As the country that claims to have given the world the concept of “zero,” India has a particular affinity toward this number. However, when it comes to the issue of nuclear zero, this affinity is found wanting. Today India professes to support the concept of nuclear zero without having zero nuclear weapons. However, this has not always been the case.
Until at least 1974 (when India tested a nuclear “device”) and possibly the mid-1980s (when India covertly built nuclear weapons), India did vociferously support nuclear disarmament without having any nuclear weapons of its own. Subsequently, even though it developed nuclear weapons, New Delhi continued to advocate complete nuclear disarmament within a time-bound framework, at least until 1998, when it conducted a series of tests and declared itself to be a nuclear weapon state. More recently, even as India declared its intentions to create a minimum credible deterrence, it also pursued attempts to reduce nuclear dangers from existing nuclear weapons on the one hand, while also working toward the complete elimination of all nuclear weapons on the other. Thus, India’s nuclear disarmament policy has become closely intertwined with its nuclear armament policy and vice versa, and to understand India’s approach to nuclear disarmament in general and global zero in particular it is essential to examine the weapons program.
This chapter begins with a historical overview of India’s nuclear weapon program through its four phases. It also examines India’s efforts at global disarmament since its independence in 1947. The next section looks at India’s ef forts to reduce nuclear dangers at the regional level through a series of confidence-building measures with Pakistan and China. The final section draws the linkages between the weapons program and the disarmament effort, and argues that the window of opportunity for engaging India in global zero is rapidly closing. The chapter will identify the driving forces behind the present and future weaponization program, as well as the drivers toward nuclear disarmament: politics, technology, the military, and—above all—Indian strategic notions, including its perception of the emerging global order, and targeting dogmas.
The rationale behind India’s nuclear weapon program was complex and was driven partly by external security concerns and partly by internal drivers, which included the scientific community, the political leadership, and the military, as well as New Delhi’s perception of its place in the world order based on the possession of nuclear weapons. India’s nuclear weapon program has evolved in four distinct phases: the “weapon option” phase (from the establishment of the Atomic Energy Commission in 1947 to the first nuclear tests in 1974); the “un-weaponized” phase (from 1975, when India virtually slowed down, if not halted, its march toward weaponization, to around the mid-1980s, when the decision to weaponize the option was made); the “non-weaponized deterrence” and “recessed deterrence” phase (from the covert development and fabrication of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems in the mid-1980s to the overt nuclear tests in May 1998); and the present “credible minimum deterrence” phase (since May 1998).1
There is near unanimity among students of India’s nuclear program that the option to make weapons was built into the program from its inception in the late 1940s, and that both India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the chief of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission, were its principal architects.2 This built-in ability to weaponize came to be known as the “weapon option.” Although the exact origin of the phrase “weapon option” is elusive, it appears to have been coined by Nehru. Interestingly, the move toward establishing this ability was embarked on well before there was any perceivable nuclear threat to India. By the time of China’s first nuclear test in 1964, India had an implicit policy of keeping open the “weapon option.” This option became viable in 1965, when India had completed construction of the 40 MW CIRUS plutonium production reactor and the Trombay plutonium reprocessing plant, and drew up plans for the Subterranean Nuclear Explosion Project (SNEP).3 Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, who had succeeded Nehru, gave the go-ahead to SNEP in November 1965. However, following the sudden deaths of Shastri and Bhabha in 1966, SNEP was shelved. It was revived by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi only in the form of the “peaceful nuclear explosion” (PNE) in 1974, when India tested but did not weaponize its nuclear capability for at least another decade.
