NUCLEAR WEAPONIZATION IN SOUTH ASIA: DID US NON-PROLIFERATION POLICY MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE?

by

Raju G. C. Thomas Allis Chalmers Professor of International Affairs Marquette University

Presented before the NPEC/IGCC Summer Faculty Seminar July 11-14, 2001 University of California, San Diego

U.S. nonproliferation policy in South Asia appeared to have failed when and Pakistan conducted a series of underground atomic/nuclear tests in May 1998. But perhaps making such a statement is akin to the declarations made during the McCarthy years that the United States, and in particular the State Department, failed to prevent the triumph of communism in China in October 1949 because of many things that American foreign policy-makers did or did not do. It seems absurd to contemplate that amidst the sweep and rush of historical forces in a large country like China that in the prolonged struggle between the nationalist and communist forces of Chang Kai-shek and Mao Zedung, that anything the United States could have done would have prevented the ultimate outcome. There is a tendency for some Americans to think that America is omnipotent and omnipresent, and that given the right mind, policy, resources and perseverance, the State Department could have saved China from communism. That mindset still prevails today with expressions like "the indispensable nation," "America can make a difference," "the world looks to American leadership," and so on...

So too in the case of India and Pakistan taking the nuclear path in May 1998. Would the right policy, people and implementation could have made a difference in preventing the nuclearization of South Asia? But the answer to the question as to whether U.S. non-proliferation policy failed in South Asia is more complex than might seem apparent. The picture is mixed. There were pressures and constraints in both the South Asian and international security environments with considerable interaction between the two. To say that the nuclearization of South Asia was inevitable would be a truism and a post hoc rationalization.

I will first look at some aspects of U.S. non-proliferation policy which may provide some clues to the problem, and then look at autonomous proliferation compulsions in South Asia that led to the region’s nuclearization.

Was Eisenhower’s "Atoms for Peace" the Beginning?

The fertile global conditions for nuclear weapons proliferation were set probably in 1953 when President Eisenhower introduced his "Atoms for Peace" plan whereby the United States would share the benefits of the peaceful atom with the rest of the world. At the time, this meant that the industrialized countries with nuclear technology would be willing to sell nuclear power reactors to the rest of the world, at least to those who could afford to buy them. The United States sold light water reactors to Japan, South Korea, and Iran setting up their nuclear power base. Germany and France sold reactors to Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa and Iraq. [I am not exactly sure here of who gave what and how much to whom.]

Canada sold and set up two heavy water reactors in Rajasthan in India (the Rajasthan Atomic Power Plant - RAPP I and II) of 220 megawatts each, and gave a small research reactor called "Cyrus" installed at the Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC) in Bombay. Canada also; provided a small 125 megawatt heavy water reactor to Pakistan installed in Karachi. In 1961, the United States gave India two 4200 megawatt light water reactors which were stationed in Trombay, a suburb of Bombay (the Trombay Atomic Power Plant -TAPP I and II). When India conducted its "Peaceful Nuclear Explosion" (PNE) the plutonium was alleged to have come from the Canadian-supplied Cyrus research reactor, from RAPP, and from the American supplied TAPP. India denied these allegations since it had already developed and established its own heavy water reactors based on the CANDU design at Kalpakkam, a suburb of Madras (the Madras Atomic Power Plants - MAPP I and II).

Since then India has set up other indigenously built nuclear reactors in many other states, and also an experimental Fast Breeder Reactor in Madras. While India has allowed the Canadian and American supplied RAPP and TAPP to be placed under IAEA safeguards, none of the Indian built reactors are under international safeguards. Two Russian-supplied 1000 megawatt light water reactors being installed at Koodanakulum in Tamil Nadu are also under mutually agreed upon IAE safeguards. This leaves a dozen Indian build heavy water reactors throughout India that are capable of diverting the plutonium extracted from the reprocessing of its waste fuel to be used for weapons purposes. Following India’s "Peaceful Nuclear Explosion" in May 1974, Pakistan tried to buy a reprocessing plant from France. When that failed because of U.S. pressure on France, Pakistan sought to piece together a uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta through a variety of clandestine transfers of materials and technology from Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Canada and the United States. Thus, India and Pakistan took two separate routes to nuclear weapons capability. The Indian nuclear tests of 1998 were plutonium technology-based, and the Pakistani nuclear tests were enriched uranium technology-based.

Perhaps Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program proposed and embarked upon in 1953 was at least partially to blame for this chain of events, although shortly thereafter the United States successfully established the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1957 to monitor the recipient countries nuclear energy facilities. Even with the IAEA, a determined state could divert to nuclear weapons capability as Iraq and North Korea demonstrated decades later. The ability of not just India, but also South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa, Argentina and Brazil to make nuclear weapons may be traced to the Atoms for Peace program. On the other hand, the Israeli determination to acquire its 200 "bombs in the basement" (if Seymour Hirsch’s assessments and claims are credible) would appear to have happened anyway, whether Israel pursued a nuclear energy program or not. However, back in 1953 it would have been difficult for the United States and other Western industrialized countries not to have offered the sharing of the anticipated wonders of the peaceful atom. Nuclear energy was perceived then as the energy of the future promising energy salvation for all countries. There was no non- proliferation treaty in existence at the time, and no restrictions on the transfer of "peaceful" nuclear technology. The competition for the lucrative nuclear reactor market would have meant that France, Germany and the Soviet Union would have sold them anyway. The United States would then would have been compelled to pre-empt them on the grounds that "it would be better if we did it than if they did it," thereby guaranteeing profits for American corporations, and American control over possible diversions to military purposes.

