June 8, 1998

Clinton in a soup means Vajpayee has to be curried

Swapan Dasgupta

At the best of times, failure is difficult to digest; at the worst of times, it is abhorrent. For the US, May's 10 N-tests are not only a failure of the counter-proliferation regime so carefully nurtured since 1993, they are a monumental foreign policy disaster. It will take time for the ramifications of Pokhran II and Chagai to sink in, but the two neighbouring curry powers have conclusively smashed the universalist pretensions of the West's nuclear apartheid. They have made N-might, as Samuel P. Huntington foresaw (in The Clash of Civilisations), "the central phenomenon of the slow but ineluctable diffusion of power in a multicivilisational world".

President Bill Clinton may have mocked India's achievement as "a nutty way to go", but his concerns run deeper. First, a recalcitrant Senate may well defer ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) since the ban on N-tests have been shown to be completely unenforceable. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms has already advocated such a course. Secondly, the presence of two new N-weapons states is certain to prompt demands for a review of the present Sino-US honeymoon since China has been shown to be the common villain. The Heritage Foundation, for example, has demanded a Congressional inquiry into Clinton's reported approval of missile technology transfers to China. "If true," says a recent Heritage report, "these allegations represent a betrayal of US security."

It is because the reverberations from India and Pakistan extend well beyond their immediate neighbourhood that Washington is concerned over the US espionage establishment's "greatest failure in more than a decade". The CIA, in particular, has egg on its face because it established a Non-Proliferation Centre as early as 1991 to both identify and pre-empt the world's N-rogues. "Look, we are wrong. We were all wrong," the state department's top intelligence officer told a Senate committee in exasperation after India's N-tests. The CIA has also admitted its failure to recruit any Indian spies with access to the N-programme. A "botched attempt" even led to the expulsion of its Delhi deputy station chief last year. There is also concern that neither carrot nor stick could stop Pakistan going ahead with its well-publicised tests.

It is silly to believe the US will now admit the futility of persevering with an iniquitous CTBT and press for universal N-disarmament. The menacing noises about signing the CTBT "without conditions" reflect the profound nervousness of the N-haves at the global system being redefined. The stakes are far too high. A combination of sanctions and diplomacy may meet Indian aspirations half-way, but they are certain to destabilise Pakistan and make it turn to the Islamic world for succour. Counter-proliferation having failed, the West has to consider a policy shift. This, however, will take time and a new US administration. For Clinton, N-accommodation signals defeat. To be remembered for anything more tangible than Monica Lewinsky, he has to bludgeon the interlopers into unconditional surrender.

Clinton and a vengeful CIA know that Pakistan is fragile. Arm-twisting will push it to unbridled fanaticism. A liberal India is a different ball game. Senator Dianne Fienstein said the N-tests wouldn't have happened in a Congress regime, and Newsweek has stressed Clinton's anxiety "for a more predictable party to take power in India". No wonder there is an unseemly rush in "predictable" circles to take lessons in competitive cringing.

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