June 2000 Edition
Views and Analysis from India and the sub-continent
Two years ago, when India conducted the tests in Pokhran, it signaled a dramatic shift in India's nuclear posture. It brought India's nuclear capability from the realm of a quiet and covert military program to a publicly known status. India's nuclear tests set off a sanctimonious furor in Washington, London, Tokyo and Bonn. But in conducting it's tests it had broken no laws as was acknowledged by Andrew Mack in The Australian Financial Review (May 19, 1998) when he wrote: "India's tests didn't legally violate the 1996 Comprehensive Test ban Treaty (CTBT) because India is not a signatory to it."
Although India was the first country to propose a ban on nuclear testing, it has been unwilling to sign global treaties that were discriminatory because they allowed a few countries to hold nuclear arms indefinitely. In spite of nearly 100 resolutions of the UN General Assembly reflecting the will of most nations against this nuclear monopoly held by a few powerful nations (particularly the US and it's allies), decisive steps for creating a nuclear weapon free world have still not been taken.
India's Struggle
for Disarmament
In a recent statement by Indian
Ambassador Savitri Kunadi to the Plenary
Meeting of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, August 6, 1998 she said: "India has consistently maintained that the only credible
guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons lies in their
total elimination. Until this objective is reached, as an interim measure,
there exists an obligation on part of the nuclear weapon states to assure
non nuclear weapon states against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons,
as also that these weapons will not be used as instruments of pressure,
intimidation and blackmail. This obligation should be of an internationally
legally binding character, clear, credible, universal and without discrimination."
It should be noted that in 1965, India (along with a group of non-aligned countries), had put forward a proposal for an international non-proliferation agreement under which the nuclear weapon states would agree to give up their arsenals, provided other countries refrained from developing or acquiring such weapons.
In the 1960s India had sought security guarantees against the use of nuclear weapons but the countries India turned to were unable to extend to India the expected assurances. In 1961 India supported UNGA resolution 1653 of 24th November 1961 which called on the Secretary General to ascertain the views of member states on the possibility of Convening a Special Conference for concluding a Convention on the Prohibition of Use of Nuclear Weapons. In 1978, India proposed negotiations for an international convention that would prohibit the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons. (See Savitri Kunadi, Speech to Conference on Disarmament)
Although many editorial writers in the West dismissed statements emanating from the Indian government that India's nuclear tests had resulted from the repeated failure of many decades of determined efforts towards unconditional and universal nuclear disarmament, Peter Coombes, President of End the Arms Race seemed to echo India's concerns. Rather than heap abuse on India's tests he wrote: "The irresponsible ones are the nuclear weapons states and countries like Canada that are 'protected' by the nuclear umbrella. Canadian officials are proud of Canada's role in renegotiating the Non-Proliferation Treaty without having any time constraints or conditions of disarmament being imposed on the nuclear states."
That it is the US and it's allies who have repeatedly resisted all time bound attempts at disarmament has been sadly forgotten, even by many peace activists, who have now joined in the chorus of disapproval. Government officials and security analysts and "experts" in the West (and their agents in the developing world) have talked at length about the "dangers" of nuclear weapons in South Asia and the "need" for India to sign the CTBT. But the CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) does not require the existing nuclear powers to disarm. Nor does it require nations like Australia, Germany and Japan to give up their nuclear umbrellas or prevent the US or NATO from stationing nuclear weapons on their soil.
Western Nuclear
Hypocrisy
Greg Sheridan, (The Australian,
8 February, 1999) seemed to acknowledge this hypocrisy when he quoted Former prime minister Inder Kumar Gujral
as saying: "I said to Australia, you get out
from under the American nuclear umbrella, then talk to us." Greg Sheridan also quoted BJP national president
Kushabhau Thakre: "Australia allowed British
nuclear tests in your own country but later deplored us. Australia's attitude
is not acceptable." That the
West was being highly hypocritical was picked up by more than one journalist
in Australia.
Zbigniew Brzezinski writing in the Times of India, also appeared to attribute India's nuclear tests to the hypocritical manner in which the US and it's allies have approached the issue of nuclear disarmament: "U.S. efforts to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons have failed for two reasons. The first is that the United States has never pursued a genuinely universal and nondiscriminatory policy of halting proliferation. In fact, U.S. policy all along has been that of selective and preferential proliferation." In an even more damning vein, Zbigniew Brzezinski went on to point out that: "The United States openly assisted Great Britain in its acquisition of nuclear weapons. Also, it is now known that the United States, though much more surreptitiously, helped France in its pursuit of a nuclear capability. Last but not the least, the United States very deliberately more than winked at Israeli efforts, while studiously ignoring the atmospheric nuclear test conducted "by someone'' in the late 1970s near South Africa in the Indian Ocean."