Today there is renewed interest in nuclear power in Europe, Japan and the United States, the main guardians of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. In an article on the nuclear industry, Simon Holberton claimed that "as the European nuclear industry approaches the end of the millennium there is reason to think that its prospects are better than they have been for 20 years. With memories of the Chernobyl disaster fading and public concern about global warming growing, the industry has been presented with an opportunity to change its public perception and possibly its future." Taken collectively, the European Union's nuclear industry is the biggest in the world with more than 140 nuclear reactors in operation producing one-third of the total electricity generated. France obtains 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. Japan has embarked on a major nuclear energy program and expects to obtain almost 50 percent of its electricity from nuclear power plants.

India has always claimed that nuclear power was essential to its developmental needs. First, given the location of coal resources and the costs and security risks of transportation throughout India, and given the fact that hydel power projects need to be located along major rivers, some of the major cities of India such as Bombay and Madras do not have ready and reliable access to electricity. Nuclear power plants can be located right next to India’s major cities. Apart from accidental leakages of radioactive materials and the likelihood of nuclear meltdowns, nuclear power is clean and non- polluting compared to coal-fired thermal plants. Major accidents such as the one at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, are not likely to happen again as technology and safety standards have advanced.

After shunning nuclear energy for more than 2 decades, especially following the accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, the United States is now seeking salvation for its energy crunch through nuclear power. The problem has been most acute in California.1 As Richard Rhodes noted in his article "Nuclear Power’s New Day": "The population of the United States is growing, adding the equivalent of California every ten years. Demand has caught up with supply even with significant improvements in energy efficiency and conservation, and the United States has become the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. These factors make a renewal of nuclear power likely.... France once burned coal. That nation’s electricity is now 80 percent nuclear, with five times less air pollution and with carbon dioxide emissions 10 times lower than Germany’s and 13 times lower than Denmark’s. "2

Arguments for nuclear power in the midst of the energy crisis in California, Brazil and other states, have raised concern among those seeking to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. In an article entitled "More Nuclear Power Means More Risk," Paul Leventhal claimed that the "nuclear industry’s safety and security claims are often misleading. They don’t acknowledge that the core of at the Three Mile Island plant was within hours of an uncontrolled meltdown, with Chernobyl- like consequences, when a new shift operator came on duty" and shut the plant down.3 Leventhal continued: "A rapid expansion of nuclear power would compound the existing dangers of nuclear weapons proliferation. International inspections of nuclear facilities provide uncertain protection. Iran, for example, has pledged to put the reactors it will build under inspection but is still suspected of using civilian nuclear power as a cover for a nascent nuclear weapons program. George Perkovich, in his book ‘India’s Nuclear Bomb,’ reports that a bomb tested by India in 1998 was made from the grade of plutonium produced in its 10 uninspected power reactors." If nuclear energy is the energy of the future, and if the West perceives this as a critical source of energy, then will be limits to the American ability to contain further nuclear proliferation in the future.

U.S. Non-Proliferation Policy’s Impact on India’s Nuclear Energy Program

Western economic and technological sanctions have not contained India’s nuclear weapons capabilities. What U.S. non- proliferation policy has done is to retard India’s nuclear energy program relative to nuclear energy programs elsewhere in the world. There has been little or no Western assistance for India's nuclear energy and weapons programs since India tested its first atomic device in May 1974. These sanctions were further increased and tightened after the test of 1998. The denial external technology assistance has prevented India from fulfilling its nuclear energy goals. India's nuclear energy performance has been comparatively dismal. (See Tables below).

Comparative Energy Capabilities (1995)

Natural Gas Hydroelectric Power Crude Oil Nuclear Electric Country Coal Production Production Generation Production Power Generation Liquid & Dry Mil. Short Billion KWH 1000 BPD 1000 BPD/CuFt Billion KWH INDIA 311.06 71 703.4 47 & .66 7.23 China 1478.07 175 2990.0 ** & .60 12.38 Pakistan 3.27 18.50 57.1 5 & .64 .5 Indonesia 41.47 12.30 1502.6 76 & 2.23 ** Taiwan .32 8.77 1.2 .5 & .03 33.93 South Korea 6.31 5.42 ** ** & ** 63.68 Japan 7.40 79.70 11 ** & ** 275.22 Brazil 5.24 245 695.4 40 & .06 2.39 Argentina .21 30 715 42 & .89 7.07 Mexico 10.23 27.25 2617.5 447 & .94 8.02 Russia 310.03 179.23 5995 180 & 21.01 94.34 France 9.99 71.37 50 12 & .11 358.6 U.K. 52.36 3.99 2489.1 267 & ** 76.57 U.S.A. 1032.97 323.52 6559.6 762 & 18.80 673.46

Comparative Per Capita Consumption of Electricity (KWH)

Bangladesh 84 Italy 4588 Kenya 139 UK 5843 India 314 Germany 6513 Pakistan 416 France 7126 China 719 Japan 7281 Mexico 1486 USA 12308 Brazil 1783 Sweden 16534 Canada 17347

From: India's Means Business; Investment Opportunities in Infrastructure. Ministry of External Affairs, Investment Promotion and Publicity Division, , 1997

Projections made back in the 1970s that nuclear energy would constitute 10 percent of India's electric power by the year 2000, have proven woefully short of expectations. In 2000, nuclear power constituted about 2.5 percent of total electricity generated in India. In France, electricity generated from nuclear power plants is about 78 percent, in Belgium 62 percent, South Korea 50 percent, Sweden 48 percent, Japan 35 percent, Germany 32 percent, and the UK and US about 25 percent.4 France and Japan have established major nuclear energy programs and its reliance on this source of energy is expected to grow. France has almost 60 power plants with an electricity generating capacity of about 55 Gigawatts. The United Kingdom has 35 nuclear reactors with a generating capacity of 13 Gigawatts, Germany 20 reactors with a generating capacity of 22 Gigawatts. India had only 10 operating reactors in 2000, two each at Tarapur near Bombay, Kota in Rajasthan, Kalpakkam near Madras, Narora in Uttar Pradesh, and Kakrapar in Gujerat. Site preparation or construction for two nuclear reactors each were being conducted at Tarapur, Kaiga in Karnataka, and Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu. On the other hand, South Korea and Taiwan had far greater nuclear generating capacity than India. A 1998 news report indicated that China is in the market for 150 nuclear reactors which led to extensive lobbying in the U.S. Congress by General Electric, and other nuclear power plant suppliers to ease up Congressional sanctions or restrictions on China because of China's dismal human rights record. These figures indicate that India's indigenous nuclear energy program which has been denied external assistance since its atomic test of 1974, needs all the foreign assistance it can get if nuclear energy is to make a significant contribution to the severe deficiency in the power sector.

