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print versionThe Guardian (guardian.co.uk), 23 September 2009
India’s hawks want to start a series of nuclear tests that could isolate the nation and spark an arms race
There’s no stranger figure on Indian television news at the moment than retired atomic scientist K Santhanam. One of the driving forces behind the country’s weapons nuclear programme, Santhanam has gone rogue in the past few weeks, denouncing the timidity of Indian government’s pursuit of the most powerful weapons ever devised.
Santhanam wants the country to stop worrying and love the bomb. According to the scientist, India’s nuclear tests conducted more than a decade ago were a dud. The country now stands "naked" before China – unable to deter the People’s Liberation Army.
The only solution, says Santhanam, is to defy world opinion and explode a massive thermonuclear device – in his words for India "to cross the Rubicon" by dropping its voluntary testing moratorium.
This runs against the grain of current thinking, which envisages a shrinking of nuclear weapons. The old cold war mentality of mutually assured destruction and the idea of deterrence have been replaced with a call for a nuclear weapons-free world.
This shift can be traced back to AQ Khan’s atomic supermarket, run from Pakistan, which spread technologies to hostile regimes – with American indifference. The result is that a host of states from Iran to North Korea stand on the threshold of going nuclear.
More worrying is an assessment that Pakistan’s own nuclear weapons facilities have been attacked three times in two years by extremists. Al-Qaida openly says it wants the bomb to wage war on America.
Nuclear weapons in such hands would make deterrence less effective and more hazardous. Little wonder that one of Barack Obama’s key messages at the UN this week will be about global nuclear disarmament.
The securitists in India have a different agenda. They see nuclear weapons as a route to respect. Santhanam is undoubtedly a hawk, one who has chafed against the restraints India faced since it refused in the 1960s to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – Delhi said it was a version of nuclear apartheid.
The NPT banned countries, apart from the five security council members, from owning atomic weapons and simultaneously benefiting from civilian trade in such technologies. The result was that India tried to build its nuclear weapons industry from scratch.
India did get the bomb – exploding the Smiling Buddha in 1974 and 15 years later it tested five devices. The uber-nationalists say that India’s home-grown nukes could be geared up for bigger things – citing Pakistan’s expanding nuclear arsenal and China’s vast armoury as reasons to explode bigger devices.
There is an opportunity lurking in the rhetoric gap between Obama’s speeches on disarmament and the implementation of such ideas. That opening, say hawks, could be filled by a series of massive Indian nuclear tests, which would deter Delhi’s enemies and secure its stockpile – while the world frets about AQ Khan, Iran and North Korea.
Bizarre as this might sound, Indian testing could be justified by the president’s soaring idealism. Although Obama wants to Washington to ratify the comprehensive test ban treaty, it has yet to be passed by the Senate. As long as the US has not signed the treaty, Delhi’s hawks reason, Washington can denounce Indian nuclear tests but the rest of the world is going to ask why senators have blocked the treaty for years.
For a section of India’s elite, the US’s political gridlock is a boon. They point to China, which tested its arsenal until 1996 before signing up to the NPT and endorsing the CTBT. Why, runs the thinking, shouldn’t India be allowed to do the same?
It’s a dangerous game. India has not signed the NPT or the CTBT. It has been a nuclear rogue state. Yet it was brought in from the cold last year by the international community and permitted to trade in nuclear technology despite not having signed the NPT.
It is the only exception ever made for any state with nuclear weapons – a coup and recognition of its rising global status. France, Russia and the US have signed lucrative deals with India. Canada and Britain want in too. The world signalled that it wanted to turn swords into ploughshares – converting nuclear weapons know-how into nuclear energy know-how.
A series of massive Indian nuclear tests would snatch defeat from the jaws of diplomatic victory. It might provide a short-cut to international status – but it would be one of a pariah. Questions would be raised about India’s pursuit of intercontinental ballistic missiles, its plans for nuclear-powered submarines and its burgeoning space industry. It would rightfully be seen as a renegade act, sparking an arms race in Asia when the world least needed it.
Should India test again, the country would once again be subject to sanctions and be seen as a nation engaged in a needless military build-up while its population languished in poverty. Ever-growing nuclear stockpiles are seen as a threat to the international order and a distraction from economic progress. For India to go nuclear all over again in a bigger, more deadly way would be a sign of weakness not strength.
