Dead on Arrival

Testing Times: The Global Stake in a Nuclear Test Ban

by Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik

Dag Hammarskjold Foundation

Uppsala, Sweden, 1996

71 pages, ISBN 91-85214-23-X

India might find ego-gratification by emerging as a nuclear power, but it will have to contend with the image of 'rogue' state.

The end of the cold war brightened hopes for the emergence of a nuclear weapons-free world. But the presence of some 20,000 nuclear warheads and their sophisticated delivery systems with the nuclear weapons states (NWS) on the one hand, and the activities of the threshold nuclear powers on the other, have ensured that it remains a difficult proposition. The initialling of a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by the end of this year was supposed to have been an important step in this direction.

In Testing Times: The Global Stake in a Nuclear Test Ban, journalist-researchers Praful Bidwai and Achin Vanaik write: "The completion of a truly comprehensive, universal, non-discriminatory zero-yield, and verifiable treaty to prohibit testing (so necessary for qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons) would provide a logical way out of the nuclear impasse that has lasted half a century."

But the 28 June deadline for wrapping up the draft of a CTBT has come and gone without any accord. On 20 June, the newly elected United Front government in New Delhi announced it would not sign the CTBT unless the NWS—China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States—agreed to disarm within a given time frame. It also announced the withdrawal of all facilities for seismic verification from the purview of the International Monitoring System (IMS). However, India would continue to sit in on negotiations at the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva, it said.

Pakistan promptly announced that the treaty would be "dead on arrival" if any of the eight nuclear-capable powers declined to sign. Simultaneously, China expressed its reservations, saying the clause on peaceful nuclear explosions (PNE) should be revised after 10 years. Russia, China, France, Pakistan and UK were of the view that India, Pakistan and Israel should ratify the treaty for its entry into force. Russia, China and India expressed reservations on the matter of "on-site inspection" and the US position on National Technical Means of Verification.

Negotiations collapsed and a revised version of the draft was presented to the delegations at the CD to take back with them and study before talks resume on 29 July.

The well-argued monograph by Mr Bidwai and Mr Vanaik was conceived as an intervention in the negotiations and the public debate on the CTBT. Supported by the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, the study, in the words of the authors, "attempts to assess the main areas of dispute between potential signatories and possible forms of their resolution, and to point to the larger political value of establishing a good CTBT, something that is now within our reach."

The study thus retains its topicality and is significant in that it is the first publication of its kind, and all the more significant as it comes from India, a country that has a critical role in the CTBT process. It follows on the book-length study Nuclear Weapon Tests: Prohibition or Limitation? (1988) edited by Josef Goldblat and David Cox, and two monographs on the CTBT by Eric Arnett.

The authors of Testing Times maintain that theirs is an attempt to familiarise readers from the global South, and especially India, with the international debate on disarmament and to acquaint the international reader with the debate in India on the issue. The objectivity of the concise, meticulously researched and readable text is in sharp contrast to the selective analyses and biased research on the same theme by some well-known writers of India on nuclear issues, who so strongly advocate that the country withdraw from the CTBT negotiations.

The authors make no secret of their own stance on whether India should go nuclear. It should not. After devoting a section to the analysis of the Indian position and mapping out the options available to the country, Mr Bidwai and Mr Vanaik are of the opinion that India should initial the treaty at the earliest.

They write: "The ongoing talks on the CTBT represent an encroaching ´Day of judgement´ for New Delhi. It is to be hoped that it will wisely choose the path of nuclear sanity and work for and be part of a consensus CTBT that is now close within the world´s reach".

They warn: "If the world yet again fails to complete the CTBT in the near future, the impact will be to strengthen hawkish lobbies in the governments of both the NWS and threshold states. This will end hopes for a fissile material production ban (Fissban) and even jeopardise existing arms control agreements including START-II and the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty."

Hidden Agenda

The authors point out India wants to be seen as seeking the moral high ground reflecting its seriousness about advancing the cause of nuclear disarmament. However, they write, New Delhi is resisting signing mainly because it will limit of narrow its nuclear option. While refusing to sign the CTBT in its present form, India, nudged by its power elites, may be seeking an escape route to a belated nuclear weapons programme. This hidden agenda which goaded India to act as a ´spoiler´ at the CD negotiations in Geneva is now becoming apparent even as some higher-ups in the defence services openly advocate that India exercise its nuclear option.

In effect, the situation is fast approaching the one described by the authors in the monograph. They say the US and Russia may now go forward with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) process, enlarging its scope to eventually include the other nws, while India could take a retrogressive step by emerging as a new nws and ending up as a ´rogue´ nation.

The book provides valuable insights into the global stakes in a test ban, the vacillating stand of the nws on the CTBT, the probable holdouts (Russia and China) and the potential spoilers (India). The writing is simple, lucid and to the point. Seven boxes within the monograph elucidate the basic tenets essential for understanding the political and technical complexities of the CTBT. Under a separate head, a brief history of the CTBT talks since 1954 is included.

The book unabashedly advocates the CTBT and its stated objectives of banning all attempts by the nws to further refine or modernise their arsenal and to cap any further weapons development by the threshold states. It acknowledges that the treaty is limited and that not a single nuclear warhead from the existing stockpile will be destroyed because of it. Nevertheless, the authors believe that the instrument will be an important step forward for nuclear disarmament.

They write, "In all probability, if a CTBT is not completed and signed this year, that will also weaken the credibility of the multilateral process of arms control negotiations and devalue the CD as a forum. The world may have to say goodbye to nuclear disarmament for a long time to come."

The monograph will have to go through a quick revision and be updated as well if it is to retain its relevance, as it was written before elections in either India or Russia and before the 28 June deadline was crossed. Although it deals with India´s security concerns as an aspect of the domestic debate on the CTBT, the authors do not do justice to the extent of concern which exists in New Delhi about the external security environment. This, after all, is what makes analysts and policy-makers come out vociferously in favour of exercising the nuclear option.