JCC NUCLEAR ARMS RACE: INDIA BACKGROUND GUIDE & Letters from the Directors
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&MUN IX JCC NUCLEAR ARMS RACE: INDIA BACKGROUND GUIDE & Letters From The Directors Dear Delegates, Welcome to &MUN IX and to the Nuclear Arms Race: India v. Pakistan. My name is Reeves Yanez and I will be the coordinating crisis director. I am a Junior at William & Mary majoring in Kinesiology with a concentration in Public Health. I have done MUN since middle school and since I have become increasingly involved, competing as part of W&M’s travel team, staffing our conferences, and serving as the USG for specialized agencies and Director General for our middle school conference, WMIDMUN. Outside of MUN, I love to spend time outside, leading students on backpacking trips through the student rec center. I am beyond excited to see what you all bring to the table as we discuss such an exciting topic with so many possibilities. I would encourage you to use history as a guide as you change the future of the subcontinent, but don’t be constrained by it.. The historical outcome was not perfect and I look forward to the alternate solutions you put forward. I especially value creativity and novel solutions, and plans that account for contingencies will be the most successful. With that being said there may be some sensitive subjects covered in this committee and we have high expectations of delegate conduct. We will not tolerate any racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or any other form of discrimination. I look forward to your exciting plans as you strive to lead your nation to victory. This committee will also be a joint crisis committee, and so you will be actively working against another committee. JCC’s are fast paced and require quick thinking. Your plans will be opposed by an actual committee bound by the same constraints as you which makes JCC’s much more exciting. The entire director team and your USG’s have worked really hard to design this committee, and so we hope you are as excited for it as we are. Please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any questions at all about &MUN or this committee! Your crisis czar, Reeves Yanez & Background From their infancy, Pakistan and India have been at each other’s throats. In 1947, British India was partitioned into two independent states, Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. The partition saw the mass migration of Hindus and Muslims across the new borders and hundreds of thousands of deaths from violence. Territorial disputes between the two newly independent states – particularly over Muslim-majority Kashmir – soon broke out. Pakistan’s refusal to allow Kashmir to join India led to war in 1948. India won control over much of Kashmir, but neither state has ever accepted the other’s rule. The partition left Pakistan considerably weaker than India. It lacked the military organization and arms production infrastructure that India possessed, and population disparities amplified Pakistan’s relative weakness. The Beginning of the Nuclear Program Since its independence in 1947, India has worked towards the development of nuclear weapons. There are several factors that have pushed India in this direction, chief among them the partition and Pakistan, however, their disputes with China and their desire to be a world power should not be forgotten. The key players in India’s early development of nuclear weapons were Homi Bhabha and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Homi Bhabha was an Indian Physicist and founder of the Indian nuclear program. Often referred to as the “Indian Oppenheimer,” he began working on nuclear weapons for India in 1944, even before their independence. He helped found and directed Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in 1945 and started work on enriching uranium for power generation. True nuclear research would start after he convinced the new government to pass the Atomic Energy Act, on 15 April 1948, leading to the establishment of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) not quite one year after independence. Prime Minister Nehru was a proponent of disarmament and pushed research towards non military applications, but left open the possibility for military use. In 1949, when asked about nuclear weapons, Nehru said, “We must develop this atomic energy quite apart from war - indeed I think we must develop it for the purpose of using it for peaceful purposes. Of course, if we are compelled as a nation to use it for other purposes, possibly no pious sentiments of any of us will stop the nation from using it that way." Although Nehru insinuated military use, the early years of the program were focused on civilian use, pushing towards nuclear power in India. & The first major push towards weapons came in 1954 when the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay (AEET) was set up. This was followed up by the creation of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), headed by Bhabha. The DAE fell under the direct control of the prime minister who gave it a huge amount of independence. This autonomy was a major fear for other nuclear powers and the UN. They suspected it would be easy to manipulate but did not initially take any major action. The DAE quickly grew to take up a third of India’s research budget. Also during this time, Canada formed a partnership to set up an experimental nuclear reactor in India and the United States and provided heavy water for the reactor under the Atoms for Peace program. These programs were initially peaceful and worked on civilian technology but they gave India the infrastructure to develop weapons grade plutonium. Although the infrastructure existed and there had been some talk of nuclear weapons, up to this point the Indian nuclear research was almost all peaceful and civilian. They continued to receive assistance from the US and Canada through the early 1960’s and were pursuing a three step plan to replace much of their coal generation with nuclear power. Nehru was a powerful force directing the country away from pursuing nuclear weapons and even Bhabha was primarily interested in civilian uses. They even directed research into Thorium reactors because India had about 25% of the world’s reserves of Thorium compared with only 2% of the world's reserves of Uranium. Although this turned out to be more expensive and impractical, it should still be noted that the Indian civilian nuclear program was very strong and on the forefront of research. The Sino-Indian War India’s nuclear focus changed with the Sino-Indian war in 1962. India and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had initially been allies following the Chinese Civil War. While the United States and the United Nations recognized the Republic of China (ROC) as China’s sole representative, depriving the PRC of diplomatic relations, India supported the PRC. To maintain cordial relations with the People’s Republic of China, who from hereafter will be referred to as China, India did not push back very hard when they occupied Tibet, a contested area. However, India did welcome the Dali Lama, which greatly upset China, who sought more control over the region. This sparked China to grow increasingly weary of India as a threat to their dominance of Tibet. Tibet is the start of all of China's major rivers that maintain food independence for its large population and serve as an impenetrable barrier to invasion. An independent Tibet was essentially an Indian controlled Tibet as the Tibetan people were less antagonized by India and closer religiously to India. & China declared war on India in 1962 to further assert their dominance over the occupied Tibet. India did not expect an attack from China and so had a very weak military of about 20,000 troops, heavily outnumbered by China’s military of 100,000. India also expected the Soviet Union would protect them and ward off an invasion. However, China's attack came at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so the Soviet Union was dealing with much larger problems. All these imbalances led to an unprepared and surprised India, which, coupled with some clever and decisive moves by the Chinese led to a crushing defeat. One of China's first moves was to cut the Indian telephone lines, which stopped communication between Indian units, and command. China was also able to encircle and get behind Indian forces, quickly gaining the advantage. The only advantage India had was their mortars, who were able to accurately target Chinese division. However, these mortars ultimately only slowed Chinese advance. In the aftermath of the war China secured their border and control over Tibet.India was forced to pull back and end their policy of pushing the Himalayan border. It was a humiliating defeat for the Indians and provided the first major push towards nuclear weapons. Then in 1964 China tested their first nuclear weapon essentially guaranteeing their supremacy over India. India now had to contend with a Nuclear neighbor, which essentially ended any hopes of India regaining control of parts of Tibet, or winning any significant victory over China. Peaceful Nuclear Explosions The next phase of India’s nuclear program was designed to create a nuclear bomb, however, it was not a military program. Instead, nuclear development was viewed as an engineering and state building program. Following the Sino-Indian War, Bhabha argued strongly for the development of nuclear weapons, ostensibly to ward off China. China's power spike due to their successful nuclear test needed to be matched and the only way to do this was for India to develop a nuclear weapon of their own. Despite this, prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri still opposed military research, and so compromised by allowing the development for civilian purposes only.