to many states. 7
Among the states that reshaped their attitudes towards the non-proliferation regime in this period, none was more important than China. Its accession to the NPT in 1992, its tightening of controls on exports of nuclear and missile technology, and its increasingly active participation in the UN Security Council and in the discussions among the five permanent members (P5) on nuclear and other security issues—all of these developments were rooted in China’s pressing interest in modernizing its economy through access to foreign markets, capital and technology.
The other source of advance in the non-proliferation regime was the deliberate effort by states, led by the United States, to strengthen the regime in order to increase security in the complex political order emerging out of the end of the Cold War. Some realist theorists (most famously Mearsheimer) predicted that the replacement of a bipolar by a multipolar order would lead to a rush by states to acquire nuclear arms. 8 Fearful that this might indeed occur, states instead cooperated to bind the international community still more tightly to the norms and institutions of non-proliferation. The urgency of this task was brought home by revelations in the early 1990s of Iraq’s and North Korea’s nuclear weapon programmes, and by the realization that a number of nuclear-armed states could emerge from the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In retrospect, the requirement to hold a conference in 1995 to consider whether and how to extend the lifetime of the NPT was also fortunate. 9 Concerns that the treaty might lapse or be destabilized gave impetus to achieving the denuclearization of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine by 1995, to negotiating the CTBT, and to expanding the number of states signing and ratifying the NPT. 10
When considering subsequent events, it is important to recognize the immensity of the change, and of the achievement, that occurred in nuclear politics between 1986 and 1995. The period was crowned by the NPT’s indefinite extension in May 1995. Furthermore, the Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament which formed part of the extension conference’s decision gave expression to an expectation of more to come. The mood of optimism was evident in the flurry of attention given to complete nuclear disarmament in the mid-1990s, culminating in the publication in August 1996 of the Canberra Commission’s Report on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. 11
The great frustration, 1995-1998
Progress in nuclear arms control did not cease in 1995. Various initiatives continued to be pursued in the following years, including the CTBT’s negotiation (concluded in August 1996), the IAEA safeguards reforms (concluded in May 1997), and the negotiation of nuclear weapon-free zones (notably in Africa). One can also point to the continuing success in dismantling Iraq’s weapons programme and to the intermittent but genuine progress in implementing the Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea. 12
There are also limits to the administrative and diplomatic resources available to states. In the months and years after the NPT extension conference, much time and energy was devoted to the implementation and ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention (it had been concluded in January 1993), the negotiation of verification provisions for the Biological Weapons Convention, and the achievement of a ban on anti-personnel landmines. In many countries, particularly at senior levels in government, less time was made available to attend to nuclear issues than in previous years.
Even taking this into account, however, the period 1995-8 was marked by a gradual deterioration in the climate and achievement of international nuclear relations, and by mounting frustration over the inability to take matters forward on a number of fronts. This was exemplified by the Russian government’s continuing failure to ratify START II and by its difficulties in implementing the ‘transparency and irreversibility’ agreements with the United States; 13 by India’s refusal to join the CTBT and thereby to allow it to enter into force; 14 by the inability to open negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament on a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT); by slow progress in implementing plutonium and highly enriched uranium disposition programmes; and most recently and dramatically, by the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests.
The reasons for this change of fortunes are complex and are to be found in both the internal politics and the external relations of states. Two broad explanations can be offered. One is that increased utility came to be attached (and was allowed to be attached) to nuclear weapons in most if not all of the eight states with active nuclear weapon programmes. Nuclear Weapons did not regain the central roles ascribed to them during the Cold War—this was not back to square one—but they began to gain fresh importance in certain political and military contexts. In consequence, some arms control measures that entailed further restraint on nuclear powers became more elusive. The second broad explanation is that nuclear arms control objectives and processes became tangled and confused, partly out of deliberate intent and partly because states found themselves confronted with dilemmas to which there were no ready solutions.
Changing perceptions of the utility of nuclear weapons
A renewed attachment to nuclear arms was evident in three political arenas. The first was Russia, where there was increasing awareness of the serious loss of political, economic and military power that had been suffered in the 1990s, a loss that appeared more grievous when set against the reinvigoration of both the United States and China. In particular, NATO expansion gave nuclear weapons fresh prestige in Russian eyes. They became the only unassailable emblem of Russian power. It is also worth noting that Russian attachment to nuclear arms was more openly expressed after commitments had finally been secured from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to renounce them and return their inventories to Russia. Thereafter, Russia cared less about reactions to its nuclear rhetoric in its near abroad.
Although trends in Russian politics provoked concerns in Washington, the US government reacted mainly by pressing for further arms reductions, and by seeking ways of softening the impact of NATO expansion, in the justified expectation that Russia would be forced by economic circumstances to return to the negotiating table. Indeed, the Russian government showed its eagerness by proposing that START III negotiations should begin before START II was ratified. 15 Throughout, Washington appeared more concerned by the risks of leaks (of both materials and expertise) from Russia’s decaying nuclear infrastructure than by any revival of the strategic threat posed by Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
Events in the Middle East arguably provided the more important driver of reassessments in US strategic nuclear policies. In 1995, an Israeli government had stated for the first time that it might contemplate abandoning its nuclear deterrent. 16 However, Israel’s subsequent retreat from the regional peace process increased its psychological reliance on military power and entrenched its determination to avoid restraint on its nuclear arms and to negate any attempt by another regional power to threaten it with weapons of mass destruction. Israel became increasingly alarmed by the prospect that Iran (or Iraq) might gain the capacity to attack it with missiles armed with chemical or biological warheads. Its alarm was infectious in the United States, and indeed may deliberately have been relayed to Washington in an attempt to bind America into the protection of the Israeli government’s political and security agendas. 17
In response to these and other pressures, the US government strengthened its commitment to theatre missile defences (TMD), and began to elevate the role of nuclear weapons as deterrents against attacks from chemical and biological weapons. In turn, these developments provoked negative reactions in Russia and China which foresaw that effective TMD programmes, and the ABM systems that might emerge out of them, could swing the strategic balance in favour of the United States. In addition, threats to use nuclear against chemical and biological weapons were interpreted by many NPT parties as retreats from the negative security assurances that the five nuclear weapon states (NWS) had issued in April 1995. 18
The third arena in which attachment to nuclear weapons hardened after 1995 was South Asia. The Indo-Pakistani conflict began at the same time as the Cold War and has now outlasted it. The end of the Cold War has brought no amelioration. On the contrary, the dispute has intensified, partly in reaction to events in Kashmir. Although neither Pakistan nor India deployed nuclear weapons before the recent tests, a vigorous ‘capability race’ involving missiles, warhead design and fissile materials has been under way over many years. 19
It is a mistake to view India’s actions just as reactions to Pakistan, or even to China, without whose assistance Pakistan could not have established its capabilities. Perversely, India’s deepening affection for nuclear weapons has also been propelled by its hatred (this is not too strong a word) of the non-proliferation regime—by its intense grievance over being locked into what it sees as an inferior status due to the regime’s politico-legal stratification. 20 The term ‘nuclear apartheid’ which India has promulgated in recent years gives accurate expression to this grievance: Indians perceive themselves as victims of an immoral order and as being held in a position of inferiority by structures of power over which they have little influence.