A few years before the 1974 nuclear tests, the annual report of the minister of defense noted the Chinese trend of developing “ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads” and estimated that China had stockpiled about 150 nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, with a capacity of producing forty weapons of 20 kilotons annually. The report seemed particularly concerned about the medium-range ballistic missiles (with a range of up to 3,200 km), which when operational were “capable of reaching targets in India from launching bases in Tibet.”4 Thus, after 1974 and with the growing threat posed by the Chinese nuclear arsenal, there was a security case to enhance India’s nuclear weapon capability. This capability, however, was curtailed for a number of organizational and political reasons. Although the scientists were eager to go ahead with further developments of the nuclear arsenal, including the development of a thermonuclear capability, and were, reportedly, given the “go-ahead” to conduct preliminary work, the technical capacity to do so was drastically reduced. Following the 1974 nuclear test the availability of fissile material went “from one to zero.” This was partly on account of the sharp international reaction, especially from Canada, which had provided the CIRUS reactor on the strict understanding that it would be used only for “peaceful purposes,” and partly on account of the closure of the Trombay plutonium separation plant for refurbishment. This was coupled with a feud that had broken out between Raja Ramanna (the chief architect of the 1974 nuclear device) and Homi Sethna (the head of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission) in their contest to control the organization. The feud paralyzed the “bomb-makers” at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.5 Finally, Prime Minister Gandhi, who had been a supporter of the program, became increasingly distracted by political challenges in the late 1970s and was eventually voted out in 1977. The new prime minister, Morarji Desai, a staunch Gandhian, ensured that during his tenure the weapon option remained “un-weaponized.”
However, even during this period of “un-weaponization,” several steps were taken that were to strengthen the weapon option in coming years. First, in 1977, work began on a new 100 MW plutonium production reactor, originally called R-5 but subsequently named “Dhruva.” This reactor was a scaled-up version of the original CIRUS reactor and had the added advantage of not being under safeguards and, therefore, not vulnerable to sanctions.6 On August 8, 1985, Dhruva attained criticality but encountered start-up problems; it attained full power only on January 17, 1988. Second, although Prime Minister Desai was instrumental in keeping the option “un-weaponized,” in 1978 he approved the purchase of Jaguar aircraft, which could be designed to carry India’s first generation of nuclear weapons. Finally, the return of Indira Gandhi as prime minister in 1980 saw not only a move to resume nuclear tests in 1982, but also the launch of an ambitious Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, which was tasked to develop at least two nuclear-capable missiles: the Prithvi and the Agni.7 However, despite growing evidence that Pakistan was well on its way to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability, nuclear tests were shelved at the behest of Prime Minister Gandhi and never revisited until her assassination in 1984. In the absence of precise evidence, there is only the speculation that Indira Gandhi changed her mind primarily on account of pressure by the United States and, perhaps, the absence of a perceived clear and present nuclear threat.
This weaponless state did not necessarily reflect an “Indian” way of deterrence, but came about because India’s latent nuclear capability was not immediately translated into a weaponized deterrent. The delay was produced by the slow development of India’s technological capability to build nuclear weapons and missiles; the exclusion of the military from the nuclear weapon program (which remained exclusively in the hands of civilian scientists and technocrats); and the absence of a clear and present nuclear danger to India’s security until the 1980s. This phase lasted at least until the early 1980s if not 1988, when the decision to weaponize appears to have been made.8
After 1974, but more evidently since the premiership of Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, when a formal decision to weaponize without conducting further tests appears to have been taken, India developed a missile-based delivery system for its covert arsenal of nuclear weapons and started to adopt a deterrence policy, without actually deploying nuclear weapons. Scholars have described this situation as “recessed deterrence” or “non-weaponized deterrence” or even “existential deterrence.”9 “Non-weaponized deterrence,” in which a country has the basic components of a deliverable nuclear weapon but chooses not to weaponize these components, provides the best explanation of this period. This phase continued until the nuclear tests of 1998, which ushered in the phase of “minimum credible deterrence.” While the various “nuclear” crises of the 1980s did provide a compelling rationale for weaponization, there is no doubt that weaponization was possible only because the fruition of the scientific and technological capabilities coincided with the will of the political leadership to covertly cross the nuclear Rubicon.
