July 20, 1998

Tell Talbott India is still the Mahatma's land.

Mani Shankar Aiyar

Strobe Talbott is the American heavy whom Jaswant Singh has been chasing the world over and who arrives in India this week to tell the Vajpayee Government what is what. In rank, he is approximately equal to what we would call a deputy minister. Which means he ranks in the scale of creation somewhere below Vasundhara Raje. Which also means he just about equals the defeated BJP candidate from Chittorgarh who has emerged, in effect, if wholly unconstitutionally, as the country's foreign minister.

The visit is taking place because the Vajpayee Government has already given away the essence of our opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). All that remains is the tying up of the sordid bargain. The fireworks of May 1998 were alleged to have made us a formidable force in world politics. Instead, we are, as never before, bending our knees before insolent might. Unless, of course, the nation rises against the impending sell-out before it occurs.

India was the first UN member to propose a test ban treaty. That was decades ago in Nehru's day. It was made at a time when the favoured nuclear strategic doctrine was "massive retaliation" which escalated, as nuclear technology went crazy, to "assured destruction", then "mutually assured destruction". Nehru's ctbt was aimed at reining in the insane race towards more and better bombs that would wipe out the enemy, never mind that it would also wipe you out. That phase of nuclear escalation peaked under President Ronald Reagan and his Star Wars programme when the arsenals of the nuclear powers had together attained the capacity to annihilate everything in existence not once but 51 times over. Crazy. Completely crazy.

So crazy, it even dawned on the Americans and the Soviets that this was crazy. So, during the Gorbachev era, the INF and START-I were negotiated, the first treaties ever to cap and begin rolling back the nuclear arsenals of the superpowers and their surrogates. It was in the context of this first-ever reverse thrust that in 1988, India came up with an Action Plan which moved beyond the mere reduction, control and limitation of nuclear weapons towards their complete elimination. The plan incorporated all the elements of reduction/control/limitation/non-proliferation (including CTBT) which had earlier been made (mostly by India) and linked them to a phased but time-bound elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

The goal India set was not arms reduction -- a goal which the nuclear weapon powers had eventually come around to themselves -- but the larger goal of elimination. There was nothing utopian about this goal because the elimination of other weapons of mass destruction -- chemical and biological -- had actually been achieved through international treaties, signed by American and Russian plenipotentiaries and all others.

India's Action Plan was not just morality (although, we must add -- and with pride -- it was that too), it was also a neat act of realpolitik. Through the Action Plan, India brought into play the clout it had attained by becoming nuclear-weapons capable in 1974. We said we had shown the world over the previous decade and a half that we were not only capable of becoming an N-power but also of unilaterally deciding not to cross the threshold. Through the plan, India offered to convert this decision into a multilateral commitment not to do so provided the N-powers converted their unilateral statement of intention to eliminate N-weapons into a multilateral commitment to do so, within a specified time frame and through clearly identifiable and verifiable phases.

That provided us the moral and political strength to refuse to be party to the extension of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the CTBT without inviting retaliation. Pokhran-II has taken us marginally beyond the threshold. Even so, we can still insist that, as a matter of principle, we are not prepared to sign either treaty without a time-bound commitment by all N-powers, including ourselves, to eliminate weapons of mass destruction that waylay national security, global security and a voice of good sense for India in world affairs.

The BJP-led Government is, however, unwilling to assert that the 1988 Action Plan remains the sheet-anchor of our global N-weapons policy -- merely because the author of the Action Plan was one Rajiv Gandhi. It has no alternative plan of its own. Jaswant Singh is, therefore, reduced to negotiating for a few baubles (dual technology, etc) in exchange for an Indian surrender on the CTBT. He will merely be begging Talbott, as he did in Washington and Frankfurt, "Give us this day our daily bread -- and forgive us our trespasses."

Those of us who are untainted by association with this transitional Government must make it clear to the Americans, through Talbott or other means, that whatever the bazaar bargain the Vajpayee Government strikes, the rest of the country is not bound by it. We must stick to our principled position on nuclear issues by reasserting the only Action Plan calling for time-bound phases towards the global elimination of nuclear weapons. In short, Talbott should be told that the Pokhran prank notwithstanding, we are still, in morality and unbending strength of national will, the land of the Mahatma.

The author is secretary, AICC. The views expressed here are his own.

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