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World Affairs
Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jul.–Sept.1998)
Nuclear India In Global Politics
By K. Subrahmanyam
| No country has campaigned so hard and so long for nuclear disarmament than India, and yet India conducted its first nuclear test in 1974 and then observed unparalleled restraint for 24 years till its series of nuclear tests on May 11 and 13, 1998. The basic reasons for this change after all these years was that India’s security concerns had increased and its security enviornment become more adverse. |
Introduction
Peace movements took many years to develop in Western countries following nuclear weaponisation, and even then these did not ask for elimination of the nuclear arsenals of the countries concerned in most cases. When sections of the British Labour Party leadership proposed that Britain should unilaterally abandon its nuclear arsenal, the British electorate taught the Labour Party a lesson they have never forgotten. India is the only country which, in the wake of nuclearisation, continued — in the recent Rome Conference — to press for the setting up of an international criminal court of justice, making the use of nuclear weapons a crime against humanity, with those guilty of it tried by an international criminal court of justice. That attempt was brushed aside.
We are living in a world in which the international community of 185 nations, gathering in New York in 1995, decided to legitimise nuclear weapons by extending indefinitely and unconditionally the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We are told that Japan has a great aversion to nuclear weapons, as the only country which has been subjected to nuclear attack. Therefore, it puzzles Indians why Japan then voted to legitimise nuclear weapons, and voted against them being considered a crime against humanity. Why does Japan need the protection of US nuclear deterrents even after the cold war has ended, and China is being engaged constructively by both the US and Japan? Similarly the non-aligned nations have declared themselves against nuclear weapons for well over three decades. Yet they agreed to legitimise the nuclear arsenals of five nuclear weapon powers through the indefinite and unconditional extension of the Nonproliferation Treaty. The five nuclear weapon powers accepted an obligation to negotiate, in good faith, effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date, and for nuclear disarmament. Nothing was done in the first 25 years before the NPT was extended indefinitely and unconditionally. In the two preparatory meetings held for the first quinquennial review conference to be held in 2000 AD no progress has been registered at all. There is therefore a wide divergence between what nations say and what they do on the nuclear issue.
Nuclear threats to nations of the world can be averted only in one of two ways. Either the nuclear weapons should be prohibited and eliminated as is being done for two other categories of weapons of mass destruction — the biological and chemical — or nations should develop a balance of mutual deterrence which will reduce the risks of temptations to the five most war prone powers who are the acknowledged possessors of nuclear weapons today. India having failed to register even the slightest advance on nuclear disarmament felt compelled to opt for the second alternative.
No doubt India has been highly critical of both the doctrine of nuclear deterrence as practised by the nuclear weapon powers as well as the balance of power strategy as expounded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The intrinsic merits and demerits of these strategies are not very relevant for the pursuit of Indian foreign and security policies. What is of utmost relevance is that the world powers that count in global decision-making are pursuing these strategies whether they are right or wrong. So long as India did not possess adequate military, economic and technological power to make an impact on the global system the international power game was bound to be played according to the rules prescribed by the major military and industrial powers of the world. India’s choice was limited to being totally marginalised or joining the game and playing it as per the present rules. The rest of the non-aligned, in spite of all their declaratory policies on disarmament and autonomy of nations were not able to stand up to the pressures of the industrialised world. Therefore, they endorsed the NPT and legitimised nuclear weapons. They adopted the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty with its entry into force clause which violated the Vienna Convention on the law of the treaties and attempted to force the CTBT on India, after Delhi had made it clear that it would not sign. Non-alignment was robbed of most of its content with these two treaties. The first coerced the non-aligned to endorse the legitimacy of nuclear weapons. The second treaty exposed that they did not have the strength to stand up to defend the autonomy of decision-making of the developing nations. This is, today, the objective reality regarding most non-aligned nations. In these circumstances India had to opt to reinforce the balance of power in the global system and thereby provide an increased degree of autonomy of functioning to other nations. That is why the Indian dilemma on nuclear weapons was finally resolved with India exercising the nuclear option.
Global Nuclear Order
With the exception of four nations — India, Pakistan, Israel and Cuba — the rest of the international community has acceded to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The Non-Proliferation Treaty has divided nations into four categories. There are five nuclear weapon powers acknowledged by the treaty. Out of these five three, the US, UK and France are in a military alliance — the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The US has assisted UK and France in the development of nuclear weapon systems. They have an understanding to share data and technology on further weapon development among themselves. Russia was the arch adversary during the Cold War era. The first three and Russia were engaged in a highly costly arms race during that time. Now they are partners in peace and linked in a common security framework —the Organisation of European Security and Cooperation (OSCE). They have detargeted their missiles earlier aimed at each other. The fifth nuclear power, China, is outside this framework. It has a mutual no first use declaration with Russia and has recently agreed to detarget its missiles on a reciprocal basis with the United States. In other words the five nuclear weapon powers no longer have any threat from each other and therefore their nuclear arsenals are not directly related to their security threat perceptions. They have not chosen to offer any rational explanations why they continue to need nuclear weapons.
The second category of nations are the allies of nuclear weapon powers and they rely on the nuclear deterrent protection provided by the nuclear weapon powers. They are members of NATO, the Commonwealth of independent nations and countries with bilateral security treaties with United States, such as South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The nations of Europe outside NATO are part of the Organisation of Security and Cooperation In Europe (OSCE). Therefore, all industrial nations are under a nuclear deterrent security framework. So also the nations of the western hemisphere which are all (with the exception of Cuba) members of the Organisation of American States (OAS), under the overall protection of the United States. This security protection does not necessarily mean that there would not be conflicts among the nations which are members of the alliance. Turkey and Greece face major security problems vis-à-vis each other and over Cyprus. Argentina and Britain fought a war and the former did not get the support of the US. Grenada and Panama have been invaded by the US itself. But the conflicts were all limited wars which did not alter territorial status quo. The Turkish occupation of Cyprus has not been recognised.
The third category of nations are those who have formed nuclear weapon free zones and attempted to obtain a nuclear protectorate status from the nuclear weapon powers in exchange for undertaking that they will not acquire nuclear weapons, nor allow others to bring nuclear weapons to their territories. By seeking and accepting nuclear protection guarantees they, in turn, legitimise the nuclear weapons of the five nuclear weapon powers. The fourth category of non-nuclear weapon states within the NPT are nations which have been brought under the jurisdiction of the US Central command and US Fifth Fleet.
