India’s Tests Create a Global Opportunity

14 May 1998

By Daniel Plesch and Stephen Young

Only one slim hope can be gathered from India’s recent nuclear tests: it could lead to a comprehensive re-evaluation of the role of nuclear weapons in security policy by the five declared nuclear states.

Two factors motivated India’s fateful decision. The first, and most frequently noted, was India’s perception of threat from nuclear-armed China and a nuclear-capable Pakistan. The second was the desire of India’s nationalists to obtain what they view as their country’s rightful place in the world. Five countries – the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom – maintain nuclear arsenals for their security yet seek to deny any other country that same prerogative. The current government in India deemed it necessary to redress that situation.

This route was not India’s first choice. Successive Indian governments and many other states have sought a global ban on nuclear arms. They failed, time and again. This failure was demonstrated only last week, when a meeting of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review process ended with reaching any substantive agreement, entirely because of the objections of the nuclear five.

This failure is even more shocking in light of the legally-binding commitment under the NPT by all the nuclear weapon states to the elimination of nuclear weapons. These obligations were made law in 1970 by President Nixon and reconfirmed in 1995 as part of a deal to make the NPT permanent. No such talks have begun, despite a 1996 finding by the International Court of Justice that the conclusion of such negotiations is required under international law.

Many states, including Canada, South Africa (which renounced its own nuclear arsenal), Belgium, and New Zealand, have promoted the idea of talks about nuclear disarmament at the UN in Geneva. They propose a forum to raise issues and to seek areas where progress can be made. Led by Washington and Moscow, the nuclear five have adamantly refused.

They cite progress on the bilateral nuclear arms talks between the United States and Russia, and say nothing more can be done. Yet START II – the next step in disarmament – is frozen in the Duma, Russia’s parliament, and the United States refuses to further discuss any more reductions until it moves.

India’s decision was dangerous and destabilizing. It will set off a chain of events that will, in all likelihood, lead to a nuclear race with Pakistan, increased tensions with China, and raise the chances of proliferation in the Middle East and Asia. It requires a strategic response from the nuclear five, and from the United States in particular. Washington must decide that, as its non-proliferation strategy has clearly failed, a new approach must be taken. We must finally recognize that nuclear weapons do not contribute to our security, for the US more than any other country.

Such a conclusion seems radical, but an assessment of the alternatives is grim. The nuclear five – now six – will be openly joined soon by Pakistan, and the future can only lead to more. As General Lee Butler, head of US strategic nuclear forces from 1991 to 1994, now states, "I came to a set of deeply unsettling judgements. That from the earliest days of the nuclear era, the risks and consequences of nuclear war have never been properly weighed by those who brandished it. That the stakes of nuclear war engage

not just the survival of the antagonists, but the fate of mankind. That the likely consequences of nuclear war have no politically, militarily or morally acceptable justification. And therefore, that the threat to use nuclear weapons is indefensible."

One immediate step would be for the United States and India both to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. India has already hinted it now might do so, but ratification in the Senate faces the hurdle of Sen. Jesse Helms and his cohorts. The Clinton Administration should find a way round that problem. But a treaty banning tests is not enough. Washington must now focus on the real issue: finally eliminating the nuclear threat altogether.

Nuclear armageddon knocks at the door. Yet in danger there is also opportunity. There is a chance, a slim glimmer, that this will lead to real progress. But the chance must be seized.

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