The hypocrisy theme was echoed in other commentaries and editorials. Prof. Kumao Kaneko of Tokai University (Japan) while acknowledging that the international nuclear regime centering on the NPT was extremely unequal and discriminatory, admitted that Japan had adopted a policy of depending on the nuclear umbrella provided by U.S.A under the U.S.- Japan Security Treaty, thus becoming vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy on the issue.
The Australian in a June 4, 1998 piece by Malcolm Fraser headlined it's story on India's nuclear tests as "Nuclear jolt rooted in test ban disparity". The Australian Financial Review introduced it's May 19, 1998 story with the statement: "Uncle Sam and the other nuclear weapons states can't really demonize the Indians, argues Andrew Mack, because their criticisms smack of hypocrisy." Robert Scheer expressed a similar view in the Los Angeles Times (May 19, 1998) stating: "It is hypocritical for the U.S. to say it has the right to possess such weapons and others don't. If it weren't so tragic, it would be a joke. India dares to test a few crude nuclear bombs and the United States, which has 8,000 strategic warheads mounted on sophisticated launching devices aimed a targets throughout the world is outraged." Robert Scheer also pointed out that: "The largest of the Indian tests involved the equivalent of 43,000 tons of TNT, a small hydrogen bomb by U.S. standards. The "father" of the hydrogen bomb Edward Teller, was honored with a national medal by President Reagan."
Bernard Feng also berated US hypocrisy in the Hong Kong Standard (19 May 98) as he pointed out that: "Thrice Americans have edged to the brink of holocaust, once during the Korean conflict, then in 1961 during the Cuban missile crisis and again four years later when President Lyndon Johnson contemplated radiating China as the Vietnam War escalated."
Tyler Marshall's piece in the Los Angeles Times (June 5 1998) was titled: "South Asia Testing May Blast a Hole in 3-Decade-Old Double Standard". "For the better part of a generation, the world's five declared nuclear powers kept themselves on the up side of a global double standard, encouraging other nations to renounce the right to atomic weapons even as they amassed huge stockpiles of them. This was a reality that the late German Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger once likened to a bunch of alcoholics persuading others to vow abstinence".
The Berlingske Tidende ran a commentary by nuclear physicist and Nobel Laureate Joseph Rotblat on 29th July 1998, with the headline: "Nuclear Bombs for All - or for None" , continuing: "The atomic policies of the leading Powers of the world are marked with hypocrisy and double standards. The only reasonable purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter others from a nuclear attack, and this aspect would disappear if nobody had those weapons."
In that commentary, Joseph Rotblat quoted the Canberra Commission, and wrote: In 1996, the experts of the Canberra Commission summed up the situation quite incisively: "A handful of countries possess nuclear weapons and they insist that these weapons provide unprecedented security advantages, but they also reserve the right to keep these advantages to themselves. This situation is highly discriminative and thus untenable and cannot be maintained. The possession of nuclear arms by any country presents a constant incentive for others to acquire them."
Concerned about the US's enormous nuclear arsenal, Dr. Rashmi Mayur, Director, International Institute for a Sustainable Future, Mumbai, in a statement, said: "The world today has enough nuclear weapons to exterminate every one of the 5.9 billion human beings five times over."
It is arguments such as these that perhaps persuaded Stephen Glover to title his Daily Mail, (May 19 1998) piece: "Why India should have the Bomb". Exposing the US record, he wrote: "How odd that America should take this line. What was and is good for it and the West is apparently not good for India. The United States has carried 1,032 nuclear tests since 1945, the last being in 1992. Until it let off five last week, India had only done one test - in 1974. America is still in possession of some 12,000 nuclear warheads, whereas India is thought to have about 65 and, in the view of some defense experts, cannot even bolt these on to the missiles it has developed. The United States is a very large nuclear power. India a very tiny one."
India's Security
Concerns in a post-Soviet World
In an interview with Rakesh Sharma
of Deccan Herald News Service, former prime minister I K Gujral elaborated
at length on India's security concerns. He pointed to the fact that Indian
coastal borders were very extensive, nearly 7,000 miles, and were situated
in an area that was heavily nuclearized. The Indian Ocean is home to the
US military base in Diego Garcia which has been nuclearized by the US government.
