05-11-2006, 03:26 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Pioneer, 11 May 2006
<b>This day, that year </b>
C Uday Bhaskar
May is very hot in the plains of India and, by a combination of complex causal factors that include design and coincidence it is deeply associated with India's nuclear narrative. May 11, 1998, marked the Pokhran-II nuclear test that saw India declaring itself as a de facto nuclear weapon state (NWS) in the early months of the NDA Government. This was followed by another test on May 13 and the world had a sixth NWS. Pakistan followed with its nuclear tests in end May 1998 and the strategic profile of South Asia was definitively transformed.
But 1998 was preceded by the May 18, 1974, Indian PNE - or peaceful nuclear explosion - <b>when under the stewardship of Indira Gandhi, India demonstrated its technological capability with an underground explosion</b>. However, India chose not to be a NWS and this was impelled by a distinctive Indian strategic culture.
May is also associated with two purported nuclear crisis situations - the first in 1990 when the US White House under Mr Bush (Senior) sent its special envoy Robert Gates to ostensibly defuse a tense nuclear standoff in the subcontinent. Mr Gates was in Delhi and Islamabad on May 19 and 20 respectively and this was the focus of a very alarmist account put out by famous American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in 1993 about the nuclear Armageddon that was avoided by timely US intervention.
This has become the dominant interpretation among many Western analysts for over a decade and "May 1990" is synonymous in strategic circles with an Indo-Pak nuclear crisis.<b> It was this incident that led former US President Bill Clinton to describe the subcontinent as the "most dangerous place on earth". However, it is only now that this scare scenario is being reviewed objectively and recent US scholarship is case in point.</b>Â
The other notable punctuation in May was the Kargil war of 1999 when what seemed a routine incursion into Indian territory by irregulars turned out to be far more insidious tactical move by the Pakistani military under General Musharraf. By end May 1999 when the IAF was deployed, the anxiety about escalation mounted in various quarters. Thus one notices a pattern about May that appears to linked with the Indian nuclear experience and on the 8th anniversary of the May 1998 tests it is pertinent to reflect over India's nuclear trajectory.
<b>An objective cost-benefit analysis would suggest that India's core national interests have been better served by May 1998 and paradoxically the Kargil war of May 1999. </b>India's regional nuclear matrix had become very animated in the aftermath of the Cold War and both China and Pakistan forged a close and opaque nuclear weapon-missile cooperation programme that had very adverse consequences for India's security. Simultaneously, a clandestine nuclear Walmart under the deft control of Pakistani scientist AQ Khan was in operation though the details of this emerged only recently. <b>In the mid-1990s the global community was also trying to corral India into signing CTBT. </b>
Against this backdrop, the national consensus veered towards exercising the nuclear option which was finally exercised by Prime Minister Vajpayee's team in May 1998. <b>Almost immediately on May 13, India committed itself to a "no-first-use, minimum deterrent" doctrine to assuage global concerns; and this paid rich dividends in May 1999</b>.
From 1999 onwards, India's strategic stock gradually went up leading not only to the Clinton visit of March 2000 but also the radical shift in US policy that followed under President Bush. The May 1998 nuclear tests and the rectitude associated with India post-1999 have enhanced the relevance accorded to Delhi in the emerging global matrix. It must be noted that India without nuclear weapons in 2006 would have counted for less in the global strategic stock exchange.
One may further argue that the recent agreement between India and the US beginning July 2005 and consolidated in March 2006 was enabled to a large extent by the events of May 1998 and 1999. Today, India is perceived as one of six nodes of relevance in the emerging global hexagon of the 21st century - the other five being the US, EU, China, Russia and Japan.
However, this is not a paean for the nuclear weapon or praise for India's current strategic profile. Since May 1998, India has remained hobbled by its own diffidence about what constitutes credible minimum deterrence. This ambivalence about the credibility index was most discernible in the public debate about the separation of Indian nuclear facilities into civilian and non-civilian as part of the India-US agreement.
