May 4, 1998

Confronted with Pakistani sabre-rattling and Chinese double-dealing on nuclear weapons and missiles, the government is quietly gearing up to meet the challenge.

By Manoj Joshi

On April 21 for the first time in recent memory, Chief of Army Staff General V.P. Malik went public with the army's demand that the Government develop a strategic deterrent capability to counter the emerging "nuclear and missile challenges" to Indian security. Two days later, the revived Defence Minister's Committee, chaired by George Fernandes, was briefed by Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. According to a terse official release, "a possible action plan for the future was extensively discussed".

More than 30 years after China tested its atom bomb in the desert sands of Lop Nor, India has followed a policy of procrastination and drift, cloaked in self-deluding rhetoric of peace. With Pakistan fielding Chinese-designed nuclear weapons and missiles in the past few years, alarm bells have been ringing, none more insistently than after the launch of the Ghauri missile -- capable of hitting most parts of India.

The situation facing the new Government is extremely delicate. It must overcome its own fractured mandate, even while confronting a well established Chinese-Pakistani axis. It has to do this amidst persistent pressure from the US, Japan and other western powers on India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Officials say, however, that the new Government is moving with deliberation to craft a policy that meets the needs of the country's security without fanfare or hype.

Coalition-leader BJP has been the most vocal among India's political formations on the issue of the nation's security against nuclear-armed opponents. From the days when it was the Jana Sangh, the need for India to possess nuclear weapons has been part of the BJP's ideological baggage. On March 20, the first working day for the new Government, almost as an echo from the past, an RSS spokesperson told newsmen at a briefing following the organisation's annual session near Bangalore: "China possesses nuclear weapons and Pakistan has missiles which can be aimed at any part of the country ... we cannot be left behind."

Says Jasjit Singh, director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, with a chuckle, "Their (the BJP's) image was that the first thing they would do would be to test the atom bomb but they are moving with maturity and restraint." Compulsions of governance have led to a reformulation, if not moderation, of the BJP's call in its election manifesto of 1996 and 1998 that it will "re-evaluate the country's nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons".

Speaking to the media shortly after assuming office, Fernandes, self-declared peacenik and gadfly, clarified that the operative part of the declaration was "re-evaluate" rather than "induct". Any action on the nuclear front, he declared, would come after a strategic defence review which, in turn,would have to wait for the formation of a National Security Council, a process that could be months, if not years, away. Fernandes has at the same time, however, energised the Ministry of Defence and revived decision-making structures that ensure the civilians and armed forces work as a team again.

Notwithstanding this, the Government has been attacked by Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee, who says that the BJP's position on nuclear weapons threatens to breach a consensus policy of keeping the option "open" by not signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the CTBT and pursuing global disarmament. However, he conveniently overlooks his own record and contribution as a member of the then government in ensuring that India has not just a nuclear option but, according to most observers, disassembled nuclear weapons.

It was under Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri that India insisted on creating an independent nuclear industry base. Indira Gandhi ordered the carrying out of the first nuclear test. During Rajiv Gandhi's prime ministership, the research reactor Dhruva was commissioned, providing India with the source of weapons-grade plutonium. P.V. Narasimha Rao took the decision to fabricate nuclear weapons and a second test was nearly conducted in December 1995.

In this sense, all that the BJP is doing is to say it will "induct" these weapons. What precisely does the word "induct" mean, considering that India has an arsenal of untested weapons made by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) scientists working with blueprints of the Pokharan-design device? According to an official familiar with nuclear weapons, in the 1950s, bomb assemblies were in US Air Force custody while the critical uranium or plutonium cores were kept under the control of the US Department of Energy. "If this is induction," he notes, "then the line between 'nuclear capability' and 'induction' is very fine." Strategic thinker K. Subrahmanyam is not too worried about the issue of testing, noting that India would induct a weapon based on the "proven Pokharan technology". To buttress this, he says that the Hiroshima bomb was of an untested design.

Nevertheless, the Indian position is not happy. According to US bomb-design specialist Richard L. Garwin, India will not be able to make the more powerful thermonuclear weapon to deter equivalent Chinese bombs. On the other hand, the country is confronted with the Sino-Pakistani axis whose aim seems to be to contain India. As an accepted nuclear-weapons power which has carried out some 45 nuclear tests, China has the data and experience the Pakistanis need in order not just to keep up with India but to best it.

Nations, be they India, Pakistan or China, say they need nuclear weapons to defend themselves. China declared that it would never be the first one to use nuclear weapons and that it would never use them against a country that did not possess such weapons. India has since 1994 called on Pakistan to join in making such a "no first use" pledge. However, Pakistan has baulked at this, arguing that as a smaller country, such a commitment would be disadvantageous.

While the country can derive some comfort from Chinese words, though not its deeds, there is a pattern of Pakistani statements and ideas which has a dangerous edge. It is one thing to talk of ensuring "parity" with a country five times its size but quite another to ask for missiles as Pakistan President Rafiq Tarar did in mid-April, and to name missiles after Mahmud Ghaznavi and Ahmed Shah Abdali who, with Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghauri, were simply marauders who ravaged northern India. Adding to this climate of threat was Pakistan's nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan who declared that he was ready to test a nuclear weapon and that designing the Ghaznavi missile was already underway. Pakistan's surly tone has been audible for some time now. Late last year, Pakistan's hawkish Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub declared that Pakistan would not sign the CTBT even if India did.

Some observers expect the Government to send a clear signal to China and Pakistan in the coming months possibly through a test of an Agni II missile capable of hitting at least half of China. But there is little doubt in the minds of Indian decision-makers that the only strategy of countering nuclear weapons is to possess the ability to make and deliver similar weapons to inflict unacceptably high punishment on an attacker.

Twelve years ago, the then army chief Krishnaswamy Sundarji called on the armed forces to prepare to meet both the "conventional and the nuclear threat", and hoped the government of the day would not "make us fight our adversary at a disadvantage." Hopefully the long wait of the armed forces and the country for a strategic deterrent will soon be over.

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