Ten years after India's nuclear tests: Deeper into the morassby M.V. Ramana(
The Hindu, May 11, 2008)
Since
Pokharan, we have been witness to an opportunistic shift in the stance
of the government, from an outright condemnation of nuclear deterrence
to an unabated enthusiasm for the development of a full-fledged arsenal.Hand
in hand, expenditures on non-nuclear military activities and
acquisition of conventional weapons have also increased
dramatically...The impact of these expenditures, of course, falls
primarily upon the poor and the vulnerable.In 1996, the
International Court of Justice offered a historic Advisory Opinion
where it ruled that “the threat or use of nuclear weapons would
generally be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in
armed conflict, and in particular the principles and rules of
international humanitarian law” and endorsed unanimously a legal
obligation on all States “to pursue in good faith and bring to a
conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its
aspects under strict and effective international control.” Earlier, as
the case was being considered, India submitted a Memorial where it
argued that nuclear deterrence should be considered “abhorrent to human
sentiment since it implies that a state, if required to defend its own
existence, will act with pitiless disregard for the consequences of its
own and adversary’s people”. This description is apt. Though just an
unproven assumption, nuclear deterrence relies on the accumulation of
weapons of mass destruction aimed at killing large numbers of people in
the wishful hope that such annihilation would deter another country
from attacking because of fear.
Some years later, in January
2003, the Indian government issued a nuclear doctrine which explicitly
stated that the country is pursuing nuclear deterrence, though this was
qualified as a minimal one. But the doctrine also warns that “nuclear
retaliation to a first strike will be massive and designed to inflict
unacceptable damage”. Unacceptable damage, in plain English, means that
these nuclear weapons would be dropped on cities, each killing lakhs or
millions of innocent people. The few years between the clear and
forthright condemnation of deterrence and the enthusiastic invocation
of deterrence are among the most important in recent Indian history.
The
biggest event occurred 10 years ago, on May 11, 1998, when three
nuclear devices exploded in the Pokharan desert. Two days later, two
more explosions were conducted and Prime Minister Vajpayee proudly
announced that India was now a nuclear weapon State. Pakistan’s
leaders, showing that they too subscribed to the twisted logic that
drives the acquisition of nuclear weapons, conducted six explosions of
their own on May 28 and 30. With those tests, the half-century-old
conflict between India and Pakistan acquired a nuclear edge.
Nuclear threats
The
edge was to be seen soon. Contrary to the claims of nuclear weapons
advocates, who promised peace and a cessation of war, India and
Pakistan fought over Kargil bitterly within a year of the tests. Though
limited geographically, the war is estimated to have cost about 1,700
Indian lives and nearly 800 Pakistani ones. Indian and Pakistani
officials delivered indirect and direct nuclear threats to one another
at least 13 times. There are also plausible, though not convincing,
reports that the two countries did prepare their nuclear arsenals for
potential use.
Kargil was the first major confrontation between
two nuclear powers. Indeed, the war may even be the first caused by
nuclear weapons. The late Benazir Bhutto stated that in 1996 Pakistani
military officers had presented her with plans for a Kargil style
operation, which she vetoed. It would therefore seem that the 1998
tests convinced Pakistan’s political and military leaders that the
operation might be feasible with nuclear weapons to restrict any
possible Indian riposte.
The pattern of nuclear intimidation
seen in Kargil was to be repeated during the major military crises that
followed the militant attack on the Parliament in December 2001. Even
Prime Minister Vajpayee warned: “no weapon would be spared in
self-defence. Whatever weapon was available, it would be used no matter
how it wounded the enemy”. On the other side of the border, former
chief of the Pakistan Army, General Mirza Aslam Beg, declared: “We can
make a first strike, and a second strike or even a third”.
Although
it did not develop into war, a number of factors make the 2002 crisis
more dangerous than the Kargil war. Unlike Kargil, where Pakistan is
clearly seen to have lost, especially politically, both sides claim the
2002 crisis as a victory. On the one hand General Musharraf’s promise
that he would rein in Pakistan-based militant organisations is seen as
proof that India’s “coercive diplomacy” worked. Pakistan’s case is
simpler. Despite the huge build-up of forces by India, and much talk of
attacking so-called terrorist camps within Pakistan, no military
attacks actually occurred. That a massive military confrontation with
strong nuclear overtones is seen by both sides as a victory increases
the likelihood that similar incidents will occur in the future.
