U.S. fashions new diplomatic tool against India

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI (JP): U.S. diplomacy has come into the international spotlight recently following a media leak on India's tactical Prithvi missile, the first of several successfully tested Indian ballistic missiles that has entered serial production.

India, responding to the Chinese supply of M-11 missiles to Pakistan, began commercial production of the Prithvi two years ago, which is similar in its battlefield role to the U.S. Army Tactical Missile (ATACM) used against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War. Since then, the Indian Army has been inducting the Prithvi into its armory.

But India is not willing to publicly admit the deployment of the Prithvi. The United States has stepped up pressure on India over the Prithvi, even though Washington has been selling Turkey the ATACM and has turned a blind eye to the provisions of its own domestic law requiring sanctions against China and Pakistan for their missile trade.

The latest round of Indo-American diplomacy has involved U.S. claims that the Prithvis have been moved to the Punjab state's Jullundur area, 100 kilometers from the border with Pakistan, and Indian assertions that they have been stored there.

This was triggered by a Washington newspaper's report that cited U.S. intelligence information on the movement of the Prithvis to Jullundur. The leak generated a chorus of defensive Indian reaction, with senior officials contending that India has not deployed the Prithvi.

An overzealous New Delhi fueled the controversy by planting its own media stories and provoking the United States to leak a claim that Indian Prime Minister Inder Gujral, who has been in office for just two months, privately pledged to stop the Prithvi deployment.

In the much-lampooned manner of Michael Dukakis riding a battle tank in the 1988 U.S. presidential election campaign, the 77-year-old Gujral recently sat in a Russian-built Sukhoi-30 jet fighter acquired by India in its most expansive arms import deal ever, and discovered no "immediate threat to national security". In reaction to the U.S. newspaper leak, he said India has no intention of deploying the Prithvi, which at US$700,000 apiece is the cheapest weapon system in the country's inventory.

Despite the self-righteous Indian indignation over the media leak, New Delhi has not been able to deny the essence of the report.

It is an open secret that the Prithvi is in production and being inducted by the army. The limited number of missiles already manufactured are being dispersed across India, and it has not been denied that several of them are in Jullundur. The Indian military, with its defensive defense strategy, does not provocatively deploy or flaunt its weapon system.

As a liquid-fueled, conventionally armed missile, the Prithvi is not suitable for any launch-on-warning strategy, nor can it be kept in a ready-to-fire mode. For safety reasons, the fuel, the warhead and the delivery vehicle have to be separately stored within reasonable distance from each other. It will take several hours to launch a Prithvi once a command is given, but even a missile kept in the Indian capital can be driven to the Indo- Pakistan border and fired the same day.

The Prithvi is also available for use on the Indo-Tibetan border against Chinese forces, already armed with rapid-fire tactical missiles. In an accord signed last November, which has been difficult to implement, China and India have agreed to reduce or limit (but not eliminate) border deployment of missiles.

The Indian Army's inadequate battlefield surveillance capabilities at the Prithvi's 150-kilometer-range means that, despite its high level of accuracy, the missile's operational range would be far less. The Army has made it clear it sees the Prithvi as a second-strike tool of conventional deterrence -- to be used only if the adversary strikes first with missiles.

After Gujral made the public declaration on the Prithvi, the U.S. government was satisfied that India was not "openly" deploying the Prithvi, whose range is about half of the M-118 in Pakistan's inventory. With the Prithvi in production and the United States unable to do anything about it, the main purpose of the media leak was to stop India from moving to an overt deployment posture, and Gujral has more than obliged the Americans.

For a change, the United States and India are partners in a charade. It suits Washington that the Prithvis are not overtly deployed because it helps cover up its missile nonproliferation policy failure, and -- by keeping Pakistan from unsheathing its Chinese-supplied M-11s -- it allows it to ignore domestic law provisions mandating sweeping trade sanctions against nations exporting and importing missiles.

Years after China transferred the M-11s, Washington has yet to acknowledge that fact because, as the State Department spokesman candidly admitted on June 3, "that would trigger, as you know, sanctions".

No Indian official has explained how it serves Indian interests to cover up the facts on the Prithvi and participate in a charade, one of whose aims is to block sanctions against India's two principal adversaries, still engaged in clandestine nuclear and missile collaboration. But it is not difficult to fathom the underlying reason for Indian acquiescence: India, rapidly liberalizing its economy, needs to build closer economic and political ties with the United States, which has emerged as its largest investor and trading partner.

The fact is the United States has turned diplomacy into a potent and effective weapon against India. The level and intensity of New Delhi's reaction to the latest newspaper leak forcefully explains why Washington loves to employ such an instrument.

Each time an American newspaper carries an intelligence leak on India, the chain of reaction is the same. The Indians cry foul, see an official American conspiracy behind the leak and deny any wrongdoing. The State Department, while neither confirming nor denying the report, seizes the opportunity to sternly warn India of the negative consequences the reported action would trigger. It also takes up the issue formally with India.

By the time the controversy subsides, the Indians have lost the nerve to push ahead with their plan and take the easy way out by indefinitely postponing their move and abjuring any action that would openly challenge the United States.

The pattern is so familiar now that whenever caught with their pants down, the Indians scamper for cover instead of acknowledging what they were doing and asserting their sovereign right to secure themselves with the means of their choice.

For 23 years, India has not conducted a second nuclear test and does not admit to deploying a single missile system despite flight testing several different missiles over the past decade. It continues to be subjected to technology denial and high- pressure diplomacy by the United States and its allies, because of its refusal to join the Western-led nonproliferation regime.

India, 50 years after its independence, presents itself as a state unsure of itself and unable to make up its mind on core issues. The country lacks the confidence and determination to relentlessly pursue and fulfill its strategic goals. Many Indians have come to reluctantly accept Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal's description of their country as a "soft state".

The writer, a specialist on arms control and disarmament, is professor of security studies at the center for Policy Research, an independent think tank in New Delhi.