And there is constant movement of nuclear weapon carrying warships, submarines
and aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Persian
Gulf. US, NATO and Australian military maneuvers have greatly increased
in this region.
India's security analysts are also perturbed by how after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the world's sole super power (i.e. the US) has along with it's military allies decimated small and vulnerable nations. The aggressive manner in which the US and it's NATO allies targeted Iraq and Yugoslavia has undoubtedly played on the minds of India's national security analysts. Dilip Lahiri, Additional Secretary (UN) hinted as much when he explicitly brought up the US bombardment of Yugoslavia at the United Nations Disarmament Commission on April 13, 1999, in New York. He stated that: "Apart from the impact which it has already had on regional peace, the implications of NATO action in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are far-reaching. If a group of countries or a regional arrangement take it upon themselves to act outside the UN Charter, in violation of its provisions, using violence against another sovereign state without the authorization of the Security Council, the legal foundations on which international relations have been built up since the end of the Second World War are gravely undermined. So too is the confidence of states in agreeing to disarmament measures, because if countries can be attacked without sanction, because its opponents are militarily more powerful, none would be prepared to lower its guard. Events in the Balkans therefore will inevitably have repercussions on the international disarmament agenda."
It should be noted that it was the threatening and coercive presence in the Bay of Bengal of the US Seventh Fleet, (led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Enterprise) during the 1971 Bangladesh war of independence that had triggered India's first nuclear test. (The US role during the Bangladesh War has been brought out by Kuldip Nayar in his book: 1971 - the untold story)
Support for
the Indian Position
It is little wonder that India's
nuclear tests drew overwhelming support from Indians both within India and
abroad. An opinion poll published in the Times of India showed that 91 percent
of urban Indians approved of the tests and 82 percent believed the country
should now build nuclear arms. On the BBC web-site, as many as 86% percent
of site visitors endorsed the Indian action and wrote passionately about
the hypocrisy of the US and it's allies in defending a one-sided and highly
discriminatory nuclear policy.
Support also came from India's neighbors like Sri Lanka and old allies like Russia . Other developing nations expressed understanding, even sympathy - for even as the world's nuclear and military powers issued vitriolic statements condemning India, the G-15 summit of developing nations in Cairo did not. A random opinion poll conducted in the city brought forward such comments as "At last, a friend of the Arabs is a nuclear power", and "It's good, Egypt can now turn to India for support". In Egypt, editorials in Al Akhbar, Al Abram and Al Ahram were all supportive of India's position.
Abdel Rehman was perhaps most enthusiastic when he titled his 20 May 98 piece in Al-Ahram as Revolution against the World and wrote: "The world only knows how to respect the language of action. Thus India carried its nuclear sword and went out to the world because it was the only way to deal with a world in which the poor suffer amidst large luxuries of the rich. Indian explosions are, in one aspect if nothing else, a social revolution against the unjust world economic order."
Nawab Khan writing in the Iran Times titled his piece: Nuclear Tests, Why Not India? "The argument that Western powers are democratic and hence, their nuclear arsenals are under strict control and can never be misused, are not quite convincing. American democracy did not prevent it from dropping the atomic bomb twice on Japan." he wrote. "The lesson to be learnt from the Pokharan nuclear blasts is that there cannot be one law for the haves and another for the have-nots." he added.
It is therefore hardly surprising that there was no criticism of India by the 113 member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) which issued a declaration describing as "highly discriminatory" the stand of the nuclear weapon states to monopolize the right to own atomic weapons. Soon after India's nuclear tests, the Indian Prime Minister (at the NAM summit in South Africa) had highly cordial meetings with African leaders from Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola and the Congo. An attempt to criticize India in an ASEAN summit also failed in spite of considerable lobbying by the US and Australia.
Yet, in spite of this understanding for the Indian position in the developing world, internal critics of India's program have not been assuaged. Like many in the Western press, some Indian journalists espouse the position that India provoked Pakistan into conducting it's nuclear tests, thereby contributing to the "tensions" and "instability" in the region. More extreme critics of India have laid virtually all the blame on the Indian side for it's myriad problems with Pakistan. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Pakistan -
Colonial Creation and Proxy for Imperialism
No serious analysis of India's
nuclear policy can ignore the actual dynamics of the India-Pakistan relationship
going back to it's very creation in 1947. Contrary to the commonly held view,
the creation of Pakistan was not based on any popular democratic
mandate - nor was it created with the perspective of protecting the
interests of the sub-continent's ordinary Muslims. (See this article on the 2-nation
theory and
partition.)
