Published in Emirates News newspaper, Op-Ed Page (June 21, 1998)
The Indian nuclear explosions last month were
not just a new kind of populist device triggered off by the nationalist BJP
party to upset the political applecart of its many coalition partners and the
Opposition. The fact is that such programs involve long and
sustained preparations and could not have been initiated during the brief
tenure of the new government.
The Indian nuclear program has been facing a
serious crisis for some time now, as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT)
and the Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty (FMCT) are threatening its survival. India has to sign the CTBT by September 24,
1999, without which the treat cannot come into force. This could give India not
only a worse label than the ‘spoiler’ it earned from the nuclear powers in
1996, but as per Article XIV of the draft treaty, a conference may decide what
measures are to be taken to facilitate the early ‘entry into force’ (EIF) of
the treaty.
If India signs the CTBT then it will not be able
to conduct (according to Article 1 of the Treaty) “any nuclear test explosion
or any other nuclear explosion,” and on the basis of the negotiating record
this is understood to include all nuclear explosions with yields above zero, in
accordance with US President Bill Clinton’s August 1995 proposals.
Article IV of the verification protocol provides
for a tough verification regime which will rest on an International Monitoring
System and on-site inspections.
The draft treaty exempts the nuclear powers from
conducting sub-critical tests, developing and refining their nuclear weapons
through computer simulations and so forth, a technology the threshold nuclear
states can develop only after conducting many test explosions.
According to M.R. Srinivasan, former chairman of
the Atomic Energy Commission of India, the CTBT would lead to “freezing
technology levels at current capabilities, with additional support base of
analysis, theory, computer modeling and so forth.”
So if India wants to be a signatory to the CTBT
without becoming a nuclear imbecile, it may have to conduct more tests before
September 1999, just as China and France did in 1996. The recent statements by
Gauhar Ayub Khan that India may be considering more nuclear experiments and a
statement by Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman on June 18 that its moratorium
on nuclear tests could be lifted if it was in the national interest to do so
suggest that any further nuclear tests in the subcontinent cannot be ruled out.
In a post-Cold War world, neither India nor
Pakistan can depend on their erstwhile allies on issues related to defense and
therefore will find it very difficult to compromise with their respective
nuclear programs.
The parameters of mutual assured destruction
(MAD) have undergone a change over the years. The big and cumbersome atomic
bombs, capable of destroying large civilian populations, are surviving merely
as deterrents. The smaller tritium backed thermonuclear devices, easy to load
on to ballistic missiles, capable of hitting strategic military and nuclear
sites with limited and effective destructive capability and pinpoint accuracy,
will have the edge now in any war-like scenario.
In the words of retired Rear Admiral Raja Menon
there is a difference between counter value and counter force nuclear weapons.
“The former are inaccurate and have large kilo tonnage, since they can only
destroy population centers. The latter are accurate, smaller and target hostile
nuclear weapons sites.” But to develop the counter force technology one needs
to achieve “non-explosive testing, so that the nuclear arsenal can be upgraded
… as the US is doing.”
The Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty (FMCT),
negotiations for which will begin soon in Geneva, is meant to prohibit all further
production of fissile material (enriched uranium and plutonium) for weapons
purposes, or outside safeguards in all countries.
India objects to this draft treaty as it claims
“it would in effect disarm the threshold states’” while leaving nuclear weapons
on states with huge stocks of weapons grade fissile material. The FMCT, Indian
experts states, can prove even worse for the Indian nuclear program. In the
words of strategic affairs analyst Savita Dutt, the FMCT could serve the
purpose of “capping, rolling back and eventually eliminating” India’s nuclear
weapons capability, while leaving huge stockpiles of the nuclear weapons states
in place.
Therefore, both the CTBT and the FMCT could hold
India back from rising to the level of conducting sub-critical tests and
building sufficient data for computer simulation soon and may relegate it to be
a minor nuclear power with only a few crude atomic bombs.
The date of ratification for the CTBT may
literally become the deadline for its nuclear program. The question is whether
India has the requisite technology and more importantly the political will to
go for an ambitious nuclear program? Will it be able to weather the adverse
consequences at the international levels? Can it keep the Buddha smiling, even
if public opinion changes and the demand for nuclear-backed power increases.