The Failure of the Carter Stick and the Reagan Carrot

President Carter had attempted to use the economic sanctions stick on both India and Pakistan. President Reagan had attempted to use the economic military aid carrot on Pakistan. Neither approaches worked. Just before and during the Carter administration, a series of internal legislation was passed to stem the proliferation tide in South Asia. In 1976 and 1977 the Symington and Glenn Amendments were passed to the Foreign Assistance Act which prohibited American economic and military aid to countries attempting to acquire reprocessing and enrichment capabilities for weapons purposes. Both Amendments were essentially directed at Pakistan.5 In 1978, Congress passed the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Act (NNPA) that called on the U.S. government to withhold cooperation on peaceful nuclear programs with countries that would not allow the IAEA inspection of its nuclear facilities. This Act was expected to be enforced retroactively, the target clearly being the 30-year Indo-American agreement of 1963 that had assured the supply of enriched uranium to the two General Electric light water nuclear power reactors set up at Tarapur near Bombay. In accordance with the NNPA, the supply of enriched uranium was withheld by the Carter administration. India claimed that the U.S. had violated an international agreement. The U.S. claimed violation of the peaceful nuclear uses clause because American heavy water was allegedly used in the Canadian-supplied Cirus research reactor from where India had obtained the plutonium for the 1974 atomic test. Subsequently, to circumvent the NNPA and Congressional pressures, and to fulfill the contractual obligations arising from the 1963 agreement, the Carter administration allowed India to obtain the enriched uranium from France, and later Germany.

The Reagan administration took a laissez-faire approach to the proliferation issue in order to maintain Pakistani cooperation and goodwill in the U.S. policy of assisting the Afghan mujahideen in its war against Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan. The reward for such Pakistani cooperation was large-scale economic and military aid to Pakistan, the third largest U.S. aid to any country after Israel and Egypt, and a U.S. policy of minimizing the seriousness of Pakistan's clandestine nuclear weapons program. The Reagan policy succeeded enormously on the Afghan front, but contributed heavily to the shambles that is now found in the nonproliferation regime in South Asia. Whereas India had ended its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons after its 1974 test of an atomic device, Pakistan had accelerated its own nuclear weapons program leading to an Indo-Pakistani posture of mutual nuclear brinksmanship for a decade and the eventual tests of 1998.

However, there was an effort on the part of the Senate to link American economic and military aid to Pakistan to combat the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, with U.S. non-proliferation policy in the region. The passage of the Pressler Amendment in the Senate in 1984 required the U.S. administration to certify every year that Pakistan was not attempting to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. The Pressler Amendment was Pakistan-specific and did not apply to India. But India had already been denied a variety of economic and technological assistance following the 1974 atomic test. Thus, if U.S. Intelligence were to indicate that Pakistan was pursuing such a capability, then the U.S. government would be compelled by law to cut off all economic and military aid. In 1991, based on clear evidence, the Bush Administration declared that it could no longer certify that Pakistan was complying with its non-proliferation requirements and the terms of the Pressler Amendment... Economic and military aid was cut off to Pakistan, including the transfer of some 40 F-16 fighters that Pakistan had already paid for. But these actions were too little and too late. During the Reagan Administration from 1981 to 1988, Pakistan had acquired the materials and technology to put together uranium-enriched bombs.

Did the NPT Advance or Contain Proliferation?

Eisenhower’s "Atoms for Peace" plan would appear to have given expression to something unavoidable. Subsequently, this dilemma of containing nuclear proliferation and advancing nuclear energy development was codified and encrusted in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT was completed and opened for signature in 1968 and went into effect in 1970. It was a treaty drawn up as loosely as possible to attract the maximum number of state signatures and ratifications at the time. Indeed, while Articles 1 and 2 of the NPT, enjoin the Nuclear Weapons States and the Non-Nuclear Weapons States to take measures to prevent the spread of these weapons among new states, Articles 4 and 5 call for the transfer of civilian nuclear technology by the Haves to the Have-Nots, including the technology of "peaceful nuclear explosions." Given the fact that there appears to be little technological separation between the civilian and military nuclear programs, these clauses of the NPT would appear to be in contradiction. To sweeten the treaty and encourage acceptance, Article 10 assured would-be signatories that they could withdraw from the treaty by giving 3 months notice if newer circumstances jeopardized their national security interests. Accordingly, in March 1994, North Korea gave the mandatory three-month notice to withdraw but was prevented from exercising that legal right by the United States.

Needless to say, the problem of civilian-military dual use-technologies apply also to "peaceful" chemical and biological research and industrial activities, and to space rocket and satellite development programs. Nearly all technological research, development and production carry dual-use purposes. They include the areas of electronics, computer hardware and software, automotive engineering, aircraft, and shipbuilding. Most major states have comparatively easy technological access to biological and chemical weapons which could serve as a substitute for nuclear weapons either for deterrence or war-fighting purposes. The acquisition of missile technology which may be a spin-off from civilian space rocket and satellite development programs provide delivery systems for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons to distant targets. Treaties and informal multilateral agreements such as the BWC, the CWC and the MTCR are not guarantees against covert programs and operations. The NPT is no exception.

