Atomic Mayhem in South Asia. - Review - book review

N. Ram, Riding the Nuclear Tiger (New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 1999); Signpost no. 1: Issues that Matter, 120 pages, paperback (available from LeftWord, 12 Rajendra Prasad Road, New Delhi 110001; phone: 011 91 11 335 9456; email: LeftWord@vsnl.com) Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik, New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament (New York and Amherst: Interlink Publishing, 2000), 288 pages, $17.95, paperback.

By bullet or ballot, the Indian and Pakistani States had, by late 1999, committed themselves to the votaries of the right. In India, an election returned a vast alliance dominated by the Hindu right, while in Pakistan, the generals resort to a coup d'etat against a corrupt but democratically elected regime. Some would like to see these developments as the natural condition of postcolonial societies at the other end of the imperialist chain. This is inadequate, principally because, despite the frequency of instability, both India and Pakistan have produced regimes capable of resilience (but not always on the side of social justice). Current events in South Asia must, without a doubt, be seen in light of the watershed of May 1998, when the nuclear tests occurred that threw diplomatic and moral caution to the wind (including quite a large amount of radioactive dust). Most commentary on the tests remains at the level of the superficial, as we read reports of popular support and of the machinations of the interna tional regimes vis-a-vis the two states. A few commentators offered balanced and reasoned analyses on these events. Among them are N. Ram (editor of Frontline), Praful Bidwai (columnist in Frontline), and journalist Achin Vanaik. Their books are a summation of much of what they said after the tests, plus their prognoses for the future. Bidwai and Vanaik's book is the longer of the two, written after not only the tests but also after the India-Pakistan conflagration in northern Kashmir (May through July 1999). Ram's text is short and punchy, shows remarkable foresight about the Kashmir conflict, and bears the scientific wisdom of his collaborator, physicist T. Jayaram (whose contribution allows laypeople into the crucial arcana of nuclear physics). Both books provide the right kind of introduction to a political universe befuddled with rumor and error, as well as sheer mendacity from the powers that be.

Nuclear bombs enhance the power of the right to dominate society. This was so in the United States, where the state arrogated vast powers to itself in the name of atomic secrecy. [1] It justified this secrecy on the grounds that it was necessary for deterrence against an antidemocratic enemy (in true Orwellian style). Since an "essential aspect of the theology of deterrence" is to allow "one's population to be hostage to the nuclear weapons," then those who speak in the name of the people commit an act of immense bad faith in our name (Ram, 38). If nuclear bombs deter nuclear wars, then why have the bombs in the first place; why, logically, should two sides need to keep arsenals to ensure that they are never used? Nuclear bombs certainly do not deter conventional wars, since the nuclear age continues to be littered with the detritus of conflict. The original sin of Hiroshima produced a theology called deterrence, which is an opiate not to wash away the worries of poverty but to promote an authoritarian and m ilitaristic state. "Coming from a warm country," Nehru said at the United Nations (UN) on October 3, 1960, "I have shivered occasionally from these cold blasts." By 1999, those blasts had emanated from the subcontinent as well. The right in India, the military in Pakistan, and democratic authoritarianism in the United States are all examples of the logic of nuclearism.

But deterrence across the Indo-Pak border demands far stricter standards than that assumed for the United States-USSR. Among other limitations, the minuscule warning time means that the military on both sides will remain on hair-trigger alert. Bidwai and Vanaik demonstrate how neither India nor Pakistan possesses the infrastructure for deterrence, nor can they currently afford to build such a costly infrastructure without the creation of massive famine. Both India and Pakistan lack an acceptable early warning system to offer each other the comfort of deterrence. Rather than take shelter in the topsy-turvy hope of mutual assured destruction (MAD), each side will, if nuclear weapons enter the arsenal, await a first-strike from the other. Any error in the instruments may result in an accidental, but nonetheless deadly, release of nuclear missiles. In the event of nuclear exchanges, both books draw from the work of nuclear physicist M. V. Ramana, who shows that "neither Pakistan or India will be spared the effec ts of the fall-out of radioactive material." (Ram, 30) As a response to this dilemma, the Indian government put forth the theory of the "minimum credible deterrent," but what is not clear is what is minimum or what is credible. When challenged, the government argued that minimum did not refer to the number of warheads, since that must remain flexible. "Such a posture," T. Jayaram notes, "is obviously not conducive to avoiding an arms race or developing a restraint regime with Pakistan since it leaves unclear what India seeks to build by way of a nuclear arsenal." [2]

If the theology of deterrence is out, then what was the purpose of the tests? There is even a suggestion that these tests represent "trivial science" (Ram, 60), that the Indo-Pak claims to be nuclear powers is hollow. If these powers can only "pseudo-weaponise" (Ram, 76), then should we be less worried about the situation in South Asia? On the contrary, the mere possibility of the existence of nuclear weapons is sufficient to create all manner of political instability in the region. The theology of deterrence relies upon the belief that the enemy may fire a nuclear missile, so that the perception bears enormous power. All the failures of deterrence will remain whether India or Pakistan have real bombs or not. It is the nature of these failures and what they have caused that produces the most alarm.

General Pervez Musharraf, Chief of Army Staff in Pakistan and main leader of the October 1999 coup, noted after the May 1998 tests that "Pakistan is talking to India on an equal basis. We are not talking to India from a weak position." (Ram, 62) India' conventional weapons advantage in the subcontinent was rendered useless by the Pakistani tests. In January 1999, Musharraf (who has close ties to the Talibanist Lashkar-e-Taiba) announced on the Siachen Glacier that Pakistan's defense had become "impregnable," a reference to the nuclear capability. [3] Prior to the tests, in 1987 and 1990, India and Pakistan defused two serious crises on the border. The Kargil (northern Kashmir) conflict of 1999 reveals the instability of atomic diplomacy; indeed, the consolidation of the Hindu right in India and the military coup are further illustrations of both instability across borders and authoritarianism within them (the hallmark of atomic diplomacy). [4] Ram, as well as Bidwai and Vanaik, underscores the illusion of security, indeed the intensification of insecurity, in the vise of atomic diplomacy.

