Author: Bharat Karnad
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: July 27, 2000
Sir Halford Mackinder, the great
geopolitical theorist, once observed that democracies find it hard in peacetime
to think strategically.
In India's case, the trouble is
the inability to think strategically at all. Complacency is so deep-rooted
a trait that short of danger materialising literally on the doorstep, neither
the government nor the people are roused to take effective action, and
then it is a helter-skelter piling on of crisis-time decisions. In
a conventional military context, like in Kargil, this is not fatal.
In the nuclear realm, however, it can prove cataclysmic as there is no
time for preparation and, hence, little margin of safety.
The reason for this characteristic
Indian infirmity is in part a habit of mind the tendency of the political
leadership cutting across party lines, Nehruvian-era onwards, to predicate
foreign policy on universalist values and concerns, like disarmament.
Unlike other major powers which tailor their policies around narrowly-defined
national interests, Indian policy has a millennial orientation.
Thus, the case, in this instance,
goes something like this: disarmament is a good in itself; it is good for
the world, ergo, it is good for India. And, insofar as arms control
and non-proliferation are way stations on the path to this objective, any
measure dressed up by the nuclear Haves in the raiment of the Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty or the follow-on Fissile Material Control Treaty for instance,
is ipso facto, believed to serve India s interests as well. Such
lack of realism has systematically weakened national security.
It does not seem to occur to the
proponents of this or that `arms control' treaty that the playing field
was always uneven, but that India had the means of straightening it.
Not only did India refrain from doing so, it was a spectator to the field
being rendered more uneven. With India marginalising itself until
it was almost too late to either force an entry into the nuclear Club or
to get out of the high stakes game altogether, the principal players ensured
loopholes in treaty language qua international law, to wriggle out of tight
commitments to disarm.
The CTBT, for example, allows sub-critical
testing and hence constant modernisation of nuclear arsenals by the five
nuclear powers (P-5), even as the cost and the complexity of the alternative
means of testing (to wit, sophisticated hydro-dynamic facilities and multibeamed
high-energy laser complexes to realise inertial confinement fusion), for
all intents and purposes, makes these means unavailable to India.
Nor is there any particular worry about the politico-military consequences
of the Indian nuclear deterrent being frozen on the low end of the technology
curve which, the US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has candidly
admitted, is the primary aim of the US and by extension the P-5.
The trouble is India's small pile
of rudimentary nuclear weapons of dubious provenance and performance do
not constitute a credible deterrent even vis-a-vis Pakistan, what to talk
of the more advanced China, because it is armed with proven nuclear weapons
designs and missile systems acquired from Beijing and thus has a more reliable
nuclear deterrent. So, what use is a deterrent if it cannot deter
the lesser threat?
The problem about an unproven Indian
nuclear force juxtaposed against a Pakistan armed with tested nuclear weapons
and missiles bought `off-the-shelf' from China has been ignored.
This is in tune with the Government's apparent inclination to accept the
under-development of the national nuclear forces as strategy. It
may keep many foreign countries and a few domestic constituencies happy,
but is it wise? Such a strategy fails to appreciate the fact that the mainly
political value of nuclear weapons can be maximised only by realising a
substantive nuclear deterrent in a world in which the extent of the power
directly to hurt another is the currency of exchange and considerations
of realpolitik the motive force. In this unforgiving milieu, what
is the Indian policy?
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee
announced the acquisition of a minimum credible deterrent (MCD) as the
objective. The draft nuclear doctrine was elastic enough to provide
the Government the latitude to construct a force of meaningful quality
and quantity while hewing, in principle, to the MCD concept. Some
two years after the latest series of tests, there is little progress except
perhaps in simulating new weapons designs! Such nuclear deterrent as the
country is presently able to muster may be minimal all right, in terms
of numbers, but it is neither credible nor capable seriously of deterring
anybody or anything for the reason the NBC TV report stated, namely, that
it is not operational.
Moreover, like the fabled Light
Combat Aircraft which, technology-wise, will be obsolete before it gets
into squadron service, absent a sustained regime of nuclear testing, the
Indian nuclear deterrent too bids fair to be reduced to a relic by the
`fourth generation' `pure fusion' and neutron weapons coming on stream
elsewhere, as Mr PK Iyengar, former chairman of the atomic energy commission,
has repeatedly warned.
This situation has arisen because
of the hasty, ill-advised and unwarranted moratorium announced in the wake
of the tests. Meant primarily to mute Western criticism about India
s going overtly nuclear, it has ended up, ironically, doing the job of
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which New Delhi has so far not signed,
of freezing the country s nuclear weapons designs, including those of the
decisive, thermonuclear, variety at the failed-stage, as many senior scientists
maintain.
The fact is that without a whole
bunch of additional tests, there is no way of knowing why previous designs
fizzled out or of configuring new weapons systems. Because explosion
physics varies with even minute changes in weapon architecture, without
physical testing, there will is no guarantee that any of the Indian nuclear
weapons other than the basic fission-type tested will actually work.
Though worrisome, nobody appears
to be losing sleep over this state of affairs; presumably, lulled by the
current AEC chairman, Mr R Chidambaram s assurances that the 1998 thermonuclear
flop, notwithstanding, his outfit can produce a one megatonne-yield weapon.
Considering, that, short of tests, there is no way of knowing whether this
big Hydrogen weapon will work any better than the modest 43 kiloton variant
which did not, we are left having to take Dr Chidambaram s claims on faith.
Surely, this is a thin reed to base a national nuclear force on.
The deus ex machina-element here
is computer simulation, which is touted as adequate replacement for explosive
testing. This is errant nonsense and, like simulated sex, is not
the real thing! Physical tests verify the explosion physics assumptions
factored into a weapon design and the workability of the weapon assembly.
If even one of the numerous physics assumptions and/or design parameters
is wrong or a single component malfunctions, the weapon will not work as
specified, necessitating redesign and re-testing.
It is for this reason that the US
has conducted in excess of 1,000 tests, the Russians nearly 800, the Chinese
almost 50, and one is expected to believe that India s five fission tests
and one fusion test are all this country will ever need by way of test
data to simulate new designs, as the basis for sub-critical testing schedules
(assuming India will ever be able to afford and access the relevant technologies),
to field nuclear weapons systems and, in the future, to develop newer neutron
and thermonuclear armaments!
(Bharat Karnad is Research Professor
in National Security Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
)