What is puzzling is that this highly flawed treaty was renewed without change indefinitely in 1995. The United States argued that the NPT met all or most of its basic objectives. Renewal without revision was expected to promote the prevailing satisfactory (if not ideal) state of affairs into the foreseeable future. After all, almost all the 191states (or whatever the number is right now) had signed and ratified the treaty since 1968 with the notable exceptions of India, Pakistan and Israel. Even if some key states have not signed, there were no additional nuclear weapons states beyond the existing five until 1998. Following the Indian test of an atomic device in May 1974, India's stockpile went from one to zero. Although the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests in 1998 may represent a setback, still the earlier fears of more than 30 nuclear weapons states existing by the year 2000, as envisaged during the Kennedy administration, did not materialize and appears unlikely to happen in the next decade. Besides, there is indication that India and Pakistan will not conduct further tests and may yet sign the CTBT. The policy attitude of the United States is simply a case of "leave well enough alone." To have tinkered with the old NPT in 1995 with the purpose of devising a new treaty to cover all the problems that emerged during the 25-year period would only have opened the floodgates of controversy leading to no agreement and no renewal.

India has argued that the NPT has failed to meet its objectives. Unlike non-discriminatory multilateral treaties such as the BWC and the CWC whose terms apply equally to all its signatories, the NPT is a discriminatory treaty that creates an exclusive club of nuclear "Haves" and a permanent mass membership of nuclear "Have-Nots." Moreover, throughout the original NPT's existence, states that should have signed it such as India, Pakistan, and Israel (and at one time, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina), had refused to sign the treaty. Moreover, there are at least four NPT signatory states--Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea--who signed the treaty but at one time or another engaged (and may still be engaged) in clandestine nuclear weapons programs. And there are at least three other signatory states--Japan, South Korea and Taiwan--who are engaged in developing major civilian nuclear energy programs with the capacity to divert to nuclear weapons programs if sufficiently motivated by security concerns. These concerns arise from the continuing growth of Chinese nuclear weapons capabilities and North Korea's secretive nuclear ambitions. With the end of the Cold War and with U.S. alliance relationships in Asia ending or in decline, the industrialized and technologically advanced states of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan may perceive the need to develop independent nuclear deterrents to meet future security needs. For India, Chinese nuclear capabilities and Pakistan's clandestine nuclear weapons and missile programs aided by China, remain a major security problem.

Until 1993, two nuclear powers, France and China, had not signed the treaty. Even after these two states signed the NPT, they continued to conduct nuclear weapons tests until 1996 in anticipation of the moratorium that would be imposed on all nuclear testing by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that was concluded in 1996. This state of affairs suggests first that there exists no restrictions on the five formal nuclear weapons states except the restraints that they may choose to impose on themselves. Second, that the majority of states which do not need to sign the treaty because they lack nuclear ambitions have signed it. And third, a handful of states with nuclear ambitions which need to sign the treaty have not signed it, or have signed it in bad faith, or may change their minds about their treaty membership as new security circumstances emerge.

Regional Imperatives: Beyond American Control?

Although the roots of proliferation in South Asia are to be found mainly in the dynamics of Sino-Indian and Indo-Pakistani relations, proliferation tendencies in the Middle East, Central Asia and Northeast Asia add to the proliferation pressures in South Asia. Conversely, it could be argued that if South Asia is nuclearized, holding back the proliferation tide elsewhere in the world would become more difficult. Many of these trends would appear to be somewhat beyond American control. North Korea's earlier efforts to build the bomb at its Yongbyon nuclear complex may carry no direct or immediate security implications for South Asia except to demonstrate the failure of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to check the spread of the bomb among the treaty's signatories.6 A worst case scenario might envisage a South Korean response in kind to North Korean nuclear weapons production, followed by similar responses in Taiwan and Japan triggering a complex nuclear arms race among these countries and with China. A regenerated and active Chinese nuclear arms buildup within the new and expanded Asian strategic nuclear context would further rationalize the Indian nuclear deterrent. That, in turn, would rationalize the Pakistani nuclear deterrent.

The more serious proliferation linkages with South Asia were to be found usually in the Middle East and Central Asia. Previous Indian concerns in the 1980s arose from possible Libyan-Pakistani connections in the development of an "Islamic bomb." India had alleged in the early 1980s that various Libyan holding companies were set up in Pakistan to channel Libyan petrodollars and uranium ore from Niger (channeled through Tripoli) for the Pakistani nuclear weapons program.7 Indirect financial assistance for the bomb through regular economic aid channels was also alleged to have come from Saudi Arabia. The construction of the uranium enrichment plant at Kahuta was facilitated by such indirect Arab financial backing. Whatever the veracity of such earlier Indian reports, there are no further allegations of Arab connections, perhaps because the Pakistani program had become self-sufficient. Pakistan had stockpiled sufficient weapons grade enriched uranium at the Kahuta plant thereby making the tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May 1998 possible within three weeks of the Indian tests.8

Iraq's experience during the 1990-91 Gulf crisis and war may provide some dangerous lessons for would-be proliferators elsewhere including states in the subcontinent. Irrespective of the wrongs of the Iraqi invasion and annexation of Kuwait, one lesson that may be learnt by the near-nuclear weapons states is that if Iraq had possessed even a small arsenal of crude nuclear devices before it annexed Kuwait, the course of events might have been different. Either the threatened attack by the U.S.-led coalition might have been deterred; or the attack might have been deferred until the security of Iraq's neighbors, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, was assured; and until probable casualties to Western forces from Iraqi chemical and nuclear weapons attacks could be avoided.