These sentiments were aggravated by the great strides in arms control taken after the end of the Cold War. India’s fury was aroused especially by the decision to grant an indefinite extension to the NPT (interpreted as giving the NWS an eternal legal right to hold nuclear weapons), and by the negotiation of the CTBT (which would have affected India’s ability more than that of the NWS to deploy nuclear arms). In addition, India’s sense of disadvantaged isolation was heightened by the rapprochement between Russia and the United States, and by China’s political and economic expansion and its increasing absorption into the institutions and practices of collective security. Whereas open-door policies and economic liberalization appeared to be accompanied by a genuine Chinese embrace of internationalism, this did not happen to the same extent in India.
India’s nuclear tests on 11 and 13 May can therefore be seen as a lashing out—against Pakistan, against China, against the nuclear weapon states, against the non-proliferation regime. India’s nuclear weapon programme has always been deeply motivated by the thirst for prestige. The Indian Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee, proclaimed with evident emotion on television on 11 May that ‘India is now a nuclear weapon state’. Hence the dilemma now facing the international community: there may be no end to India’s defiance if this status is not granted; yet it is impossible to grant this favour within existing structures of international law and without creating serious problems elsewhere (for instance, in the Middle East over Israel).
It is tempting to seek general causes of the increased utility that came to be attached to nuclear weapons in these three arenas. One common factor is the rise of nationalism (including the distinctive US brand) together with, in Israel and India, the rise of parties with religious agendas. Both tend to increase interest in representative symbols of power and encourage an uncompromising reliance upon that power.
But one should not press such generalizations too far. It is more correct to treat developments in the three arenas as being largely sui generis. It is also possible to regard the policy developments in Russia and even in the Middle East as temporary phenomena, driven by certain events (NATO expansion) and governments (that of Prime Minister Netanyahu). In more propitious circumstances, one can imagine nuclear weapons again losing salience in both contexts.
However, developments in the three arenas have all interacted and been influential at the systemic level. They have had significant implications, singly and in combination, for arms control regimes: for the political and normative debates conducted within them; for the ability to develop new multilateral instruments and use them as remedies in troubled regions; and for political relations between leading powers.
Normative and procedural dilemmas in nuclear arms control
At the regime level, arms control was also increasingly bedevilled in 1995-8 by two linked problems, one concerning the rights of, and relations between, different categories of states, the other concerning objectives and the processes by which those objectives might be attained.
The first might be termed the ‘2 + 3 + 3 + 183’ problem. 21 Hitherto, nuclear arms control among the eight states with current nuclear weapon programmes has largely been conducted bilaterally by the United States and USSR/Russia, with China, France and the UK as onlookers and Israel, India and Pakistan outside the frame. However, as US and Russian arsenals were reduced, and as attempts were made to construct universal norms and treaties that would everywhere stem the development and production of nuclear weapons, so pressures rose to involve all eight states and have them bound by the same constraints. These pressures were increased by desires of the non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS) parties to the NPT to have more say over the arms control agenda and to promote measures that would assist disarmament. These pressures and interests came together in the CTBT negotiations held between 1994 and 1996.
However, the situations faced by the eight states were different and highly asymmetrical, especially in regard to the scale, qualities and deployment of capabilities. Thus the US and Russian arsenals were an order of magnitude larger than the British, French and Chinese arsenals; these five states (and Israel) had deployed nuclear weapons and had integrated them into military strategies, while India and Pakistan had not yet done so; and stocks of weapons material possessed by the eight states were very different in kind and scale. 22 Moreover, India, Pakistan and Israel had come to ascribe special political and strategic value to nuclear weapons and were thus the least prepared to accept restraint. India’s and Pakistan’s more limited capabilities and experience also meant that constraints on production and testing might push them in the direction of disarmament. This concern underpinned the Indian claim that the CTBT would remain fundamentally discriminatory unless the NWS themselves embraced disarmament.
The situations facing each state were thus distinctive. Common approaches easily became bogged down in suspicion and complexity and became vulnerable to the veto of any one of the eight states. Weighing against this were the undoubted advantages of multilateral approaches in terms of simplicity, universality and regional stability, not least in the capping of India’s and Pakistan’s capabilities.
‘2 + 3 + 3 + 183’ represented only one cut of the cake. It intersected with a set of politico-strategic relations defined more accurately by ‘4 + 3 + 3 + 1’ (USA/Russia/France/UK + USA/China/Russia + China/India/Pakistan + Israel) with the 183 non-nuclear weapon states being variously arranged among these groupings (such as Germany and Poland with the four, and Egypt and Iran with the one). Taking these two categorizations together, the implication was that arms control processes had to be pursued at many levels and in many geometries; but that universal approaches built around common norms and instruments have great merits as they could consensually cut across all of the political and symbolic boundaries.
It was in the period after 1995 that these problems began to confront the international community in a serious way. In some degree, they were consequences of the great successes in arms reduction and non-proliferation which were focusing attention on the remaining eight states and on their interrelationships. They were also consequences of the increasing urgency attached to addressing the security risks posed by the comparatively unconstrained weapon programmes of the three states outside the main arms control regimes—Israel, India and Pakistan.
The second issue that bedevilled arms control was disarmament. After the great successes of 1987-95, what should be the fundamental objective of nuclear arms control (broadly defined)? Should it be complete nuclear disarmament, or a ‘low-salience’ nuclear environment, or something else? If nuclear disarmament were rejected, how could any alternative be reconciled with the NPT commitment to pursue disarmament? If disarmament were accepted as the objective, how should the processes leading to it be managed?
Contemporary debates about disarmament have been conducted almost entirely within expert communities comprising government officials and representatives of international organizations and NGOs. 23 There has therefore been no preparation of the domestic political ground for disarmament in any of the eight states possessing nuclear weapon programmes; and the elite groups that determine weapons policies have shown little desire to promote it. 24 Indeed, it is unlikely that the US and Soviet/Russian governments could have made such progress after 1986 if they had been required to agree on a final destination, not least because they would have faced punishing internal debates. Advocacy of nuclear disarmament has therefore mainly come from within epistemic communities, and intragovernmental debates before and after 1995 largely took place out of the need to respond to international pressure. 25
But the NPT’s fundamental aspiration (some would say obligation) is complete disarmament. This aspiration has gained fresh life in the 1990s and was strongly endorsed at the 1995 NPT extension conference. The NWS therefore faced a dilemma: how to support disarmament without tying themselves to its realization. The result was constant ambiguity, often leading to accusations of bad faith.
The NWS’ justified or unjustified reluctance to embrace disarmament helped nurture a politics of grievance within the non-proliferation regime, especially among states belonging to the non-aligned movement. 26 However, complete disarmament also became a mantra for the promotion of special interests. For Arab states, disarmament was code for the disarmament of Israel, while for India it was code for the disempowerment of China and the other NWS. Together, these interests and grievances gave rise to the adoption by a coalition of states of an increasingly uncompromising stance on disarmament.
One can go further. In the 1990s, the NPT’s normative concentration on disarmament, and the political games that states played around it, inhibited the development and enunciation of a coherent set of nuclear arms control objectives and of a process for achieving those objectives. Within expert communities there may now be a broad consensus on the superiority of an evolutionary, step-by-step, open-ended approach to disarmament over the ‘time-limited’ approach advocated by the Indian government; 27 but its adoption has not yet proved possible at an intergovernmental level.
