India cannot sign NPT since it is discriminatory
K. Subrahmanyam

The UN Security Council presided over by President Obama has adopted unanimously resolution 1887 on nonproliferation which among various measures calls on states not party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to join it. There are only three countries outside the NPT –India, Pakistan and Israel.

India and Pakistan have declared themselves nuclear weapon states while Israel, though a possessor of nuclear weapons even before the NPT was signed, has chosen to adopt an ambiguous stand of neither declaring nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons. Israel’s stand is that it will neither be the first to introduce nuclear weapons nor will it be the second. The world, however, accepts Israel as a nuclear weapon state.

India has reacted to the resolution by saying that there is no question of India joining the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state as nuclear weapons are an integral part of India’s security. The NPT only recognises five nuclear weapon powers and other countries can be a party to the NPT only as a non-nuclear weapon state. Therefore the question of India joining the treaty does not arise.

President Obama talks of a world without nuclear weapons. But the NPT was not intended to lead towards a world without nuclear weapons. Initially when it was drafted, it was meant as a bargain between the nuclear weapon powers and non-nuclear weapon states for 25 years. The nuclear weapon powers were meant to not expand their arsenals and had to negotiate in good faith for nuclear disarmament while the non-nuclear weapon states were meant to not acquire nuclear weapons.

The nuclear weapon states did not keep their side of the bargain. Then, in 1995 at the end of 25-year period, they got the NPT extended indefinitely and unconditionally thereby legitimising the nuclear weapons in the hands of the five nuclear powers. If the nuclear weapons were legitimate for five powers, they would also be for all other powers who have not bound themselves not to acquire them. India, Israel and Pakistan did not break any international law when they acquired nuclear weapons.

The supporters of the NPT do not seem to appreciate that the NPT is the main hurdle in advancing towards nuclear disarmament. The term non-proliferation implies that there will be some possessors of weapons and it is meant to stop the new states from acquiring the weapons. It is essentially a discriminatory treaty. Over and above this discrimination, the weapons have been legitimised.

No weapon considered legitimate is ever going to be eliminated.

President Obama will not see the world without nuclear weapons so long as the nuclear weapons are deemed legitimate. If he is keen on advancing towards the world without nuclear weapons, he should progress towards delegitimisation of nuclear weapons. India cannot sign a discriminatory treaty which legitimises nuclear weapons.

India has proposed steps to delegitimise the nuclear weapons. It has called for the nuclear weapon powers to adopt ‘no first use’ policy as a first step towards delegitimisation as happened in the case of chemical weapons in the Geneva Protocol of 1925. That led to the treaty to eliminate chemical weapons in 1993. The nuclear weapons have been used only once against a country which was negotiating its surrender terms. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Mikhail Secretary Gorbachev had jointly declared that a nuclear war could not be won. The delegitimisation path is more likely to lead towards disarmament, as the precedence of the chemical weapons shows rather than the non-proliferation path which surrounds the nuclear weapons with a mystique and endows them legitimacy.

India has been a consistent advocate of nuclear disarmament since the inception of the United Nations. India became a reluctant nuclear weapon state faced with two nuclear neighbours with an ongoing proliferation relationship going back to 1976, with one of them declaring its nuclear arsenal as India-specific.

At the time the NPT was under discussion, Indira Gandhi sent Indian emissary L.K.Jha and Dr Vikram Sarabhai to Moscow, Paris, London and Washington to seek nuclear security assurances for India if it were to sign the NPT. Those assurances were denied and therefore India did not sign the NPT faced with a Maoist China which proclaimed that all peace-loving nations had a right to nuclear weapons.

In Chinese view at that time Pakistan was a peace-loving nation and India was not. In 1971 when the Bangladesh massacre involved a million casualties and 10 million refugees pushed into India, Delhi found itself facing a Pakistan-China-US axis. Therefore India conducted the Pokhran-I nuclear test, but did not follow that up with a weaponisation programme.

In 1976 Z A Bhutto concluded an agreement for nuclear weapon development cooperation with China. The recent revelations from Dr A Q Khan’s letter written in December 2003 when he was detained and facing interrogation give some details of the Chinese proliferation to Pakistan in the eighties which included weapon grade-enriched uranium and nuclear weapon design. In turn, Pakistan helped China to set up an ulta-centrifuge plant with European technology purloined by Dr A Q Khan from Almelo centrifuge facility in Holland where he worked earlier.

Two American authors Thomas Reed of Livermore Laboratory and Danny Stillman of Los Alamos Laboratory in their book “The Nuclear Express” write that China’s late leader Deng Xiao Peng adopted a deliberate policy of proliferation in the eighties towards Pakistan, North Korea and Iran. According to the authors, China even conducted a nuclear test for Pakistan on May 28, 1990.

The Pakistanis conveyed nuclear threats to India during Operation Brasstacks (a military exercise undertaken by the Indian Army during November 1986 and March 1987) and at the beginning of Kashmir insurgency in February 1990. These are recorded in the report of the Kargil Review Committee. Rajiv Gandhi came up with his comprehensive and phased disarmament plan before the UN Special Session on Disarmament in June 1988. He offered that India would not go nuclear if his plan was accepted. When that plan was ignored by the Non-Proliferation Community, he had no choice but to order assembly of weapons in India to catch up with Pakistan, which according to Dr Khan had attained weapon capability in mid-eighties.

While China may have adopted a ‘no first use’ policy its surrogate Pakistan, which it had equipped with nuclear weapons and missiles, asserts its nuclear policy is India-specific and it has a policy of first use of nuclear weapons under certain circumstances. In 1998 Pakistan tested its Ghauri missile. Under those circumstances, India was compelled to test and declare itself a nuclear weapon state.

India found a compromise between its commitment to nuclear disarmament and its security imperatives faced with two nuclear adversaries in the strategy of ‘no first use’. The world has recognised the Indian record of restrained and responsible behaviour and consequently granted India waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines. The call for non-nuclear states to join the NPT is a ritual meant to satisfy other non-weapon states and there is no reason for India to be unduly perturbed by it.

The allies (well the British Empire, one ally was late to the game) got involved when the Germans went into Poland, if they’d stopped before then, at Czechoslovakia, they may not have intervened.

They sure as hell did not want war during the Phoney war period. If Hitler wanted he could have gotten some deal from the Ango-French.

As would I, but can you speak for people living in countries that aren’t stable democracies, where they might not be just extorting money? That certainly isn’t all people like the Taliban did. The images taken of what they did to people on the diving boards the Russian’s put up in Kabul would be reason enough for me to have at them.

Yeah and right now the majority of Afghans would rather be with the Taliban than have foriegn troops there.

Hmm, not sure that is entirely right. You have equated intervention entirely to military involvement. The use of Soft Power against Apartheid grew steadily for years until the collapse. Can’t comment on Rwanda, don’t know enough.

But it was pretty much an internal change. Soft Power is fine.

Wouldn’t American interests being in danger make them more likely to play hard ball?

It is more in danger if they go to war. Its like you feeling so threatend by a guy point a gun at you that you take it from him and shoot yourself.

You’re probably right for Chavez (do people really find him appealing? :S) but the other 2 are debatable, the mass riots on re-election of votes and widespread accusations of vote-rigging can’t be entirely baseless.

They are not baseless. But these sorta things happen everywhere. Actually why do you think your Mugabes and Chavez’s attack the West ? It is because if the west do something silly they can United their respective countries behind them. War is a good way to unify a divided population.

Pakistan has been allowed to get away with too much by threatening to do nothing about the Taliban, but this has little relevance to the argument. (I guess i’m a little biased towards India though, but still).

I mentioned it only because you mentioned non proliferation of weapons. ‘Even worse would be who they give/sell the stuff to after they have the know-how. ‘ – was replying to that.

Iraq was worth it anyway, Saddam needed to go, there were proven human rights issues there. Gassing the Kurds ain’t a sport. The post-game execution was terrible though.

The Post game was always going to be messy and if you look at it was never worth it (from an Iraqi POV). Saddam was probably on his last legs and would have been toppled one day anyway. With a majority Shia population something like what happend in Iran (a revolution) was always on the cards, but this would probably have been unacceptable to the West. Americans secured Iraq a vital piece in their strategy towards Iran and in middle east and Iraqi assets and had a friendly government. So you see the War for Americans was pretty much Worth it. Just do not say its about humanitarian crisis Saddam Hussein being evil and WMDs.

And Afghanistan really was important, the links to terrorism are undeniable.

Again I am not arguing. Its possibly important for the West and the world as a whole. But you cannot say its important or good for Afghans themselves or reflect what they want. I am not against War I am against saying War is for the good of the people of a country being invaded.

We need to be clear here what we are talking about, governments intentions and public support for actions. In the case of Somalia, the government wanted to help, but had no support from the public. There are instances of the reverse too.

Yes because most of the public sit on the Moral High Chair and judge accordingly. This is why the world leaders tell lies and half truths to go to war.

^^^^

Nice Imagination. You should try writing for cheap magazines.

The tailhook is visible I think you can also make out that the wings are foldable.

Why there is no case for further nuclear tests

R. Ramachandran

From the published data, there is no evidence that the 1998 thermonuclear test was unsuccessful and, in any case, since nuclear war has no meaning, an arsenal built up from lower yield fission weapons alone suffices for ‘credible minimum deterrence.’

The argument that the Pokhran-II thermonuclear (TN) test of May 11, 1998 had either a lower than the officially stated yield or failed altogether has now formed the basis for demanding a new round of tests.

Reiterating their arguments made in a recent article (The Hindu, September 17) at a press conference on September 21, K. Santhanam, former official of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and a member of the Pokh ran-II core team, and Ashok Parthasarathi, former Special Assistant on S&T to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, called for lifting the country’s unilateral moratorium and launching “a comprehensive, well-focused series of TN bomb tests until such bombs are perfected.” It must be emphasised that they have not questioned the country’s capability to build an arsenal with deliverable fission weapons.

The arguments for a fresh round of TN tests towards weaponisation arise from two perspectives: (a) an unsuccessful Pokhran-II test and (b) improving the weapon design even if the Pokhran-II test was successful. While the available evidence — the technical information published by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) — does not show that the Pokhran-II was unsuccessful, there are compelling arguments against the need for resuming testing even if it was so.

DAE employed different techniques to estimate the test yields. The yield values obtained from the other five nuclear explosive tests are stated to be consistent with the original estimate of 60 kt for the May 11 tests — a 45 kt thermonuclear device and a 15 kt fission device that were exploded simultaneously. Of these, the post-shot radiochemical test, an on-site method, is considered the most accurate. Its results were published by S. B. Manohar et al (BARC Newsletter, July 1999).

A TN weapon has a primary fission trigger and a fusion secondary. The radiochemical technique for a TN test looks for signatures of certain radioisotopes, like sodium-22 and manganese-54, produced as a result of nuclear fusion in material samples from the shaft. Dr. Santhanam has argued that, since these could arise in fission as well, detection of these without stating the absolute values cannot be evidence of fusion having occurred.

Fusion produces large quantities of high-energy 14 MeV neutrons whereas fission neutrons have an average energy of only about 2 MeV. But in fission too there would be a small number of high-energy neutrons. However, high-energy neutrons produce these radioisotopes with greater probability than low-energy neutrons. Therefore, while one may see these products during fission as well, fusion would produce these in copious amounts. According to the Pokhran-II measurements, the fission weapon too had produced manganese-54. But the amount in the fusion device is significantly higher and does provide an idea of the comparative yields. DAE scientists have also published the significantly higher gamma-ray activity from fusion products (BARC Newsletter, July 1999). The absolute values and the scale have been withheld for obvious sensitivity reasons, but the qualitative difference in the levels is evident.

Further, from the post-explosion morphology of the test site, Dr. Santhanam has contended that, had a TN test occurred, “the shaft [and the A-frame sitting astride its mouth] would have been totally destroyed.”

This assertion is clearly not correct because qualitatively speaking, it is possible to conduct a 40+ kt TN explosion and still have the site morphology as seen with no cratering.

The crater morphology depends on the depth of burial, the surrounding geology, and the manner of emplacement of the device. In an underground explosion, the confining effect of the material overburden causes the energy to be directed downwards. This has a negative influence on cratering. At the same time, the confining strata are blown upwards by the expanding gas. As the depth increases, the mass of the overburden increases and, therefore, the confining effect increases. As a result a larger and larger fraction of the material thrown upwards falls back and the crater size would begin to decline as less and less material now gets ejected. So one can understand why, for example, the cratering effect of a 1 kt explosion at 20 m may be similar to a 125 kt explosion at 100 m. In fact, at some low enough value, there would be upheaval within but no material would be thrown out and there would be practically no crater.

The surface features caused by explosions at different depths and yields (under similar surrounding geology) can actually be quantified by scaling them to a standard yield, for example 1 kt. Such a scaled empirical relation does show zero cratering for some depth values, beyond which what is known as a subsidence crater results. From this relation, cratering effects for different depths and different yields can be calculated. DAE scientists have worked out such a relationship for Pokhran. Through simulations, yield and depth for the TN device were chosen so that there would be minimum cratering and there would be complete containment of radioactivity (BARC Newsletter November 1998). Indeed, in the Pokhran-II TN test, there were only large fractures on the surface but no crater or venting of radioactivity.