Out of the four nations which have not acceded to the NPT two of them, India and Pakistan, have declared themselves nuclear weapon states. Israel was known to be a nuclear weapon state even as the Non-Proliferation Treaty was being finalised in 1968. Only Cuba remains as a non-nuclear weapon state outside the global nuclear order. But there is not much concern about Cuba attempting to become a nuclear weapon state. Whether India, Pakistan and Israel are accepted as nuclear weapon states under the Non-Proliferation Treaty or not, the international community cannot overlook their weapon capabilities. There is therefore a global nuclear order with eight nuclear weapon states and the rest of the international community under a Non-Proliferation regime. Since all the non-nuclear states other than Cuba are signatories to the NPT there can be no more new nuclear weapon states unless the NPT is violated. The Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests cannot be cited as precedents by others since they have all acceded to the treaty, while India, Pakistan and Israel kept out of it. When the NPT was being renewed and extended unconditionally and indefinitely the international community was fully aware of the status of three undeclared nuclear weapon states. By reconfirming the treaty without attempting to bring the three undeclared weapon states into it in some way or the other they accepted the reality of their undeclared nuclear weapon status. The nuclear tests of May 1998 by India and Pakistan only made explicit what has been known implicitly for several years.
Threats to Global Nuclear Order
A global nuclear regime with eight nuclear weapon states cannot be considered to be significantly any more unsafe or unstable than one with five nuclear weapon powers. Israel has been a nuclear weapon state for nearly 30 years, Pakistan for eleven years and India in one sense for 24 years and in another sense, eight years. These three nations have behaved with far more restraint than the nuclear weapon powers in the initial years of the nuclear era. Their nuclear weapons build-up has not been accompanied by the fierce arms race that characterised the nuclear weapons build-up of the five acknowledged nuclear weapon powers. India and Pakistan have been at peace for the last 26 years which cannot be said of the US, UK, Russia and China. If after the fierce arms races and cold war confrontation of many decades, the five nuclear weapon powers can agree to give up their rivalries, detarget their missiles and reduce their conventional forces, since they have come to the conclusion that a nuclear war was not fightable and winnable and mutual deterrence preserved peace among them, there is no reason why overt acquisition of nuclear weapons should not produce the same effect on the additional three nuclear weapon powers. The five nuclear weapon powers have proved themselves historically more war prone than others. The industrialised nations have gone through two world wars and one cold war confrontation in this century. In all they have had fifty-five years of either actual war or cold war in this century. If, given this history, the five nuclear weapon powers have settled down to peace and stability, the same can be reasonably expected in the case of the other three, India, Pakistan and Israel, too.
The threat to the present relatively stable nuclear order does not come from the change-over of three hitherto undeclared nuclear weapon states to the declared status. The next nuclear proliferation when it takes place, would mean wrecking the Non-Proliferation Treaty because that proliferation would be a breach of the NPT. India, Pakistan and Israel, by keeping out of NPT, did not breach the treaty. This threat of breaching the treaty is real since according to the information available in the US media and US think tanks specialising in non-Proliferation, China has been assisting Pakistan in nuclear weapon technology even after its accession to the NPT in 1992. It is today widely accepted that Pakistan achieved its nuclear weapon capability in 1987 with Chinese assistance and the US looked the other way. Though information was available from the reports of CIA operative Richard Barlow in Islamabad in 1987 that Pakistan had achieved nuclear explosive capability, the US administration’s certification to the US Congress continued for the next three years that Pakistan had not done so. Even now, the US administration has postponed giving a finding on Chinese missile proliferation to Pakistan which took place in 1993 and which has officially been admitted by the Pakistani government.
Proliferation from nuclear weapon powers to a non-nuclear weapon state in violation of NPT is not easily penalisable. Nor are the nuclear weapon powers under any safeguard system which verify and check such transactions. It is now well established that attempted proliferation by Iraq had the support from a number of industrialised nations. So did the South African programme. When a nuclear weapon power proliferates, the other powers appear to be reluctant to challenge that and bring that power to international accountability since that would erode the credibility of the NPT. The US administration appears to be subordinating, at present, its proliferation concerns to its commercial interests. There are speculations in the US media that China might be using its proliferation to countries like Pakistan or Iran as a bargaining chip vis-à-vis the US supply of arms to Taiwan. Another school of thought which puts forward the thesis of the clash of civilisations tends to attribute the Chinese proliferation to the alliance between the Sinic and Islamic civilisations against the West.
The US concerns on the likelihood of further proliferation are reflected in the massive counter-proliferation programme that country has undertaken. While there is talk of the emergence of rogue states, it is obvious that under the new safeguards system of the International Atomic Energy (IAEA) and under the CTBT (still not in force), this is hardly realisable unless they receive clandestine proliferation assistance from established nuclear weapon powers. This remains a distinct possibility.
The second threat to the international nuclear order is the breakdown in the command and control structure of Russia and the falling of Russian weapons into the hands of other nations and organised crime. This threat was highlighted in the UN Security Council Summit of January 1992 by the Indian prime minister P V Narasimha Rao. General Alexander Lebed, the former national security adviser to the Russian President Boris Yeltsin disclosed that he could not account for all 30 kg, 2 kiloton explosive yield back-pack bombs made during the Cold War. This charge has not so far been fully and credibly rebutted. General Lebed took up the issue with the US Congress and pointed out that the scientific talent to manufacture such weapons was getting scattered making it possible for a number of organised crime syndicates with resources greater than many nation states to manufacture such devices. More recently General Lebed, now elected as governor of Krasnoyarsk province, wrote a mock serious letter to the Kremlin offering to take over the nuclear missiles in his province (estimated to be 320 warheads), since the officers and soldiers of the missile units had not been paid their salaries for over five months. Reports have emanated about Russian soldiers selling their weapons and equipment during the Chechen War. Today, the Russian organised crime syndicates are regarded as the most powerful with world-wide operational capabilities, and links with other powerful syndicates in Europe and the western hemisphere.
