Nuclear option is an illusion

Something is now known as to why we stopped at one test and characterised it a “peaceful nuclear explosion” and thus robbed it of any military significance. Perhaps the pressure that finally compelled us from completing the planned tests came from our ally, the Soviet Union. In 1971 we had contracted with it a treaty of peace and friendship, and it is the Soviet Union that was greatly unhappy at what had happened at Pokhran.

Anatole Dobrynin, a key person in the Brezhnev establishment and one who was Soviet ambassador to the US for a record 22 years, says in his memoirs how disturbed Moscow was at the Pokhran test. Some well-placed Russian academics have said the same thing to me.

We gave in to Moscow and also to Washington from whom we got concessional economic assistance. A month after Pokhran our European and American donors at the Aid India Club meeting in Paris in June 1974 asked us some blunt questions regarding our nuclear policy. The upshot was that we called off the series of nuclear explosions we had planned and then announced to the world that our nuclear programme was entirely for civilian purpose.

It was a lie, but that is nothing to be ashamed of for all nations lie. It is just that we don’t know how to lie convincingly. Our dilemma is that we are trapped in this peace verbiage, which we know is a sham but to which the big powers, particularly the US, have committed us to.

Had we shown some resolve to carry through the original Pokhran programme we might have succeeded in it. In 1974, the Congress Party under Indira Gandhi had a two-thirds majority in Parliament and there was a kind of strategic constellation that was unfavourable to the Soviet Union. The Soviets needed us then; had we stuck to the original Pokhran rationale, perhaps they would have swallowed it, with a few hiccups.

Again our economy then was greatly autarchic. At a lumbering Hindu growth rate of 3.5 per cent we did not need to involve ourselves much in the world economy. Despite the disastrous domestic consequences of economic autarchy, it gave us some diplomatic freedom, surely much greater than what we have in these days of economic liberalisation.

The hypocrisy and duplicity we had to resort to to justify the Pokhran test have put our post-Pokhran nuclear policy in a bind. We say our nuclear programme is only for civilian purposes; so a declared nuclear weapons programme, so necessary for deterrent purposes, is something we cannot have, unless we say we are no more committed to our past pledge.

Today, we clandestinely pursue a weapons programme but this cannot be carried beyond a point; the Agni programme illustrates this. We called this missile a “technology demonstrator”, and when Washington expressed its concern over this, Prime Minister Rao called it off with a glib remark that the technology was demonstrated and that was it.

Such Orwellian doublespeak stands in the way of the development of a credible nuclear deterrence. All that we have today is an option to develop it. This must be the longest-held option by any nation. Since the Pokhran explosion 23 years ago, every Prime Minister, Foreign and Defence Minister has said that our nuclear option is open.

The words by now grate on one’s ears. No individual or nation can keep repeating for so many years that its option to do this or that is open without inviting the ridicule and disbelief on the part of those to whom the words are addressed to. In politics, options are closed or opened depending on the situation. Surely our politicians who often play the meanest kind of politics know that you have to close certain options to realise others contracting a security treaty with the Soviet Union demanded some compromise with our non-aligned stand, for example.

The five present nuclear weapons powers are content to let India keep its nuclear option so long as it does nothing to build up a capability to realise it. Robin Raphel is reported to have said that as long as India does not carry out a test it could be taken as a party to CTBT. We live in the illusion of the option. A philosopher can keep contemplating all his life whether to realise moksha through bhakti or jnan but a politician must constantly choose.

The central issue in our nuclear debate should be the cost and consequences of exercising the weapon option versus the gains and political payoffs of abandoning it. What kind of a nuclear posture, ambivalent or explicit, non-weaponised or weaponised, is a secondary issue. The power constellation in the post-Cold War era is unfavourable to India pursuing a weapons option. None of the five present nuclear powers would find an Indian acquisition of nuclear weapons to its advantage. Besides we can be severely hurt economically by those who command the economic power.

But, then again, abandoning the weapon option for a price, perhaps a permanent seat on the Security Council or a privileged position in the American scheme of things, is something worth bargaining for in return for giving it up. Our noisy and intellectually barren bomb lobby has, in frightening unison, propagated the idea that nuclear weapons are good as deterrent weapons but useless as currency of power and influence.

The case of Japan and Germany shows that you can be a global power without nuclear weapons. But the point is not that we should follow the Japanese or German path to world status. The critical point is that we come out of the illusion of nuclear option and decide to exercise or abandon the option.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi