India is not being obstructionist by not agreeing to sign the CTBT as is presumed by some Western powers. The unfortunate part is that they simply refuses to appreciate India’s legitimate security concerns. The United States and the other nuclear powers seem to have decided to maintain smaller but more effective and, whose, more ‘usable’ stockpiles of nuclear weapons. For a number of reasons, objective scenarios worked out by analysts suggest that the chances of the use of nuclear weapons by nuclear powers have increased and not decreased with the end of the Cold War.
For India, the ‘Cold War’ is not quite over in the sense that South Asia and its neighbourhood remains a dangerous place. The very dynamics that forced the Western powers and the Soviet Union to develop nuclear arsenals are at play in this region.
Talk on various treaties to reduce, cap or eliminate the production of nuclear weapons and materials are not new. For instance, the first proposal for a total ban on the production of fissile material was made by the American Baruch Plan in 1946 barely a year after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nothing came of this and other proposals. Reason—the Cold War was on and neither the Soviets nor the West could seriously consider treaties that could compromise their security or perceptions of security. Today, the US has become the biggest advocate of such treaties for two reasons—first, the Cold War is over and, second, it has enough nuclear weapons and means to conduct lab tests of new bomb designs.
From the Indian view point, on the other hand, the regional ‘Cold War’ is far from over. Both Pakistan and China, two countries that have attacked India in the past and continue to lay claim to Indian territory are going ahead with improving and expanding their nuclear arsenals. Furthermore, Pakistan and China, whose military establishments are closely allied, are helping each other on the nuclear weapons area.
Pakistan has not capped her country’s nuclear weapons programme and will not do so under any circumstances. Although the Pakistanis argue that their nuclear weapons programme is directly related to that of India, this is not entirely true. Pakistan’s prestige in the Muslim world and its regional ambitions are equally compelling factors. There is evidence to suggest that Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions are far greater than normally presumed.
Pakistan’s Quest for a Plutonium Bomb: US investigators have concentrated on Pakistan’s uranium enrichment and bomb design facilities. The fact that plutonium is much more easily available worldwide and could be enriched for bomb-making has been overlooked.
As far as raw materials go, there is enough civil plutonium in the world for a country determined to lay its hands on some. It should also be noted that various plutonium bomb designs are possible given that virtually all the three plutonium isotopes can be used as cores for nuclear bombs. The nuclear powers are considering a cap on the production of weapons-grade plutonium. This is meaningless given that all plutonium is potentially weapons-grade.
Chances of Limited Nuclear Strikes: During the ‘Cold War’, the threat of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) prevented the major powers from using nuclear weapons against each other or their allies. With the end of the ‘Cold War’, the MAD dynamic is no longer operative. Rather the chances of localised pre-emptive nuclear strikes have increased. The nuclear powers are more likely today to use nuclear weapons as forms of retaliation than ever before. Worse, a country that is not allied to one or the other nuclear weapons states is highly vulnerable. Because, no nuclear weapons state would consider intervening in a crisis involving another nuclear weapons state and a non-nuclear weapons state. India, clearly, has to stand on its own. The CTBT and other such instruments are all right for the rest of the world but not for India which lives in a dangerous neighbourhood.
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