Thus, the possession of a few crude nuclear bombs may be perceived by near-nuclear weapons states in the less industrialized world either to deter attacks by more powerful neighbors, or to raise the threshold of external military intervention by the industrialized West with their advanced high-tech conventional weapons.9 Iran declared its right to obtain nuclear weapons following the Gulf War and called upon other Muslim nations to match Israel's capabilities.10 Iranian Vice President, Ayatollah Mohajerani, declared in October 1991: "Because the enemy has nuclear facilities the Muslim states too should have the same capacity. Muslims should try to go ahead...[until] the atomic capacity of Muslims and Israel should [are] be at par".11 Iran has made unsuccessful attempts thus far to develop gas centrifuges for enrichment, to purchase a small plutonium-production reactor from China, and to buy a research reactor from India.12 Syria has obtained Scud missiles from North Korea, and has contracted with China for the purchase of a nuclear research reactor, for medium range M-9 missiles, and chemical ingredients for missile fuel.13 That nuclear weapons may constitute the "great equalizer" among unequal states, is a lesson that has not been lost on such states, including Pakistan and India.

Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1990, the temporary possession of nuclear capabilities in Ukraine, Belarus and especially Kazakhstan provided some logic for nuclear weapons states such as India and Pakistan. After some initial resistance, all three states have since signed the NPT.14 Referring to the "respectful" visits of US Secretary of State James Baker, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, and French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas to the capital Almaty during 1991-92, Scitkazy Matayev, a spokesman for President Nursultan Nazarbayev, declared: "If we didn't have nuclear weapons, they wouldn't have bothered."15 Matayev continued: "A state with nuclear bombs has a decisive voice in world affairs". However, under pressure from the US, President Nursultan Nazabayev agreed in May 1992 to scrap all nuclear weapons systems on its soil and to sign the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state.

Proliferation in West and Central Asia will constitute a positive trend for Pakistan but a disturbing development for India. For Pakistan, the existence of more friendly Muslim nuclear weapons states would reduce the relative strategic nuclear power of India in the region. Faced with multiple deployments of nuclear weapons in China, Pakistan and in some of the Muslim countries further west, the credibility of an Indian nuclear deterrent posture would become more complex, and perhaps ineffective. Israeli reactions to such trends would further complicate the delicate balance of mutual deterrent relationships in West, Central and South Asia. The net outcome would be unstable nuclear relationships all around.

Global Imperatives: Within American Control?

Arguments were also made in India before 1998, that regional security was also affected by the unmitigated growth of nuclear weapons among the five nuclear weapons states, especially during the Cold War. Therefore, India had to right to exercise its nuclear option if necessary. Global arguments for an Indian nuclear deterrent usually revolved around the discriminatory nature of the non-proliferation regime that allowed the pre-1968 five nuclear weapons states (all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council), to continue their nuclear arms buildup unabated. India had always argued during the Cold War that global security was not only affected by the spread of nuclear weapons among prevailing non-nuclear states, but also the unmitigated growth of weapons of mass destruction among the five nuclear weapons states. While Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty that was finalized in 1968 and went into effect in 1970, called upon these nuclear "Haves" to proceed forthwith towards universal and comprehensive nuclear disarmament, no such thing happened until the end of the Cold War in 1989. Indeed, Article 6, the only clause in the treaty that attempted to contain "vertical" nuclear weapons proliferation, appeared to be a false promise by the "Haves" to lure the "Have-Nots" away from acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities.

Throughout the Cold War, vertical proliferation continued among the five nuclear "Haves" through newer areas of weapons development not restricted by arms control agreements. Thus, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT I signed in 1972 and the unratified but largely fulfilled SALT II signed in 1979) essentially provided for a controlled Soviet- American nuclear arms race. This was hardly disarmament as required by Article 6, or even arms control. It was only the INF treaty of 1988 that for the first time eliminated a whole class of intermediate-range nuclear weapon delivery systems of the two super powers in Europe, without however touching those of Britain, France and China. The Strategic Arms Reduction Talks showed some genuine inclinations towards nuclear weapons reductions but only became more of a reality after the end of the Cold War when the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended the threat to the Western world. START-I was signed in 1991 and START-II in 1993. Under the latter agreement, the nuclear warhead stockpiles of the United States and Russia was to be reduced to 3,500 within 10 years.

This was still an enormous reservoir of destructive power, exceeding the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs several thousand times over. As John O. Pastore and Peter Zheutlin, members of the Physicians for Social Responsibility, pointed out: "Today, 10 years after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia retain tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, many of which, astonishingly, remain on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched on a moment's notice.... Even with a relatively small nuclear arsenal Russia could wreak incalculable devastation. Indeed, a 1998 New England Journal of Medicine study by Physicians for Social Responsibility reported that just 16 warheads fired at U.S. targets from a single Russian Delta-4 submarine could cause as many as 6 million immediate deaths, and just as many, if not more, injuries from radioactive fallout and other after-effects. Under what circumstances would the U.S. possibly take such a risk?"16

No doubt, the end of the Cold of War significantly halted and reversed the upward spiral of vertical nuclear weapons proliferation between the United States and Russia, the successor state to the Soviet Union. Britain and France have largely kept their nuclear weapons development on hold. The exception among the nuclear "Haves" is China which continued with its nuclear weapons and missile development programs. However, France and China--two nuclear NPT "hold out" states--signed the treaty in 1992 and 1993. Whether the NPT is now strengthened with the inclusion of the remaining two nuclear weapons states will remain somewhat dubious. It did not stop France and China from going on testing nuclear weapons until 1996 before adhering to the CTBT. Some of these tests were conducted above ground contravening the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty which neither China nor France had signed at the time. Those actions set a precedent for India and Pakistan to conduct further nuclear tests before signing the CTBT. And the U.S. Senate’s decision not to ratify the CTBT has provided sufficient cause for India and Pakistan not to sign and ratify it either

Domestic Sources of South Asian Nuclear Policy: Conditions Beyond American Control

