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Varsha Bhosle

Self-interest is the name of the game

The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable. ~ Sun Tzu

Much is being bandied by our peaceniks about India's necessity to do the nuclear tests. It's evident that not one of them has ever paid any attention to what the five nuclear powers have been doing since decades, confirming to me that only Western might is right. The discrepancies in what the West says and what it does is so blatantly unfair as to be comical. And it's this that's shaped India's resistance to signing the NPT and CTBT and forced her to exercise the nuclear option.

On August 6, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachov, then the new leader of the Communist Party of the USSR, declared a moratorium on all nuclear tests on the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. He invited the US to join in the moratorium. The US continued to test.

In April-May 1992, the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference (called for in the Treaty to decide whether the Treaty should be extended indefinitely or for a fixed period), was held at the UN. Four of the five declared nuclear weapons states (US, UK, France, and Russia), argued for indefinite extension of the Treaty. You see, with indefinite extension, other states would remain indefinitely obligated not to develop nuclear arsenals, while the nuclear states could continue to possess them.

The NPT entered into force in 1970, but during the following 25- year period, the nuclear states increased the size of their arsenals as well as improved them qualitatively. Ergo, an indefinite extension of the Treaty was like giving a carte blanche to states that hadn't fulfilled their past promises. Within days of making these commitments, China conducted a nuclear test, and just over a month later, President Chirac announced that France would conduct a series of 8 nuclear tests in the South Pacific -- which it did.

The nuclear states are comfortable with their privileges in the two-tier system of nuclear haves and have-nots. The haves *appear* willing to cut back their arsenals, to eliminate underground nuclear tests (but not laboratory testing), and to make promises about "the ultimate goal" of eliminating nukes. But, they are unwilling to make a commitment to eliminate their nukes within a time-bound frame. In essence, these states refuse to give up what they perceive to be their privileged status.

Few are familiar with Article 26 of the UN Charter. Thus, the UN Security Council has been able to ignore one of its most important responsibilities for more than 50 years: Under the Article, the regulation of armaments is *not* optional for the Security Council; it clearly states that the Security Council "shall" formulate such a plan. Since the non-permanent members rotate at two-year intervals, they can't be held responsible for failing to meet this obligation. It is the 5 *permanent* members of the Council -- the 5 nuclear states -- that have been violating the Article 26 obligation for over 50 years.

The reason why the permanent members haven't fulfilled their obligation isn't difficult to discern. After all, these states have been the greatest developers, producers, promoters, and sellers of arms. They have profited enormously by the sale of arms throughout the world and they continue to do so. To fulfill their obligation by formulating plans for the regulation of armaments would wreck them economically.

Between 1945 and 1996 when the CTBT was signed, there had been over 2,000 nuclear tests in the world -- of which India had conducted only one. We argued that as long as we were confronted by states with nuclear weapons capabilities, it didn't make sense for us to agree not to test -- a capability we might desire for reasons akin to those that motivated the nuclear-haves to conduct tests all throughout. India made her position very clear and tried to convince the Big Five to tie the CTBT to a promise of complete nuclear disarmament.

The nuclear states refused to accede to India's demand, and when agreement couldn't be reached in Geneva at the Conference on Disarmament, the CTBT was introduced by Australia to the UN general assembly. There, it received overwhelming support and was adopted by a vote of 158 to 3 (India, Bhutan, and Libya). The nuclear states and their allies and dependents were successful in characterising India as a "spoiler" and isolating her in that position.

Nuclear weapons *are* viewed as weapons of the underdog -- those that can equalise the power of a nation with larger, better- equipped conventional forces. For instance, in a paper titled Pakistan's Security and Nuclear Option, Pakistani Air Chief Marshal Zulfiqar Ali Khan wrote: "Pakistan cannot give up its nuclear option in the absence of an iron-clad peace treaty -- a treaty that will have to include a resolution of the Kashmir dispute backed by the US and other major world powers. Meanwhile, Pakistan must retain its nuclear option for the following reasons:

"First, nuclear weapons will act as a deterrent against the threat that Pakistan perceives from the overwhelming conventional military superiority that India enjoys. The gap between the conventional forces of India and those of Pakistan is unbridgeable, since any attempt to do so would invite economic strangulation for Pakistan... Even the possession of a few nuclear weapons will provide Pakistan with a strategic equalizer against the conventional superiority of India and a countervailing deterrent against its nuclear arsenal.

