09-17-2004, 08:23 PM
Self-surfing USA: Subrahmanyam
Personal memoirs do not a history make. The historic testing of thermo-nuclear devices at Pokharan on 11 May 1998 is a decisive, defining moment in the history of Bharat.
The dangerous game that USA is playing by cuddling the Paki bomb with Chinese connivance will come home to haunt US policy for a long time to come, when strategists like Graham Allison start counting tick, tick, tick for a nuclear 9/11 using the Islamic bomb.
US strategic thinking is still conditioned by the pre-cold war era of fight against the Soviet Union. In the post-9/11 world, the true allies for peace are likely to be Russia and Bharat who have to chalk out an effective strategy to contain and defeat the nation of Islam -- the caliphate. There are islamists who are prepared to achieve this with inhuman techniques such as the gruesome tragedy of Beslan.
9/11 and now, Beslan. What more will it take the policy-makers in USA to realise that the fight against terror in Fergana valley, cannot be won without Russia and Bharat as Uncle Sam's allies?
Kalyanaraman
Self-surfing USA
K. Subrahmanyam
September 17, 2004, Hindustan Times
In 1998-99, when Jaswant Singh and US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott engaged in a dialogue of a number of rounds on the nuclear issue in the aftermath of Shakti tests, there were strident demands from sections of the BJP as well as opposition parties that there should be greater transparency about the ongoing discussions. There were even charges against the Indian side that it was yielding to US pressure. Now Talbott, in his very readable book Engaging India, has come out with a full account of the dialogue. It turns out that the Indian side did not yield to US pressure but firmly defended the countryâs security interests as defined by Delhi.
Jaswant Singh emerges from the account as a kind of hero for the sophisticated manner in which he softly stonewalled the American demands and yet developed and maintained a very warm friendship with Talbott. The book also reveals that in 1994, when the US proposed a conference of five nuclear powers, Japan and Germany, Pakistan and India to discuss the proliferation issue India demanded that the list should include North Korea, Iran and Libya. While Talbott admits that this demand was justified, he has no comment to offer on why and how the Indians were able to focus attention on the three countries with which Pakistan was at that time engaged in clandestine proliferation activity and what the US intelligence was informed at that time on that proliferation. The conference was never held.
While he mentions China as one of the helpers of Pakistanâs nuclear weapons programme, the continuing Chinese help to Islamabadâs weaponisation, Beijingâs association with A.Q. Khanâs activities (illustrated by the Chinese weapon drawings in Libya) and the supply of ring magnets to Pakistani centrifuges â all of which indicated that Pakistani arsenal was only an extension of the Chinese arsenal â do not find mention.
He recommends India should adopt the international standard of export controls. But the international standards as practised by Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland were to permit Khan and the Pakistani military establishment to indulge in black-market sale of West European nuclear equipment and technology and for the West to look the other way. Is that what he wants India to do?
Talbott mentions his being involved in efforts to persuade Russia to permit changes in the anti-ballistic missile treaty to allow the US to construct a missile defence against a future North Korean missile threat. But the transfer of North Korean missiles to Pakistan, and Islamabad firing Ghauri missile in April 1998, did not appear to amount in Washingtonâs view a sufficient challenge to Indian security to warrant Delhi carrying out nuclear tests.
In other words, there is one standard for US security and a different one for the Indian security. He has hinted at his scepticism about US authorities accepting the Pakistani claim that their military was not involved in Khanâs proliferation activities. But he has no comment to offer on how India should safeguard its security, placed between proliferating China and Pakistan in an axis with a totally permissive non-proliferation regime which looked away as China, Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland combined with Khan in establishing an international nuclear Walmart.
Talbott pressed for an Indian nuclear doctrine when it was well- known that no other nuclear power has published a doctrine. When the National Security Advisory Board came up with its doctrine of no-first use, minimum credible deterrence, absolute civilian
control on the weapons and commitment to disarmament, in a leap of imagination Talbott and his
advisors concluded that India was about to build an arsenal, a replica of the US deterrent which at its height exceeded 30,000 warheads because the document mentioned strategic triad.