It was a demand put forward by Muslim landlords and former feudal barons who were encouraged and abetted by the British in their demands for the creation of Pakistan. On September 4, 1939, Jinnah had met Lord Linlithgow and pledged to Britain the loyalty of Indian Muslim troops -- nearly 40 per cent of the British Indian army -- and help with Muslim recruitment. The Muslim League resolution of March 1940 demanding "independent states for the Muslims of India'' (i.e. Pakistan) was passed after Jinnah, through Khaliq-ul-Zaman, obtained the support for Muslim states from Lord Zetland, the secretary of state for India. (See Creation of Pakistan - Safeguarding British Strategic Interests by Narendra Singh Sarela, former Indian Ambassador to France in Times of India, March 17, 2000)
In his Times of India commentary, Narendra Singh Sarela stated: "BRITISH top secret documents of the period preceding India's independence have now been unsealed. They prove beyond doubt that Britain after 1945 supported Jinnah's demand for Partition in order to safeguard its strategic interest in Asia in the post-war world and was not safeguarding Muslim interests, as believed in India." Elsewhere in his article, he states: "The blueprint of the Partition plan was drawn up by Lord Wavell in New Delhi towards the end of 1945 and communicated in a top secret telegram to the secretary of state for India in London on February 6, 1946."
Narendra Sarela also points to British interests in controlling the oil-wealth of the Middle East, and the need of the Western powers in having a "reliable ally" that could serve as a foil to the former Soviet Union. Once it was created, Pakistan did not disappoint Britain or it's allies. After it's creation in 1947, Pakistan quickly became an important military ally of the US and Britain in South Asia by joining the US-led Baghdad Pact and later CENTO. In 1959, it signed a bilateral military pact allowing the US to set up a military base at Peshawar for American U2 planes to spy over the Soviet Union. Of particular importance is how Pakistan played a leading role in destroying the democratic revolution in Afghanistan and destabilizing the former Soviet Union. (Pakistani analysts on Pakistan Television have repeatedly taken credit for helping to win the Cold War against the former Soviet Union as have former Pakistani ambassadors to the US.)
From 1982 to 1990 the U.S. acknowledges providing Pakistan $5.4 billion in mostly military aid. (The $5.4 Billion sum is mentioned in the Congressional Quarterly, 16 May 1992, p. 1352; The actual figure may be much higher since additional aid was sent through covert channels by the CIA) Since then, Pakistan has provided troops and trained mercenaries to fight against Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia and Chechnya.
Pakistan's
Military Incursions and Nuclear Blackmail
Pakistan has also served as a proxy
of the imperial powers in destabilizing India and in keeping India weak
by initiating four wars with India ostensibly over Kashmir. Since
1990, it has kept up a barrage of cross-border fire along Kashmir.
K. Subrahmanyam's Kargil Report to the Indian Parliament (March 2000) suggests
that Pakistan was able to increase it's violence against India because it
had acquired a credible nuclear capability by 1990. This capability was
acquired through the conscious support of other nuclear powers such as China
and the US. K. Subrahmanyam also speaks of Pakistan having threatened India
with a nuclear attack more than once. As an example, he cites the following:
"In 1987, Pakistan conveyed a nuclear threat
to India at the time of Operation BRASSTACKS. This was officially communicated
by Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Zain Noorani to the
Indian Ambassador in Islamabad, SK Singh. It was also communicated by the
Pakistani nuclear scientist, Dr A.Q. Khan to the Indian journalist Kuldip
Nayar." By resorting to nuclear
blackmail, Pakistan has been able to conduct it's hostile activities against
India with relative impunity and without fear of retaliation. Yet, many
South Asian analysts continue to blame India for escalating tensions
in the region.
Pakistan's nuclear blackmail of India has undoubtedly weighed on the minds of India's defense analysts. Barring a brief flirtation with jingoistic nationalism on the part of a few immature politicians, most of India's defense policy experts and foreign policy analysts have displayed caution and restraint. Since the Pokharan tests, India's nuclear analysts have worked extra hard to define a nuclear policy that is rooted in a strongly defensive posture - that can disarm it's non-nuclear friends in the developing world - offer mutually binding no-use pledges to other nuclear nations, and ameliorate the possibility of accidental launches and avoidable escalation. A series of conciliatory statements have been issued in an attempt to disarm the US and it's allies, as also China and Pakistan.
