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India should offer 'no first use': defence expert

India should unconditionally offer 'no first use' guarantees to its three neighbours -- Pakistan, China and Russia -- as a first step towards de-legitimising nuclear weapons and pushing the world towards full disarmament, defence analyst K Subrahmanyam said on Saturday.

The analyst felt if such an agreement could be brought about between these countries, this would go a long way towards bringing peace in the world and would also mount pressure on the West to come to a similar treaty.

Speaking on 'Nuclear Tests Pokhran II -- What Next?' at the India International Centre in New Delhi, Subrahmanyam -- a former director of India's first think-tank, the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses -- said, "Now that India has shown its nuclear capabilities to the world, it could offer substantially towards the peace process. The country should desist from building enormous stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but aim at a 'simple minimum deterrence' to protect its national security concerns."

Pointing out that a 'no first use' pact exists between China and Russia, Subramanyam felt it could be extended to India and Pakistan to bring peace and stability in the region.

It is only the West that has not been accepting the 'no first use' policy, the analyst said. "To follow that policy is not wise for India because it did not pursue an aggressive foreign policy," he said, arguing that the tests India has recently conducted were in the national interest as the country was facing both overt and covert nuclear threats.

The tenor of Subramanyam's argument was that China in any event would not be too worried about India's n-tests, since its long term interests clash not with this country but with the United States.

The analyst said the Pokaran tests had provided India sufficient deterrent power, and that was the point India had scored -- from that point on, no further tests are necessary, Subramanyam felt.

His belief, expressed here, was that Russia, Japan and India together could offer a power balance in Asia, and the US and Europe should therefore be grateful for India becoming a nuclear state.

The former IDSA director said there was no point in the US shutting its eyes to the fact that there were eight, not five, nuclear states -- mentioning India, Pakistan and Israel as the other three.

Subrahmanyam pointed out that the talks of the G-8 countries, now on in Birmingham, England, thus far had shown that there was no unanimity among the member countries on the sanctions against India. The French and British would like to gain from the sanctions imposed by Japan and the US, and even the latter two countries would give up once they realised the futility of imposing sanctions against such a large country as India, the analyst argued.

He felt the US bluster was mainly designed to impress on Pakistan not to conduct retaliatory tests, since the Pakistan economy could not sustain the kind of harsh sanctions the Glenn Amendment mandates. "The US would like to avoid a situation where Pakistan, reeling under sanctions, becomes a potential peddler of drugs to the US or sells nuclear technology to rogue nations for money," the analyst pointed out.

Interestingly, he also pointed out that it was a theoretical possibility that every nuclear power was vulnerable to nuclear strike, and therefore there should also be provision for political and military succession in such an event. Such legislation was in vogue in other nuclear states, he pointed out.

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