The Indian tests of May 1998 (followed in quick succession by the Pakistani tests), while critical for India’s autonomy of action, raised three primary challenges. First, India attempted to justify its de facto right to bear nuclear arms and also to provide some element of de jure recognition of this right. Second, it wished through its declarations and actions to portray and prove itself as a responsible member of the exclusive nuclear weapon club. Thus, soon after the tests, India declared its desire to create a “minimum credible deterrence,” but also offered a qualified “no-first use guarantee.” In a curious move soon after the tests India also offered to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but only as a nuclear weapon state. India also readily agreed to provide negative security guarantees for proposed nuclear weapon free zones in its vicinity.10 This move was not entirely altruistic: it was aimed at acquiring de facto recognition of India as a nuclear weapon state. Similarly, India, followed by Pakistan, declared a unilateral moratorium on further nuclear tests. Third, given the level of hostility with Pakistan and the rudimentary nature of the nuclear arsenals, there was fear that the region might become the flash point (accidental or deliberate) for a nuclear exchange. This concern was highlighted by the 1999 Kargil intrusions. While the reasons behind the Kargil confrontation need not concern us directly here, it is important to note that both Islamabad and New Delhi showed a willingness to manage the crisis and prevent a dangerous increase in tension (even though democracy in Pakistan might have become the hapless victim of this success).11
Similarly, while both India and Pakistan have conducted missile tests to vali date delivery systems for their nuclear weapons, this has not led to an open-ended arms race. Moreover, so far, neither India nor Pakistan has deployed or put their nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert, and both are keen on nuclear stability. Soon after the Kargil crisis on August 17, 1999, India unveiled a draft nuclear doctrine.12 This doctrine categorically stated India’s quest to establish a “minimum credible deterrent.” Almost three years later New Delhi also elaborated its nuclear command and control structure.13 These doctrinal developments were a direct result, not necessarily of the clear and present nuclear threat, but of a compromise between the three key actors in the nuclear decision-making process: the political leadership; the nuclear and defense scientific establishment; and the armed forces.
India’s present nuclear doctrine emphasizes a strong civilian control of the nuclear arsenal through the “nuclear command authority” headed by the prime minister. This civilian control is further buttressed by a “divided control” of the nuclear arsenal between the nuclear scientists (who have control of the warheads) and the military (who possess the means of delivery). In addition, during peacetime the nuclear arsenal is in a state of de-alert (where the warheads are separate from the delivery systems) and the nuclear forces are not deployed in an operational mode. The declared Indian doctrine also calls for a no-firstuse posture, which notes that the nuclear arsenal can be used in response to a nuclear “attack on Indian soil, or an attack on Indian forces anywhere.” This no-first-use guarantee has also been qualified with the caveat that India might launch a nuclear attack in response to a chemical or a biological attack against it.14
India’s no-first-use doctrine by implication also rationalized the need for a survivable second-strike nuclear triad (composed of aircraft-delivered, land- and sea-based missiles). Whereas by all accounts India possessed only an air-deliverable capability when the nuclear doctrine was unveiled in 1999, the launch of the INS Arihant nuclear-armed submarine in July 2009 has provided all the key elements for the nuclear triad.15 Although it is still years if not a decade before the triad will be fully operational, India’s quest for a minimum credible deterrence appears to be nearing fruition. Nonetheless, many experts who have looked at this arsenal and doctrine have displayed skepticism of India’s actual use, or deterrence credibility.
Interestingly, although India has not signed either the NPT or the Com prehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), nor is it a member of any other international restriction agreement such as the nuclear suppliers group or the missile technology control regime, the 1999 doctrine calls for nuclear abolition, clearly indicating the linkage between nuclear weapons, doctrine, and disarmament.
Like India’s nuclear weapon program, its global disarmament policy has also evolved in four distinct phases: the complete nuclear disarmament phase (from 1947 till the time of the first Chinese nuclear test in 1964); disarmament diplomacy coupled with the quest for nuclear guarantees and the nuclear disarmament abstinence phase (from 1964 till India’s rejection of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, and from then until the mid-1970s during which India virtually abstained from engaging in nuclear disarmament efforts); the continuing call for nuclear disarmament coupled with the building up of the nuclear armament phase (from the mid-1980s to the overt nuclear tests in May 1998); and the “reducing nuclear dangers” to “devalue to discard” phase (since May 1998).