The Americans have charged that China had been proliferating till recently to Iran and Pakistan. China sold 40 C–SS2 missiles with a range of 2500 km to Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s, at about the same time they were helping Pakistan to manufacture nuclear weapons. The failure of US agencies to monitor the China–Saudi Arabia C–SS2 transfer deal reported to have been arranged by Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar, was perhaps the biggest US intelligence failure in the last quarter of this century. Anytime the Chinese missiles and Pakistani nuclear warheads come together will pose a major threat to Israel and other Middle East countries including Iran. One should not forget that the Iran–Iraq war was the longest war between developing countries in which weapons of mass destruction and missiles were used. These aspects of nuclear proliferation do not receive sufficient attention in the western media for understandable reasons.
Nuclear Hegemony
The Cold War is over. Russia and three western powers, the US, UK and France are partners in peace and are members of a common security framework —Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The US is engaging China in a strategic partnership. All five nuclear weapon powers claim that they have detargeted their missiles against others. Logically it would appear this is the right moment for the five nuclear weapon powers to commit themselves to ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons and move towards a step by step approach to delegitimise, prohibit and finally eliminate nuclear weapons. But, instead of doing this, they continue to insist on keeping the nuclear weapons legitimate. The last step towards that end is the rejection of the India–Egyptian move to have the use of nuclear weapons included in the list of crimes against humanity in the Rome Conference in June 1998, while finalising the proposal to set up an international court of criminal justice. The two preparatory conferences held to lay the ground for the NPT Review Conference in the year 2000 AD under the strengthened Review Process have not moved forward. Various official documents published in the US indicate that it will continue to rely on nuclear weapons for its security in the foreseeable future.
The various weapon reductions that have taken place (START–I, START–II and the withdrawal and elimination of tactical nuclear weapons) are mostly arsenal rationalisation measures, and will still permit nuclear weapon powers enough nuclear weapons to destroy human civilisation several times over. It is now recognised that a nuclear war cannot be won and should not be initiated. Therefore the logic behind the five nuclear weapon powers insisting on keeping their nuclear arsenal and coercing the world to accept their legitimacy must be examined. The present nuclear hegemonic order restricting nuclear weapons to five permanent members of the Security Council is a reaffirmation of the Yalta–Potsdam arrangement. When proposals are advocated to include Germany and Japan into the Security Council as permanent members they are not to be given the veto. In spite of their being more powerful economies than the UK, France and Russia, they will not get the same status as the possessors of nuclear arsenals.
Nuclear weapons serve different aspects of national interest of the five nuclear weapon powers. The US sees in them the necessary guarantee for maintaining its status as the world’s foremost power. With the widely proclaimed forecasts that the Chinese economy finally may level up with that of US in overall size and overtake it in due course, the US apparently sees the next generation weapons as an important instrumentality which will enable it to outrank China in the international hierarchy. Therefore the US is against delegitimisation and elimination of nuclear weapons. The Russians concede that without their nuclear arsenals they will count for nothing. Britain and France use their nuclear arsenal as a symbol of their superior status over Germany in Europe. For China the combination of their market size and nuclear arsenal together will make them the “Middle Kingdom” of a resurgent Asia.
The US is engaged in further research on pure fusion weapons. There are reports that the National Ignition Facility with investments of billions of dollars and the best talent available may lead to the development of new categories of laser ignited fusion weapons. The US is in a position to break out of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty whenever it chooses to do so, and it insisted on the withdrawal clause being incorporated in the CTBT. One cannot therefore rule out the possibility that US insistence on sustaining the legality and legitimacy of nuclear weapons may be related to its hope of developing a supremacy in the next generation of nuclear weapons.
The legitimacy of nuclear weapons, furthermore compels such economically powerful states as Germany and Japan, to rely entirely on the US for their security. That security dependence is a factor that could be utilised by the US to keep them in line on economic and technological issues.
The Asian Balance of Power
The rise of China as a major economic and military power is a significant alteration in the global status quo irrespective of the manner and shape in which the future evolution of China takes place. Such an alteration of the status quo is bound to change the balance of power in Asia. With the economic transformation taking place in the East, South, Central and South West Asian countries, Asia is likely to become the centre of gravity of global economic activity, with international relations increasingly becoming Asia centric. There are wide expectations that in an age where the existence of nuclear weapons preclude interstate wars among major powers, a new global balance of power is likely to emerge in which the lead players will be the US, China, Japan, the European Union, Russia and probably India. In this balance of power, four countries are established democracies and Russia is struggling to evolve into one. China is not a democracy, and that raises serious questions on the alternative possibilities regarding China’s evolution.
China’s economic pluralism may steer it towards political pluralism and democracy. That is what the rest of the democratic world hopes for. A democratic China may still be hegemonic as the democratic US is, and as were democratic Britain and France in the past. A second possible scenario is of China being able to combine its economic pluralism with its political authoritarianism. In that event China will emerge as the most powerful authoritarian state in history. That will be a matter of grave concern to all of China’s neighbours. A third possibility is the mis-match between the political authoritarianism and economic pluralism resulting in the breakdown of China on the same lines as the Soviet Union. Such a breakdown will send a seismic shock all over Asia and is bound to generate security problems for many. Yet another scenario is that regional disparities will lead to a loosening up of China into a loose confederation. Since China will be in transition for quite sometime, it will be a centre of security related attention to many Asian countries including India.
Given the potential economic and military power of China a strategy of engagement with Beijing is the right one. On that there is no difference of opinion. But there are serious differences regarding the alternative approaches to the strategy of engagement. The recent visit of President Clinton to China and various pronouncements made during and in the aftermath of the visit have raised concerns in many Asian countries, including India and Japan. An impression has gained ground that the US prefers to engage China in an exclusively bilateral framework which may result in a new bipolarity emerging in the globe with China as the primary interlocutor of the US. This is bound to have its impact on all neighbours of China in Asia.
It is not a question of Chinese aggression or military threat. To the north of China is a nuclear armed Russia. To the East an economically powerful Japan under US nuclear security protection. To the west are the Central Asian republics under the nuclear protection of the Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States. They may also come under the jurisdiction of US central command. The only areas which do not have a balancing arrangement vis-à-vis the Chinese power and influence are South and Southeast Asia. China has already been exercising its power and influence on its South. It has proliferated to Pakistan both nuclear and missile technologies and is the largest arms supplier to that country. The Chinese interest in Burma is all too evident. The Americans have charged that China was proliferating to Iran. Its sale of CSS–2 long-range missiles to Saudi Arabia is history. It has maritime disputes with a number of South East Asian nations. It is logical to expect the pressure of Chinese power and influence over the South, Southeast and Southwest Asia.
