India’s nuclear labyrinth

Nonproliferation Review

Volumn 4, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 61-77

  Walker, William ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85008756615     PISSN: 10736700     EISSN: 17461766     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10736709608436653     Document Type: Article

References (49)

1. This paper has been made possible by generous grants from The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the W. Alton Jones Foundation. However, the author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in these pages. The author wishes to thank numerous correspondents inside and outside governments, in India and elsewhere, for their comments on drafts of this article.
2. For want of a better term, “paradigm” denotes a set of conceptual and instrumental assumptions held, in this context, by a country’s political, administrative, and scientific elite.
3. For histories of the Indian nuclear program, see Ashok Desai, India’s Nuclear Option (New York: Praeger, 1976)
4. Raju G. C. Thomas, Indian Security Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986)
5. Ziba Moshaver, Nuclear Weapons in the Indian Subcontinent (London: MacMillan, 1991)
6. Chris Smith, SIPRI, India’s Ad Hoc Arsenal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
7. The best history of Indian science and technology policies which influenced the nuclear development program is Baldar Raj Nayer, India’s Quest for Technological Independence: Policy Foundation and Policy Change (New Delhi: Lancers Publishers, 1983).
8. Mahatma Gandhi, “Atom Bomb and Ahimsa,” Hanju (Poona), July 7, 1946. Quoted in Aabha Dixit, “Status Quo: Maintaining Nuclear Ambiguity” in David Cortright and Amitabh Mattoo, eds., India and the Bomb: Public Opinion and Nuclear Options (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976).
9. For a Chinese perspective, see Wang Hongyu, “Sino-Indian Relations: Present and Future,” Asian Survey 35 (June 1995), pp. 546-554.
10. An excellent history of the border dispute can be found in Xuecheng Liu, The Sino- Indian Border Dispute and Sino-Indian Relations (Lanham: University of America Press, 1994).
11. In particular, China has agreed to supply low-enriched uranium for the Tarapur reactor, which has been effectively embargoed by U.S. and European suppliers due to India’s refusal to accept full-scope safeguards.
12. Little has been written about Sino-Indian relations. Exceptions are A. Whiting, The Chinese Calculus of Deterrent: India and Indo-China (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press, 1975); and
13. Gary Klintworth, “Chinese perspectives on India as a Great Power,” in Ross Babbage and Sandy Gordon, eds., India’s Strategic Future (London: MacMillan, 1992).
14. However, China could now be regarded as exerting indirect pressure on India through its advocacy of an entry-into-force clause in the CTBT which required Indian ratification.
15. On non-weaponized deterrence, see George Perkovich, “A Nuclear Third Way in South Asia,” Foreign Policy 91 (Summer 1993), pp. 85-104.
16. More than this, Jasjit Singh has argued that “Any move towards making the nuclear arms control process explicit and techno-legal (as compared to the present political-strategic) would require an overt acceptance and formalizing of the nuclear weapon status of the three countries [China, India, and Pakistan]. This will tend to remove most of the current restraints, and could prove counterproductive in the long run. Desire for regional arms control should be tempered with this reality.” Strategic Analysis.
17. Jasjit Singh, “Arms Race in the Region: Myths and Reality,” Strategic Analysis 18 (August 1995), pp. 595-609.
18. On the history of and need for confidence-building measures between India and Pakistan, see Aabha Dixit, “India-Pakistan: Are Commonly Accepted Confidence-building Structures Relevant?” Security Dialogue 26, No. 2 (1995), pp. 191-203.
19. Whether they could publicly admit to asking these questions in the current climate is another matter.
20. Did India receive foreign assistance before 1974? The story has not yet been told.
21. Assuming that it has produced tritium in its heavy water reactors, India may also have sufficient confidence that it could manufacture a reliable boosted fission device, albeit without being certain of the yield.
22. Perfecting the design of an optimal yield-to-weight, two-stage thermonuclear design for long range missile delivery, with a yield of several hundred kilotons, has in the past required—and some would argue can only be achieved with—at least partial yield testing of the secondary component. This is one of the primary technical reasons why the CTB remains an important arms control measure.
23. Thomas Cochran and Christopher Paine, “The Role of Hydronuclear Tests and other Low-Yield Nuclear Explosions and their Status under a Comprehensive Test Ban,” Nuclear Weapons Databook (Washington, D.C.: Natural Resources Defense Council, March 1995), p. 9.
24. This assessment has recently been shared by a number of Indian analysts. See, for instance, P. R. Chari, “Moment of Truth,” The Hindu, January 3, 1996.
25. This is also partly a consequence of an under-formed policymaking process. Amitabh Mattoo observes that “Decision-making on nuclear issues in India is complex and obscure. No agency or department is solely responsible for coordinating policy formulation on key security issues, including the nuclear one.” Survival 38 (Autumn 1996), p. 43
26. Amitabh Mattoo, “India’s Nuclear Status Quo,”Survival 38 (Autumn 1996), p. 43.
27. As so often in history, an egalitarian ideology which is promoted for serious and practical reasons also masks—or can be used to mask—a desire to wrest power from, or exert power over, the nations, institutions, or individuals which are the objects of attention.
