Scoring nuclear self-goals

At the party level too, there was no enthusiasm for celebrating the Shakti tests. Only the Bharatiya Janata Party held a commemoration —a small symposium, where the tone was peevishly self-justificatory.

Party president L K Advani used the occasion to pillory the Left and demand it be firmly kept out of all areas that affect vital national interests. He cited Communist Party (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat’s description of the nuclear tests as "adventurist and very unfortunate" events which weakened India.

Advani was barking up the wrong tree. It is not just Karat, but much of the Opposition in 1998, which had questioned the wisdom behind the nuclear blasts, including Manmohan Singh, H D Deve Gowda, Mulayam Singh and many others. During the 1998 Monsoon session of Parliament, the government came under intense fire over breaking the consensus to have a nuclear capability, but not to cross the threshold and make weapons. Singh went as far as to warn that a defence strategy based on nuclear weapons would lead to an arms race which would turn out to be so expensive that there would be "nothing left to defend."

Today, the BJP’s claim that it did both the right thing, and the popular thing, by conducting the Pokharan blasts, sounds laughable. Opinion polls show that 63 to 72 per cent of Indians are against making or using nuclear weapons. This is in keeping with the figures in most major countries of those who want nuclear disarmament. These range from 67 per cent (Russia) and 78 per cent (Japan) to 87 per cent (US, Germany and UK) and 93 per cent (Canada).

In most Non-Aligned Movement countries, there is an even stronger sentiment against nuclear weapons.

Poll ratings apart, South Asia has become more insecure since 1998 despite the recent improvement in India-Pakistan relations, itself uneven, wobbly and reversible. As far as a flashpoint for a nuclear confrontation goes, South Asia still remains the world’s "most dangerous place". More than one billion ordinary civilians living in that region have become vulnerable to a devastating nuclear attack, whether intended, accidental or unauthorised, against which there is no defence, military, civil or medical.

Seven years ago, the Indian bomb lobby made at least five claims about the virtues of nuclearisation. It said India and Pakistan would become more secure and self-confident because neither could now blackmail the other on the strength of conventional strategic superiority or even covert support to militant groups. This new strategic equation would form the bedrock of stability.

Second, Pakistani and Indian leaders would behave ‘responsibly and maturely’: the bomb’s destructive power would ensure that, irrespective of the leaders’ qualities.

Third, after the Pokharan-Chagai tests, an India-Pakistan conventional war would become inconceivable. Doesn’t deterrence theory tell you that nuclear weapons-states do not go to war with one another? The low-intensity skirmishes between the USSR and China in the 1960s and 1970s across the Ussuri river were only an aberration. That doesn’t affect the rule.

Fourth, nuclearisation would greatly expand India’s and Pakistan’s capacity for political-diplomatic manoeuvre in world affairs. And fifth, nuclearisation’s adverse social-political impact would be minimal, and its economic costs affordable.

All five predictions have proved disastrously false. India and Pakistan have become edgy, nervously unsure about each other’s doctrines, more prone to panic reactions, and strategically unstable. Nuclear weapons have not induced ‘maturity and sobriety’ into India-Pakistan relations. Indeed, they have promoted rank adventurism based on the premise that nuclear weapons furnish a shield or cover for needling and harassing the adversary in numerous conventional ways. The casual, cavalier, manner in which Indian and Pakistani officials exchanged nuclear threats in 1999 and 2002 was spine-chilling. The two came close to the brink of a nuclear attack at least three times.

Thanks to pure adventurism, Pakistan and India went to war at Kargil a year after the Pokharan-Chagai nuclear tests. Kargil was a serious middle-sized conflict by international standards, involving 40,000 Indian troops, top-of-the-line weaponry, and billions of dollars. The casualties exceeded 1,000.

Take global stature and the supposed ability to expand room for international manoeuvre. After Chagai, Pakistan became a virtual pariah state —until 9/11, which gave it a chance to get into an alliance with the US. True, India’s global profile has risen. But that is more because of information technology successes and economic growth and despite nuclear weapons. India’s bargaining power and room for manoeuvre vis-a-vis Washington has shrunk thanks to nuclearisation. That’s one reason why India had to get into an unequal ‘strategic partnership’ with the US and take ambivalent positions on many US policies and actions.

Nuclearisation’s still-unfolding economic costs have proved extremely burdensome. India’s military budget has more than doubled in absolute terms since Pokharan-II. Pakistan’s spending has followed the same trend. This is just for starters. As their nuclear programmes proceed towards deployment, military spending will skyrocket. With an arms race in the Indian case, two races, the other being with China, it could spiral out of control, ruinously, for all concerned.

The low-end estimate for a small arsenal, one which is only one-fifth the size of China’s, is Rs60,000 to 100,000 crores. This would entail doubling the military budget, which is now 3.2 per cent of GDP.

All this means paying through our nose to court yet more insecurity. The nuclear danger cannot be contained or managed while retaining nuclear weapons. Systematic elimination of nuclear weapons, beginning with the South Asian region, is the only solution. India can work for it if it revives and upgrades the thoughtful Rajiv Gandhi plan of 1988, which involves a three-stage process of global nuclear elimination.

But this means making an extraordinarily bold gesture of nuclear restraint in the South Asian region. Is India ready for this? The alternative is an unsafe world over which the nuclear sword will hang forever.

Praful Bidwai is a senior Indian journalist and eminent commentator