Hence, the need for a stable, Asian balance of power made it imperative for India to exercise its nuclear option, and contribute to embedding China in a four-power balancing system involving Japan, the US, Russia and itself. In turn, such a polycentric balance of power will provide optimum autonomy to other nations in Asia. A simple bipolar arrangement between US and China may lead to certain deals between them at the expense of other nations while a polycentric balance will be more stable and permit more freedom of manoeuvre for the nations of Southeast, South and Southwest Asia. In the longer run, the Indian nuclear tests will come to be recognised as a major contribution to the balance and stability in Asia.
The Timing of the Tests
Till 1995 India had some hopes that the five nuclear weapon powers would initiate moves towards nuclear disarmament and the non-nuclear weapon powers would be able to assert themselves in the Review and Extension Conference of the NPT. The 1995 extension conference instead, legitimised the nuclear apartheid. It was clear that the non-nuclear weapon states had neither the will nor inclination to resist the perpetuation of the global nuclear hegemonic order. During the Review Conference there was no agreement among the parties that all nuclear weapon powers abided by their obligations under Article (I) of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and were not engaged in proliferation. The threat perception arising out of the deliberations of the 1995 NPT Review Conference presumably led to the Indian government to discreetly order preparations for nuclear tests in December 1995. But it was discovered by the US and was given up, under pressure from Washington. It is therefore obvious that a Congress government considered it necessary to conduct a test in 1995. Mr V P Singh in his BBC “Hard Talk” interview said that the test could have been conducted in his time, but he did not do it because of the extremely difficult economic situation he faced. Therefore a Janata Dal government in 1990 and a Congress government in 1995 considered conducting tests. In such circumstances there is nothing unusual in the BJP government’s decision to conduct the tests when they came to the conclusion that they could be done without the US noticing the preparations. The shafts were dug earlier and the preparations carried out in 1995 made it possible for the BJP government to take the world by surprise.
Unfortunately, the political class of the country was not adequately informed about China’s extensive help to Pakistan on nuclear and missile development. Nor was the significance of Chinese moves amply analysed in the country during the final phase of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty draft in 1996. On June 20, 1996, India made it clear that while it would not sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, it would not oppose its adoption by others. At that stage, under Chinese pressure, and without any prior discussion in the Conference on Disarmament a new entry into force clause was added to the treaty — a clause which stipulated that 44 countries including India would have to ratify it before it could come into force. This inclusion of the force clause was a clear contravention of the Vienna convention on the law of treaties which stipulated that no treaty will be binding on a nation not party to a treaty. Clearly this was a step intended to coerce India. The Indian decision to highlight China as the reason for India conducting the tests must explain why China adopted such a hostile line towards India. In 1963 the international community adopted a Partial Test Ban Treaty prohibiting atmospheric nuclear tests. But China violated that international norm and conducted its atmospheric tests in 1964. It continued with its multimegaton thermonuclear tests causing immense radioactive fall-out all over the world and in India. China adopts one standard for its own security while attempting to impose on India a different standard. That is a clear case of hegemonism.
However, in spite of India’s objection to the inclusion of the force clause and notwithstanding Indian objection to the transmission of the CTBT text from the Conference on Disarmament to the UN, the western powers mobilised enough support to introduce the treaty text, along with the obnoxious article XIV and managed to get it adopted by the UN General Assembly. India could not ignore the helplessness of the non-aligned countries and their submission to the nuclear hegemony for the second time. If the CTBT did not obtain the ratifications of 44 listed nations in three years, a new conference of the treaty signatories would have to be convened to consider further steps. One should reasonably expect enormous international pressure on India to join the CTBT.
The tests, therefore, had to be carried out in 1998. The recent investigations on the failure to monitor the preparations for the tests revealed how much India was under surveillance. One of the major reasons for the failure was attributed to the inadequacy of “humint” (human intelligence) resources. A new government had assumed office in Delhi and it had asserted its intention to induct nuclear weapons. It therefore made sense for the new government to test early in office before the US Central Intelligence developed adequate “humint” resources.
The US–Chinese engagement was deepening and becoming closer. The US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Non-Proliferation, Dr Robert Einhorn told the US Congress on February 4, 1998, that China continued to supply components and technology for missiles to Pakistan. It was becoming clear that just as the US subordinated its non-proliferation goals in respect of Pakistan in the 1980s to its need to have Pakistani cooperation in the anti-Soviet Mujahideen war in Afghanistan, it looked away from China–Pakistan nuclear collaboration due to the lure of large and growing trade with China. The breaches by China of its obligations under Article (I) of the Non-Proliferation Treaty were obfuscated despite extensive reporting in the US media. The US administration’s attempt to fudge on Chinese proliferation of M–11 missiles to Pakistan even after Pakistan had officially admitted to the receipt of the missiles, stripped the present administration of all credibility. The Indian tests —conducted before Clinton’s visit to China — were meant to lay bare US–China collusion to shield the Chinese proliferation. In spite of all euphoric pronouncements during the presidential visit subsequent assessments in the US media have revealed the US helplessness to influence the Chinese proliferation. Consequently, the condemnatory tone in international pronouncements over India have been muted over a period of time. In fact, signals are emerging from the US administration that it may reconcile itself to living with a modest Indian nuclear and missile arsenal.
Lastly the tests were triggered off by Pakistan’s test of the Ghauri missile on April 6, 1998. It has now been disclosed that the decision to test was an immediate response to the Ghauri test which did not generate significant reaction from the high priests of non-proliferation. The missile came from North Korea. The US has concluded an agreement with North Korea offering it a new light water power reactor and annual supply of fuel oil in exchange for the latter giving up its nuclear proliferation activity. In spite of such concessions extended, it would appear that North Korea continues to indulge in proliferation activity and the US is as helpless in the case of China. The Indian tests have now highlighted that the US permissiveness and tacit encouragement on selective proliferation is not acceptable to India.
Indo–Pak Tests and Global Proliferation
Most of the western media and academia which toe the official nuclear proliferation theological line have tried to project Indo–Pak tests as a starting point for another round of proliferation. This charge appears to be baseless. All countries other than India, Pakistan, Israel and Cuba are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and have voluntarily accepted the international obligation not to acquire nuclear weapons. If any of them did so it would be a breach of an international treaty obligation, unlike in the case of India, Pakistan and Israel. It would expose the Non-Proliferation Treaty as something basically unviable. All the other non-nuclear weapon nations have been reconciled to the present global nuclear order.
