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The toxic terms of discourse of the nuclear debate
have insidiously intruded into the public’s mind
and distorted its moral perspective.
Whatever the final fate of the India-United States nuclear
deal, it is undeniable that the media-driven debate over
it has had a profound impact on public consciousness. Thus,
not just television anchors, but even college students,
are mouthing phrases like the “historic opportunity” (the
agreement offers to India to become a world power) through
a “strategic partnership” with the U.S.,
and promoting India’s “national interest” (which
self-evidently lies in superpowerdom and in containing
China) and “energy security” via nuclear power
development (as if there were no alternatives).
One notion that is rapidly becoming part of middle-class
commonsense is that the deal undoes the iniquitous technology-denial
sanctions imposed on India since the 1970s and rewards
it as a “responsible” nuclear weapons state
(NWS), or, as the July 2005 agreement put it, “a
responsible state with advanced nuclear technology”.
“Responsible” nuclear weapons state? Can this
be anything but an oxymoron? NWSs not only possess the
ability to kill millions of non-combatant civilians instantly
but are prepared and willing to use that capability in
cold blood. Indeed, they make their security dependent
upon keeping scores of these weapons of terror ready to
be fired at short notice.
All NWSs, regardless of intent or the size and lethality
of their arsenals, and despite their professed faith in
nuclear deterrence, have doctrines for the actual use of
nuclear weapons to incinerate whole cities — that
is, to commit unspeakably repulsive and condemnable acts
of terrorism against unarmed civilians. The world’s
greatest terrorist act was not the Twin Towers attack (which
killed 3,600 people), but Hiroshima (where 140,000 perished).
Yet, those who erase this terrible, yet fundamental, truth
from their consciousness still justify the idea that India
is a “responsible nuclear power”. They advance
six claims in support. First, India has an impeccable non-proliferation
record and has never diverted civilian nuclear materials
to military use or participated in clandestine nuclear
commerce. Second, India practices exemplary nuclear restraint
through its “minimum deterrence” doctrine and
its policy of no-first-use.
Third, India has always responded positively to, if not
advocated, proposals for non-discriminatory and equal treaties
for arms control and disarmament. Fourth, India’s
foreign policy orientation is strongly multilateralist;
New Delhi rejects collusive bilateral agreements in favor
of multilateral, universal treaties leading to disarmament.
This derives from the view that the nuclear threat/danger
is global.
A fifth claim is that India abhors any policy or action
that will start or aggravate a nuclear arms race, especially
in its neighborhood. It has not triggered such a race and
will never do so. Finally, India is a peaceful, mature,
stable and law-abiding democracy, which respects human
rights and can be trusted to act with restraint – unlike,
say, Pakistan.
All these claims are questionable, if not altogether specious.
True, India has never run an A.Q. Khan-style “nuclear
Wal-Mart” or willingly proliferated nuclear technology.
But, India has been an active proliferator and has participated
in clandestine as well as open nuclear commerce with a
host of countries to develop its military and civilian
programs.
Right from its very first nuclear reactor, Apsara, to the
latest pair under construction (at Koodankulam), India
has bought, borrowed and both overtly and covertly procured
nuclear technology, equipment or material from states as
varied as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada,
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and later Russia,
France, China, and even Norway.
The basic design of its mainline power generator is Canadian – the
pressurized heavy water reactor named CANDU (Canada Deuterium
Uranium). India’s very first power reactors, at Tarapur,
were donations from the U.S. Agency for International Development
and were executed as a turnkey job by General Electric
and Bechtel. The much-touted Fast Breeder Test Reactor,
the only such reactor to operate in India, was developed
with French assistance.
India used spent fuel from CIRUS (Canada-India Research
Reactor, to which the U.S. supplied heavy water, adding
to the acronym) for military purposes by reprocessing plutonium
from it. This was used in the 1974 Pokhran blast. CIRUS
was designed and built by the Canadians.
A condition for Canadian and U.S. assistance was that the
products of CIRUS would only be used “for peaceful
purposes”. India blatantly violated this and, to
evade legal liability, declared Pokhran-I a “peaceful
nuclear explosion”.