<b>India's nuclear policymakers must ponder our chequered experiences since 1974 and evolve a calibrated approach that would maximise the opportunities to harness nuclear energy. The conceptual challenge will be to shift the global focus from the military potential of nuclear technology to its more benign uses. The global community and India will benefit from such an ethical shift - ethics being enlightened self-interest.</b>
(The writer is a defence and strategic affairs analyst. The views expressed here are personal)Â
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<b>This day, that year </b>
C Uday Bhaskar
May is very hot in the plains of India and, by a combination of complex causal factors that include design and coincidence it is deeply associated with India's nuclear narrative. May 11, 1998, marked the Pokhran-II nuclear test that saw India declaring itself as a de facto nuclear weapon state (NWS) in the early months of the NDA Government. This was followed by another test on May 13 and the world had a sixth NWS. Pakistan followed with its nuclear tests in end May 1998 and the strategic profile of South Asia was definitively transformed.
But 1998 was preceded by the May 18, 1974, Indian PNE - or peaceful nuclear explosion - <b>when under the stewardship of Indira Gandhi, India demonstrated its technological capability with an underground explosion</b>. However, India chose not to be a NWS and this was impelled by a distinctive Indian strategic culture.
May is also associated with two purported nuclear crisis situations - the first in 1990 when the US White House under Mr Bush (Senior) sent its special envoy Robert Gates to ostensibly defuse a tense nuclear standoff in the subcontinent. Mr Gates was in Delhi and Islamabad on May 19 and 20 respectively and this was the focus of a very alarmist account put out by famous American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in 1993 about the nuclear Armageddon that was avoided by timely US intervention.
This has become the dominant interpretation among many Western analysts for over a decade and "May 1990" is synonymous in strategic circles with an Indo-Pak nuclear crisis.<b> It was this incident that led former US President Bill Clinton to describe the subcontinent as the "most dangerous place on earth". However, it is only now that this scare scenario is being reviewed objectively and recent US scholarship is case in point.</b>Â
The other notable punctuation in May was the Kargil war of 1999 when what seemed a routine incursion into Indian territory by irregulars turned out to be far more insidious tactical move by the Pakistani military under General Musharraf. By end May 1999 when the IAF was deployed, the anxiety about escalation mounted in various quarters. Thus one notices a pattern about May that appears to linked with the Indian nuclear experience and on the 8th anniversary of the May 1998 tests it is pertinent to reflect over India's nuclear trajectory.
<b>An objective cost-benefit analysis would suggest that India's core national interests have been better served by May 1998 and paradoxically the Kargil war of May 1999. </b>India's regional nuclear matrix had become very animated in the aftermath of the Cold War and both China and Pakistan forged a close and opaque nuclear weapon-missile cooperation programme that had very adverse consequences for India's security. Simultaneously, a clandestine nuclear Walmart under the deft control of Pakistani scientist AQ Khan was in operation though the details of this emerged only recently. <b>In the mid-1990s the global community was also trying to corral India into signing CTBT. </b>
Against this backdrop, the national consensus veered towards exercising the nuclear option which was finally exercised by Prime Minister Vajpayee's team in May 1998. <b>Almost immediately on May 13, India committed itself to a "no-first-use, minimum deterrent" doctrine to assuage global concerns; and this paid rich dividends in May 1999</b>.
From 1999 onwards, India's strategic stock gradually went up leading not only to the Clinton visit of March 2000 but also the radical shift in US policy that followed under President Bush. The May 1998 nuclear tests and the rectitude associated with India post-1999 have enhanced the relevance accorded to Delhi in the emerging global matrix. It must be noted that India without nuclear weapons in 2006 would have counted for less in the global strategic stock exchange.
One may further argue that the recent agreement between India and the US beginning July 2005 and consolidated in March 2006 was enabled to a large extent by the events of May 1998 and 1999. Today, India is perceived as one of six nodes of relevance in the emerging global hexagon of the 21st century - the other five being the US, EU, China, Russia and Japan.
However, this is not a paean for the nuclear weapon or praise for India's current strategic profile. Since May 1998, India has remained hobbled by its own diffidence about what constitutes credible minimum deterrence. This ambivalence about the credibility index was most discernible in the public debate about the separation of Indian nuclear facilities into civilian and non-civilian as part of the India-US agreement.
<b>India's nuclear policymakers must ponder our chequered experiences since 1974 and evolve a calibrated approach that would maximise the opportunities to harness nuclear energy. The conceptual challenge will be to shift the global focus from the military potential of nuclear technology to its more benign uses. The global community and India will benefit from such an ethical shift - ethics being enlightened self-interest.</b>
(The writer is a defence and strategic affairs analyst. The views expressed here are personal)Â
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