Based on the Pokhran-II tests, the National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) assessed the Credible Minimum Deterrent (CMD) capabilities and drafted the Indian Nuclear Doctrine (IND) in August 1999. In fact, according to R. Chidambaram, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), going by the Pokhran-II tests, a TN capability up to 200 kt and a “full capability to provide technological back-up to the Indian nuclear programme” existed. The IND, which had government and military acceptance, is premised on the following: a CMD, a ‘no first use’ policy, and nuclear retaliation against a first strike that will inflict unacceptable damage. Further, in January 2003, the National Democratic Alliance government stated: “The Cabinet Committee on Security reviewed the existing command and control structures, the state of readiness, the targeting for a retaliatory attack and operating procedures for various stages of alert and launch…[and] expressed satisfaction with the overall preparedness.”

Dr. Santhanam argued that, without high-yield (150-350 kt) TN weapons, an arsenal of lower yield (around 25 kt) fission warheads did not amount to a CMD for distances of 3500 km and beyond. In a recent article (The Hindu, September 21), a former DRDO chief, V. S. Arunachalam, and a veteran strategic affairs analyst, K. Subrahmanyam, asked: “Can it be argued that only a 150 kiloton weapon will deter another warhead of a similar yield? Deterrence is not about the damage one causes to the adversary. It is about what the aggressive side will consider as unacceptable.” That is, given the extent of damage a 25 kt fission weapon can cause, an arsenal built up from lower yield fission weapons alone suffices for deterrence. Further, countering the argument of Dr. Santhanam and Parthasarathi that not only the warhead yield but the distance also was a factor, they stated: “It is not infra-dig for a 3500 km range missile to carry a 25 kt warhead. Cost-effectiveness calculations have no meaning since the nuclear war itself has no meaning.”

P.K. Iyengar, a former AEC Chairman, has argued that since TN devices are “compact, light, use less sensitive material, and offer better safety features,” they are better for weaponisation and deployment. “It is only prudent,” he says in his yet-to-be-released book, “that one continuously tests these and upgrades the technology so that it will be foolproof. Declaring a moratorium on testing immediately after the May 1998 test is unfortunate because we cannot test the veracity of the yield and also cannot improve the mechanical design of the device.”

In this context and from the perspective of only a second strike capability, the observations a Chief of Army Staff, General Krishnaswamy Sundarji, made in a 1996 private communication I have had access are pertinent: “I would not accept the proposition that continued open-ended testing would be required to keep our deterrence…For, in minimum deterrence, our weapons are going to attack enemy cities and…not…enemy weapons. Relative superiority of the nuclear weapons of the two sides should not, therefore, make any difference to deterrence…”

Jaswant for panel to probe Pokhran II row

JODHPUR: Former defence minister and ousted BJP leader Jaswant Singh has asked the Centre to constitute a committee of three to five retired nuclear scientists to investigate into the controversy over the success of Pokhran II.

Speaking here on Thursday, Singh said that the motto of India’s nuclear policy is to build a “credible minimum deterrence”, which needs to be maintained at any cost and such controversies affect this credibility which paints a negative image of the country.

“A large number of comments have been pouring in in this regard from both political and scientific quarters, which should not be allowed to prevail as it not only hurts the country’s nuclear prospects but spreads an atmosphere of distrust also,” he said.

Singh said that since he was directly linked with this test in 1998, he too is interested to know whether it was successful or not and the sooner it is done, the better it is to decide the future course of action to ensure the credible minimum deterrence.

It is Singh’s first visit to his home state after the Jinnah controversy erupted and he was expelled from the BJP. While talking to the media enroute to his home district Barmer, he appeared quite distraught by the expulsion. “The kind of treatment meted out to me was shocking as I was not given any notice or sought any clarification,” he said.

He claimed that this all came as a surprise to him as he had already apprised both Lal Krishna Advani and Rajnath Singh about his work on Jinnah and they did not object to it. According to him, they rather advised him to first wait till the assembly elections are over and then the general elections.

“But the extreme step they took was without going through the contents of my book and they just took it as my glorification of Jinnah, whereas I have also criticised him at a number of places,” he rued, “It was quite an unceremonious adieu to my 43 years’ of service to the party.”

The veteran politician also threw light on his future plans, in which his literary zeal is likely to hold priority. Reactions from the Rajput leader reflected the controversy has to some extent boosted his literary zeal as he has plans to pen a few more books in the coming days.

“I am working on a compilation of all the diaries which I have written during my entire political career,” Singh said, claiming that the diary will disclose a number of secrets and cause further ripples in the political circles. “I am planning to write a book on Chakravarti Rajagopalachari,” he added.

Pained by the treatment extended to his book on Jinnah, right from burning the copies to banning them, Singh referred to the book as his child’ and described the treatment of it as a “crime and sin”. He stated that books must be respected as they are the harbinger of the freedom of thoughts and expression.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/india/Jaswant-for-panel-to-probe-Pokhran-II-row/articleshow/5053241.cms