Prime Minister Nehru, who was the chief architect of building India’s nuclear weapon capability, was also responsible for constructing India’s global nuclear disarmament efforts. Nehru’s personal aversion of nuclear weapons was evident as early as 1946, when he called the bomb “a symbol of evil.”16 He was horrified at the destructive power that these weapons were capable of unleashing. Following the March 1, 1954, “Bravo” test on the Bikini Atoll—the biggest U.S. hydrogen bomb ever tested, with a yield of 15 megatons and fallout that spread worldwide—Nehru introduced the first UN General Assembly resolution calling for a comprehensive test ban of nuclear weapons, a precursor to the CTBT negotiated in 1996. Nehru also commissioned the world’s first public study of the effects of nuclear weapons, which was published in 1956.17
While championing the cause of global nuclear disarmament, Nehru was also categorical about India not building nuclear arms itself. For instance, speaking in parliament in the debate on the department of atomic energy in 1957, Nehru vowed, “[We] have declared quite clearly that we are not interested in making atom bombs, even if we have the capacity to do so... . I hope this will be policy of all future governments.”18 In a similar debate in 1963 Nehru reiterated the “no-bomb” policy and argued: “On the one hand, we are asking the nuclear powers to give up their tests. How can we, without showing the utter insincerity of what we have always said, go in for doing the very thing which we have repeatedly asked the other powers not to do?”19
Nehru’s assertion was endorsed in the active diplomatic role that New Delhi played in the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC), the forerunner to the present-day conference on disarmament (CD) in Geneva, to ensure the successful negotiation of the Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), which banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space, and entered into force in 1963. Interestingly, India lamented the limitations of the PTBT in the UN General Assembly in October 1963 in that it did not ban underground tests and called for continued efforts to achieve a CTBT.20 Around this time India also supported other General Assembly resolutions that sought general and complete disarmament, especially the prohibition of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, as well as resolutions that called for a suspension of all nuclear tests.
Thus, according to K. D. Kapur, Nehru’s “genuine concern about the horrors of nuclear menace, his conviction in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy which should never be used for military purposes, normative and moralistic overtones emanating from the country’s commitment to non-alignment, and his commitment to nuclear disarmament [resulted in a] high profile and diplomatically active role in disarmament negotiations in the 1950s and 1960s.”21 Of course, the absence of any nuclear threat to India—direct or perceived—might also explain the zealous idealism with which New Delhi pursued the cause of global nuclear disarmament.
The Indian defeat at the hands of China in the 1962 Sino-Indian border war, coupled with the first Chinese nuclear test at Lop Nor in 1964, not only dealt a severe blow to the Indian national psyche, but also established the perception of a nuclear threat from a more formidable and now nuclear neighbor. The emerging alliance between China and Pakistan, with whom India had already fought one war and was about to face another, accentuated the potential nuclear threat from Beijing. These developments posed a serious dilemma to the traditional idealistic approach that India had adopted toward global nuclear disarmament.
In response to the new scenario India embarked on three approaches: first, to participate in global nuclear disarmament negotiations that would target all nuclear weapons in general, but Chinese nuclear weapons in particular. Second, to simultaneously seek nuclear guarantees from other nuclear powers (albeit through the UN) against China. Third, as discussed in the previous section, to embark on its own nuclear weapon program to deter China’s growing capabilities. Clearly, these three approaches were in contradiction to each other and posed a challenge to India’s quest for global nuclear disarmament. For instance, by seeking nuclear guarantees against other nuclear weapon states (especially China), even through the UN, India was forced to tacitly accept the presence, possession of, and protection by nuclear weapons.