With the nuclear status of India and Pakistan getting clarified it could be argued that possibilities of expansion of nuclear weapon states has come to an end except for Israel. To that extent the global nuclear order has been firmed up. The present NPT cannot accommodate the two newcomers and a potential newcomer in Israel. Therefore a new global nuclear order which will subsume the three new nuclear weapon states will need to be re-negotiated. The nuclear hegemonic powers may attempt to ignore the three new weapon states and carry on business as usual. But the existence of the three states outside the NPT framework will provide some additional clout to the non-nuclear weapon states. India’s charges against the Chinese proliferation to Pakistan will focus attention on the review of the fulfilment of the obligations of nuclear weapon powers in respect of article (I) of the NPT. A number of issues, including nuclear disarmament, a convention on no first use and obligations of nuclear weapon powers under articles (I) and (VI) of the NPT are bound to come up for consideration. This trend was evident in the deliberations of the ASEAN regional forum meeting and in the statements issued by eminent personalities like Presidents Carter and Gorbachev.
Indo–Pak Relations In The Nuclear Context
The establishments of various countries, including large sections of Indian and Pakistani media and many public personalities in the subcontinent have all expressed concern about the acquisition of nuclear weapons by two countries, which have fought three wars, which still do not have cordial relations, which have been fighting a covert war in Kashmir and which often exchange fire across the line of control. Most of these concerns are based on misperceptions and inadequate understanding of the situation as it has evolved over the last two decades. The responsibility for this is largely attributable to the Indian leadership and its lack of transparency. The situation between India and Pakistan in the nuclear context is unique in the world. Five nuclear weapon powers came into possession of nuclear weapons with demonstrated nuclear weapon tests and with all of them flaunting their nuclear weapons. Pakistan came into possession of nuclear weapons in 1987 with Chinese assistance. The weapons were believed to be of the Chinese design tested in 1967, and therefore Pakistan did not have to test them.
In 1987 Dr A Q Khan told Indian journalist Kuldeep Nayyar that Pakistan had the bomb. At about the same time the CIA operative in Islamabad Richard Barlow reported to Washington that Pakistan had assembled the bomb. In the summer of 1990 the US media was full of stories that Pakistan might launch a surprise nuclear attack on India. In October 1990 the US President denied certification required under the Pressler amendment that Pakistan had not reached nuclear explosive capability. In December 1992 Benazir Bhutto, then out of office, stated during an NBC interview that Pakistan had assembled the bomb behind her back when she was prime minister. In December 1993, General Aslam Beg wrote in the Nation that the bombs were assembled in 1987 and Ms Bhutto was fully briefed on it during her prime ministership. In August 1994, Nawaz Sharif, again out of office, made a speech in Nila Bhatt in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir that his country would use the bomb if India attempted to recover Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Dr A Q Khan kept up a stream of declarations about Pakistan’s nuclear weapon prowess. Successive directors of the Central Intelligence Agency had disclosed before the US Congress that both Pakistan and India had nuclear weapon capabilities which could enable them to assemble nuclear weapons at short notice.
India thus knew of the existence of the Pakistani bomb for eleven years before the Chagai tests were conducted. Presumably, the Pokharan test of 1974 by India, too may have led Pakistan to assume the existence of an Indian nuclear weapon from the beginning, even though the Indian deterrent capability came into being only in 1990. The two countries were aware of each other’s nuclear capabilities even as Pakistan unleashed its covert operations in Kashmir in 1989 and had sustained them over the next nine years. Many American and Indian observers attribute the non-escalation of the intense covert war operations in Kashmir into a regular inter-state war, to the perception of mutual nuclear deterrence. In other words, nuclear weapons on both sides of Indo–Pakistan divide haver been a stabilising factor instead of an escalatory one, even though 18000 casualties of Indian servicemen, Kashmiri civilians and Pakistani militants have occurred in Kashmir. These casualties are more than those incurred in the previous three Indo–Pak wars on the Indian side. While Pakistani leaders have talked about their nuclear weapons, no Indian leader referred to any use of nuclear weapons except for the fact that the nuclear option was open. The Indian military was outside the decision-making loop on this issue.
During the eight years that both Pakistan and India built up their nuclear capabilities there was no arms race. As percentage of gross domestic product the Pakistani defence expenditure remained stable, and in India’s case that percentage dropped from 3.3 to 2.3. Therefore India and Pakistan do not fit into the orthodox nuclear proliferation theological pattern propagated by the western academia and media, and accepted by many of our people.
Pakistan is the only country which has acquired a nuclear arsenal largely with the support of another nuclear weapon power. Its nuclear proliferation has been actively supported by China and tacitly connived at by the US. As General Arif has recorded in his book Working With Zia, as early as 1981 Pakistan extracted from the US a promise not to interfere with Pakistan’s nuclear programme, as a price for its collaboration with the US on the anti-Soviet Mujahideen campaign in Afghanistan. Even at that stage Pakistan was clear about its nuclear strategy. Professor Stephen Cohen, an eminent American specialist on Pakistan and India wrote in March 1998, that many in Pakistan believed that the Pakistani nuclear capability would neutralise an assumed Indian nuclear force. “Others point out, however,” wrote Cohen, “that it would provide the umbrella under which Pakistan could reopen the Kashmir issue; a Pakistani nuclear capability paralyses not only the Indian nuclear decision but also Indian conventional forces and a brash, bold, Pakistani strike to liberate Kashmir might go unchallenged if the Indian leadership was weak or indecisive.” (“Nuclear Issues and Security Policy In Pakistan”, a paper presented in Washington at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies). From the beginning, the Pakistani strategy has been to use the nuclear capability as a powerful, strategic and political factor to get Kashmir.
Presumably in pursuance of that long established strategic doctrine Pakistan unleashed the covert war in Kashmir following its acquisition of nuclear weapons. The covert war intensified when there was a change of government in Delhi in December, 1989. Those American stories of summer 1990 about Pakistan getting ready to carry out a preemptive nuclear strike might have been part of an elaborate psychological war campaign against what they perceived as a weak and indecisive government in Delhi. However, Islamabad did not succeed in that attempt. Then came a subtle campaign linking the Kashmir issue to the nuclear factor. There was an implied threat that if Pakistan did not get what it wanted, viz, Kashmir, the covert war might escalate to overt conventional war, and perhaps to nuclear exchange. The western nuclear proliferation theology came in handy for Pakistan’s attempted blackmail. Some sections of the US State Department openly took a partisan line on Kashmir, thereby encouraging Pakistan further in its blackmail attempt.
