India crosses world's nuclear fence in style (2)

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI (JP): India has one of the world's oldest nuclear programs. Its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, laid the foundation of that program by setting up the Atomic Energy Commission in 1948 to produce "all the basic materials" because of nuclear power's "strategic nature".

Nehru had said even before assuming office that as long as the world was constituted on nuclear might, "every country will have to develop and use the latest scientific devices for its protection". By the mid-1950s, India had built Asia's first atomic research reactor and set in motion a broad-based nuclear program.

After the Cirus reactor built with Canadian assistance started up in 1960, Nehru declared: "We are approaching a stage when it is possible for us... to make atomic weapons." That stage was reached unquestionably in 1964 when India completed a facility to reprocess the Cirus spent fuel, making it the fifth country to be able to produce plutonium.

When China conducted its first nuclear test in 1964 -- four months after Nehru's death -- India's top nuclear scientist, Homi Bhabha, declared that India could build a nuclear bomb within 18 months if it so decided.

China's first nuclear test, barely two years after its invading forces inflicted a crushing defeat on India, sharply heightened New Delhi's insecurity. The following year, Pakistan, taking advantage of India's security travails, sent its troops into Kashmir, triggering a full-scale war.

It was then prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri who initiated the Indian nuclear-explosives program in 1965. But a series of events put a brake on that program. These included the death of Shastri, Bhabha's own death in a mysterious plane crash, and political instability triggered by an initially weak government under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

When India eventually conducted a nuclear detonation in 1974, it astounded the world. U.S. intelligence was caught unawares, even though Indira Gandhi had told parliament in 1972 that her government was "studying situations under which peaceful nuclear explosions carried out underground can be of economic benefit to India without causing environmental hazards". Earlier in 1970, India had rejected a U.S. demarche against conducting any nuclear explosion.

By conducting the 1974 test, Indira Gandhi gave India a tangible nuclear option. The country broke no legal commitment and had the sovereign right to continue the testing program. As Henry Kissinger told U.S. Congress after the Pokharan test: "We objected strongly, but since there was no violation of U.S. agreements involved, we had no specific leverage on which to bring our objections to bear." The test shook the 1968-designed Nuclear Nonproliferation (NPT) to its very foundation.

Had India continued to test, the NPT regime probably would have disintegrated or been seriously damaged. Instead, the U.S.- led regime emerged stronger and with fangs because India, to the great surprise of the rest of the world and its own public, did not go beyond that one single test. It will remain a riddle of history why Indira Gandhi did not carry out another test.

One key constraint on India going overtly nuclear was its lack of missile capability. Indira Gandhi sought to remedy this by formally instituting a program in 1983 to develop ballistic missiles.

An Indian nuclear-deterrent force has to be centered on missiles since bomber aircraft cannot reach the heartland of its leading security concern, China.

India's nuclear-weapons option really opened up in an operational sense only after the Agni intermediate-range missile was flight-tested in February 1994, completing its triumphant three-test developmental phase.

The first Agni test in 1989 was carried out despite, in the words of then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, "ambassadors of certain foreign powers" threatening punitive sanctions. "I told them clearly that India would carry out the launch and we would not change our decision under pressure," the son of Indira Gandhi and grandson of Nehru said.

Agni-type missiles make strategic sense only if they carry a nuclear weapon. While India had demonstrated its delivery capability, it had not demonstrated its ability to build a nuclear warhead for the Agni. That demanded nuclear testing.

India's turning point came when an openly pronuclear government took office in March 1998. The new coalition elected to power pledged, in the words of Vajpayee, to "exercise all options, including the nuclear option".

The Vajpayee government was determined not to miss India's closing opportunity to test. The Indian nuclear option had come under increasing siege in the 1990s with the five declared nuclear powers joining hands for the first time to enforce nonproliferation as a global norm. After legitimizing their nuclear monopoly through the NPT's permanent extension, these powers had begun targeting India through the test-ban treaty and the proposed fissile material cutoff treaty.

It was this pressure that prompted two previous Indian governments to order a nuclear test, although they retreated from their plan at the 11th hour. The first test decision was taken by then prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in late 1995, but Rao scrapped the plan after the U.S. government began breathing down his neck.

The second test move was initiated by Vajpayee immediately after taking over as prime minister in May 1996. The plan, however, had to be aborted as his first government lasted only 13 days.

When Vajpayee became prime minister for the second time, he knew that continued inaction would bring India under stepped-up pressure from next year, with the 1999 CTBT entry-into-force conference to be followed by the NPT review conference in 2000.

He also realized that any testing plan would get leaked to the Americans unless it was confined to a handful of decisionmakers. That is the reason why even Defense Minister George Fernandes was not in the loop from the beginning but was brought into the picture just before the first series of three detonations. Had Fernandes known the plan from the outset, he would not have gone around saying that a nuclear decision would have to await a strategic posture review.

So when Vajpayee announced that India had conducted three nuclear tests within minutes of each other, he stunned the world and exposed one of America's biggest intelligence failures.

The writer is a professor of security studies at the privately funded Center for Policy Research in New Delhi.