Asia Times: ANALYSIS: Can India maintain a nuclear deterrent?



	February 10, 1999	atimes.com

India-Pakistan

ANALYSIS: Can India maintain a nuclear deterrent?
By Bobby Poulose

NEW DELHI - With India expected to sign theComprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by September, whatremains to be asked is how credible a nuclear deterrent it will be allowed to retain.

''India will have to go on talking - we have to engage withthe U.S,'' says Christopher Raj, professor at the School ofInternational Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

India has been talking. But after the eighth round of theIndia-U.S dialogue ended on Jan. 31, what remains to be definedis the minimum in the ''minimum credible deterrence'' Indiainsists on keeping in exchange for signing on the dotted line.

On his return to Washington after the talks Deputy Secretaryof State Strobe Talbott announced the tough stance that minimumdeterrence in South Asia should be zero. This sent the Indian sideinto a tizzy.

In essence that would mean that in spite of India's bestefforts Washington is not buying the theory that India perceives China rather than Pakistan as its main threat.

The problem for India boils down to how it can reach anagreement with the United States and get costly economic andtechnology sanctions lifted without compromisingits hard-earned, indigenously developed nuclear capability.

Raj thinks that sanctions involving dual-use technologycan wait because of the country's own capabilities and becauseany agreement on technology transfer is years away.

More critical is India's capacity to withstand further theeconomic pressure brought to bear on the country through thesanctions imposed by the U.S on multilateral lending soon afterit carried out the nuclear tests in May last year.

At the January talks, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh arguedthat India's unilateral commitment to no first use of nuclearweapons and non-use against non-nuclear states should give theworld confidence enough.

Although the Indian position follows a doctrine of utmostnuclear restraint - given that the U.S has itself rejected no-first use for NATO as suggested by a European power - there is no sign of it being accepted.

As for U.S concerns about India's missile program, theargument offered was that the definition of ''deployment'' hadchanged in the post-Cold War world.

For India, deployment did not translate as physical display ofcombat readiness since the country does not want to beprovocative or be seen to be so. Missile testing would in any casemean giving 15 days notice to international shipping.

Indeed, such notice was issued for the planned test firing ofIndia's 1,800 km-range intermediate ballistic missile Agni-2from the coast of eastern Orissa state between March 5 and 7.

For unknown reasons the test firing was called off but DefenseMinister George Fernandes said Sunday that it was only beingpostponed and dates would be announced.

India has also refused to commit itself on capping itsproduction of fissile material, although it has assuredparticipation in the ongoing dialogue in Geneva and offered toaccept any prospective multilateral agreement on a cut-off.

In all this the only visible achievement for India is a shiftaway from the name-calling and admonitions by the nuclear weaponsstates and a more civilized dialogue, albeit a tortuous andseemingly unwinnable one.

''Yes, we do have some complex problems to solve but we aretrying,'' Singh told reporters in the midst of the January talks,keenly watched by an opposition which has accused the governmentof undermining India's moral bargaining power by carrying out thetests.

India failed to get the U.S to lift sanctions on at leastsome of the 200-odd entities or allow funding agencies like theAsian Development Bank (ADB) or the International FinanceCorporation (IFC) to resume lending.

Given India's spiralling fiscal deficit, it desperately needsloans to stave off an economic crisis that could happen if theU.S continues to block $2 billion to $3 billion worthof World Bank loans.

The issue of multilateral funding was reportedly discussed atthe Jaswant-Talbott talks but nothing has come of it that couldcushion a particularly difficult financial year.

India's compliance on CTBT may have been due to pressure fromregional bosses like the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh state,Chandra Babu Naidu, who plans to turn his capital of Hyderabadinto a Silicon Valley-like ''Cyberabad''.

Like Naidu, other regional politicians who could just aseasily bring down the right-wing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party-ledgovernment also need money to ensure that they stay popular inthe event of national or state-level elections.

The rout of the ruling party in recent elections for threemajor state assemblies over the single issue of rising foodprices has only increased the leverage of the regional parties.

Close to $3 billion in loans hinges on abreakthrough in the India-U.S dialogue, the bottom line of whichis that India signs the CTBT anyway in September.

(Inter Press Service)

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