Ram, Bidwai, and Vanaik, agree in broad strokes that the main culprit for the instability is the Hindu right within India, that the Pakistani feudal elite and military responded to a rather unpleasant situation. Unlike Itty Abraham, these authors believe that in the five decades before May 1998, the Indian Foreign Office produced a notable history of antinuclear policy. Shifts in that policy came, no doubt, but the main principle of disarmament was reiterated as recently as 1985, by Rajiv Gandhi. The accomplishment of the Hindu right, Ram argues, was "to make a mockery of [India's] longstanding policy" against nuclear bombs. Indeed, both India and Pakistan went to Washington to beg the nuclear elite (the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China) --the "discriminators,"--to recognize them as "minor players," as "junior partners of the United States, in fact." (Ram, 54) Bidwai and Vanaik offer a fine chapter on the shifts within the Indian position, but all along keep clear that the Rubicon was only crossed under the watch of the Hindu right. (We await Zia Mian's work on Pakistan's history with nuclearism and disarmament.)

Both books agree on most of what I have thus far presented. The main disagreement comes in the tactical approach to nuclearism in the subcontinent. Bidwai and Vanaik have been the most consistent champions of a form of unilateral refusal to participate in the nuclear gambit--a position that means that India should sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Agreement (CTBT) immediately. Ram, like much of the Indian Left, holds that the Discriminatory Global Nuclear Bargain (DGNB) is set up in such a way that to sign treaties like the CTBT does little for disarmament. On the contrary, the CTBT as it stands now might perpetuate the DGNB with the nuclear elite--smug in their military dominance over the rest of humanity. Nehru, at the UN in 1960, noted that the question of priorities between disarmament and control would only come in if the treaties under discussion "have controls of existing armaments and thus in a way to perpetuate those armaments. It must therefore be clearly understood that disarmament and a machinery f or control must go together, and neither of these can be taken up singly." As the United States fails to ratify the CTBT, one gets a sense from the debate in Congress that both sides of the aisle see the CTBT in the one-sided manner noted by Nehru. There was only a worry about the proliferation of nuclear bombs to other powers--not one major speech in favor of the CTBT as an instrument of disarmament. The Bidwai-Vanaik position, however moral, should give us pause as we eavesdrop on the powers that be.

Bidwai and Vanaik follow Jonathan Schell's assumption that the bulk of humanity looks forward to a nuclear-free world. Despite the end of the Cold War, we are now not that far from the days of a nuclear winter. A set of physicians reminded us recently that U.S. and Russian weapons remain on high alert. An accidental rapid launch, by, say, a Russian submarine would kill 6,838,000 people. [5] U.S.-NATO engagements in central and eastern Europe draw the nuclear Maginot Line between Russia and the United States more firmly than ever. In June 1997, the Russians, NATO, and the United States signed a Founding Act to assure the Russians that the U.S.-NATO alliance would not deploy nuclear weapons in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary (the new NATO members). With NATO's expansion in to Yugoslavia, there is considerable evidence that the tension between the Russians and U.S.-NATO will increase rather than subside. With NATO's eastward march, the principal Russian cities are now within range of precision-guided co nventional missiles, putting under threat the illusion of deterrence in that sector. In 1997, Nikolai Sokov (Minister of Foreign Affairs in Russia at the time) noted that "there is a very clear perception in Russia that under current conditions the only feasible military response to NATO expansion is the deployment of additional numbers and types of tactical nuclear weapons." [6] There are few indicators that the nuclear elite foresee disarmament in the near future. Bidwai and Vanaik use opinion polls within the West to show that the population does not favor nuclear weapons, but this is a disorganized population that will need to be united if their desires are to make any kind of impact on the states. For instance, the CTBT discussion in the United States came and went without any public deliberations, a sure sign that the opinions of the masses (whether polled or not) were irrelevant to a rather smug ruling elite. For India and Pakistan to sign the CTBT, then, may seem to be a morally necessary act but it m ay be tantamount to a political capitulation to the DGNB regime. This is something that Bidwai and Vanaik do not take up in their book.

Vijay Prashad is Assistant Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Connecticut and contributed to Monthly Review in 1994 and 1998.

NOTES

(1.) The current anti-Chinese American "spy scandal" is an extension of the right's attempt to use "secrecy" as a weapon against immigration, the rights of migrant technical workers, the free movement of people, and other such things.

(2.) T. Jayaram, "A Destabilising Misadventure," Frontline 26, February 1999, p. 90.

(3.) On Musharraf, see Ahmed Rashid, "Raise the Crescent," Far Eastern Economic Review, December 3, 1998, and Amit Baruah "Sharif Confirms Development of Shaheen Missile," The Hindu, January 30, 1999.

(4.) Praveen Swami, The Kargil War: Chronicle of a War Foretold (New Delhi: LeftWord, 1999). This volume is the second in the Signpost series from LeftWord. Ram's book was the first. It provides an excellent overview of the political dimensions of the conflict as well as the imbroglio over Kashmir.

(5.) Lachin Forrow, et. al., "Accidental Nuclear War: A Post-Cold-War Assessment," The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 338, no. 18, April 30. 1998, pp. 1326-1331.

(6.) Tim Zimmerman, "Russia's Ace in the Hole," US News & World Report, June 2, 1997.

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