Sea-based and mobile delivery systems are less vulnerable to an adversaryâs strike in a no-first use situation and the size of a survivable arsenal is directly proportional to its vulnerability. A submarine fitted with a cruise missile is not beyond Indiaâs capability in the next decade. The doctrine, meant as a long-term guideline, took into account this possibility and included the sea-based systems to keep the size of the deterrent to the lowest minimum possible.
Only a highly prejudiced perspective could have interpreted this as an attempt to build an arsenal equalling that of Britain, France and China. Unfortunately, Jaswant Singh did not explain the logic of the Indian doctrine to the Americans. That is not surprising since no Indian politician had anything to do with its formulation, nor did they attempt to understand it.
Talbott continues to maintain that India should not be allowed to get into the nuclear club as a legitimate member since that would wreck the present NPT. At the same time, he cannot imagine a solution to the challenge posed by Indian and Pakistani tests beyond asking these two countries to exercise restraint and sign the CTBT. There is a logical solution â to declare the first use of nuclear weapon, a crime against humanity punishable by all nuclear weapon powers under UN authority. It is because the US and other western nuclear weapon powers want to retain their right to use of nuclear weapons first that other nations find them a currency power.
US permissiveness in respect of Pakistani proliferation with Chinese help in the Eighties and the West European and Chinese blackmarketing in nuclear weapon technology with the help of A.Q. Khan and Pakistani military compelled India to have a minimum credible deterrent with the pledge of no-first use.
Bill Clinton is quoted asserting that India did not need nuclear weapons as it did not face any threat. If India, placed between a hostile China and a Pakistan sworn to bleed India through a thousand cuts, did not face a security problem, what security problem justifies US waging war thousands of miles away maintaining the largest nuclear arsenal and seeking withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty?
Talbott, in spite of his empathetic approach to India, continues to be a prisoner of the traditional nuclear cult of the Cold War era.
It is no surprise that he could not make any headway against Jaswant Singh and his team.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1...120001.htm
Personal memoirs do not a history make. The historic testing of thermo-nuclear devices at Pokharan on 11 May 1998 is a decisive, defining moment in the history of Bharat.
The dangerous game that USA is playing by cuddling the Paki bomb with Chinese connivance will come home to haunt US policy for a long time to come, when strategists like Graham Allison start counting tick, tick, tick for a nuclear 9/11 using the Islamic bomb.
US strategic thinking is still conditioned by the pre-cold war era of fight against the Soviet Union. In the post-9/11 world, the true allies for peace are likely to be Russia and Bharat who have to chalk out an effective strategy to contain and defeat the nation of Islam -- the caliphate. There are islamists who are prepared to achieve this with inhuman techniques such as the gruesome tragedy of Beslan.
9/11 and now, Beslan. What more will it take the policy-makers in USA to realise that the fight against terror in Fergana valley, cannot be won without Russia and Bharat as Uncle Sam's allies?
Kalyanaraman
Self-surfing USA
K. Subrahmanyam
September 17, 2004, Hindustan Times
In 1998-99, when Jaswant Singh and US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott engaged in a dialogue of a number of rounds on the nuclear issue in the aftermath of Shakti tests, there were strident demands from sections of the BJP as well as opposition parties that there should be greater transparency about the ongoing discussions. There were even charges against the Indian side that it was yielding to US pressure. Now Talbott, in his very readable book Engaging India, has come out with a full account of the dialogue. It turns out that the Indian side did not yield to US pressure but firmly defended the countryâs security interests as defined by Delhi.
Jaswant Singh emerges from the account as a kind of hero for the sophisticated manner in which he softly stonewalled the American demands and yet developed and maintained a very warm friendship with Talbott. The book also reveals that in 1994, when the US proposed a conference of five nuclear powers, Japan and Germany, Pakistan and India to discuss the proliferation issue India demanded that the list should include North Korea, Iran and Libya. While Talbott admits that this demand was justified, he has no comment to offer on why and how the Indians were able to focus attention on the three countries with which Pakistan was at that time engaged in clandestine proliferation activity and what the US intelligence was informed at that time on that proliferation. The conference was never held.
