India's National Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

Vol. 16 :: No. 03 :: Jan. 30 - Feb. 12, 1999

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INDIA & THE U.S.

On to the next round

As the India-U.S. strategic dialogue goes into its eighth round, it is clear that New Delhi has only a bleak range of options.

SUKUMAR MURALIDHARAN

THE strategic dialogue between India and the United States resumes in New Delhi in the first week of February against the backdrop of seven previous meetings which produced little of tangible value and a rhetorical shift in the U.S. position which suggests the first glimmer of a tilt towards India. Jaswant Singh, who was the negotiator from the Indian side, has in the interim period become Minister for External Affairs. His dialogue partner remains Strobe Talbott, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State.

A parallel negotiating track with France and the United Kingdom has also been opened. Brajesh Mishra, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, has been exploring possibilities of a new strategic engagement with the two governments. A second round of talks with the French envoy, Gerard Errera, was concluded in mid-January, following which Mishra went to London to meet British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

Conducted for the most part in an environment of opacity, these diplomatic encounters have failed to win broad political endorsement in India, precisely because their agenda remains unknown. From stated positions it appears that India's nuclear posture today is to maintain a "minimum deterrent" force in a state of advanced deployment. An element of restraint has been built into this posture by the assurance that India will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict situation. If these two elements are accepted by the global community - or to avoid this uncomfortable euphemism, the U.S. - then India would be willing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and participate in ongoing negotiations towards a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT).

Talbott will arrive in New Delhi in the first week of February, after two days of talks in Pakistan, where he will pursue a concurrent effort to bring Pakistan into compliance with the global nuclear non-proliferation regime the U.S. has been orchestrating. Significantly, it is expected that India will shortly afterwards resume its discussions with Pakistan under the "two plus six" agenda that was agreed upon in September 1998. The first round of talks on this gamut of eight contentious issues remained inconclusive for the most part. It remains to be seen whether Talbott will be able to impart a new momentum to the bilateral negotiations, though that clearly will be part of his intentions.

As they prepared for their last round of bilateral talks on reciprocal nuclear restraints, India and Pakistan were exhorted to study the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that the U.S. and the Soviet Union concluded in 1987. This in the American reading was a worthy model for emulation by the adversarial neighbours. The U.S. also urged both sides to put certain quantitative parameters into their frequently spoken of intention to induct a "minimum nuclear deterrent". This would put verifiable limits on the scope and extent of weaponisation and stabilise a situation that threatened to escalate into a lethal arms race.

THESE essential points were reaffirmed early in January by the U.S. Ambassador in India, Richard Celeste. A satisfactory outcome to the conflicts that were unleashed by the competitive nuclear tests on the subcontinent, said Celeste, would depend upon both sides agreeing on the size of the deterrent force that they would deploy. Transparency would also be required on the delivery systems being used and the locations of the devices in either side's armoury, said the Ambassador. Of course, the U.S. conceived of a supervisory function for itself in its self-proclaimed role as global umpire in nuclear matters.

Celeste's proposals were quickly rejected by the Indian Foreign Office and Defence Minister George Fernandes. The points Celeste raised impinged directly on the national security concerns of a sovereign state, said Fernandes, who also drew a parallel between the recent U.S. bombing raids in Iraq and U.S. insistence on foisting unacceptable conditions on India.

It is clear, however, that the Pakistani bargaining position in its bilateral encounters with India have drawn much from the framework that the U.S. has outlined. Since it went into the last round of talks with Pakistan with its own distinctive perceptions, India often found itself talking at cross purposes with the western neighbour. India was willing to offer a treaty committing both sides to a "no first use of nuclear weapons posture." After having made a unilateral pledge to this effect, India thought that a better ambience of mutual security could be created by drawing Pakistan also into a similar commitment. Expectedly, Pakistan saw this as an effort to undo a situation of nuclear parity and tilt the strategic balance in favour of India's superior conventional military forces.

The Pakistani alternative of a comprehensive treaty of non-aggression was rejected by India on account of its linkage to the Kashmir question. Lowering its sights from a "no first use treaty", India then suggested a mechanism to prevent an accidental or unauthorised nuclear launch.

In its practical details one of India's most significant suggestions was the establishment of safe and secure lines of communication between the political leaders, the military commands and the operational security details on either side of the border. The 1991 agreement on not attacking each other's nuclear installations was to be extended to cover population centres above a certain threshold. And both sides were to commit themselves to prior mutual notification of missile tests above the range of 20 km.

The specificity of these proposals invests them with a certain merit in the Indian perception. But for Pakistan, they do not go far enough in their security implications. And given its obsessive preoccupation with the Kashmir issue, India's proposals were seen as a way of minimising the security threat to itself while in turn conceding little.