The costs of disagreements over disarmament showed up especially after 1995 in bitter disputes over the CTBT’s final text, in the failure to initiate negotiations of the FMCT in the Conference on Disarmament (CD), and in damage wrought to the climate of relations among NPT parties. In the CD, which acts under consensus rules, India—backed by some non-aligned states—made its participation in FMCT negotiations conditional upon the formation of an ad hoc committee on nuclear disarmament, a condition that the NWS refused to meet. At the PrepCom meeting in Geneva in early 1998, Canada and South Africa led efforts to win agreement on establishment of a committee that could at least discuss disarmament. These efforts were thwarted especially, in the eyes of many participants, by the United States.
This has been a dispute about rights as well as commitments. The NWS have worried that their rights to determine nuclear weapon policies, including the timing, purpose and contents of arms control negotiations, would be eroded if disarmament were to be formally addressed in an intergovernmental setting. They have also worried lest negotiations (for instance, within the START process) on sensitive issues pertaining to nuclear arms be blighted if conducted under the gaze of a wider community of states. 28 For their part, the NNWS have understandably been reluctant to concede that they have no rights in such matters, given the global nature of nuclear threats and the rights that they have themselves ceded by renouncing nuclear weapons.
Progress in multilateral arms control was therefore greatly complicated by the ‘2 + 3 + 3 + 183’ problems and the disputes over disarmament in 1995-8, and by their frequent entanglement. On the positive side, these were symptoms of success and were bound to emerge, albeit not necessarily with such debilitating consequences, as attention became focused on the eight states that comprised the nuclear world’s hard core. On the negative side, they have left a pile of unresolved problems and unfinished business—an unfortunate background against which to face the challenges posed by events in South Asia.
Dangers and opportunities arising from the Indian and Pakistani test explosions
This article is being written in the second half of May, soon after the Indian (and then Pakistani) test explosions. Although many states delivered strong rebukes, and many took steps to implement economic sanctions, the initial reaction was highly variable and generally indecisive. 29 Governments faced an extremely complex and volatile situation that did not lend itself to simple remedies. In late May, there are signs of increasing resolution and coordination as the gravity of the situation becomes apparent.
At one level, one can sympathize with India’s inherited predicament. Here was a proud and ambitious nation-state, the world’s largest democracy, founded in traumatic circumstances after generations of foreign domination, surrounded by anxious and unfriendly states, but with pretensions to become a modern and respected international power. Yet its nuclear pretensions were thwarted by the NPT’s restriction of the number of ‘legitimate’ weapon states, it had to look on as the five anointed states enjoyed wide privileges under the treaty, it was subjected to the indignity of trade embargoes over many years, and it was constantly being pressed to join the NPT and other treaties against its will. 30
But this predicament cannot condone the acts of aggression committed by India on 11 and 13 May, acts which involved both the explosive tests and the language in which they were presented to Indians and to the world. 31 Let there be no equivocation: these were acts of aggression—against India’s neighbours, against the emerging Asian international society, and against the norms embedded in the CTBT and the non-proliferation regime. One can go further. They were acts of aggression against the whole post-Cold War presumption that social and economic development should take priority over military prowess, that states should cooperate rather than confront one another and strive together to resolve conflicts, build international institutions and extend the rule of law. If decisions were taken primarily for the BJP’s domestic political gain, the Indian government will be perceived as having acted with even greater irresponsibility.
In this sense, the international community, together with political elites in both India and Pakistan, face two challenges in South Asia. One is to address the immediate dangers arising from political and military confrontation between two highly armed states, and to bring new energy and ideas to the task of resolving the long-standing sources of conflict between them (notably Kashmir). Without excusing Pakistan’s actions (including its provocative test launch of the Ghauri missile), the other challenge is to address the threats posed by this particular Indian government, and to draw the Indian political establishment back towards the more consensual and internationalist course followed by its predecessors. What will especially be sought is a return to the spirit of the Gujral doctrine whereby states should be magnanimous towards their less powerful neighbours in the expectation that all will end up benefiting. 32
It is pointless to try to predict outcomes. Instead, I wish to offer three main observations—on strategic relations, on political status and on arms control. I wish to underline the gravity of the situation now facing the international community. But I also wish to suggest that new opportunities may emerge out of the mess for making real progress in arms control. Provided India and Pakistan begin to show restraint, and show a new willingness to cooperate with each other and with the international community, interesting solutions may begin to emerge to the difficulties that beset nuclear relations in 1995-8. Indeed, the recent events contain within them the seeds of a transformation in the manner in which the whole problematic of international nuclear relations is conceived.
Strategic relations in South Asia
By conducting its nuclear tests, and by the tenor of its announcements, India is the first state to have overtly proclaimed itself a nuclear power since China made its move in 1964. It has therefore crossed a political threshold, followed by Pakistan, that most people hoped would never be crossed again.
In fact, the high emotions aroused by India’s actions have quickly led India and Pakistan to cross not one but two thresholds: from an ambiguous to an unambiguous commitment to nuclear arms; and from non-weaponized to weaponized deterrence. 33 Even if nuclear-armed delivery vehicles are not fully deployed (and deployment seems increasingly likely), the preparatory steps have been taken and nuclear deterrence is being visibly integrated into military strategies. 34 On 11 May, the Indian government provocatively asserted that ‘India has a proven capability for a weaponized nuclear programme’. On 28 May, the Pakistani government even more provocatively asserted that ‘the long-range Ghauri missile is already being capped with the nuclear warhead [sic] to give a befitting reply to any misadventure by the enemy’. The dynamics of weaponization may soon become entrenched.
The nuclear relationship between China, India and Pakistan has long been asymmetrical. Nevertheless, China’s strategic superiority over India, and India’s over Pakistan, brought a certain stability to their relations provided China did not deploy weapons against India, and provided India and Pakistan held to their policies of ‘non-weaponized deterrence’. 35 In retrospect, the seeds of destabilization may have been sown by China’s ill-judged support for Pakistan’s nuclear and missile programmes, and by Pakistan’s consequent rapid progress in closing the gap with India. This induced a psychological reaction in India akin to that experienced in the United States in the late 1970s when faced with rapid advances in the Soviet Union’s strategic capabilities. One reading of the Indian government’s recent actions is that it was trying to re-establish an earlier pecking order in the expectation that Pakistan could not respond. If this was the case, the tactic misfired.
The question now is whether India is prepared to accept the rough parity (especially psychological parity) that has now been established by Pakistan. 36 Will the Indian government again try to assert supremacy through further tests and large deployments? Might it even try, with the United States and European Union as unwitting accomplices, to break Pakistan through the economic stress that it thereby induces? 37 Again, the situation is redolent of US-Soviet relations, this time in the early 1980s when the United States under President Reagan tried to cow the Soviet Union into submission by invigorating the arms race. At the time of writing, there are signs that India may henceforth be more restrained. 38 But the temptations will remain.