Perhaps none of the international conditions described above were as decisive as domestic conditions. These include autonomous technological growth, economic capacity, inter- and intra-party politics, and the search for international status and recognition. One level of analysis would be whether India’s nuclear decisions were the outcome of the technological and economic ability to develop and sustain a nuclear weapons program, and whether this capability determined external threat perceptions. In other words, economic and technological growth that made nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems possible, also made them strategically desirable, thereby compelling an opposing state to respond in kind. This would appear to the case in May 1998 when India’s testing of nuclear weapons and missile systems were immediately countered by similar tests by Pakistan. A second level of analysis would be whether domestic inter-party politics, nationalism, and national self-images as a rising power propelled India’s decisions to join the ranks of nuclear weapons states. If India could not compete for international recognition as a major economic power such as Japan, perhaps the clout of nuclear weapons would provide that recognition. After all, nuclear China in the 1960s was recognized as a major world player before its rise as a global economic giant in the late 1990s. The hypothesis here is that the Hindu nationalist ideology of the Bharatiya Janata Party and that of its more extreme political partners such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Shiv Sena, had more to do with the decision in May 1998 to turn India into a nuclear weapons power.

In Pakistan, the situation was much more straightforward. There always has been a near national consensus that if India had the bomb, then Pakistan must have it to. This was given expression by President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto prior to the Indian atomic test of May 1974: "If India acquires the bomb, Pakistanis will eat grass to acquire the bomb as well." Pakistanis came close to having to eat grass a year following their tit-for-tat nuclear tests in 1998 when the Pakistani economy stood on the brink of collapse.

Riding the Technological Momentum. "Going Nuclear" may well be a function of both technological capabilities in the making of nuclear weapons and perceptions of security threats to a state. So long as states do not possess the needed nuclear weapons technology (for example Nigeria), or possess the technological capability but do not perceive serious threats to itself (for example Canada), the NPT will remain an acceptable but irrelevant treaty. It is those states that perceive nuclear threats to itself and possess the technological and economic capacity to undertake nuclear weapons and missile delivery programs that are relevant.

Thus, perceptions of security threats to a state may be the outcome of technological capabilities to produce nuclear weapons. If two antagonistic states are capable of developing nuclear weapons, there will be a tendency for each state to assume that the other will do so thereby justifying it own attempt to preempt the other in acquiring such weapons. What operates here is the classic "security dilemma" and the so-called "mad military momentum," namely, that if we can do it, then they can do it too, therefore we must do it before they do it. Such nuclear threat projections become self-fulfilling prophecies. Whatever the compulsions, the present nuclear weapons proliferation tendencies point to somewhat uncertain prospects for the nonproliferation regime in the 21st century.

In the Indian case, much of the motivation no doubt arose because China already possessed a nuclear and missile arsenal, and Pakistan was perceived as covertly acquiring the same. However, motivations to acquire nuclear weapons and missiles also arose from the growth of technology in the nuclear energy and space programs. Moreover, the Indian educational system continued to churn out an abundance of scientists and engineers capable of developing bombs and rockets who needed to be employed. Or they would be lost to the West, or remain within India as an unemployed or underemployed disgruntled and underprivileged class of workers. Technological capacity in India, has no doubt generated perceptions of external threat conditions that required an Indian nuclear deterrent.

One author, Itty Abraham, argued that that the evolution of India's nuclear capabilities arose from an unusual mix of autonomous scientific growth within a highly protected domestic strategic enclave that was not subject to public political scrutiny.17 Various scientific personalities and egos ran India's atomic establishment especially those of Homi Bhabha and Raja Ramana, the "grandfather" and "father" of the Indian atomic bomb. The idiosyncrasies and inconsistent beliefs on the role and nature of nuclear weapons of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors contributed to the sense of infallibility among the scientists and engineers working within this protected strategic nuclear and missile enclave.

In India, there are differences in the expectations, criteria and strategy of acquiring technological self-sufficiency in sophisticated conventional weapons through indigenous sources on the one hand, and that of nuclear weapons and missiles on the other. Unlike conventional capabilities, the technological sophistication of nuclear weapons and perhaps even missiles developed in India need not match the quality of those found in the US, Britain or France. The minimum expected requirement at present of nuclear weapons and missiles is that the bomb must detonate and the missile must land in the approximate target area. That would constitute minimum deterrence.

Technological comparisons with the capabilities of existing nuclear weapons states, including China, are not considered important although this attitude may change if India decides to embark on an overt nuclear arms buildup to rival that of the medium nuclear powers. However, the designated range, payload, accuracy and other operational requirements of missiles must be reasonably assured. In the case of short-range tactical missiles to be used by the Army on the battlefield, Indian military expectations of comparative technological quality are that such missiles must match those available to India's adversaries, not unlike that of other major conventional weapons. Medium and intermediate range missiles intended for strategic deterrence need to fulfill less stringent requirements of sophistication and accuracy since they serve a somewhat more flexible and ambiguous purpose. Ultimately, missiles developed and produced in India need only demonstrate its own pre-defined and projected range, payload and accuracy and not necessarily the missile capabilities possessed by China, Pakistan or other countries.

Civilian and Military Spin-Offs and Spin-Ons. The indigenous development of nuclear weapons and missiles in India carries another major advantage over the similar development of other major conventional weapons. There is a parallel "peaceful" civilian program being undertaken by the Departments of Atomic Energy and Space that more directly contributes to India's nuclear weapons and missile capabilities. Indeed, despite all the technical setbacks, cost overruns and prolonged delays in India's nuclear energy programs and schedules, nuclear reactors and reprocessing facilities have provided India with the crucial plutonium for the development of atomic and thermonuclear bombs. Similarly, the civilian space program shares with the military missile program common needs such as cryogenic booster engines, special aluminum alloys, launch motors, gyroscopes, liquid and solid propellants, stabilizers and guidance systems. No doubt, civilian technological development in the areas of aeronautics, shipbuilding, automotive, and electronics also carry benefits for the defense sector, but they do not tend to be as comparable in the technical standards required or technologically compatibility as in the case of nuclear energy and space programs. The spin-offs and spin-ons between civilian and military endeavors in nuclear and space technologies have been much more direct and beneficial.