While he mentions China as one of the helpers of Pakistanâs nuclear weapons programme, the continuing Chinese help to Islamabadâs weaponisation, Beijingâs association with A.Q. Khanâs activities (illustrated by the Chinese weapon drawings in Libya) and the supply of ring magnets to Pakistani centrifuges â all of which indicated that Pakistani arsenal was only an extension of the Chinese arsenal â do not find mention.
He recommends India should adopt the international standard of export controls. But the international standards as practised by Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland were to permit Khan and the Pakistani military establishment to indulge in black-market sale of West European nuclear equipment and technology and for the West to look the other way. Is that what he wants India to do?
Talbott mentions his being involved in efforts to persuade Russia to permit changes in the anti-ballistic missile treaty to allow the US to construct a missile defence against a future North Korean missile threat. But the transfer of North Korean missiles to Pakistan, and Islamabad firing Ghauri missile in April 1998, did not appear to amount in Washingtonâs view a sufficient challenge to Indian security to warrant Delhi carrying out nuclear tests.
In other words, there is one standard for US security and a different one for the Indian security. He has hinted at his scepticism about US authorities accepting the Pakistani claim that their military was not involved in Khanâs proliferation activities. But he has no comment to offer on how India should safeguard its security, placed between proliferating China and Pakistan in an axis with a totally permissive non-proliferation regime which looked away as China, Britain, France, Germany and Switzerland combined with Khan in establishing an international nuclear Walmart.
Talbott pressed for an Indian nuclear doctrine when it was well- known that no other nuclear power has published a doctrine. When the National Security Advisory Board came up with its doctrine of no-first use, minimum credible deterrence, absolute civilian
control on the weapons and commitment to disarmament, in a leap of imagination Talbott and his
advisors concluded that India was about to build an arsenal, a replica of the US deterrent which at its height exceeded 30,000 warheads because the document mentioned strategic triad.
Sea-based and mobile delivery systems are less vulnerable to an adversaryâs strike in a no-first use situation and the size of a survivable arsenal is directly proportional to its vulnerability. A submarine fitted with a cruise missile is not beyond Indiaâs capability in the next decade. The doctrine, meant as a long-term guideline, took into account this possibility and included the sea-based systems to keep the size of the deterrent to the lowest minimum possible.
Only a highly prejudiced perspective could have interpreted this as an attempt to build an arsenal equalling that of Britain, France and China. Unfortunately, Jaswant Singh did not explain the logic of the Indian doctrine to the Americans. That is not surprising since no Indian politician had anything to do with its formulation, nor did they attempt to understand it.
Talbott continues to maintain that India should not be allowed to get into the nuclear club as a legitimate member since that would wreck the present NPT. At the same time, he cannot imagine a solution to the challenge posed by Indian and Pakistani tests beyond asking these two countries to exercise restraint and sign the CTBT. There is a logical solution â to declare the first use of nuclear weapon, a crime against humanity punishable by all nuclear weapon powers under UN authority. It is because the US and other western nuclear weapon powers want to retain their right to use of nuclear weapons first that other nations find them a currency power.
US permissiveness in respect of Pakistani proliferation with Chinese help in the Eighties and the West European and Chinese blackmarketing in nuclear weapon technology with the help of A.Q. Khan and Pakistani military compelled India to have a minimum credible deterrent with the pledge of no-first use.
Bill Clinton is quoted asserting that India did not need nuclear weapons as it did not face any threat. If India, placed between a hostile China and a Pakistan sworn to bleed India through a thousand cuts, did not face a security problem, what security problem justifies US waging war thousands of miles away maintaining the largest nuclear arsenal and seeking withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty?
Talbott, in spite of his empathetic approach to India, continues to be a prisoner of the traditional nuclear cult of the Cold War era.
It is no surprise that he could not make any headway against Jaswant Singh and his team.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1...120001.htm