India adopted a policy of restraint and firmness. The covert war in Kashmir was fought and contained in Kashmir territory itself and was not sought to be escalated. Pakistani nuclear sabre rattling was completely ignored and the US attempts at putting pressure on India to freeze, cut and roll back the Indian nuclear programme were blunted with a mixture of firmness and obfuscation. Time was bought by going along with the US declarations of 1993 on the CTBT and fissile materials cut off issue, even at the expense of annoying Indian public opinion for yielding to US pressure.
The nuclear factor also had some self-deterrent effect on Pakistan. On two occasions Pakistan’s army stopped the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) militants from crossing into Jammu and Kashmir and violating the line of actual control. Though, from time to time, the Pakistani army fired across the line of control and carried out limited exchanges of fire it nonetheless ensured that it would not get out of hand.
Pakistani authorities are fully aware of their own limitations in escalation. No conventional attack by them into the Indian territory in Kashmir will be able to penetrate to a significant depth. The Indian army’s fire power is superior as they have repeatedly experienced in Siachen. At the same time, the Indian army will not be provoked into an unrestricted escalation. A nuclear threat will be rebuffed. A nuclear exchange is out of the question. Therefore Pakistan is attempting desperately to use the nuclear blackmail to get a third party involvement in the Kashmir dispute. Even in this respect it did not have much success. When the five permanent members (P–5), the eight leading industrial countries (G–8) and the Security Council referred to Kashmir in their statements they talked only of actively encouraging India and Pakistan to find mutually acceptable solutions, through direct dialogue.
The Indian prime minister in his statement to the Lok Sabha on August 4, 1998 declared that India would never use nuclear weapons first. This shifts the entire responsibility for any nuclear escalation or tension to Pakistan. India has also offered to enter into a strategic dialogue on peace, security and stability in the nuclear context, but Pakistan has rejected this offer. Prima facie it would appear that Pakistani nuclear strategy has failed. But there are positive aspects to it which Pakistan has so far failed to exploit and still has an opportunity to do so. The nuclear weapon capability is a great equaliser, and Pakistan is now in a position to liberate itself from the obsessive feeling of threat vis-à-vis India. According to some Pakistani leaders this has established a certain balance of power. In a strictly military sense this argumentation is unchallengeable. For the nuclear weapons as an equaliser removes the fear of Indian hegemonism, thus making it possible for Pakistan to reduce its conventional defence expenditure and free itself from an excessive security obsession about India. It can reduce its armed forces and its political role, and thereby consolidate democracy. Some Pakistanis are of the view that this was one of the objectives of prime minister Z A Bhutto when he initiated the nuclear weapons programme. All this is possible only if Pakistan is able to get over its obsession on acquiring Kashmir.
Time is not on Pakistan’s side, since the world had indeed got used to its covert war in Kashmir over the last eight years. And this should explain its apparent determination in wanting to derive some advantage from the transition from covert to overt nuclearisation. At present, it does not look like that they will succeed in their efforts.
The Indian and Pakistani nuclearisation has taken place in an era when the international community has a better understanding about the infeasibility of fighting and winning a nuclear war. In the past three wars, the Pakistani military establishment initiated wars on calculations that they had reasonable chances of gaining a victory. In 1947 before the landing of the Indian armed forces in Srinagar if the airport had been taken by Pakistan, history would have been different. In 1965, if the Pakistanis had not lost the battle of Asal Uttar, which they should have won on the basis of equipment and numerical superiority in tanks, they would have dictated terms on Kashmir. In 1971 they expected the Pakistan–US–China line-up would frighten India from over-running Bangladesh. In all three cases they started the wars on rational expectations and they made peace when they realised they had lost. Now they know that neither prolonged covert war using mercenaries nor the threat of escalation to regular conventional war or to nuclear conflict will make India budge on Kashmir. Their stake in Kashmir is not high enough to drive them to resort to nuclear confrontation. They are also aware in the extremely unlikely possibility of nuclear exchange that they will come off worse.
There are worries among some people that Pakistani nuclear weapons may fall into the hands of military leadership conditioned by extremist Islamic ideology, and that the future generals of Pakistan may not be as rational as the past and present ones. As such a possibility cannot be totally excluded, the need to ensure that Pakistan is not isolated becomes all the more important. India and other nations, therefore, must maintain good communications with Pakistan and its generals, in order to make them understand the full consequences of any irrational action. The world has survived an unbalanced Richard Nixon, an irrational Mao Zedong, a sedated Pompidou and a senile Brezhnev, all of whom were in charge of nuclear weapons.
However, an Islamic extremist military in Pakistan will be of concern not only to India but also to Iran, Israel, Russia, and the US. This also goes for China. For one can hardly expect China to remain indifferent to a nuclear autonomous Pakistan with Islamic extremist army generals in charge, though such a collaboration between the Chinese and Islamic extremist elements has been envisaged in some scenarios, postulated by subscribers to the thesis of clash of civilisations. This possibility will figure increasingly in strategic dialogue among different nations. On the other hand there is also the possibility that Pakistan’s nuclear capability may be kept under a tight leash by the Chinese. While China may allow sufficient leeway for Pakistan on nuclear capability to countervail India and scare the US in regard to its Gulf and West Asian interests, China may also act as a restraint to Pakistan. The world has yet to realise that nuclear Pakistan is not of concern to India alone. There are much wider ramifications involving the interests of other nations. There are at least two American novels which speculate on Pakistan attempting to seize Gulf oil by using its nuclear capability.
While short range missiles are adequate to deter or threaten India, long range missiles is a different ball game: they would threaten the Gulf countries, Israel and US. If the Taliban-occupied Afghanistan becomes strategic depth for Pakistan then the Pakistani nuclear missile reach will get further extended. Pakistan from its inception has taken full advantage of its strategic location. Professor Stephen Cohen has said that “Pakistan belongs to that class of states whose very survival is uncertain, whose legitimacy is doubted and whose security-related resources are inadequate. Yet these states will not go away nor can they be ignored. Pakistan has the capacity to fight, to go nuclear, to influence the global strategic balance (if only by collapsing) and lastly is in a strategic geographical location, surrounded by the three largest states in the world and adjacent to the mouth of the Persian Gulf.” Pakistan is also in a position to play off China and the US against each other.