Despite its size, India risks a deep political isolation after its actions—more than Russia in the 1940s and 1950s (Russia had allies), and more even than China, whose isolation was soon ended by its quasi-alliance with the United States against the Soviet Union. This last memory invites speculation, which one hopes is unfounded, that Indian strategic analysts may anticipate that an approaching conflict between the United States and China, of which India might partly be an agent, would end India’s isolation and turn it into a valued partner of the United States, and possibly Russia, against the great Chinese threat. The risk that the conflict between India and China could poison wider geopolitical relations adds to the enormous importance of cooperation between the United States, China and Russia in dealing with the situation in South Asia. 39
Political status
In a seemingly well-rehearsed article in the Times of India on 12 May, K. Subrahmanyam asserted that ‘by conducting three underground nuclear tests simultaneously, India has formally joined the club of nuclear weapon states... India has become an irreversible nuclear weapon state and the other nuclear powers have to reconcile themselves to it.’ 40 As a declaration of strategic intent, this and other like statements will be taken at face value. States will take whatever political and military actions are deemed necessary to protect their and their allies’ interests. As a declaration of political aspiration, of a desire for recognition as one of the world’s most influential powers, it cannot but be rejected. Legally, India cannot accede to the NPT as a nuclear weapon state (nor can Pakistan). Politically, it has by its actions further weakened its moral claims for recognition, whether through attainment of permanent membership of the UN Security Council or by other means. In so far as India today craves prestige above all else, we are therefore in danger of entrapment. If India does not show willingness to compromise, the politico-strategic reality is that states will be encouraged to take up arms against it, while the politico-legal reality is that India will face increasing ostracism, possibly deepening its grievances.
Writing in the midst of these extraordinary events, my intuition is that India’s problems over prestige, and indeed the whole array of politico-legal difficulties presented by the status of India, Israel and Pakistan outside the NPT, may be eased in an interesting way.
The chain of thought runs like this. There are now essentially three classes of state: the ‘legal’ NWS (five members); the ‘extra-legal’ NWS (three members); and the NNWS (183 members). In terms of prestige, the recent developments have two contrasting effects. One effect is to dissolve the distinction, in the perceptions of the 183 and of many citizens of the eight, between the eight states that have acquired nuclear weapons. In politico-strategic terms, differences between the eight ‘legal’ and ‘extra-legal’ NWS have now been diminished. 41 They have all acquired and activated nuclear weapons, albeit at different times and in different quantities, and have integrated them into military strategies. Furthermore, by demonstrating so vividly the great dangers of nuclear arms and the affronts they represent to the Zeitgeist, recent events will tend to diminish the prestige of nuclear weapons in international politics and, one strongly suspects, in the politics of the established (‘legal’) NWS. As a result, my conjecture is that the political and psychological, if not the military, prestige attached to nuclear weapons will be levelled downwards rather than upwards by recent events. Legality will no longer confer prestige. In this regard, ‘8 + 183’ replaces ‘2 + 3 + 3 + 183’ as the main architecture in the perceptions of international society. The attitude of the 183 will be—a pox on them all.
In another respect, however, the stratification between the ‘legal’ and ‘extra-legal’ NWS is increased by recent events. A perceptual difference has opened up in terms of the responsibility with which states deploy their weapons and approach arms control, and in terms of the trust and esteem in which they are thereby held by the international community. In this respect, India and Pakistan, far from increasing their status, have suffered a huge loss of prestige, absolute and relative, as a consequence of their actions. This will quickly dawn on political elites. In Pakistan, as in Israel in another context, they may not care. They certainly will care in India. If it is to attain the prestige that it craves, India will have to begin to exhibit great responsibility in the manner in which it henceforth handles its nuclear policies. 42 In my view, this will become one of the most powerful forces acting in the direction of moderation and conciliation in Indian political and strategic thinking as it considers its position. It gives the international community a powerful card to play, provided it conveys its displeasure in clear and unambiguous messages to India. It implies that India will be pushing towards—and can be pulled towards—a much more cooperative stance on international nuclear relations.
Nuclear arms control
The above observations on strategic relations and arms control have two important implications for nuclear arms control, broadly defined, always with the proviso that India and Pakistan begin to act with greater restraint. I take it for granted that there must be parallel attempts at conflict resolution, which cannot be addressed here.
First, an exercise in bridge-building between states, and of attempted integration into or reconciliation with the institutions of arms control, now lies ahead. It has to be conducted on a number of levels:
South Asia. A major effort now has to be initiated to construct an arms control process in South Asia (virtually none has existed to date). The situation is reminiscent of that pertaining in East-West relations in the late 1950s and early 1960s when arms control measures began to be negotiated against a background of potential strategic parity. The measures and processes can almost be plucked off the shelf, including the dialogue and summitry, the connection of hotlines, and the limitation of missile deployments. In this instance, there is the advantage of being able to draw upon experience. There is also the possibility of establishing a dialogue on technical and other matters with the five ‘legal’ NWS. 43 While it is difficult to envisage the formation of a group of the eight, various lines of communication might now be opened.
CTBT and FMCT. As has been widely recognized, the Indian and Pakistani tests create possibilities for both countries to join the CTBT, enabling this universal treaty to be fully established under international law. The Indian government stated on 11 May that it was ‘prepared to consider being an adherent to some of the undertakings in the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty’. 44 This is unacceptable: states have to join the whole of the treaty or none of it. There will now be heavy pressure on both states to accede to the CTBT unconditionally, and for states that have not ratified it (including the United States, Russia, China and Israel) to ratify it without further hesitation. 45
The FMCT now becomes an enormously important measure. 46 The CTBT quells testing and thus experimentation with warhead technology; the FMCT places limits on the number of warheads that can be produced by ending the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium for weapons. The FMCT has other benefits. It could provide an alternative framework for trading with states outside the NPT without requiring full-scope safeguards, thereby allowing India and Pakistan to be reintegrated into the civil nuclear trading system. 47 In addition, it would help drive much-needed innovations in verification and other regulatory measures in the NWS, and particularly in Russia and the United States with their vast inherited infrastructures and inventories of fissile materials. Elsewhere, colleagues and I have written about the difficult and sensitive issue of excess stocks. 48 Suffice it to say that this issue cannot be evaded, as the United States and other NWS have tried to evade it, but must be addressed through a separate negotiating process.
The NPT. The NPT Principles and Objectives open with a call for universal adherence to the treaty. Although India’s and Pakistan’s actions have made this ambition seem even harder to achieve, the treaty’s normative foundations would be damaged if the commitment to universality were discarded. Offence would also be caused to the many states that joined the treaty expecting that the number of nuclear powers would be held at five. Persuading India and Pakistan to join the NPT (as non-nuclear weapon states) is therefore bound to remain central to the diplomatic stance adopted by the international community. India’s accession to the treaty would, however, entail its abandonment of a long and passionately held position. Its response will probably be the usual one: to tie its accession to disarmament by the five ‘legal’ NWS.
While necessary, attaching high priority to NPT membership carries risks of pinning diplomacy to an unachievable objective and of rekindling India’s sense of victimization. A more realistic current objective might be to gain transitional pledges from India and Pakistan that they would henceforth behave as if they were NPT parties, following the example set by France 30 years ago, 49 and that they would embrace the NPT’s ambition to achieve their own and all other states’ disarmament. Although such an approach might be difficult for many governments to accept, and would have to be thought through with great care, it would at least have the attraction of gaining India’s and Pakistan’s (and Israel’s?) recognition of the NPT’s status and norms. It might also allow their governments more political and psychological freedom with which to embrace other arms control measures.