"Second, nuclear weapons will compensate Pakistan for the loss of traditional allies in the post-Cold War era.

"Third, nuclear capability for Pakistan will ensure that Pakistan is taken seriously as a major player on the subcontinent, even though it is considerably smaller in size than India.

"Finally, given the current geopolitical scenario, which resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union, it has become all the more important for us to retain a credible deterrent against India. We should have no doubts that should we succumb to the pressure being applied to us by the US, the security of Pakistan will be irreversibly endangered. Within a matter of a few years, we will lose total relevance not only on the subcontinent but also to the US and the rest of the world -- and then we will have no choice but to exist as a vassal state of India."

The CTBT has done nothing to alleviate the problems that exist in South Asia. If anything, it has highlighted the dangerous situation in this part of the world by demonstrating the degree of insecurity of South Asian nations and the dangers this insecurity poses to global security.

Through its Ghauri missile test, Pakistan called the American bluff and stole a march over India. The Ghauri test came in the wake of Sino-US discussions in Beijing on arms control issues (particularly in regard to nuclear technology transfer from China to Pakistan) and just a few days before the visit of two senior American officials to New Delhi. The missile isn't indigenous but was obtained by Pakistan from North Korea (the liquid-fuelled missile is an enhanced version of the Rodong Missile, which is a fancy version of the Scud missile developed in the '60s). The test sent out a loud and clear message that the US has no capability to stop nuclear proliferation to Pakistan.

Gary Milholin, proliferation expert and director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, said the US knew before the Ghauri test that North Korea had smuggled the missile technology into Pakistan. While Washington tried to "buy" the test with the F-16 carrot, it's not known if it used any stick for the consequences of testing. He added that US officials claim that North Korea has previously supplied such technology to Iran, Syria and Egypt...

The Advisory Opinion of July 8, 1996 by the International Court of Justice demonstrates the illegality of NATO's nuclear policy so far: NATO retains the option of using nuclear weapons first. In paragraph 94 of the Opinion, the ICJ challenged the nuclear states that they had neither specified any legal circumstance for use, nor convinced it that "limited use would not tend to escalate into the all-out use of high-yield nuclear weapons."

The US, UK and France have plans to threaten to use nuclear weapons against even non-nuclear "rogue" states to counter the proliferation of nuclear weapons, or to protect their so-called "vital interests" anywhere in the world. For such so-called substrategic use, some of the missiles in the UK's Trident submarine are fitted with a single, variable lower-yield warhead -- because six 100 kiloton warheads on a missile are not a credible deterrent threat to "rogue" regimes.

The NATO nuclear states deploy at least some of their nuclear warheads on behalf of the Alliance, and are willing to use them in collective self-defence. Although some of these warheads might be relatively small, the majority are far larger in their yield than the Hiroshima bomb.

To date, there's no evidence that the NATO Nuclear Planning Group has responded to the implications of the ICJ's Opinion. The onus has always been on NATO to demonstrate that its nuclear plans would fit the criteria of "extreme circumstance" and not violate the humanitarian laws of warfare. Expert assessment is that NATO should urgently review its nuclear policy in order to comply with the ICJ's opinion.

Until there is a commitment by the Big Five to reduce their nuclear weapons to zero, India is justified in stockpiling nuclear arms to protect herself against China and Pakistan. Pakistan, in turn, will justify its nuclear arsenal to protect itself against India...

David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation asks, "How can the rest of the world, and particularly the nuclear weapons states, be convinced to accept the logic of the Indian position, and make firm commitments to the prohibition and elimination of all nuclear weapons? The Indians have been much maligned for their position, but they are fundamentally correct... So long as some states maintain nuclear arsenals, other states will justify their own possession of these weapons. On the other hand, in a world where all nuclear weapons are prohibited and eliminated, the Indian argument disappears; it is no longer valid." Well said.

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