Nuclear costs
The
obvious lesson of these two military crises, that nuclear weapons cause
insecurity, has been ignored by nuclear advocates. Instead, they
claimed that just testing nuclear weapons is insufficient for
deterrence and called for the kinds of steps that India had earlier
criticised nuclear weapons States for taking. Following their advice,
India has not only adopted use-doctrines and practices similar to those
of nuclear weapon States, but has also embarked on developing the
paraphernalia needed for the adoption of these doctrines. These include
a triad of delivery vehicles, including aircraft capable of dropping
nuclear bombs, missiles launched from land and sea, and a nuclear
submarine; training the military to use these; a command and control
structure to oversee the deployment and use of nuclear weapons;
components of an early warning system and an anti-ballistic missile
(ABM) defence system. No one has been keeping count of the crores of
rupees being spent in this process. Hand in hand, expenditures on
non-nuclear military activities and acquisition of conventional weapons
have also increased dramatically. This is in direct contradiction to
the erstwhile claims of nuclear advocates that the acquisition of
nuclear weapons would reduce expenditure on conventional weapons. The
impact of these expenditures, of course, falls primarily upon the poor
and the vulnerable.
A growing arsenal
One of the
adjectives appended to deterrence in India’s nuclear doctrine is
minimal. (The other adjective — credible — is superfluous. A deterrent
that is not credible cannot deter.) When asked to delineate what
constitutes minimal, policy makers resort to obfuscation. Minimal, they
claim, is a dynamic concept and one which cannot be specified in
advance. Given the massive destructive power of nuclear weapons, it
should be obvious that a dozen or so suffice to obliterate several
cities and millions of people in Pakistan or China. But going by
current public estimates, the fissile material stockpile just from
CIRUS and Dhruva, the two reactors reportedly assigned for making
plutonium for weapons, should be sufficient for over a hundred nuclear
weapons. Perhaps the meaning of minimal is simply that it is not
maximal.
That the future arsenal size sought by policymakers is
much larger was made clear during the negotiations and public debates
surrounding the nuclear deal that is being negotiated with the United
States. As a report from the International Panel of Fissile Materials,
which the author is a part of, shows, the number of reactors that the
DAE strenuously kept outside of safeguards can produce several dozen
nuclear weapons worth of plutonium every year (available at
www.fissilematerials.org).
New attitudes
During the
1990s, one oft-heard argument from those espousing nuclear weapons was
that while these were evil, they were a necessary evil. To the extent
that the pressures of this lobby were resisted, India acquired weapons
only reluctantly. That was then. What is on display today is unabated
enthusiasm for the ongoing development of a full fledged arsenal. And
all the attitudes that go with being a State possessing nuclear weapons.
Such
a shift in attitude was on display during the unexpected vote against
Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005. While much
attention was focused on US pressure, there was something deeper too.
In an earlier era, Indian leaders would have denounced the hypocrisy of
the United States, with its immense nuclear arsenal, lecturing Iran
about its small uranium enrichment plant. Now, one heard many
policy-makers talking about why nuclear proliferation was dangerous and
Iran should not be allowed to have nuclear technology.
Non-proliferation, which used to be seen as immoral, has come to take
the place of disarmament, the truly worthwhile goal.
The
opportunistic switch in stance is somewhat akin to what has been called
the third class railway compartment syndrome. Those waiting on a
crowded platform clamour in the name of justice and fairness to be let
into compartment. But once inside, the opportunist shuts the door and
keeps the others outside, with force if necessary.
In July 1946,
following the US attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mahatma Gandhi
observed, “the atom bomb has deadened the finest feelings which have
sustained mankind for ages…It has resulted for the time being in the
soul of Japan being destroyed. What has happened to the soul of the
destroying nation is yet too early to see.” Unfortunately in our case,
the first decade after Pokharan has already started making the impacts
quite clear. It is not too late to reverse these.
M.
V. Ramana is Senior Fellow, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in
Environment and Development at the Institute for Social and Economic
Change, Bangalore, and co-editor of Prisoners of the Nuclear Dream.