Indian Nuclear Strategy
India has no intention of joining the club of nuclear hegemonic powers. While some people initially wanted India to be accepted as a nuclear weapon state there is overwhelming opinion in the country against any co-option into the nuclear hegemonic order. Keeping its minimum nuclear deterrent as an insurance against nuclear intimidation India would become a global player and would be one of the centres in a polycentric world; it could then focus all its attention on economic, technological, social and political development of the country. The minimum nuclear deterrent provides the cover to do that, as it did for Deng’s China. There are hardly any takers in India for building a nuclear arsenal on the model of five nuclear hegemonic powers. Today, the world has moved away from the doctrines of nuclear war conflict, from flexible response, from counter-force and other irrational formulations. India is in a position to build a minimum nuclear deterrent steadily over a period of time, without getting sucked into an arms race. Perhaps it can downsize its conventional forces and use the money saved to modernise them.
In today’s international strategic environment even high intensity interstate wars using regular armed forces are considered to be of very low probability. This is because in the present-day political environment it is extremely costly to hold under occupation a population not willing to submit itself to alien rule. The probability of a nuclear weapon being used is even lower than that of conventional war, though the threat of use, especially an implicit one may be of higher probability. For the last 53 years nuclear weapons have not been used. Though the nuclear hegemonic powers and their allies are not willing to accept that the threat or the actual use of nuclear weapons be declared a crime against humanity, attitudes may indeed change with the passage of time in a polycentric world. Any nation using a nuclear weapon will have to think of the consequences of legitimising its use to the world community and itself. Perhaps the two largest nuclear weapon powers still possessing 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapon stockpiles may afford to contemplate such action, but not the others unless their very survival is at stake.
The real danger may not be posed by nuclear weapons which are in existence today and which are considered unusable because of the environmental and collateral damage; but in the new mini and micro weapons currently being designed by some nations and which are, at least at the moment, considered usable. Therefore, the Indian nuclear R&D should continue to monitor the developments in this field and attempt to keep pace with them. This may have to be done at affordable costs as we have done with our nuclear weapons programme.
Our commitment to keep the nuclear arsenal only for deterrence and our pledge not to be the first to use it have now been reiterated by both the president and the prime minister. There cannot be an Indian consensus on possession of nuclear weapons except on the basis of no first-use. It should be noted that contrary to the popular view, no first-use was not a Chinese patented doctrine. Its origin goes back to the Geneva Protocol of 1925 when in the wake of the havoc caused by chemical weapons in the first world war, the international community adopted the convention not to use chemical weapons and toxins. The possession of weapons was not prohibited nor was its retaliatory use. But the no first-use agreement was by and large successful and also demonstrated the general efficacy of the doctrine of deterrence in respect of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
The Geneva Protocol was violated by the Italians against the Ethiopians, the Japanese against the Chinese, and above all by Saddam Hussain against the Iranians. But, all these breaches were instances in which there was an asymmetry in which only the aggressor had the WMD and the victim did not. On the other hand, during the Second World War when both sides had the WMD (the chemical weapons) they were mutually deterred, and did not use the weapons even as the Allied Forces closed in on Germany and overran it completely. Hitler used the gas to massively murder the Jews in gas chambers but did not dare to use it in war against the Allied Forces. Saddam Hussain used chemical weapons because of the tacit encouragement he received from some of the permanent members of the Security Council, who did not act on the reports submitted by the UN inspection teams.
No first-use and mutual deterrence are two sides of the same coin. The use of chemical weapons in the First World War did not yield victory to either side, but only resulted in senseless slaughter in Flanders — sometimes exceeding that of Hiroshima or Nagasaki in a day. There is today a similar understanding that a nuclear war is not winnable or fightable among two nations both armed with nuclear weapons. The success of no first-use strategy is crucially determinant on the projection of an image of credible capability for certain retaliation. Today it is very difficult for any nation to assume that it will be able to disarm its adversary totally and therefore it can get away with a first strike and can have the confidence of escaping retaliation. The US contemplated such a strike against the Soviet Union in 1961 when it had 17 to one superiority but could not be certain it would escape a minimum number of retaliatory hits. The ratio of missiles the US can aim at China is hundred times more than that of China. Yet mutual deterrence operates between the two.
In the strategic literature of the fifties, sixties and seventies, the strategy of deterrence has been derived mostly from factors of certainty in punishing retaliation. It has been overlooked that factors of uncertainty can also function as a deterrent. If, for an initiator of a nuclear strike, the outcome in a particular conflict is not of sufficiently high stake then the uncertainty on the quantum and nature of retaliation may make him pause and reflect whether it would be worth the risk to initiate such a strike. For Pakistan, Kashmir does not constitute so high a stake as to induce them to consider escalating the conflict to a first strike with nuclear weapons and risk their cities and high dams in retaliatory attacks. Therefore, so long as India’s retaliatory capability is credible deterrence, no first-use strategy will not normally come under challenge.
India does not have to follow the NATO strategy of using nuclear weapons to deter larger conventional attacks. India can manage Pakistani conventional attack on its own. What China can mobilise on its Tibetan borders —which can only be a fraction of total Chinese forces —is also not beyond India’s capability to manage, especially if India modernises its forces. Therefore no first-use strategy will meet India’s security needs by deterring nuclear threats and guaranteeing certain nuclear retaliation.
In order to ensure the credibility of Indian retaliatory capability India must legislate both political and military succession in command and control. For that will send out a clear signal to potential aggressors that even a decapitation strike on Delhi would not cripple a certain retaliation in kind.
The nuclear weapon is not a weapon of war but of mass destruction. It is a political weapon meant for intimidation, deterrence and retaliation. In India, as a democracy where the armed forces have always accepted the supremacy of civilian political leadership, the command and control of these weapons has to be structured suitably to ensure that they will be used only in retaliation on the command of the highest civilian, political authority of the land —the prime minister and in his absence by his legally designated successor. In the West, for the first ten years of the nuclear era the same position held good. Only when the doctrine of use of tactical nuclear weapons became accepted wisdom, the weapons were released to the armed forces and the power to use them was also delegated to them under certain circumstances. This was the era when fighting a war with nuclear weapons was considered feasible. Then they had to plan for safeguarding the weapons against accidental and unauthorised use. They had to formulate plans for launching weapons on warning and under attack. Those measures made the command and control for nuclear war fighting extremely costly.
