Sanctifying
Mass Destruction
By Praful Bidwai
13 September, 2007
Frontline
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”
(w hich 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 th at 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 practises
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; N ew Delhi rejects
collusive bilateral agreements in favour 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 neighbourhood. 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 proliferant and has participated in clandestine
as well as open nuclear commerce with a host of countries to develop
its military and civilian programmes.
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 va ried 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 pressurised 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 intern
ational 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 favour 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 maximise 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 behaviour towards its neighbours 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.
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