India's growing technological capability and accumulating plutonium stockpiles from its reprocessing facilities may carry some similarities to the Japanese nuclear energy program which is technologically far more advanced and extensive, and which routinely involves the stockpiling of large quantities of plutonium. Japan currently uses enriched uranium supplied by the United States. The spent fuel is reprocessed in Europe and the plutonium then transported back to Japan, each shipment sufficient to make 100 to 150 bombs.18 Because of the safety risks in the transportation of the fissile material over long distances, Japan has created its own "plutonium cycle" which would give it an annual weapons-making capability several times greater than that of India. Yet there have been no international pressures on Japan to halt the development and stockpiling of large quantities of fissile materials.

Part of the reason may be that one of India’s main motivations for conducting a peaceful nuclear energy program has always been to keep its nuclear weapons option. Conversely, the need to maintain the nuclear weapons option justified its nuclear energy program. The civilian nuclear energy program allows India to acquire and maintain a nuclear weapons capability at an incremental cost. Thus, it is important to note that when looking at the opportunity costs of nuclear weapons and missile programs in India, the economic burden of such nuclear defense measures may not be as high as it may seem. Consequently, barring the marginal effects of international economic sanctions on India following the 1998 tests, there has been little appreciable impact on the Indian economy.

Party Politics and Coalition Governments. The Indian nuclear decision may be rooted in its domestic political environment. The idiosyncrasies of political leaders, political ideologies and inter-party politics, and domestic political crises, contributed in some measure to India’s decisions to become a nuclear weapons state. Perhaps, the political trigger for the nuclear tests of May 1998 ordered by the BJP may have been domestic political survival rather external threats. Following the February 1998 national elections, the BJP led a shaky coalition government of motley parties and diverse ideologies that combined religious nationalism, economic socialism, and regional parochialism. Almost immediately after taking office in March 1998, the BJP had to address pressures from Jayalalitha Jayaram's All India Annadurai Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party of Tamil Nadu who threatened to withdraw from the coalition unless its demands for more ministerships for its members of the coalition were met.

The situation was similar to the internal political pressures faced by Indira Gandhi's Congress government in 1974 that prefaced the atomic test in May 1974. Indira Gandhi’s popularity had plummeted two years after India’s military victory over Pakistan in 1971. There were accusations of electoral wrong-doing for which she faced an indictment, and the country was faced with nation-wide labor problems amidst economic decline. Thus, while the Indian decision to proceed with the conduct of an atomic test may have been taken soon after the experience of the 1971 war and the rapprochement between the United States and China in 1972, the immediate reasons to test the bomb in 1974 most likely arose from domestic political pressures in order to divert the attention of the Indian population from Indira Gandhi’s political woes. However, after the atomic test of 1974, India quickly withdrew back to a non-nuclear posture. There was no further stockpiling of nuclear weapons. But whether the decision in 1974 was right or wrong, it will be much more difficult to reverse India back to a non-nuclear weapons state after the tests of 1998. Knowledge and ability now remain, and capabilities may be advanced without further tests.

The demand that India acquire nuclear weapons was initially and forcefully made by the Hindu nationalist Jan Sangh party, following China’s first atomic test in 1964. The promise to turn India into a nuclear weapons power was sustained for nearly four decade by this party and its successor, the BJP. It was part of the BJP’s political platform during its election campaign of February 1998, and the promise was fulfilled within three months of it taking office as the leader of the coalition government with the largest number of seats in parliament of any other competing parties, including the Congress party. Yet, it is important to note that when the BJP leadership of the ruling National Democratic Alliance coalition decided to turn India into a formal nuclear power in May 1998, the decision was acclaimed enthusiastically by all parties within and outside the coalition government, including the opposition Congress party led by Sonia Gandhi. The BJP decision generated national support and solidarity. Thus, it would seem that the Hindu nationalist BJP gave expression to the national political will. Only the BJP had defied the threat of sanctions from the United States and the West and fulfilled a long-standing Indian security objective that spanned 4 decades of debate and party ideologies, and perceived to be in the overall national interest.

More than two years after the 1998 tests, nuclear nationalism subsided . As the leading member of the ruling coalition government that included parties that professed socialism and regional linguistic nationalism and parochialism, the BJP had to tone down its Hindu nationalist fervor. And as its Hindu nationalist ideology began to drift towards the need to maintain the secular nature of the Indian state, its commitment to a major nuclear weapons program also mellowed. Calls by the more extreme Hindu nationalist organizations, such as the RSS and VHP, and India’s other hawks in the security policy-making community, for expanding India’s nuclear capabilities, were rejected. A greater willingness to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty emerged compared to the strong resistance that prevailed among its party members towards the treaty in the mid 1990s. Nevertheless, links between the level of Hindu nationalism and the demand for a strong Indian nuclear weapons capability would seem apparent.

The Status Question. The need for international status, in addition to the need for nuclear deterrence for security reasons, were inextricably intertwined in India's decision to go nuclear. India has complained repeatedly that it does not get enough respect compared especially with China. Until the mid 1980s, before China forged ahead with sustained economic growth rates of between 8 to 12 percent of its G.N.P., the per capita incomes of India and China were between $300-400. The population sizes of the two countries also put them in the same bracket. But India pursued economic development and population control through the democratic process compared to the authoritarian measures and totalitarian conditions found in China. Instead, the West, and particularly the United States, equated India with Pakistan, a country once one-fifth the size of India before the separation of Bangladesh in 1971, and now only one-eighth the size of India. A nuclear India was expected to resolve this discrepancy. But it failed when Pakistan matched India in the tests of bombs and missiles.