India also clandestinely imported heavy water from Norway
and, later, from China. We do not know what price was paid
for these transactions, but it is unlikely to have been
purely monetary in the Chinese case.
None of this speaks of “responsibility” or
strict adherence to legality, leave alone of India’s “clean
hands” as far as dubious nuclear trade goes. In truth,
nuclear materials are among the world’s well-traded/transferred
commodities. Many countries have participated in such trade.
India is no exception and cannot pretend to be Simon-pure.
Second, the restraint claim is belied by India’s
official nuclear doctrine, which commits it to a large
triadic (land, sea and air-based) nuclear arsenal with
no limits whatsoever on technological refinement. This
super-ambitious plan sits ill with the profession of “minimum
nuclear deterrent”, which is generally understood
as a few dozen weapons. (How many does it take to flatten
half-a-dozen Chinese or Pakistani cities?)
India has also diluted its no-first-use commitment by excluding
from it states that have military alliances with NWSs and
including retaliation against other mass-destruction weapons.
In practice, given the lack of strategic distance from
Pakistan, it is doubtful if no-first-use has much meaning.
Besides, the nuclear deal will allow India to expand its
nuclear arsenal substantially by stockpiling huge amounts
of weapons-grade plutonium.
Third, India has refused to sign any multilateral nuclear
restraint/disarmament agreement since the mid-1960s. In
the 1980s and 1990s, India also turned down at least seven
Pakistani proposals for regional nuclear restraint or renunciation,
including mutual or third-party verification — without
making a single counter-proposal to “call Pakistan’s
bluff”.
Fourth, the very fact of India’s signature of the
bilateral nuclear deal with the U.S. puts paid to its professed
multilateralist commitment. The deal marks a major departure
from New Delhi’s earlier insistence on international
and universal non-discriminatory treaties on arms control/disarmament.
But this bilateral agreement is now meant to be imposed
upon the multilateral International Atomic Energy Agency
and the plurilateral Nuclear Suppliers 7; Group for their
approval — a procedure that India would have strongly
objected to in the past.
India has taken a parochial course, which in future could
mean giving the go-by to multilateral approaches in favor
of expedient bilateral ones.
Fifth, a considerable likely expansion of India’s
nuclear arsenal, which the deal facilitates, will inevitably
escalate the regional nuclear arms race. There is evidence
that in response to the India-U.S. deal, Pakistan is building
at least one (and probably two) plutonium reprocessing
plants, which will help it maximize the production of weapons-grade
material with its limited uranium reserves. That is what
a nuclear arms race is all about.
More worrisome, as India builds up its arsenal to the same
level as the lower range of estimates of China’s
nuclear weapons (250 or so), Beijing can be expected to
make more warheads and missiles. This spells a dangerous
nuclear arms race. Yet, as U.S. strategists see it (see
Ashley Tellis’s quote in Frontline, August 10), a
major purpose of the deal is precisely to help India amass
more nuclear weapons to deter China — via an arms
race.
Finally, it stretches credulity to contend that India’s
behavior towards its neighbors has been exemplarily benign
and peaceful. India’s past record of belligerence
towards Sri Lanka, Maldives and Nepal (on which it imposed
an economic blockade in the late 1980s) negates that claim,
as does its annexation of Sikkim in 1975.
India is, of course, a democracy, but it is by no means
a rule-of-law state. India’s human rights record
is deeply flawed — not just in Kashmir and the
northeastern region, but also in respect of religious minorities,
Dalits and Adivasis, and more generally, numerous underprivileged
groups. One only has to recall the 2002 Gujarat carnage,
the 1992-93 Mumbai communal clashes, the savage repression
under way against the tribals of Chhattisgarh through Salwa
Judum, and police brutality against mere suspects in countless
terrorist attacks.
Our history of strategic misperception and miscalculation
(for instance, during 1987-88, 1990 and 1999) also bears
recalling. At any rate, having a democratic government
is no guarantee that a country will not use mass-destruction
weapons.
The only state to have ever used nuclear weapons was the
democratic U.S. It would be tragic if our citizens look
for Washington’s recognition of India as a “responsible” nuclear
power while deadening their own moral sensibilities against
weapons of terror.