Pakistan, for its part, came up with a series of more ambitious proposals to defuse nuclear hostility. These included a mutual ban on explosive testing; a commitment by both sides to forswear the ballistic missile defence option; and the acceptance of a minimum deterrent force of transparent dimensions. None of these proposals gained acceptance from India, which continues to insist that the issues they raise touch upon national security interests that transcend the neighbourhood context.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz had provided, as early as October 1998, a clear signal of willingness to accede to the CTBT and perhaps even the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Yet Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was expected to tie up the deal during his visit to the U.S. in December, returned without making any commitments. Indications are that Pakistan will insist on reciprocity from India, which for the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government would be a difficult condition to meet.

V. SUDERSHAN
External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. The strategic dialogue between India and the U.S. resumes in New Delhi in the first week of February.

THE Indian Government has at various times taken divergent positions on the CTBT. Defence Minister Fernandes has firmly ruled out any possibility of a "private deal" with the U.S. on the CTBT. The secret track of negotiations between Jaswant Singh and Talbott has produced little by way of results, admitted Fernandes. And though Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had stated firmly that Indian resistance would not be a factor preventing the CTBT from entering into force in September 1999, the country would prefer to wait for the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty before initiating further action.

Jaswant Singh's negotiating brief evidently is to maximise the strategic advantage to be garnered from India's accession to the CTBT. This involves not merely a relaxation of economic sanctions and the lifting of technology denial regimes dating back to India's first nuclear test in 1974 - and recently considerably strengthened in scope and coverage - but also perhaps a larger strategic partnership that recognises India as a neighbourhood power.

For the U.S., any concession to such a bargain would be a "moral hazard" - it would encourage other states to break out of a regime of nuclear restraint in the belief that there are rewards to be earned. The message the U.S. has insistently impressed upon India since May, which that country has not in any way relented on even in the private confines of the Talbott-Jaswant Singh talks, is that nuclear "breakout" will not be rewarded. This faces India with a rather bleak range of options - accede unconditionally to the CTBT as an act of faith, in the hope that the future will bring the rewards, or continue holding out at the risk of being denied the high technology imports that it sees as vital to a number of sectors.

It was, in this context, a dramatic change of form for the U.S. to embrace the view that sanctions could be relaxed on India and Pakistan without obtaining their prior accession to the CTBT. The change in tone was signalled by Talbott just days before he was to leave for India and Pakistan. Delivering a lecture on "Dialogue, democracy and nuclear weapons in South Asia" at Stanford University in California, Talbott seemed to reverse the geopolitical equations that the U.S. administration had written in the immediate aftermath of India's nuclear tests. The signals that President Bill Clinton sent out through June and July - especially during his visit to China - were clearly that the U.S. conceived of China as the fulcrum of geopolitical stability in the Asian continent, which would if necessary be called in to restrain the strategic ambitions of India.

Talbott's speech at Stanford puts a different spin on this equation: India's democratic traditions, he said, could "serve as an important reminder to China that democracy is not only possible, but also necessary if a government is to succeed in building a huge and diverse population into a successful modern state". In Talbott's estimation, the moral value of consolidating democracy in India was immense: "If India's democracy continues to flourish, it can exercise a positive influence on those countries in East Asia where democracy is either in jeopardy or is only a gleam in the eye of would-be reformers."

These virtues made it imperative for the U.S. to be more attentive to India's national security concerns. The U.S. could always insist on the fulfilment of its maximal non-proliferation agenda in the subcontinent, but that would make the "best the enemy of the good". The U.S., in other words, is willing to accept a compromise solution with India that stops some way short of demanding the "freeze, rollback and elimination" of nuclear weapons material and expertise.

The new tone was reaffirmed by Karl Inderfurth, the next ranking official of the U.S. State Department with direct responsibility for South Asian affairs. Speaking to the Foreign Policy Association in Washington, Inderfurth gave the first glimmer of a tilt in American policy in the region: "India is the largest, strongest and indeed the dominant player in the subcontinent and, as such, it commands a corresponding level of thought and care." This was not meant to be a suggestion that the U.S. would deal with India at the expense of any other country in the subcontinent, but merely was meant to signal the recognition of "India's size and influence on the global scene, in international fora, as a leader and spokesman of the developing world, and as an emerging market."

The initial Indian response to these comments has been guarded but positive. A certain line of advocacy, which has long held that the nuclear tests in May provided a fresh opportunity to broaden the terms of India's engagement with the U.S., could claim vindication from the most recent developments. But before the celebrations commence, it may be appropriate to question how durable the U.S. empathy with India is likely to be - whether it is premised upon a set of contingent and transient calculations or rooted in a common set of values and perceptions.