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India's
Nuclearism and the
New
Shape of World Order
Richard
Falk, TFF adviser
Anyone who pretends that India's decision to cross
the nuclear weapons threshold openly has made no
difference to its international standing is either lying
or living in fantasy. Of course, the official reaction in
the West was one of anger, and disappointment. India with
nuclear weapons inevitably meant that Pakistan would soon
follow. It was a major setback for the American-led
effort to sustain the non-proliferation regime, and it
appeared to make the world more dangerous, especially in
the setting of Indo-Pakistan relations.
Perhaps, more troubling for the West than the
strategic implications of an Indian bomb, was the public
enthusiasm that greeted the news in India. Indeed, most
commentators tried to reassure the world that Delhi's
decision to go nuclear was driven by domestic politics,
especially by the BJP's declining popularity. When the
Indian Defense Minister, George Fernandes, contended that
the bomb was intended mainly to improve India's security
with respect to nuclear China, the world, to the extent
that it noticed, laughed off such an explanation as
diversionary at best.
After the first year, when talk of sanctions subsided,
the sharp edge of India's decision has been dulled even
in Washington. Instead, India's nuclear status is being
quietly factored into the latest assessments of global
security. For instance, consider the recent report of the
influential Trialateral Commission, entitled 21st Century
Strategies of the Trialateral Countries (that is, North
America, Europe, Japan). A former high-ranking US State
Department diplomat, Robert Zoellnik, includes India as
"one of the three great challenges of Eurasia" for early
in the next century, the other two being China and
Russia. Although nuclearism was not explicitly stressed,
it would be foolish to suppose its irrelevance. In
searching through the literature on geo-strategic
threats, I find no mention of India as a challenge before
May 1998 and a great deal of attention ever since. It is
hardly a coincidence!
It is only slowly dawning on informed global opinion
that the United States, as the self-appointed manager of
the nuclear club, cannot credibly claim to occupy the
high ground of moral principle. To begin with, the US
nuclear weapons posture, despite the end of the cold war,
shows no sign of softening. Nuclear weapons continued to
be developed and deployed by the thousand, and beyond
this, the US Government even now refuses to issue a no
first use pledge with respect to the weaponry. It is also
the case that the United States, along with the other
nuclear weapons states, have completely ignored the
unanimous view of the World Court in its 1996 Advisory
Opinion that states possessing nuclear weapons have a
solemn legal obligation to engage in good faith
negotiations aimed at achieving nuclear disarmament. This
American image of irresponsible nuclearism was further
reinforced a few months ago when the US Senate refused to
ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty designed to put
a global brake on further weapons development. Against
such a background, it appears to be extreme hypocrisy to
single out India (and Pakistan) as breakers of the
international moral code on nuclear weapons.
At worst, India is pursuing a security logic based on
the same sort of power politics that have guided the
approach of the existing nuclear weapons states. This
logic has been reinforced for decades by virtue of the
fact that the five declared nuclear weapons states were
also the five countries given permanent membership in the
UN Security Council with the right of veto. How can the
rest of the world insist that a democratically elected
Indian Government has no right to pursue its security by
acquiring nuclear weapons, especially when its decision
has been applauded by the overwhelming majority of its
citizenry? Is such a move by India more "irresponsible"
than Israel's much earlier "open secret" that was
deliberately ignored by the gatekeepers of the nuclear
club? In effect, India's crossing of the nuclear
threshold was fully consistent with the geopolitical
rules of the game over the course of the last
century.
What is more, India's interest in being finally
acknowledged as a great civilizational power is also
fully understandable. It is truly sad that it appears to
take nuclear weapons to achieve such a result. Consider
the record. Being the world largest democracy is not
enough. Having almost one billion people is not enough,
and being the center of a world Hindu civilization is not
enough. But now that India possesses nuclear weapons it
is no longer possible to think of the future of Asian
security without including India as an indispensable
player. In this respect, Mr. Fernandes may have been
quite right to insist that India's nuclear weapons had
more to do with China than Pakistan, as their main impact
has been to close the gap between these two dominant
countries in the Asia/Pacific region. It is no longer
plausible to think of China and the rest. Now strategic
analysis must consider, at the very least, China and
India and the rest.
None of this assessment is meant to be read as a
belated note of congratulations to India on the decision.
Undoubtedly, the region is more dangerous in the event of
crisis and conflict. During the Kargil campaign there
were real anxieties and rumors about Pakistan's evident
contemplation of a nuclear attack. Perhaps, more
fundamentally, India's decision was a decisive step away
from its post-independence identity as a country
dedicated to world peace, international morality, and
leadership of the Third World. India's geopolitical
"normalcy" meant that it could no longer claim such a
leadership role or to be an exceptional nation. Arguably,
such an undertaking had long since been discarded by
Indian politicians as "a mission impossible," yet still
in the rest of the world there was a bereft feeling after
the explosions in the Pokhran desert that anti-nuclear
activists around the world had lost their oldest and most
trusted friend.
© Richard Falk 2000
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