Trade controls. In the statement issued on 11 May, the Indian government ‘reaffirmed categorically that [it] will continue to exercise the most stringent control on the export of sensitive technologies, equipment and commodities especially those related to weapons of mass destruction’. India and Pakistan have always been scrupulous in their application of trade controls (more scrupulous than have several NPT members). One can therefore envisage an easier accommodation with the institutions of multilateral trade control than with the NPT. 50
Second, consequences arise for attitudes towards, and the prospects for, nuclear disarmament. Here again, important and subtle changes can be envisaged. One is an easing of the confusion between nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament objectives. During the debates about the CTBT and FMCT, claims were made by governments of the five NWS parties to the NPT that the benefits of those treaties should be measured mainly in terms of non-proliferation (through their ‘capture’ of India, Israel and Pakistan) and in terms of arms control, narrowly defined. Others claimed that the benefits had to be assessed in terms of their contributions to non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament. In an important sense, the division of the world now into eight NWS (five legal and three extra-legal) and 183 NNWS removes non-proliferation from the agenda, or at least transforms it into an issue of compliance with treaties. One is left with issues of arms control and disarmament (for the eight) and compliance with states’ renunciations of nuclear weapons (the 183). Another implication is that the eight NWS will henceforth be ‘in it together’: the five will no longer be able to shelter behind the three, and vice versa. 51 Here again, however, one should note that the standing of Israel becomes a particular concern for Arab states, for which Israel remains a ‘proliferation problem’.
The other change wrought by recent events is that complete disarmament has become less attainable but more desirable and, indeed, unavoidable as a political objective. It has become less attainable because the actions of India and Pakistan have increased the significance of nuclear deterrence in their eyes and in the eyes of other states. For reasons discussed above (with regard to the utility of nuclear weapons), this increased significance has not needed much encouragement, especially among right-wing and nationalist constituencies in the United States and Russia (and France). Complete disarmament now becomes more desirable because the enormous dangers of nuclear weapons, dangers which may be greater even than in the Cold War, have again been demonstrated. And disarmament becomes less avoidable as an objective because the NNWS will be more determined than ever to proclaim its advantages and to hold the NWS to their obligations under Article VI of the NPT. A rising tide of anger can already be sensed among the NNWS parties to the NPT, including loyal supporters of the treaty such as Canada, Egypt, Germany, Japan and now Argentina, South Africa and Ukraine, against the five ‘legal’ NWS and their obstructive behaviour on this issue after 1995. The NNWS will now be looking for a real commitment to pursue disarmament—not necessarily a commitment to time-bound disarmament, but one that genuinely binds all states into exploring how a nuclear-weapon-free world that enhances regional and global security might be constructed.
It follows from this that the convening of an assembly of states to address disarmament, whether inside or outside the CD, is now not an option but a necessity if the NWS wish to maintain faith with the NPT. In my view, its central mandate should be to explore the processes and stages by which complete disarmament might be achieved. But such an assembly could only be effective and trusted if governments of NWS established parallel domestic processes, especially within governmental bureaucracies, and parallel collective processes (e.g. in the P5) to consider how nuclear disarmament might be brought about, and how the foreign and security policies of the NWS and their allies might be adapted accordingly. Hitherto, such debates have not been allowed to take place in any of the NWS. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the government declared at the start of its current Strategic Defence Review that the future of Trident was not open to discussion, despite its manifesto commitment to pursue disarmament. This attitude of the NWS must surely change if belief that they are acting in good faith is to be restored not only among states but also among their citizens.
That said, it is incumbent upon all parties to appreciate the complexities of nuclear disarmament, and to realize that it could destabilize geopolitical structures if handled carelessly. Nuclear deterrence cannot be discarded simply.
Rededication to the implementation of the 1995 NPT extension conference agreements
In considering the tasks ahead, one must not overlook the vital necessity that NNWS parties to the NPT should remain faithful to their obligations. 52 There have been various warnings that other states in Asia, including Iran and North Korea which are both NPT parties, might try (again) to attain nuclear weapons. Nor should one overlook the importance of moving the START process forwards, or of beginning to include China, France and the UK in discussions on arms reductions.
All the initiatives discussed in the above paragraphs are consistent with the agreements that concluded the 1995 NPT extension conference. These initiatives are therefore best approached through those agreements. Indeed, there needs to be an urgent rededication to those agreements, especially after the unhappy experiences at the 1998 NPT PrepCom. This would entail endorsement of the NPT as the immovable foundation of international nuclear relations; commitment to making a success of the strengthened NPT review process; and a serious commitment to pursuing the objectives enunciated in the resolution on the Middle East. Above all, it entails a renewed dedication to the realization of the Principles and Objectives for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament which provide the strongest available normative framework, including injunctions to pursue the CTBT, FMCT and other measures. 53 Some reprioritization and reinterpretation of the Principles and Objectives may be inevitable in light of recent developments. 54 But they provide the central text to which governments have to refer.
Two questions remain to be asked. First, what happens if India and Pakistan will not cooperate, and if they become obsessively committed to the expansion and elaboration of their nuclear arms beyond all restraint? 55 In that case, the opportunities—indeed, the transformations—discussed above could not occur to anything like the same extent, if at all. The Principles and Objectives would remain the central point of reference for NPT parties, but their realization would be much more difficult and contentious. Fortification of the existing non-proliferation regime, in the face of incipient arms races and non-compliance, would then become the primary issue.
This would imply giving special attention to building greater irreversibility into arms control structures: ensuring the irreversibility of established measures and institutions, and of commitments to the completion of unfinished business (START, CTBT and so on). Unfortunately, one cannot be optimistic that this will succeed, not least because treaty ratification will become more difficult if states are faced with the prospect of nuclear arms races and proliferation in Asia and around its fringes. There is therefore a very real sense in which there is no alternative to the pursuit of the kinds of approaches discussed above, and to exerting the greatest possible pressure on India and Pakistan to exercise restraint and to begin cooperating with the institutions of arms control.
Second, what happens if the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China also will not work constructively among themselves or with other states? 56 The attitude of the United States may be decisive. In the past two to three years, if one is blunt, its international reputation as the responsible overseer of nuclear arms control has been damaged. The US government has been seen as treating too lightly its obligations after achieving the NPT’s indefinite extension in 1995, as being too quick to give concessions to right-wing constituencies inside and outside Congress, and as failing to respond constructively to justifiable concerns of other states, not least in regard to security assurances and to Israel’s stance on nuclear weapons in the Middle East. This may be considered unfair: others may be equally or more guilty, and hegemons often face the most difficult choices. But as the world’s most powerful and creative nation-state, and as the progenitor of nuclear arms control, it must always face high expectations. One hopes that the US government will now be prepared to take an imaginative lead—and some political risks.
Conclusion
The recent events in South Asia invite comparison with the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 in terms of how close they have brought nation-states to nuclear war and the alarm they have caused around the world. In some respects, the events in Asia have been less dangerous than the Cuban crisis in that the scale of armament has been lesser, and the confrontation between India and Pakistan has not seemed to threaten global catastrophe. 57 In other respects, they have been more dangerous in that the conflict between India and Pakistan is even more intense, the two countries face each other across contested borders and zones, and neither has established a second-strike capability, thereby making Islamabad and New Delhi more fearful of pre-emptive attacks.
While shocks of this magnitude can be highly destructive of international relations and institutions, they can also be highly illuminating and constructive. The Cuban missile crisis marked the true beginnings of nuclear arms control including regular intergovernmental dialogue, arms limitation treaties and the non-proliferation regime. 58 It therefore instigated a broad search, involving many actors, for the political and regulatory structures and processes that would reduce the risks of nuclear war and build trust between adversaries.