With Pakistan, India initiated the effort to undertake 'confidence building measures' which culminated in the 1999 'Lahore Declaration'. Unfortunately, Pakistan not only refused to endorse the no-first-use principle that India has repeatedly articulated, it followed the 'Lahore Declaration' with it's insidious invasion of Kargil. Since then Pakistan has used US-supplied unarmed aerial reconnaissance aircraft to assist in it's repeated inflitrations into Kashmir and attack the civilian and military infrastructure. (See Deccan Chronicle, May 23, 2000) Pakistan-aided terrorists have launched suicide attacks in Kashmir and in many other parts of India. Spy planes have frequently entered India's air-space in violation of previous treaties.
The military coup by Gen. Musharraf in Pakistan that followed Pakistan's Kargil invasion served to exacerbate tensions with India. Gen. Musharraf was widely viewed as the architect of the Kargil invasion and as a hawkish anti-India baiter by Pakistan watchers in India. In a 1998 speech to Pakistan's elite military cadets, the Pakistani General stated that the acquisition of Kashmir by Pakistan could wait. What was more important was to keep the Indian army bleeding in Kashmir just as the Afghan Mujahideen kept the Soviet troops bleeding in Afghanistan. He added that even if the Kashmir issue were resolved, there could not be normal relations between India and Pakistan because Pakistan, by frustrating India's ambition of emerging as a major Asian power on par with China and Japan, would continue to be a thorn on India's flesh. (See Report on General Musharraf by B.RAMAN, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai; formerly with the Govt. of India)
In the US, Gen. Musharraf has been repeatedly described as a "moderate" by the CIA and Pentagon establishment - in Senate briefings and on Public Television. Michael Krepon of the Stinson Institute and advisor to US Secretary of State Madeline Albright on South Asia described him as a "moderate" while speaking before the Commonwealth Club in San Jose. While appearing before the sub-committee of the Senate foreign relations committee for South Asia under Senator Sam Brownback, Milton Bearden, the former CIA chief in Sudan and Pakistan pleaded on the General's behalf. He emphasized how the General was trained at Fort Bragg and was an early member of the elite 19th Baloch Regiment, the Pakistani SSG, that trained jointly with US army special forces a decade ago.
All this suggests that the General's attitude of unmitigated hostility against India has quiet backing in the highest echelons of power in the US. In spite of a series of such and other negative developments, India has not been provoked into discarding it's cautious stand. India has remained firm in keeping it's nuclear posture entirely defensive. It has also continued with diplomatic efforts to move the nuclear powers towards unbiased and effective nuclear disarmament.
Articulating
a Defensive Nuclear Doctrine
Reiterating India's strong stand
that nuclear weapons must never be used, India has repeatedly called
for a legally binding international prohibition on the use of Nuclear Weapons.
This position was publicly asserted most recently in 1998 by India's Savitri
Kunadi in Geneva: "We believe that a Convention on the Prohibition of the Use
of Nuclear Weapons could form the bedrock of security assurances - comprehensive,
legally binding and irreversible."
Unlike the US which has threatened the use of nuclear weapons on as many as 25 (or more) occasions, India has stated that it does not intend to use nuclear weapons to commit aggression or for mounting threats against any country. The Prime Minister of India stated the following in the Lower House of the Indian Parliament on August 4, 1998; "India's nuclear tests were not intended for offense but for self-defense. In order to ensure that our independence and integrity are never jeopardized in future, we will have a policy of a minimum deterrent. We have stated that we will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. We are also willing to strengthen this by entering into bilateral agreements on no-first use or a multilateral negotiations on a global no-first use. Having stated that we shall not be the first to use nuclear weapons, there remains no basis for their use against countries which do not have nuclear weapons."
As a specific example of India's attempts to allay the fears of India's non-nuclear neighbors in Asia - India issued a public reassurance to the ASEAN nations in respect to their wishes for keeping the ASEAN nation nuclear free. This was expressly stated by Dilip Lahiri, Additional Secretary (UN) at the United Nations Disarmament Commission on April 13, 1999, in New York - "India has always believed that the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons transcends regional dimensions. Nuclear Weapons Free Zones cannot do justice to the wide scope and global nature of the threat posed by nuclear weapons. India, however, respects the sovereign choice exercised by non-nuclear weapon states to safeguard their security interests through nuclear weapon free zones established on the basis of arrangements freely arrived at among the States of the region concerned. At the ASEAN Regional Forum in Manila last year, India had stated that it fully respects the status of the NWFZ in South East Asia and was ready to convert this commitment into a legal obligation."