With respect to India's civilian nuclear program, Itty Abraham pointed out a similarity in the Indian case compared to that of France. "With nations turning so often to the past to authenticate themselves, incorporating the hyper-modernity of this technology into existing national discourse was often a complex feat of rhetorical shifts... The contrasts of modernity and tradition, however defined, find frequent mention in France, for example, where reference would be made to nuclear reactors in terms of past technological marvels like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and even the Cathedral of Notre Dame... One can easily see in both a similar aesthetic of triumphant rationalism in which atomic energy was the proof of the relative superiority of their own ideology."19 Abraham continued that like France, Nehru, in particular, linked Indian history and culture with the concepts of science and nation, "where modern science is appropriated to authenticate the Indian nation," and conversely "where science makes the Indian nation modern..."20 The result was an unusual mix in the Indian rhetoric that combined Sanskritic Vedic verse and the need for nuclear energy power and weapons.

In similar mode, arguing against India signing the CTBT under American pressure, Bharat Karnad, a then member of the NSAB, declared: "Nothing is better appreciated and better guaranteed to create respect — the vital aim always missing in Indian foreign and military policies — in the world than a country that stands up for itself and its national interests whatever anybody else may think or do. China is respected and allowed every consideration. India is badgered and asked to behave because Washington is convinced that the threat of punitive actions is enough to turn Indian resolve to jelly. Or, it is tempted by offers of freer access to high technology or whatever else New puts a policy premium on, because it is believed that India (and Indians) can be bought off or won over with blandishments. That is the principal difference in the American treatment of China and India."21

The search for international status, recognition and respect, and especially the frustration arising from such denial to India by the international community as compared to China, extends to other areas. With reference to Indian female contestants now repeatedly winning international beauty pageants such as Miss World and Miss Universe (India swept both in 1996 and 2000, and one of them twice in other years in the 1990s), the noted Indian novelist, Shobe De observed: "For so long we've considered ourselves to be losers and second-raters, We crave success at anything at all in the international arena."22 Vir Sanghvi, the editor of The Hindustan Times, declared that "Indians especially longed for recognition from the West, anything showing that they are major players in the world, whether with nuclear weapons, a seat on the United Nations Security Council, Western book prizes, movie deals with Hollywood or top jobs with multinational corporations. There is a sense that we can be a contender. At least we certainly want to be."23

It was mainly theses self-imposed domestic compulsions that finally triggered the Indian nuclear tests of 1998, followed immediately by the Pakistani tests. There was little that the United States could have done to control these conditions and events.

NOTES

1 For a debate on the pros and cons of nuclear energy in the context of the California energy crisis, see the following two articles: William Tucker, "The Nuclear Option Revisited: As Fossil Fuels Become Scarce, We Must Look to the Atom's Great Reservoir of Energy," and Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, "The Nuclear Option Revisited: Too Expensive and Unacceptably Risky, Nuclear Power was Declared Dead Long Ago," both in the Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2001.

2 Richard Rhodes, "Nuclear Power's New Day," New York Times, May 7, 2001.

3 Paul L. Leventhal, "Nuclear Power Means More Risk," New York Times, May 17, 2001.

4 From Simon Holberton, "The Nuclear Industry: Future Calls for Power to Persuade," Financial Times, November 14, 1997.

5 A detailed description and evaluation of U.S. nonproliferation policy in India and Pakistan may be found in Spector, The Undeclared Bomb, pp. 80-148.

6 For various reports of developments in North Korea, see The International Herald Tribune, October 28, 1991; Far Eastern Economic Review, 7 November 1991; and The Independent (London), 20 November 1991. For an argument against military strikes to take out the Yongbyon nuclear research reactor, see the op-ed article by William J. Taylor and Michael Mazarr, "Defusing North Korea's Nuclear Notions," New York Times, April 13, 1992.

7 See Raju G. C. Thomas, "India's Perspective of Nuclear Proliferation in South Asia," in Neil Joeck, Ed., The Strategic Consequences of Nuclear Proliferation, London: Frank Cass, 1986, 67-79.

8 See Manoj Joshi, "Nuclear Questions," Frontline (Madras) 20 December, 1991.

9 Jessica Matthews' advice in her article entitled, "Kick Baghdad Out and Strengthen the Nonproliferation Treaty," is not likely to help. See International Herald Tribune, October 18, 1991.

10 See "Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons: Still Time To Act," The Defense Monitor, vol. 21, no. 3, 1992.

11 The Nation (Lahore), 24 October 1991.

12 "Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons: Still Time To Act," The Defense Monitor, vol. 21, no. 3, 1992.

13 New York Times, January 10, 1993.

14 See editorials of the New York Times and The Washington Post entitled "Ukraine and the Bomb," "Ukraine's Nuclear Arms," and "Targeting the Bomb," in the International Herald Tribune, December 5 and 7-8, 1991. An assessment of the situation following the START II agreement in January 1993 is provided by Thomas L. Friedman, "Beyond START II: A New Level of Instability,' New York Times, January 10, 1993.

15 See Andrew Higgins, "Deadly Secrets for Sale," in "The Sunday Review" of The Independent (London), 19 April 1992.

16 John O. Pastore, Peter Zheutlin, "Seize the Moment, Ban the Bomb," Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2000.

17 See Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State, London: Zed Books, 1998.

18 See Reports by David E. Sanger in the International Herald Tribune, 26 November, 1991; and in the New York Times, 13 April, 1992.

19 Abraham, pp. 9-10

20 Abraham, p. 28.

21 Bharat Karnad, "Policy on CTBT," Hindustan Times, November 4, 1999. Karnad has incorporated his observation in his chapter in this book.

22 Barry Bearak, "India, Beauty Superpower, Is Becoming Jaded," New York Times, December 13, 2000.

23 Ibid.