One consequence of these and subsequent developments in arms control is that much greater experience and many more tools can now be brought to bear on the situation in South Asia. However, the crisis there has occurred at a time when broad international nuclear relations are again in poor shape, and when serious difficulties have emerged over how to make further progress after the great advances that followed the end of the Cold War.
Like the Cuban missile crisis, the recent events could become the catalysts for another period of innovation in nuclear arms control, and even in the wider processes of interstate relations. If opportunities are grasped, one can envisage the development of an arms control process in South Asia where none existed before; intensification of cooperation among the P5 and among wider groupings of states; the working out of accommodations between India, Pakistan and the global institutions of arms control, including the NPT; and the development of new norms and practices through such treaties as the CTBT and FMCT.
The events in South Asia also have implications for the other arenas where nuclear relations have been problematic in the past few years. My instinct is that US/NATO-Russian relations, and thus the START process, will not be adversely affected by these developments. On the contrary, the crisis in South Asia may strengthen those relations and bring renewed cooperation, for instance on the establishment of a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Central Asia, which now becomes a priority. In the Middle East, the consequences are likely to be both more profound and more difficult to address. Events in South Asia, and international responses to them, may heighten sensitivities in the Middle East and increase the urgency of finding solutions in that region also. Indeed, there is likely to be strong linkage between nuclear politics in the two regions, and between those regional politics and global nuclear politics. Three observations are worth making.
First, the NPT PrepCom broke down on 9 May over the issue of Israel and the refusal of the US government to allow it to be addressed within the NPT review process. In the view of Arab states, this violated undertakings made by all NPT parties in May 1995 when they signed up to the NPT Resolution on the Middle East.
Second, the lessons drawn from Pakistan’s recent experiences by Arab states, and possibly by Islamic countries more widely, may be that states have to stand up to opponents, and that to do so they have to establish nuclear capabilities so that they can achieve, or threaten to achieve, some degree of political and strategic parity with their adversaries. As states would have to leave the NPT to achieve this end, they may feel that this is an option that now has to be seriously considered.
Third, any de facto recognition of Pakistan and India as nuclear weapon states presents acute difficulties with regard to Israel and its neighbours. To date, the non-recognition and non-declaration of the Israeli nuclear capability have served the interests of both Israel and the Arab states, and of the broader international community.
The implication is that the nuclear status and policies of Israel will also have to be addressed if broad progress is to be made. Israel’s ratification of the CTBT and participation in FMCT negotiations would be important steps towards its engagement with arms control. However, I suspect that deeper changes, in Israeli and Arab policy approaches as in the approaches of the United States and other external powers, involving a willingness by all parties to compromise, will be necessary if there is to be a real sense that these problems are being resolved.
In the end, however, one has to return to India. What does India want to achieve, and how does it wish to be regarded by the international community? Does it wish to be regarded as a nation-state bent on self-assertion and expansion that will have to be isolated and confronted? Or as a nation-state that wishes to modernize and play a full part in international society? As a wrecker or builder of global arms control? Prime Minister Vajpayee says that India is now a nuclear weapon state. Rather than take their cue from nuclear scientists and strategic analysts, India’s political elite should understand that they now have an opportunity—and a responsibility—to play a prestigious role in transforming international nuclear relations. 59 Furthermore, they should seek fresh and coldly calculated answers to a simple question: how can a nuclear arms race in South Asia, and the opprobrium of the international community, bring India security and prosperity?
2 June 1998
Notes
*: I am very grateful to Frans Berkhout, Ian Hall, Mark Imber, James Manor, Kevin O’Neill, George Perkovich, Nick Rengger, Ben Sanders, Annette Schaper, Fiona Simpson and John Simpson for their comments and assistance. I would also like to thank government officials with whom I have communicated in a number of countries whose names cannot be mentioned. Back.
Note 1: See J. Cherian, ‘The BJP and the bomb’, Frontline, 24 April 1998, pp. 4-9. Back.
Note 2: International relations theorists have given surprisingly little attention to the dynamic effects of shocks, except in regard to wars and major systemic changes like the end of the Cold War. John Mueller addresses some of the issues in Quiet cataclysm: reflections on the recent transformation of world politics (New York: HarperCollins, 1995). Back.
Note 3: This was the second Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the review conference of the NPT which will be held in 2000 (the first PrepCom was held a year previously). Under the NPT’s strengthened review process agreed in 1995, the PrepCom was given an enhanced role, including rights to address issues of substance. As Rebecca Johnson noted in her summary of proceedings, the PrepCom ‘ended after midnight on May 9 with no agreement on substance, recommendations or rules of procedure’. See Rebecca Johnson, ‘The NPT Review Process’, http://www.apc.org/acronym, 9 May 1998. Back.
Note 4: There is a narrow and a broad definition of nuclear arms control. The former refers to the efforts by weapon states (especially the United States and Soviet Union/Russia in the past) to regulate their strategic and political relationships. The latter refers to the above activity plus non-proliferation and disarmament policies. Back.
Note 5: Under the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START), the tens of thousands of deployed strategic warheads would be reduced to a few thousand apiece, with the components and materials from dismantled weapons being destroyed or removed from the military cycle. See J. Goldblat, Arms control: a guide to negotiations and agreements (London: Sage, 1996). For an analysis of the end of the Cold War, see J. L. Gaddis, The United States and the end of the Cold War: implications, reconsiderations and provocations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Back.
Note 6: For an overview of developments in non-proliferation policy up to the mid-1990s, see J. Simpson, ‘Nuclear non-proliferation in the post-Cold War era’, International Affairs 70: 1, January 1994, pp. 17-39. Back.
Note 7: Such attitudes were reinforced by speculation that warfare itself was becoming anachronistic in a ‘globalizing’ and ‘democratizing’ world. On the democratic peace, see M. Doyle, ‘Liberalism and world politics’, American Political Science Review 80: 4, December 1996, pp. 1151-69; B. Russett, Grasping the democratic peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). The recent aggressive actions of India, the world’s largest democracy, and the vehement popular support for those actions, should give exponents of the democratic peace pause for thought. Back.
Note 8: J. Mearsheimer, ‘Back to the future: instability in Europe after the Cold War’, International Security 15: 1, 1990, pp. 5-56. Back.
Note 9: Article X.2 of the NPT requires that in 1995 ‘a conference shall be convened to decide whether the Treaty shall continue in force indefinitely, or shall be extended for an extended fixed period or periods’. Back.
Note 10: Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan also came to regard the conference as an opportunity to demonstrate their credentials as trustworthy members of the international community. Back.
Note 11: The Canberra Commission was appointed by the Australian government. Back.
Note 12: The Agreed Framework provided for the phased dismantlement of North Korea’s weapon facilities, and the submission of its facilities and materials to international safeguards, in return for the supply of fuel oil and the construction of two nuclear power stations. See K. D. Kapur, Nuclear diplomacy in east Asia: US and the Korean crisis management (New Delhi: Lancers Books, 1995). Back.
Note 13: See J. D. Willis and T. Perry, ‘Nunn-Lugar’s unfinished agenda’, Arms Control Today 27: 7, October 1997, pp. 14-22. Back.
Note 14: The CTBT’s entry into force clause was deliberately drafted to require India, Pakistan and Israel to sign and ratify the treaty before it could come into effect. Israel has subsequently signed the treaty. Back.
