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Rajeev Srinivasan

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

After the initial euphoria, it is important to carefully analyse the fallout from the five nuclear explosions conducted by India. Sanctions, as expected, have been imposed by the US. While I continue to believe the tests were necessary and in fact inevitable, there are intriguing questions as to the timing, the motivation, and the strategic calculus behind the whole thing.

I am partial to conspiracy theories -- so I wonder if there is a diabolically clever masterplan behind all this, aimed at Pakistan. Is this a convoluted chess game of economic warfare? For, Nawaz Sharief is now painfully seated on the horns of a dilemma: damned if he tests and damned if he doesn't. I am assuming that, as is widely rumoured, the Pakistanis have already tested a device at China's Lop Nor facility; and that they possess a small stockpile of some ten warheads.

The problem facing Sharief is this: if Pakistan does test (which I think is highly likely in the next few weeks), then the US will impose the Glenn sanctions on them, just as on India. Pakistan can ill afford crippling sanctions -- as it is, their economy is in sorry shape, and their defence spending and their debt service burden together approaches 100 per cent of their GDP. They also enjoy US overt and covert aid (although the latter, from "black" budgets, will probably continue) which they need.

On the other hand, given the mood of the Pakistani man on the street, they must regain their lost honour by matching the tests by the despised "vegetarian Hindus" -- after all, government propaganda has convinced them of their superiority vis-a-vis India in all matters related to machismo. Nawaz Sharief will find himself kicked out of power -- not to mention that the streets will run with blood -- if he doesn't react.

This is a real problem for Pakistan. As we all know, the US destroyed the Soviet Union by waging economic warfare based on an arms race that the Soviets simply could not afford. It may well be the calculation of the Indian government that it can do the same to the Pakistanis. Pretty clever, that would be, if only this were true.

Here is another theory. Consider the alleged blind-siding of the CIA and the US spy machinery by the Pokhran tests. Really? With all their spy satellites ('birds' in the sky that cover any spot on the globe every thirty minutes or so), it is hard to believe that American spooks didn't know about the preparations for the test. Also, with all due respect to India's defence establishment, I am astonished that no counter-intelligence operatives had penetrated deeply enough: after all, this is a country where corruption is famously endemic.

I have a friend in Fremont, California, who believes that this means Indian and American military planners are engaged in some elaborate charade for the benefit of the Chinese. He thinks Americans have finally woken up to the fact that they need to 'contain' the dangerously imperialistic China, and have made some kind of a deal with India.

Sorry, Raju, I wish this were true, but it is extremely far-fetched. Sinophilia has reached epidemic proportions in Washington. Interestingly, the New York Post ran a stinging editorial suggesting that said Sinophilia (and corresponding Indonesia-philia) had less to do with ideology and more to do with funds channelled to Clinton's campaign coffers through the Riadys and Tries and Wus and Huangs and other (Indonesian) Chinese -- many of whom are now hiding out in China.

Although I am astonished at the failure of US intelligence, I think that can be explained by the general lack of understanding US operatives have of India. They simply didn't think Indians could pull off something like this, so they weren't looking hard enough. I tell you, Indians just don't get no respect!

A M Rosenthal, in his commentary in The New York Times, made much the same point: US strategic planners, enamoured of their new-found love for China, have disregarded India. The embrace of China has blinded them to other realities: the triumph of clever propaganda ("the billion-person market" mantra) over sense. Rosenthal also suggested, even-handedly, that the Big Five essentially drove India to test, by doing nothing whatsoever that would lead to disarmament.

US officials were shocked not only by the fact of India's being able to conceal things from them; they are also furious at the fact that a no-account Third World country has dared to upset their plans for Asia. Much like the Papal Bull that "awarded" the Americas to Spain and India to Portugal, America has "awarded" Asia to China, and Kashmir to Pakistan. Very tidy, isn't it?

Some observers on the BBC and elsewhere suggested that the US is upset over one more implied truth -- the decline of American influence in the world at large. Not only did India defy the stated US preference (that India remain in nuclear abstinence), but the US's own allies have not followed them in sanctions -- prompted perhaps by their own commercial considerations. The New World Order may turn out to reflect the fact that the 'American Century' is ending.

And I thought US diplomatic types did whine a bit too much when they said they were incensed that India's Foreign Secretary K Raghunath had met them recently, and had not told them anything about the forthcoming tests. Have a heart, guys, why should India have told you? Do you warn India every time you're planning some new military adventure? I seriously doubt that. Besides, it is quite possible that the foreign secretary didn't know of the tests.

That brings me to the timing of these tests. Why now? What is the rationale for doing it right now? I must confess that I think these tests should have been done thirty years ago. If India had tested then, there would be no issue now -- India would have been a nuclear power as defined in the Non Proliferation Treaty. As James Rubin of the US State department pointed out in all seriousness -- by divine dispensation, no doubt -- a "nuclear power" is one that exploded a bomb before 1968!

I assume India did not have the capability to test then, although Homi Bhabha (then head of the nuclear establishment) suggested it, as the government was too caught up in its own Sinophilia and Non-Aligned Movement nonsense. So the sanctions today are the economic price to be paid for lack of timeliness -- thanks a lot, Krishna Menon and Jawaharlal Nehru! This $ 20 billion pricetag (what the US claims sanctions will cost India) is your legacy.

There are both, in my opinion, domestic and international reasons for the test today. On the international front, the CTBT is coming up for review in 1999, which means there will be renewed pressure on India to capitulate. Interestingly, for all their righteous indignation, the US Congress has not ratified the CTBT (or the Chemical Ban Treaty or the Law of the The Sea, unless I am mistaken), nor has China's (what must be called for lack of a better term) parliament.

Second, there needed to be a forceful response to Pakistan's Ghori missile test and related bravado. Entertaining sidelight: did you know, that according to the NY Times's Tim Weiner, Ghori is thus named because India's missile is named after 'Prithvi' [sic], 'a 12th century Hindu king defeated by Ghori'? The NY Times has said this more than once, and so it will become "truth by repeated assertion" pretty soon.

Of course, the fact that 'Prithvi' means 'earth' in Sanskrit, and thus is a perfectly appropriate name for a surface-to-surface missile; also that the IRBM 'Agni' means 'fire' and 'Akash', the air-to-air missile, means 'sky' -- all this is of no interest to the venerable NY Times ("All the news that is fit to print") and its omniscient reporters.

But I digress.

Rajeev Srinivasan, continued