India has also refrained from putting it's nuclear weapons at hair-trigger alerts. Defense analysts have spoken of mandatory delays in reacting to a nuclear attack in order to avoid accidental launches and allow India's Prime Minister and senior defense officials to make a deliberate and conscious decision as to when and how to retaliate if India were to confront a nuclear attack. India's Sharad Pawar spoke extensively on this subject while addressing the General Debate of the UN First Committee in New York (October 14, 1998). In his speech, he stated his concerns regarding doctrines of first use of nuclear weapons and the substantial numbers under hair trigger alert that risked accidental or unauthorized launch of nuclear weapons: "We are concerned that even with the end of the cold war there are today more than 5, 000 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert. Serious attention needs to be paid to various proposals for global de-alerting, de-targeting and de-activating of nuclear weapons that could contribute to confidence-building and to the improvement in the international climate for negotiation leading to the elimination of nuclear weapons. India proposes to introduce a resolution entitled 'Reducing Nuclear Danger', and we hope that this initiative of India aimed at focussing international attention on this clear and present danger, will receive wide spread support."
This speech and similar evidence presented earlier all goes to show that India has for long been one of the stoutest advocates of peace and disarmament. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, it's foreign policy was closely allied with that of other developing nations. It rarely hesitated from condemning the wars of aggression that the US and it's allies conducted throughout the world.
India developed its nuclear policy with considerable reluctance and more in reaction to the concrete threats it faced in the South Asian region. It is the British, the US, it's NATO allies, and it's regional proxies like Pakistan, who have turned South Asia into a region of tension and instability.
The Struggle
for World Peace
Like many other developing nations,
India has repeatedly stated that the developing world needs an environment
of peace to develop. This is especially true for the people of India
and Pakistan if they are ever to reverse the destructive and debilitating
effects that colonial rule imposed. Genuine lovers of peace in South Asia
can help by illuminating the truth - and bringing pressure on the world's
sole super-power (and it's allies and proxies) to desist from intervening
in the region in a provocative and malicious way. By categorically rejecting
the first-use of nuclear weapons, India has made it abundantly clear that
it has not acquired it's nuclear capability with any aggressive or hegemonic
ambitions. It is up to the other nuclear powers to reciprocate with pledges
to do likewise.
A no-first-use pledge has to be the first step - the essential basis of any real movement towards genuine nuclear disarmament. If every nuclear power can ascribe to the doctrine of no-first-use, then the world can take the next step of dismantling existing nuclear arsenals. Rather than argue in a manner that sustains nuclear apartheid, or preserves a nuclear caste-system of those who can and those who can't, a legally binding no-first-use pledge will automatically move the world towards nuclear disarmament. This is what the world's peace community must collectively fight for.
Finally, it should be noted that nuclear weapons are not the sole instruments of mass-destruction. The manner in which the US conducted its wars in Korea and Vietnam cannot be ignored - the US took the war to civilians on an unprecedented scale. The UN charter clearly prohibits the deliberate targeting and destruction of civilian infrastructure but that is precisely what NATO and it's allies did in Iraq and Yugoslavia. Sanctions alone have been responsible for over a million deaths in Iraq. The use of Depleted Uranium (DU) - (i.e .nuclear waste), in these wars has created deadly consequences for the people of Iraq and Yugoslavia. The US even refuses to endorse a convention to ban land-mines. The struggle for nuclear disarmament is hence, inseparable from the struggle against war and inhumane sanctions.
The defeat of the Soviet Union has led to a uni-polar world. With their enormous and unprecedented concentration of economic and military power, the NATO powers are able to dominate the world. They are able to conduct one-sided wars and unilaterally impose military embargoes and unfair trade treaties. Such actions are increasing fears and tensions across the globe. The struggle for a more just and multi-polar world is therefore, an important component in the struggle for world peace. To the extent, India's nuclear tests contribute towards building a multi-polar world, they should be greeted with tolerance and understanding, rather than with fear and trepidation.
Related Pages
Earlier Reports on India's Nuclear Tests
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