As part of the first approach India took an active part in proposing the principles of the NPT in the ENDC in 1965. However, its hopes of having an NPT that would lead to the elimination of all nuclear weapons, especially those in the hands of China, were soon dashed, and New Delhi argued that the treaty was discriminatory and created a class of “nuclear haves” and a class of “nuclear have-nots.” Subsequently, India sought to at least have security guarantees provided to non-nuclear states under the UN auspices. The Kosygin Proposal submitted in February 1966 by the Soviet Union to provide “negative security” guarantees might have alleviated the Indian concerns, but it was subsequently withdrawn, leaving India with no credible guarantee for its security.22 By 1967, although India continued to participate in the NPT negotiations, it became disillusioned at the “imposed exercise in non-armament of unarmed countries” and that there was no real effort to “deny prestige to possession of nuclear weapons.” Privately, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi did not want to accede to the NPT on the grounds that “with China at her back, and Pakistan lurking on the sidelines, she saw no alternative but to keep open her option on the production of nuclear weapons.”23
Thus, when the draft of the NPT was submitted to the UN General Assembly in April 1968, India voted against it and categorically refused to sign the treaty. India’s detailed critique of the NPT included its failure to prevent vertical proliferation, its inability to ensure a step-by-step approach toward nuclear disarmament, its discriminatory nature, and the lack of any security guarantee to the non-nuclear weapon states, which was a quid pro quo for accepting the treaty.24
India’s quest for security guarantees fared even worse outside the ENDC negotiations. Given its nonaligned status and inherent abhorrence to military alliances such as NATO (which had provided security guarantees to all its members), India was reluctant to get assurances from only one camp. On the other hand, military alliances like NATO were unwilling to provide a nuclear security umbrella to nonmembers such as India. India’s preferred position, of multilateral guarantees ideally under the UN banner or from nuclear weapon states on both sides of the Cold War divide, was a nonstarter. Consequently, India gave up its quest for seeking nuclear guarantees and resumed its nuclear weapon program.
From 1968, when New Delhi rejected the NPT, through 1974, when it carried out its nuclear test (which became the target of many multilateral nonproliferation instruments, such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group), India was noticeably absent from the international disarmament arena. In 1978, four years after conducting its first nuclear test, India presented a resolution at the UN General Assembly which stated that the use of nuclear weapons violated the UN charter, was a crime against humanity, and should therefore be prohibited pending nuclear disarmament. The resolution, like most General Assembly resolutions, was adopted but not enforced. In 1982, while Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was contemplating a second round of nuclear tests, she also proposed a five-point program of action to the Second Special Session of the UN General Assembly (UNSSOD-II) which included the “negotiation of a binding convention on the non-use of nuclear weapons, a freeze on nuclear weapons . . . , the immediate suspension of all nuclear weapon tests, and negotiations addressed to the task of achieving a Treaty on GCD [General and Complete Disarmament] within an agreed time-frame.”25 It was only in May 1984 that India joined the “Six Nation Initiative” (along with Argentina, Greece, Mexico, Sweden, and Tanzania) with the stated objective of promoting the CTBT and nuclear and general disarmament. The initiative took place against the backdrop of the second Cold War and the concerns of a limited nuclear war being contemplated between the two superpowers. The appeal of May 1984 may have contributed to the Reykjavik summit in 1986, although there is no evidence of a direct correlation. India may have joined this initiative for two reasons: first, with the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, the Cold War had come to India’s doorstep, and this may have been an effort to indirectly address that concern. Second, the close ties between India and Sweden at this time, evident in the personal friendship between Indira Gandhi and Olof Palme, may also have played a role in India’s joining the initiative. The initiative was superseded by the 1986 Reykjavik summit between Gorbachev and Reagan.26
However, in November 1986, in the wake of the failure of the October Reykjavik summit, Rajiv Gandhi and President Gorbachev signed the “Joint Declaration of Principles of a Nuclear-Weapon-Free and Non-Violent World,” “echoing many of the themes relating to general and complete disarmament, including a proposal for the elimination of nuclear weapons ‘before the end of the century’ and for the progress toward a ‘nuclear-weapon free civilization.’”27 This declaration was short on details and almost served as a consolation for the failure of Reykjavik. Interestingly, this was probably the only time that one of the two nuclear superpowers had issued a joint declaration with a purportedly non-nuclear weapon state, although in reality India was already on its way to creating its covert nuclear arsenal.