In India there is no need to follow those practices which originated in the basic doctrine of nuclear war fighting. As a nation committed to no first-use our forces have to be exercised to deliver a retaliatory blow after India is struck. If an adversary were to decide to strike India first with nuclear weapons there is no way of stopping it, except through deterrence with a guaranteed retaliatory blow. That would involve the warhead and the vector to be fitted together and launched on a pre-designated target. In such a system keeping the warheads and vectors separate and even the warhead assembly and the nuclear core separate are prudent measures, dictated by considerations of safety and security, and insurance against unauthorised use. Dispersal of these components would make the tasks of any adversary aiming to destroy our retaliatory capability more difficult. It would provide enormous flexibility and survivability for retaliatory force. In arms control parlance this will be an advance over the much vaunted steps taken by the nuclear weapon powers who claim to have de-targeted and de-alerted their strategic systems.
India should also offer to engage Pakistan and China in nuclear confidence building measures, both officially and unofficially. Any rejection of such an offer would indicate to the world that Pakistan is not interested in ensuring nuclear stability and would confirm China’s interest in maintaining a nuclear hegemonistic global order.
The size of the Indian arsenal can be very modest. There have been suggestions that weapons in two digits or low three digits would meet India’s deterrent needs. India’s willingness to join the fissile materials cut-off treaty is an indication that this country is extremely realistic in its assessment of its deterrent needs. The Federation of American Scientists has proposed scaling down the US deterrent force down to two hundred. If that is adequate for the sole superpower which claims global responsibilities, a modest deterrent of the size mentioned above should be adequate for India.
Nuclear India and Disarmament
Some people in India bemoan that with the acquisition of nuclear weapons it may have lost its moral high ground in campaigning for nuclear disarmament. This would amount to the argument that only countries which do not have armies and armaments can campaign for disarmament. The debate on disarmament in the international community could certainly be conducted on grounds of morality and ethics; but only up to a point of time when nuclear weapons were legitimised through the indefinite and unconditional extension of the Non-Proliferation Treaty by the international community. Thereafter any progress towards disarmament would come about only on the basis of multilateral arms control negotiations. In those negotiations, as the history of the last five years has revealed, those who have no nuclear armaments have no role to play. This was demonstrated during the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) when the five nuclear weapon powers had parallel negotiations outside the Conference on Disarmament and all decisions were taken within that framework and were subsequently imposed on CD including the infamous Article XIV, entry into force clause. The same drill was adopted during the NPT extension conference too. What many people in our country have not realised is that China is today a well-integrated member of the five-power nuclear hegemonic club and the Yalta Potsdam System. It may denounce the US unipolar hegemonic system along with Russia and France, but it has no intention of allowing the five-power nuclear hegemonic system to be democratised.
What the Indian nuclear tests did was to challenge directly the NPT hegemonic order and indirectly the Yalta Potsdam order. The NPT as it is today, cannot accommodate nuclear India, Pakistan or Israel. They, in turn, will not accept the non-nuclear weapon status. Therefore, sooner or later, in spite of its indefinite and unconditional extension the NPT has to be reviewed. That would be the occasion for India to mobilise the non-nuclear weapon states to apply pressure on the five nuclear hegemonic powers. Similarly, it is the correlation between the veto power status and nuclear hegemonic status that has stood in the way of meaningful reform of the UN Security Council and in the progressive dilution of the veto power. If the nuclear hegemonic powers are to attempt to expand permanent membership of the Security Council omitting India, the second most populous nation, fifth largest market and the largest democracy, and now also a nuclear weapon power, they will only make a laughing stock of themselves and the UN. Over a period of time an Asian balance of power involving China, India, Russia and Japan is bound to develop, and the US will find it difficult to deal with China bilaterally ignoring the other powers. These are all objective developments which will give India a powerful voice in global disarmament and security issues. There are also likely to be attempts at co-opting India into the existing system.
India is new to this game. The Indian political class, foreign office bureaucracy, academia and media have yet to reorient themselves to this new situation. The initiative for this has to come from the government. The traditional methods of functioning of the government of the last five decades have to change. Our reactive ways have to give way to proactive strategy formulation. Our initiatives on disarmament have to be based on a realistic understanding of military technological realities. Our normative approaches to disarmament have not even obtained the support of our non-aligned friends as was seen during the NPT extension, CTBT, and the resolution to declare use and threat of nuclear weapons a crime against humanity. If we are to play a proactive and effective role on disarmament and arms control, it cannot be done on the basis of inputs from one division in the Ministry of External Affairs. Nor can it be done without the Ministry of External Affairs encouraging the development of a number of think tanks with appropriate interaction between them.
Conclusion
The five declared nuclear weapon powers, Pakistan and Israel, became nuclear with clear strategies in their minds. India, alas, has no tradition of strategic thinking and our foreign policy has not been formulated on the basis of realpolitik, though when driven to a corner we have practised it successfully, as in 1971. Nuclear weapons have always been looked upon justifiably as evil, and there was not much effort in studying the role of nuclear weapons in international politics. Nor were there any realistic assessments on how far the developing countries could stand up to the pressures of creeping nuclearisation of the globe. Successive Indian prime ministers kept the Indian nuclear response to the China-Pakistan nuclear collaboration a close secret, and did not share it with any of their colleagues. The foreign office and defence bureaucracies and the services were out of it. Consequently, when the tests were conducted the entire political class was totally unprepared. Many of those who reacted against the test did so because they felt the ruling party was trying to appropriate all the credit for it. In any case, very few had devoted detailed thought to the total implications of these tests on the global scene. It will take quite some time for the Indian political class to get used to it. Over a period of time Indian perspectives will emerge partly influenced by Western thinking, partly as a reaction to it, and partly as independent native empirical thinking. Ultimately, the world will have much less difficulty in adjusting to nuclear India than to nuclear Soviet Union and China. Nonetheless, the impact of Indian tests will be very profound since they constitute a challenge to a global nuclear order that had been taken for granted since 1968.