Nuclear tests' fallout

The echoes of worldwide condemnation over India's three underground nuclear tests Monday had hardly died down when New Delhi announced that it had conducted two more tests on Thursday. The move has aroused the anger of world leaders to an extent that some governments have even imposed new economic sanctions against this nation of 950 million people.

U.S. President Bill Clinton has ordered his administration to halt all assistance to India, while Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, who had suspended US$30 million in grants as a punishment for Monday's tests, said he would consider reviewing a billion dollar development assistance package to India as punishment for setting off two more explosions.

The United States, which provides India $140 million in direct aid each year, is now suspending exports of certain defense and technology materials as well as terminating credit and credit guarantees to India. It is also opposing any loans to New Delhi by international financial institutions.

Some European countries have said they would consider suspending their aid as a punishment to India for breaking its moratorium on nuclear tests. Sweden has already announced that it will suspend its $118 million aid agreement with New Delhi.

Ignoring the condemnations and sanctions, India has said that it is prepared to face any sanctions for the tests it said it had to conduct for the sake of national security and nuclear deterrence. As Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee put it: "We Indians will face it. We are ready for any difficulty."

Vajpayee, according to Press Trust of India, has also sent a letter to Clinton explaining that his country had an overt nuclear weapon state on its borders "which committed aggression against India in 1962". Although Vajpayee did not specifically name the nuclear state, he was obviously referring to China.

Vajpayee may have a point that India, being the world's largest democracy, deserves becoming a nuclear state to act as a balance of power. But carrying on experiments of weapons of mass destruction at a time when relative peace prevails in the region is unethical and provocative. India's neighbors, particularly those in the subcontinent, have spent much of their wealth on national development and not on weapons procurement.

Worse still, India -- with its founding fathers like Mahatma Gandhi and Pundit Nehru greatly admired and respected by the peoples of the region -- conducted its series of nuclear tests as a number of its Asian neighbors find themselves tangled up in economic problems.

Although the nuclear tests proved to be successful, placing India as an emerging nuclear power next to the already existing nuclear states of China, the United States, Russia, Britain and France, the nuclear detonations have worried its neighbors -- especially Pakistan, its long-time foe and archrival in the Kashmir territorial dispute.

India's tests will likely trigger an arms race in the region, since Pakistan, considered a nuclear threshold state, said Tuesday that it was prepared to match India in the nuclear field. "Islamabad is in a position to explode a device of its own," said Abdul Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program.

An arms race, besides creating new tension in the region, will likely disrupt the regional stability that has been achieved thus far.