28. Among numerous articles in the Indian press on this theme during the CTBT’s negotiation, see Brahma Chellaney, “CTB Plan: will America pull off a second coup?’ The Hindu, December 20, 1995
29. C. Reja Mohan, “CTBT and nuclear hegemony,” The Hindu, January 18, 1996.
30. Indian political and military analysts keep a close watch on developments in the policies and activities of the NWS, and especially of the United States. See the discussion, for instance, in G. Balachandran, “CTBT and India,” Strategic Analysis 18 (June 1996), pp. 493-506. This has made them particularly alive to the hypocritical stance that is often adopted by the NWS in regard to the possession of nuclear weapons (they are good for us and thus for international security, and hence we are justified in maintaining weapon support programs, but they are bad for you and you must therefore desist from such activities). However, this also frequently leads Indian analysts to pay too much attention to the pronouncements of weapon developers and military strategists in the NWS, and too little attention to the large constituencies which are committed to the development of multilateral instruments of restraint for reasons that go beyond interests in power maximization. In my experience, they also usually ignore the substantial interests and influence of non-nuclear weapon states in regard to the development of nonproliferation policies.
31. In September 1996, 182 NNWS and five NWS were parties to the NPT. Of the eight countries outside the NPT, three (Angola, Djibouti, and Oman) are currently taking steps to join the treaty.
32. The “Principles and Objectives” were enunciated and approved at the 1995 NPT Extension Conference.
33. The best discussion of the interplay between Indian domestic politics and decision-making in nuclear and other security fields can be found in Shekhar Gupta, India Redefines its Role, Adelphi Paper No. 293 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995).
34. An opinion poll carried out in 1994 found that a small minority (six percent) considered the nuclear issue to be one of the two most important facing the country. However, only 8.5 percent of those canvassed favored India’s renunciation of nuclear weapons, while 58 percent were supporters of the “official policy of ambiguity,” and 33.5 percent favored weapon acquisition.
35. Cortright and Mattoo, Appendix A, pp. 109-116.
36. There are, however, dissenting voices. See, for instances, Praful Bidwai, “The case for a CTBT: India must seize the moment,” The Times of India, January 12, 1996
37. Achin Vanaik, “Standing on zero ground,” The Hindu, January 15, 1996.
38. This is especially evident in the U.S. government, non-governmental organizations, and in U.S. foundations that support research on nuclear nonproliferation policy (although the effort or desire to improve understanding has not been universal).
39. Others would no doubt worry about the difficulties in crisis management that would be caused by another addition to the ranks of nuclear powers.
40. This said, India’s containment, by various means, has probably been turned into a higher-order geopolitical issue by its campaigns against the CTBT and the NPT’s extension.
41. The proposal is explained, for instance, in the statement by Ambassador Arundhati Ghose to the U.N. Conference on Disarmament, Geneva, February 15, 1996.
42. India has announced that it will not sign the CTBT “in its present form.” See the statement by Ambassador Arundhati Ghose in the Plenary Meeting of the Conference on Disarmament, Geneva, June 20, 1996.
43. Article XIV.2, Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, U.N. Conference on Disarmament, CD/1427, Geneva, August 22, 1996.
44. One might imagine clever tacticians stage-managing a pair of nuclear tests apiece in India and Pakistan prior to their accession to the CTBT. They might thereby quench public opinion in both countries and prepare the ground for “detente” in Indo-Pakistani nuclear relations, leading to the capping of their programs and the maintenance thereafter of a permanent state of “recessed deterrence,” accompanied by increased transparency and verification. However appealing this prospect, it seems implausible that India, Pakistan, or any other powers could arrange such events or agree on their aftermath.
45. This might make India still more nervous about the pending negotiation of a fissile material cut-off treaty.
46. The universal ban on chemical weapons also shows that India and Pakistan can cooperate when they choose. On August 19, 1992, the Indian and Pakistani governments issued a joint declaration supporting the complete prohibition of chemical weapons.
47. This does not mean that the eventual goal of a non-nuclear southern and central Asia, and more broadly of a non-nuclear Asia, has to be discarded. Rather, that it has to be achieved in stages.
48. Full-scope safeguards are mandatory for NNWS parties to the NPT and are upheld by INFCIRC/153 agreements with the IAEA. With only eight nations remaining outside the NPT, they are approaching universality.
49. One of the author’s correspondents suggested that another way of getting out of a labyrinth is to stand still and scream for help, in the hope that there is someone around who knows where the exit is and will guide the lost person towards it. He went on to suggest that this option gave rise to another strategy (a misguided one in his view) for external powers in India’s case: take steps to make the labyrinth as forbidding and enveloping as possible in the hope that India will eventually let out its scream and accept guidance out of the labyrinth on almost any terms.