PRESS RELEASE

28 May1998

Pakistan Follows India in Nuclear Test,
Western Policy Fails

"The West must demand that India and Pakistan sit down with the nuclear weapons states, including Russia and China, and plan the elimination of nuclear arms," said Daniel Plesch, Director of the British American Security Information Council. "Attempts to restrain India and Pakistan must be within a new global strategy to reduce nuclear risks."

The West’s policies of non-proliferation and counter-proliferation have failed. Non-proliferation meant telling other countries that they should not build the bomb while the West, Russia and China kept theirs. This policy always ignored the legal requirement in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty on the nuclear powers to negotiate away their nuclear weapons. The high status and political value accorded nuclear arms has been a powerful incentive to India and Pakistan to go nuclear. Prestige rather than any threat from China or Pakistan was the fundamental motivation in New Delhi.

Counter-proliferation is costing the US billions of dollars. A program announced in 1995 by Secretary of Defence William Perry favors military force as a main plank of preventing proliferation. NATO has been brought into this strategy, which includes pre-emptive nuclear strikes against proliferators. No one thinks this strategy is relevant in Asia, and yet it has soaked up most of Washington’s political energy.

A new strategy should place the elimination of nuclear arms at center stage. It should build upon President Nixon’s Biological Weapons Convention -- now being strengthened -- and President Bush’s Chemical Weapons Convention. Much of the work towards the elimination of nuclear arms has been carried out by non-governmental experts, and the vast majority of countries who do not have nuclear arms have long lobbied to ban the bomb.

Western policy is likely to worsen situation in Asia and globally. The US sanctions will harden attitudes in India; in Pakistan, they may produce an economic collapse and social disintegration as seen in Indonesia, Albania and Afghanistan.

The US administration and the Senate are looking to revive a failed plan referred to as "Managed Proliferation." This would attempt to control Indian and Pakistani policy by assisting with their nuclear weapon and military programs. Early in the Clinton Administration, National Security Council officials floated the concept of giving nuclear proliferators high quality nuclear detonators to avoid accidents. Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago argued recently in the Wall Street Journal that nuclear proliferation would provide strong deterrence and therefore proliferation is beneficial.

The US and its NATO look set to harden their own nuclear policies which include preparing allies like Belgium Greece and Turkey to use nuclear weapons. This includes the first use of nuclear arms and a permanent requirement for nuclear arms. Dan Plesch notes, "The old Western approach of 'do as I say and not as I do', is setting a poor example for others such as India and Pakistan to follow."

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