India & nuclear disarmament

By Arjun Makhijani

THERE HAS been notable silence on the issue of nuclear apartheid from the Indian nuclear establishment after the May 11, 1998, nuclear tests. Not that nuclear apartheid has disappeared, of course. Of 187 parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 182 do not have nuclear weapons; five do. Having broken down the door to the nuclear club, India has been seeking legitimacy from its charter members, most notably the United States. India knows that this cannot be achieved by accession to the NPT as a nuclear weapons state, because most countries would not stand for it. Rather, India's hope seems to be that it will be recognised as a weapon state in other ways, such as being a party to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) that will engage in new weapons design through American-style stockpile stewardship, and by acquiring nuclear technology from members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, who have heretofore restricted exports to India.

Before going farther down this road, India should ask itself, as it did before the Pokhran tests, why the U.S. Government should be accorded special status as the provider of legitimacy. After all, the U.S. is in the process of violating its commitments to the 182 non-nuclear weapon states. It has not accepted the legitimacy of the World Court's opinion, which held that nuclear weapons are illegal and that Article VI of the NPT requires all nuclear weapon states party to the Treaty to actually achieve nuclear disarmament in all its aspects. The U.S. Senate rejected the CTBT breaking another commitment to the NPT parties in the name of maintaining U.S. superiority. Even the defence of the CTBT by the Clinton administration was made on the basis that it would lock in U.S. advantages (which the $ 60 billion, 13-year U.S. stockpile stewardship programme would do). It seems prepared, if necessary, to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to achieve what it believes would be unilateral security advantages. It led the 1998 and 1999 bombings of Iraq and Yugoslavia (respectively) without obtaining the necessary authorisation from the United Nations Security Council. This dismal catalog of illegitimacy can, unfortunately, be quite easily extended.

The positions of the vast majority of countries being expressed at the NPT Review Conference going on now in New York, are not in accord with U.S. policy. Indeed, on ballistic missile defences, the U.S. is practically isolated. Even its NATO partners have grave reservations about the direction of the U.S. on this issue. Moreover, U.S. claims that it is attending to its NPT disarmament obligations by reducing weapons systems ring hollow in the halls of the U.N. Most are aware that the U.S. is designing new weapons and that its real policy is to maintain nuclear weapons as a principal feature of its military arrangements for the future.

India would be far better off seeking legitimacy in a different direction. The ratification by the Russian Duma of the CTBT even in the face of its rejection by the U.S. Senate was a bold and refreshing departure from the politics of reaction to the U.S. Coming on the heels of Russian ratification of the START II nuclear arms reduction treaty, and just before the NPT Review Conference, Russia put the U.S. on the defensive, newly unsure how to pursue its agenda. In contrast, Russia has been applauded at that conference for its ratification actions. The strength of the Russian position derives from the fact that it acted in a way that was at once in its own interest, for instance, it can hardly afford to spend vast sums on testing readiness, and simultaneously in the interests of disarmament. Russia's asking the U.S. to stick to the ABM Treaty gained additional credibility because it proposed a way to address missile proliferation threats by intensifying missile non- proliferation policies, rather than by unilateral installation of national missile defenses that could also serve as part of a first-strike nuclear arsenal.

Russia has taken some bold actions, but they are in the context of promulgating a doctrine that increases the role of nuclear weapons. It is still partly locked in a dangerous battle of nuclear wills with the U.S. India can further its own security and that of the whole world by being even more bold on the CTBT, but without condoning Russia's nuclear doctrine.

The CTBT could be a sound instrument for disarmament, since it bans all nuclear explosions. Its disarmament goal is being vitiated not by its provisions, but by non-treaty factors. One of the principal problems is the flagship enterprise of the U.S. stockpile stewardship programme a huge laser-driven device, called the National Ignition Facility (NIF), designed to create laboratory thermonuclear explosions. These explosions, which are intended to reach ten or more pounds of TNT equivalent, would be illegal under the CTBT, according to the analysis done by my institute. Planning for them is also prohibited under Article I of the CTBT. Interestingly, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has so far failed to respond to a letter from the U.S. Senator from iowa, Mr. Harkin, for the basis on which laboratory thermonuclear explosions are considered legal, even though the DOE states that smaller fission explosions (four pounds TNT equivalent) are banned.

France is similarly violating the CTBT, since it is building a device of the same type and size as NIF near Bordeaux. Britain is cooperating with the U.S. in the NIF program and such collaboration is also prohibited by Article I. The French and British actions are all the more egregious, since both countries have ratified the CTBT.

Further, the U.S. is developing new low-yield nuclear weapons, and may develop pure fusion weapons, the latter by using NIF as a scientific proving ground (though not for detailed weapon design). Pure fusion weapons would have essentially no radioactive fallout. It may be undertaking these activities with one eye on the World Court opinion, which found that nuclear weapons are illegal, in part because they cause indiscriminate damage. This path of seeking to legitimise nuclear weapons increases the chances of nuclear war.

In 1996, the Government of India frequently voiced the objection, quite legitimately, that the nuclear weapons powers, notably the U.S., were converting the CTBT into an instrument of non- proliferation to the exclusion of the long-cherished goal of disarmament. India now has the chance to help make the CTBT into a disarmament treaty, especially since Russian ratification has left the U.S. more vulnerable to international pressure.

India should sign the CTBT, with the announcement that it intends, as a signatory, to ensure that it will be an instrument of disarmament and that its letter and spirit will be completely respected. India should announce that it will seek an end to design of new weapons by all nuclear weapon states, as well as clarification of Article I to ensure that laboratory thermonuclear explosions are explicitly banned. India could invite Pakistan to sign the CTBT and to join it in this effort. It could also enlist the support the vast majority of other signatories, possibly including Russia and China, to make the CTBT a true disarmament treaty.

India should note that most Governments as well as non- governmental organisations at the NPT Review Conference have given pride of place to Russian treaty ratifications as well as to the disarmament proposals of the New Agenda Coalition (Egypt, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Sweden, Brazil). Rather than seeking legitimacy in the nuclear arena from the one nuclear weapon state that is increasingly isolated and seen as an obstacle to nuclear disarmament, India should act independently in accord with its best traditions. It should sign the CTBT and work hard to convert it into an instrument of disarmament. That would be a historically fitting task for the Government of a country whose Prime Minister was the first world leader to call for such a treaty.

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