Racing global nuclearisation

NUCLEAR INDIA INTO THE NEW MILLENNIUM: Anindyo J. Majumdar- Editor; Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Calcutta. Lancer's Books, P.O. Box 4236, New Delhi- 110048. Rs. 480.

THE QUESTIONS which have to be answered with some seriousness and credibility not merely by India but every other country which has built up its nuclear stockpile hinge upon the implications of their giving an assurance that they will not resort to the first use of nuclear bombs. The Earth would indeed be a very safe planet if every nuclear weapon state sticks to this promise though we shall still need an answer as to what should be done with the deadly unused weaponry, the maintenance of which with rigorous security itself, would cost several million dollars. The other question is whether in the event of a state breaking its promise or a ``rogue'' nation, untrammelled by any commitments against the use of its nuclear weapons, launches a nuclear attack would it be possible to save the world from a response of the other countries plunging into an annihilating nuclear war?

Readers will not find answers to these questions in the articles put together in this book not merely because there are none right now but also due to their focus being on the rationale which should shape the policy decisions for India. It should have been unrealistic for any country to expect from India an indefinite continuance for its self-imposed restriction of the knowledge it had gained purely for peaceful explosions and denying itself the right to make nuclear weapons. A remarkable achievement here was the testing of a diverse configuration of weapons in an underground explosion, the ignition of a boosted fission trigger and the simultaneous testing of a thermonuclear device with a prototype fission warhead and a sub-kiloton device.

India's commitment to a no-first-use of nuclear weapons implies that its response to a first use of the weapons against itself would be the initiation of a nuclear attack which would devastate the aggressor. The late Gen. Sundarji has been credited with the view that India would survive a first nuclear attack. This presumes that the first use aggressor could not cripple India's nuclear strength. Since it is very unlikely that a first nuclear attack - unless it could be made very massive for achieving a total devastation of India's own nuclear defences - the emerging scene would be its having to recover quickly from a trauma and retaliate with a deadly counter-attack which would reduce the countries to a state of nuclear ruin.

Fully alive to what the implications of a No-First-Use Policy would be, the U.S. has not accepted any such commitment and has considered itself free to decide on the use of its nuclear weapons according to the exigencies of the time.

However, the irrelevance of nuclear weaponry to strategic operations could be seen from the most crushing and humiliating defeat of the U.S. in and withdrawal from Vietnam. Nor could its nuclear weapons help Pakistan wrench Kashmir from India, though Mr. L. K. Advani, Union Home Minister, is quoted for the dark hints he had thrown about the ``changed geo-strategic environment'' in South Asia and his caution to Pakistan against resorting to any adventurism in Kashmir.

With 1962 still burnt into its memory, India's policy for nuclear arming was prompted by China having become a nuclear weapon state with a very huge stockpile. However, nuclear weaponry by itself could not lead to its imposition of its will by China or for that matter any country for achieving what it may have in mind and its nuclear weapons will have to remain in their underground silos unless the nations slip

into a nuclear madness. This should explain the progress in the pace of normalisation of relations between Beijing and New Delhi which gets a detailed analysis in the book.

There should, however, be no complacency over the world not having seen any nuclear war since the dropping of the first atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The 2000 test explosions - to which the contents of the book have drawn attention - which the nuclear weapon states had carried out during the five decades since the end of the Second World War are not less deadly though they are not so directly perceptible. They should have definitely fouled up the world's atmosphere and could have been directly responsible for the famines, floods and the global warming apart from the uncontrollable spread of ailments which continue to target children and unborn babies.

The contents of the book also raise doubts on the clarity sought to be imparted to India's nuclear doctrine that it will not be the first to use nuclear weapon with its emphasis that the deterrence would be ``credible''. Such a perception could give it the right to forestall a nuclear attack by the launching of its own nuclear weapons without waiting to be hit to an anticipated annihilation from which it could not recover. This should explain the graduation of India's nuclear policy ``from the moralistic to the realistic'' as it was enunciated by the Foreign Minister, Mr. Jaswant Singh. The progress which India has already made with its space programmes has given it the capabilities for making an effective delivery carrier for its nuclear weapons.

If, in spite of the world having seen the heavy build-up of nuclear weapons since the end of the Second World War, there has been no nuclear war, a reminder from the book is that this is more due to good luck than to the pursuit of sane policy. There had been many false warnings about an impending nuclear attack on the erstwhile Soviet Union during the Cold War from a false warning and U.S. planes, loaded with nuclear bombs, were actually on their way to carry out the first dropping of the bombs before they were stopped just in time. ``The USC3I system gave 20,000 false alarms of a missile attack between 1977 and 1984.''

If India's nuclear explosions of 1998 raised a barrage of criticism from the West and China and it was seen as a threat to the neighbouring countries, it was very wisely pooh-poohed by the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister. Decrying the sanctions imposed on India by the U.S., he said, ``Sanctions imply judgment from a high moral ground. In the present world context, very few countries can take a moral high ground.'' The U.S. sanctions have in fact hit the U.S. corporations which were hoping to seek out the big emerging market of India and they had been exerting pressure for the lifting of the same. This is just an instance of a big bullying country being made to look foolish. Having realised a little late that India had a mind of its own and could submit to the pressure to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. had to change its tactics and had to limit its demand to seeking from New Delhi ``a quantification of India's minimum deterrence.'' To which the Indian reply given with a terseness to the U.S. was that its ``perception was not static'' and it ``refused to divulge any numbers.''

However desperately the nuclear weapon states try to halt nuclear proliferation, there is very little hope of their being able to do it. It was left to President Chirac to see matters in the right perspective. Reacting with the typical French logic and realism to the Pokhran explosions and taking note of the new era in which there would be several nuclear states in the world, he is quoted as having said, ``Well, that's the reality.''

CVG

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