The Indian Government very much mistaken if it thinks that its three nuclear tests on Monday will bring it closer to peace and security. It is more likely the exact opposite will occur. The tests have outraged India’s neighbour Pakistan and no doubt given grave concern to China.
The testing was a statement of Hindu nationalism, by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Government of Atal Behari Vajpayee that pandered to the worst instincts of Indian voters. The testing had widespread support among voters, according to opinion polls. But the support was based on a need to assuage some sense of inferiority because India, despite its huge population of 980 million, is not seen as a great power. It is not in the United Security Council. It is not, at least until now, one of the acknowledged five nuclear states: the US, Russia, China, Britain and France. It wants to be up there in the big league.
But by doing the tests, India has in fact belittled itself. The world’s admiration for India fine history of non-violence as exemplified by Mahatma Gandhi and its leadership in the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement has been cruelly diluted by the reckless adventure by the Hindu nationalist Government.
The Indian Government deserves to be condemned and Mr Vajpayee should stand ashamed.
One of the consequences is likely to be that Pakistan will now feel the need to do a nuclear test of its own. Pakistan has stated repeatedly that it has no nuclear weapons program, but that if India tested, it would follow.
It is unlikely, but it would be a deserved and delightful slap in the face to Mr Vajpayee if Pakistan took up the opportunity presented by India’s test to move to the moral high ground by announcing that it would NOT follow suit. Alas, nuclear proliferation is a one-way street.
The danger of proliferation is obvious. This test comes after Pakistan tested a long-range rocket, calling it the Gauri, a Moslem warrior who humbled the Hindus. Pakistan will feel it must respond.
It will be an odd situation because India says that China, not Pakistan is its principal security concern. Its Defence Minister, George Fernandes, called China India’s “”potential enemy number one”. It was unnecessarily belligerent language, and rightly dismissed by the head of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army as ridiculous — even remembering that India and China briefly went to war in the 1960s.
India’s other target, of course, was the United States. The US has worked long and hard at preventing India from engaging in nuclear tests since its previous test in 1974. The BJP Government obviously resents US interference. BJP president Kushabhau Thakre said the Vajpayee Government, “”unlike previous regimes, will not give in to international pressure”. Once again, the language is aggressive and uncompromising. These are unwelcome trends, but perhaps to be expected from a Government led by a party influenced by religious fundamentalism.
Before coming to power two months ago the BJP said it would “”re-evaluate the countries nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons”. The election promise was made good in two months. Of course it is much easier for an Indian Prime Minister to order a big bang in the ground than to do something about over the misery and social injustice that pervades India. Some, indeed many, Indians in the elite might feel good about the power and technological “”achievement” of the tests, but they will not put a grain of food in any mouths. If anything, the costs of the tests and the likelihood of economic sanctions will cause further misery and hunger in India.
India asserts that it has not broken any treaty with the tests because it never signed the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has said it will never sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has a point. It says that these two treaties create two classes of nations: the nuclear haves and the nuclear have-nots. In the case of the former treaty, the five nuclear states are permitted to keep their nuclear weapons. In the case of the test-ban treaty, four of the five nations had enough material from previous tests to run computer-simulated tests so they would not need live tests to maintain their nuclear-weapons programs. The fifth, France, undertook further testing in 1995 and can now do computer simulations. It is hypocrisy for the US to urge nations like India to eschew nuclear weapons when it is bristling with them.
This aside, the US faces a dilemma. It must decide whether to chide India with strong words and not much else in the hope that India conducts no more tests, or it can show its displeasure in a more tangible way by imposing financial or trade sanctions so that the Indian Government knows that further tests will carry a substantial penalty. Other countries face a similar dilemma.
Sanctions, however, carry a risk. It is likely that the people who bear the burden of sanctions will not be the people who made the decision to do the tests. With Iraq, for example, innocent children are suffering from lack of food and medicine because of sanctions. Presumably, with India the sanctions would not be so tight, but even financial sanctions can have a trickle-down effect. Sanctions, however, can have value against a democratic country provided that voters see that the foolish and arrogant decision to conduct the tests caused the inconvenience and economic loss from sanctions, so that public opinion is changed.
Shortly after the tests, the Indian Government offered to abide by the test-ban treaty under certain conditions (presumably giving India the same nuclear status as the big five). It was as provocative as the tests themselves.