Note 15: See J. Mendelsohn, ‘The US-Russian strategic arms control agenda’, Arms Control Today 27: 8, November/December 1997, pp. 12-16. Back.
Note 16: Foreign Minister Shimon Peres stated in 1995 that Israel would ‘begin negotiation of a Middle East Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone two years after bilateral peace agreements are signed with all states, including Iran’. See G. M. Steinberg, ‘Middle East peace and the NPT extension decision’, The Nonproliferation Review 4: 1, Fall 1996, pp. 17-29. Back.
Note 17: I have heard it said that, prior to April 1998, threats from missile-launched chemical and biological weapons occupied more time in the bilateral meetings between President Clinton and Prime Minister Netanyahu than the peace process. Back.
Note 18: On security assurances, see G. Bunn and R. Timerbaev, ‘Security assurances to non-nuclear-weapon states: possible options for change’, PPNN Issue Review 7, Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, University of Southampton, September 1996. Negative security assurances granted by NWS to NNWS states parties to the NPT provide the latter with guarantees that they will not be threatened or attacked with nuclear weapons unless they breach their treaty undertakings or themselves attack the said NWS in alliance with another NWS. On nuclear security assurances and chemical and biological weapons, see V. A. Utgoff, Nuclear weapons and the deterrence of biological and chemical warfare, Occasional Paper 36, Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington, DC, October 1997; A. Kelle, Security in a nuclear weapons free world—how to cope with the nuclear, biological and chemical weapons threat, PRIF Report 50, Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt, April 1998. Back.
Note 19: A summary of the events and decisions that led to India’s nuclear tests in May 1998 has been provided by K. Subrahmanyam, ‘Politics of Shakti:new whine in an old bomb’, Times of India, 26 May 1998. He asserts that the decision to launch a weaponization programme was taken by Rajiv Gandhi in 1990. For more detailed, but less up to date histories of the Indian nuclear programme see R. G. C. Thomas, Indian security policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Z. Moshaver, Nuclear weapons in the Indian subcontinent (London: Macmillan, 1991); and C. Smith, India’s ad hoc arsenal (Oxford: Oxford University Press/SIPRI, 1994). An excellent discussion of the interplay between Indian domestic politics and decision-making in nuclear and other security fields is S. Gupta, India redefines its role, Adelphi Paper 293 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995). Back.
Note 20: See W. Walker, ‘India’s nuclear labyrinth’, The Nonproliferation Review 4: 1, Fall 1996, pp. 61-77. Back.
Note 21: I have been influenced in the observations that follow by a presentation given on ‘The future of nuclear arms control’ by Andrew Barlow at King’s College, London on 18 February 1997 (unpublished mimeo). The numbers refer to the United States and Russia, plus China, France and Britain, plus India, Pakistan and Israel, plus the non-nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT (as of May 1998) together with Brazil and Cuba. These last two states have not joined the NPT (Brazil is expected to do so soon), but are bound to legal renunciations of nuclear weapons by the Treaty of Tlatelolco which has established a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Latin America. Back.
Note 22: For details on these stocks, see D. Albright, F. Berkhout and W. Walker, Plutonium and highly enriched uranium 1996: world inventories, capabilities and policies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). Updated assessments on India and Pakistan are available from David Albright and Kevin O’Neill, Institute for Science and International Security, Washington DC. Back.
Note 23: See e.g. R. C. Karp, ed., Security without nuclear weapons? Different perspectives on non-nuclear security (Oxford: Oxford University Press/SIPRI, 1992); J. Rotblat, J. Steinberger and B. Udgaonkar, eds, A nuclear-free world: Desirable? Feasible? (Boulder, CO, Oxford: Westview for Pugwash, 1993); M. McGwire, ‘Nuclear weapons revisited’, International Affairs 70: 2, April 1994, pp. 211-28; M. Quinlan, ‘The future of nuclear weapons in world affairs’, Bulletin of the Atlantic Council 7: 9, November 1996; S. Fetter, Verifying nuclear disarmament, Occasional Paper 29, Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington, DC, October 1996. Back.
Note 24: As I have suggested elsewhere, the main reason (inertia aside) why policy elites in the NWS have so far resisted disarmament is that satisfactory answers have yet to be given to three fundamental questions. Would nuclear disarmament increase or decrease regional and global security? What exactly is entailed by nuclear disarmament—what is being disarmed, and when has whatever is being disarmed finally been disarmed? And how can states get from here to there safely and securely, and once disarmament has been achieved how can they collectively ensure that they all stay there? (That is, how can they guard against the possibility of ‘break-out’?) See W. Walker, ‘Evolutionary versus planned approaches to nuclear disarmament’, Disarmament Diplomacy 15, May 1997, pp. 2-4. Back.
Note 25: On epistemic communities, see Peter Haas, guest ed., ‘Knowledge, power and international policy co-ordination’ International Organization 46: 1, 1992. Back.
Note 26: As in the 1970s, the NWS’ possession of nuclear arms has in the 1990s also come to symbolize broader inequalities in the international system. Back.
Note 27: See e.g. H. Müller, ‘An incremental strategy for nuclear disarmament: rationale and practical considerations’, PPNN Issue Review 12, Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, University of Southampton, April 1998. Back.
Note 28: Sensitive issues pertaining to nuclear weapon designs and production processes could not, in any case, be discussed with NNWS without breaching Article I of the NPT. Back.
Note 29: The G8 issued the following statement on 17 May: ‘We condemn the nuclear tests which were carried out by India on 11 and 13 May. Such action runs counter to the will expressed by 149 signatories to the CTBT to cease nuclear testing, to efforts to strengthen the global non-proliferation regime and to steps to enhance regional and international peace and security...We underline our full commitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as the cornerstones of the global non-proliferation regime and the essential foundations for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament. We express our grave concern about the increased risk of nuclear and missile proliferation in South Asia and elsewhere. We urge India and other states in the region to refrain from further tests and the deployment of nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles. We call upon India to rejoin the mainstream of international opinion, to adhere unconditionally to the NPT and the CTBT and to enter into negotiations on a global treaty to stop the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons. India’s relationship with each of us has been affected by these developments. We are making this clear in our own direct exchanges and dealings with the Indian Government and we call upon other states similarly to address their concerns to India. We call upon and encourage Pakistan to exercise maximum restraint in the face of these tests and to adhere to international non-proliferation norms.’ Back.
Note 30: The NPT’s restriction on the number of NWS parties arises from the stipulation in Article IX.3 that ‘a nuclear weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967’. Back.
Note 31: Particular concerns were aroused when Lal Krishna Advani, India’s Home Minister, was quoted in The Hindu on 19 May as calling on Islamabad ‘to realize the change in the geostrategic situation in the region and the world’ created by India’s tests. Back.
Note 32: This doctrine was enunciated by Gujral when he was Foreign Minister in 1996-7. Back.
Note 33: On non-weaponized or ‘virtual’ deterrence, see G. Perkovich, ‘A nuclear third way in south Asia’, Foreign Policy 91, Summer 1993, pp. 85-104. Weaponization refers to the insertion of warheads in operational delivery systems. Back.
Note 34: Not since 1945, when the United States immediately weaponized after the Trinity test, has there been such a rush to turn a capability into an operational nuclear force. Back.
Note 35: China’s long commitment to a ‘no first use’ policy on nuclear weapons may also have been adopted partly to avoid provoking India. Back.
