Treaty fuels India's nuclear program

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI (JP): Although the deceptively labeled "comprehensive" test ban treaty has been opened for signature, with U.S. President Bill Clinton being the first world leader to sign it, the stark reality is that India holds the trump card on its entry into force. The treaty is unlikely to take effect because India has vowed never to accept it.

New Delhi secured the trump card because the nuclear powers, particularly China, did not want a test ban that excluded their principal target, India. India's "not now, not later" pledge, backed by a strong bipartisan national consensus, means that the treaty will remain in limbo indefinitely. And although crafted mainly as a technical "fix" to proliferation, the pact could recoil on its main sponsors by helping to crack India's decades- old nuclear restraint.

This is the first treaty in modern history with a majority of states qualifying their endorsement of it. Although 158 of the 185 member-states supported it at the United Nations General Assembly, many nations expressed serious reservations about the treaty, pointing to its inherent defects and the way the text emerged, not from the negotiating process, but like a rabbit pulled out of a hat.

The bulk of the countries that took the floor saw the treaty as flawed and said their support did not mean they were accepting its deficiencies; rather they intended to exploit the test ban to step up pressure on the nuclear powers to embark on concrete disarmament steps.

The great powers, as during the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's permanent extension last year, lined up the weakest and most obscure states to puff up the list of nations backing the treaty's back-door adoption. But some of these resolution co- sponsors were not even present during the Sept. 10 vote.

Many reservations placed on record by the major non-aligned states echoed India's concerns. Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka, among others, voiced dismay that the treaty had been so designed as not to arrest qualitative improvements in existing arsenals.

A host of interveners, including Indonesia, Colombia, Egypt, Thailand, South Africa and Algeria, were disappointed that the treaty was not part of a larger disarmament plan. Several states, including Mexico and Indonesia, criticized the treaty's entry- into-force formula, with Ghana saying it "virtually guaranteed the indefinite hibernation" of the pact.

A few states like Iraq were not allowed to vote because their UN payments were in serious arrears. But the country which owes more than half of the UN's current US$2.8 billion debt and thereby has impaired its functioning, the United States, spearheaded the steamroller action in the General Assembly.

The latest U.S. missile attacks on Iraq have been defended solely by history's most egregious colonialist, Britain, yet Washington accuses India of becoming isolated -- not for committing aggression but for rejecting an unequal treaty that would constrain its capacity to build defenses against the weapons of mass destruction wielded by the major powers, including its smiling-but-spiteful neighbor, China.

In the past, too, India has taken principled positions without the fear of ploughing a lonely furrow -- such as on China's entry into the UN and battling apartheid in South Africa -- and been vindicated by history. Even on the test ban, India's position may eventually be vindicated.

A new arms race involving extremely-low-yield "nukes" seems inevitable since the treaty does not block underground hydronuclear tests and the building of new above-ground experimental facilities with advanced laser and computational abilities. As if to facilitate underground testing at slightly supercritical or subcritical levels, the treaty does not require the closure of existing test sites or ban test-related preparations such as excavation and drilling.

Having got what it wanted, Washington will begin conducting a planned series underground tests at Nevada at supposedly subcritical levels, although it might wait for the presidential election to be over. These tests will conclusively expose the treaty loopholes and confirm Egypt's UN statement that what has been adopted is another "partial test ban treaty".

Never before in history did great powers manage to erect a regime to legalize their possession of a specific class of weapons and make it illegal for other states to aspire for then. Today, "nuclear nonproliferation" is a widely chanted global- peace mantra.

The latest treaty, capping the NPT-extension success, could, however, imperil the very regime it is supposes to serve. The treaty is likely to push India -- the only country in modern history to demonstrate its capability to build a particular type of weapon system through a live test and then withhold weaponization for an inordinate period -- over the nuclear threshold.

The treaty, by implicitly threatening sanctions against any state that holds up its entry into force more than three years, is expected to push India against a diplomatic wall and goad it to end its self-imposed test moratorium. The country's sole nuclear detonation occurred 22 years ago. The treaty mandates that if it has not taken hold within three years, a conference of states should be held to "decide by consensus what measures consistent with international law may be undertaken to accelerate the ratification process."

The great powers have already drawn up a strategy to secure India's compliance with the test ban without its signature. Nonproliferation zealots are already arriving in New Delhi to preach the virtues of compliance and the dangers of a can of worms opened by non-compliance. But the way the treaty is structured, it will ensure neither India's compliance nor signature.

For more than a quarter century, India has conformed to the NPT without being a signatory. It might have also complied with the test ban without its signature had the treaty not been designed to forcibly pull its head to the test-ban noose.

Without this treaty, India would continue to do what it has merrily done for three decades since starting plutonium production: brood, meditate, ponder, reflect and weigh whether it should go nuclear, even as its defense preparedness comes under severe strain and its external environment worsens. Indian policy-makers, left to themselves, may never come to a decision.

However, by unleashing a hovering sanctions threat and rearing external pressure, the test ban will compel India to reach out for the nuclear-weapons option's security benefits rather than continue to merely bear its burden. It will force the nation to address the option's technical and policy imperatives before it seriously erodes. Policy-makers are likely to conclude that if the country is to be hanged, it better be for doing something rather than for self-restraint and self-denial.

If India does not exercise its nuclear option in this century, it may never do so, since no option can be kept open indefinitely in a credible and meaningful fashion. The treaty is not only reminding India of its closing opportunity but prodding it to go nuclear.

The treaty thus could come as a blessing in disguise for its fiercest critic, ensuring that the nuclear option no longer remains on the back burner of Indian policy-making. The most likely scenario is that when the treaty conference is held in three or more years to consider "measures consistent with international law" to accelerate the ratification process, India would already have lifted the veil of ambiguity from its nuclear- defense posture.

The writer is professor of security studies at the Center for Policy Research, an independent New Delhi-based think-tank.

Window A: A host of interveners, including Indonesia, Colombia, Egypt, Thailand, South Africa and Algeria, were disappointed that the treaty was not part of a larger disarmament plan.

Window B: Never before in history did great powers manage to erect a regime to legalize their possession of a specific class of weapons and make it illegal for other states to aspire for then.