HVK Archives: Fragmented view - Focus on future nuclear policy
Fragmented view - Focus on future nuclear policy - The Times of India
K Subrahmanyam
()
November 9, 1998
Title: Fragmented view - Focus on future nuclear policy
Author: K Subrahmanyam
Publication: The Times of India
Date: November 9, 1998
Pittsburgh: Indian analysts and commentators visiting the US face
two sets of questions on the nuclear issue. The first relates to
the motivation of the BJP government in the timing of the tests
and domestic political rivalries focused on nuclear capability.
The second are mostly from Americans with a more pragmatic
approach to international relations and strategy and focus on
future Indian policy. They concentrate on the Prime Minister's
policy pronouncements in the Indian Parliament and the UN. They
note his commitment to no-first-use and to minimum deterrent and
seek to explore the significance of this package.
The Indian government and public may be interested to know that
the RAND Corporation of the US - noted for its hawkish
contributions to US nuclear theology - is engaged in working out
an appropriate command and control framework for India. One may
recall how even as the Cold War was winding down, the US
Department of Defence commissioned Mr George Tanham of the Rand
Corporation to carry out a study on Indian strategic thought or
tradition. Since the Indian government and academia did not do
their homework, Mr Tanham's study became a benchmark on the
evolution of recent Indian strategic thought. It would be
surprising that the same kind of development may overtake us in
the field of nuclear strategic thinking as well.
Strategic Thinking
While the majority of questions on India's declared policies of
no-first-use and minimum deterrent fall within the framework of
conventional nuclear theological wisdom, a significant minority
of American strategic community are able to appreciate that
strategic considerations during the era when a nuclear war though
was fightable and winnable are no longer relevant. Such people
are disturbed by writings in the Indian media which echo the
obsolete American nuclear strategic thinking of the fifties to
eighties.
When asked how the Americans could help to promote restrained
Indian strategic thinking, I recommended that the American
strategic community should enlist the services of people like Mr
MacNamara, General George Lee Butler, General Jack Homer and
others to come out with a total repudiation of their own
conventional nuclear strategic nuclear theology of that
particular era.
In one of the institutions interested in promoting a project on
those lines; I was asked why such a venture could not be
undertaken in India since it had been a consistent critic of
western nuclear theology. I argued that such a repudiation coming
from earlier proponents of nuclear war fighting theology and
managers and commanders of vast nuclear arsenals would carry
greater credibility than a critique from an Indian like me who
has consistently questioned US nuclear theology.
Nuclear Dialogue
The Indo-US track II dialogue has many unequal features. The
dialogue is within a framework largely defined and dominated by
US strategic thinking evolved from 1945 to 1985 when the US
President publicly acknowledged that a nuclear war was not
fightable and winnable. The American interlocutors are equipped
with extensive documentations on US perspectives on arms control
while the Indians have only the Prime Minister's statement in the
Parliament on August 4, 1998 and his UN speech. The Americans
have a deeper knowledge of the evolution of their own nuclear
strategy. To challenge that American - line would need a
knowledge of the history of US nuclear strategy and the various
contradictions the US policies went through.
In spite of all these inequalities in the Indo-US nuclear
dialogue, its initiation is a positive development. It should be
a mutual learning process. Since the pragmatic American
realpolitik school is prepared to accept the Indian and Pakistani
nuclear capabilities as irreversible, both sides should attempt
to focus on where we go from here. lie Americans accept that
India and Pakistan would neither sign the Non-proliferation
Treaty as non-nuclear weapon states, nor is it realistic to
expect them to do so. They also recognise it is not possible to
amend the NPT to accommodate India and Pakistan as any attempt to
do so will unravel the entire treaty. It is, therefore, logical
for both sides to think of an overarching international nuclear
regime structure which will entomb the NPT. What the Indian and
Pakistani nuclear tests have done is to bring the nuclear issue
on which a certain complacency had developed following the
extension of the NPT and adoption of CTBT back into the
international agenda.
Track II Diplomacy
Any overarching international nuclear regime architecture has to
acknowledge that this will be only an interim one and the
ultimate, goal is elimination of nuclear weapons. So long as
nuclear, weapons are legitimate for state actors, the risks of
nuclear terrorism by non-state actors will be difficult to tackle
since the legitimisation of nuclear weapons in the hands of a few
nations will make it difficult to promote international
verification against nuclear terrorism. Therefore,
delegitimisation of nuclear weapons through an international no-
first-use agreement will be an essential feature of the new
regime. Sections of US scientific and strategic community accept
this as a basic requirement. India has proposed nuclear risk
reduction measures during the present UN General Assembly
session. The CTBT and fissile materials cut-off treaty will also
need to be incorporated in such a regime. Counter-proliferation
should not be treated as the sole responsibility of the US but as
an international collective campaign to delegitimise and finally
progress towards the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, there has not been enough team effort in India
after the nuclear tests to formulate a comprehensive view on the
post-Pokhran world and an integrated framework of security and
disarmament policies. In the absence of the evolution of such a
policy for which the leadership has to come from the government,
the track II diplomacy between Indians and Americans will result
in interactions in which there will be a coherent US view but
only fragmented Indian ones. There are, of course, both
advantages and disadvantages resulting from such uncoordinated
interactions acting as inputs to government of India.
Back
Top
|