Note 36: Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s reference to ‘settling the score with India’ (at six all, including India’s test at Pokhran in 1974) on 28 May expressed this parity. It is still possible that India may react with another one or two tests, bringing a matching Pakistani response, but the testing would probably peter out with honour satisfied on both sides. Back.
Note 37: Under the Nuclear Proliferation Act of 1994, the United States is obliged to impose economic sanctions on any non-nuclear weapon state which conducts nuclear explosive tests. As Pakistan is much more dependent on US aid and trade than India, the affects of the sanctions will not be equal. Back.
Note 38: If India accelerated its testing and deployment programmes, one fears that the primary Chinese response would be deterrence leading, possibly, to a Sino-Indian arms race. Such a development would have wider repercussions for China’s engagement in multilateral arms control, including its ratification of the CTBT, for China’s relations with the United States, and for the whole course of interstate relations in Asia. So far, China has been very restrained in its reactions to the Indian tests. Back.
Note 39: The joint communiqué issued by the Russian government and NATO is highly symbolic in this regard. Back.
Note 40: K. Subrahmanyam was formerly Director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, and remains an influential voice in India. Back.
Note 41: This applies to Israel, which has long had a weaponized nuclear armament, as much as to the other states. Back.
Note 42: In a ‘Paper laid on the table of the House on evolution of India’s nuclear policy’ on 27 May 1998, paragraph 14, the Indian government asserts that ‘India is a nuclear weapon state. This is a reality that cannot be denied. It is not a conferment that we seek; nor is it a status for others to grant. It is an endowment to the nation by our scientists and engineers. It is India’s due, the right of one-sixth of human-kind. Our strengthened capability adds to our sense of responsibility; the responsibility and obligation of power.’ The sentiments in this last sentence are to be welcomed, but India’s actions and rhetoric in recent weeks have not encouraged the international community to take them seriously. Back.
Note 43: However, any transfers of expertise would have to be consistent with Article I of the NPT which obliges NWS parties ‘not in anyway to assist...any non-nuclear weapon State to manipulate or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons’. Back.
Note 44: The statement went on to say: ‘But this cannot obviously be done in a vacuum. It would necessarily be an evolutionary process from concept to commitment and would depend on a number of reciprocal activities.’ Back.
Note 45: Opponents of this and other arms control treaties in the US Congress will no doubt try to derail the CTBT when it comes to the Senate for ratification. They should not be allowed to succeed. For a proponent’s view, see Paul Warnke, ‘The unratified treaty’, New York Times, 14 May 1998; for an opponent’s view, see Mac Thornberry, ‘Test of our deterrence’, Washington Times, 15 May 1998. There is also need for confidence-building measures to provide assurance that computer simulation and other techniques are not being used to develop new warhead designs. Back.
Note 46: For discussions of the FMCT, see Albright et al., Plutonium and highly enriched uranium 1996, ch. 15; A. Schaper, ‘A treaty on the cutoff of fissile material for nuclear weapons: What to cover? How to verify?’, PRIF Report 48, Peace Research Institute, Frankfurt, July 1997. Back.
Note 47: The reason is that all facilities for producing or separating fissile materials would have to be placed under IAEA safeguards, thereby ending the production of additional unsafeguarded material. The drawback is that existing unsafeguarded materials would still escape safeguards, a situation that full-scope safeguards are intended to avoid. However, the political reality is that a pool of unsafeguarded material is going to be kept in military cycle in India and Pakistan. An FMCT would also help equalize the trading conditions faced by the ‘legal’ and ‘extra-legal’ NWS, since the former are legally entitled to hold material stocks outside IAEA safeguards. Back.
Note 48: See Albright et al., Plutonium and highly enriched uranium 1996, ch. 15; W. Walker, ‘Irreversibility, the cutoff treaty and fissile material stocks’, presentation given at workshop sponsored by the Canadian Mission to the UN and the Institute for Science and International Security, Palais des Nations, Geneva, 27 April 1998, p. 10 (unpublished mimeo). Back.
Note 49: In explaining the abstention of France from voting in the UN General Assembly on the resolution commending the NPT in 1968, the French delegate stated officially that ‘France...will behave in the future in this field exactly as the States adhering to the treaty’. See M. Shaker, The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: origin and implementation, 1959-1979 (New York: Oceana Publications Inc., 1980), vol. II, p. 796. Back.
Note 50: This includes the Nuclear Suppliers’ Guidelines and the Missile Technology Control Regime. For a discussion of trade controls, see H. Müller, ‘National and international export control systems and supplier states’ commitments under the NPT’, PPNN Issue Review 8, Mountbatten Centre for International Studies, University of Southampton, September 1996. In January 1998, the Indian government issued for domestic users an impressive set of ‘Briefing notes on the system of control of exports from India’ relating to all weapons of mass destruction. Back.
Note 51: I recall a Swedish diplomat saying to me years ago that ‘the nuclear weapon states need the threshold states’ (as they were then called). There has been a lot of truth in that remark. Back.
Note 52: This includes remaining faithful to their obligations to conclude agreements with the IAEA on application of the reformed safeguards approaches concluded in May 1997. Back.
Note 53: The Principles and Objectives consist of a preamble and twenty paragraphs grouped under seven headings. The seven headings are Universality, Non-proliferation, Nuclear Disarmament, Nuclear-weapon-free Zones, Security Assurances, Safeguards and Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. The CTBT and FMCT are advocated in their own sub-paragraphs under the heading Nuclear Disarmament. Back.
Note 54: In view of the earlier discussion, the paragraph on universality may need reinterpretation, as will the paragraph on full-scope safeguards if the FMCT is promoted inter alia as a measure for enabling trade to be conducted with the extra-legal NWS. Back.
Note 55: The situation would then be reminiscent of the late 1940s rather than the late 1950s in respect of US-Soviet relations. Back.
Note 56: This article does not consider the roles and policies of France and the UK because they seem secondary in the situation that has developed. This is not to deny that they can play both constructive—and obstructive—parts in addressing the situation in South Asia and the broader developments in international nuclear relations. Back.
Note 57: It is important to note the near-absence of concern that a nuclear war between India and Pakistan might escalate into a war between other nuclear powers. This may be taken as an indication both of South Asia’s still peripheral position in geopolitical structures and the essentially non-conflictual relations that currently exist among the five acknowledged NWS. Back.
Note 58: Other factors besides the Cuban crisis were of course influential, including the Chinese test in 1964 and the debates over whether the United States might share control over missiles sited in western Europe with Germany and other members of NATO. Back.
Note 59: In the Economic Times on 9 May 1998, the Chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, R. Chidambaram, asserted that ‘India needs to build up its own industrial-military complex which can assure security on the one hand and catalyse development on the other. The greatest advantage of recognized strength is that you don’t have to use it, and the greatest disadvantage of perceived weakness is that an enemy may become adventurist.’ Add xenophobia, and this is but a short walk from Bismark’s speech to the Prussian House of Deputies in January 1886: ‘Place in the hands of the King of Prussia the strongest possible military power, then he will be able to carry out the policy you wish; this policy cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches, and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron.’ This sentiment led Germany, and the Soviet Union, to perpetrate the twentieth century’s greatest disasters. The notion that a competitive and dynamic economy can best be established today through military programmes, and through ‘the national laboratory system’ as Dr Chidambaram calls it, is also profoundly mistaken, as well as self-serving. Back.