In June 1988, by which time India had already developed an operational nuclear arsenal, Rajiv Gandhi unveiled his Action Plan at the Third UN Special Session on Disarmament (UNSSOD-III). The grandiose plan sought to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2010 in three distinct stages. The plan called for a binding commitment from all nations to eliminate nuclear weapons in a fixed time frame; participation of all nuclear weapon states in the process of nuclear disarmament, while ensuring other countries also took part in the process; the need to demonstrate tangible progress at each stage; and changes in the doctrines, policies, and institutions to sustain a world free of nuclear weapons.28
In presenting the plan, Rajiv Gandhi made two noteworthy statements that for the first time revealed the inherent tension between India’s own nuclear weapon aspirations, as well as its desire to contribute to nuclear disarmament. The first statement asserted: “Left to ourselves, we would not want to touch nuclear weapons. But when tactical considerations, in the passing play of great power rivalries, are allowed to take precedence over the imperative of nuclear non-proliferation, with what leeway are we left?” This was, perhaps, the first public declaration of India’s intention to build nuclear weapons and an attempt to link New Delhi’s emerging arsenal with the failure of global nonproliferation and disarmament.
The second statement noted India’s desire to use the Action Plan to “replace the NPT, which expires in 1995. This new Treaty should give legal effect to the binding commitment of nuclear weapon States to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2010 and of all non-nuclear weapon States to not cross the nuclear weapons threshold.”29 Although the Rajiv Gandhi plan, unlike previous Indian initiatives, provided elaborate details of the various stages for the negotiations, it was simply too ambitious and revealed a naivety about the scope and scale of the challenges that would have to be addressed to rid the world of tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. Consequently, the plan could not be taken seriously by any of the nuclear weapon states, particularly the superpowers.
The last Indian contribution to nonproliferation and disarmament before New Delhi conducted its Shakti series of tests and declared itself to be a nuclear weapon state in 1998 was its participation in the CTBT negotiations. Here India played an active role between 1994 and 1996, right up to the time that the treaty neared completion and bumped up against the reality of India’s untested nuclear arsenal. At that stage India, which had initially proposed such a treaty in 1954, felt compelled to block it at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. It was left to Australia to resurrect it in the UN General Assembly.
Soon after the May 1998 nuclear tests there was a discernible shift in India’s approach to nuclear disarmament. While New Delhi still espoused the cause of complete nuclear disarmament in a time-bound framework, there was now a greater emphasis on ensuring that existing nuclear weapons were properly managed so as to reduce the danger posed by them. The first indication of this was the introduction of the “Reducing Nuclear Dangers” resolution in the UN General Assembly in fall 1998. Since then, this resolution has been presented annually. This resolution was buttressed by another one, which sought to establish a “Convention on the Prohibition of Use of Nuclear Weapons.”30
This shift became even more evident when India introduced a working paper in the UN General Assembly in 2006 “to build a consensus that strengthens the ability of the international community to initiate concrete steps towards achieving the goal of nuclear disarmament.” This working paper, which drew heavily from the 1988 Rajiv Gandhi Plan, had three key components: first, the reaffirmation of a commitment to complete elimination of nuclear weapons; second, efforts to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons; and third, measures to reduce nuclear dangers. These were elaborated in the following seven measures:
• Reaffirm commitment to complete elimination
• Reduce salience of nuclear weapons
• Measures to reduce nuclear dangers and accidents
• Global “no-first-use” agreement
• Universal nonuse against non-nuclear states
• Convention to prohibit use or threat of use
• Negotiate Nuclear Weapon Convention
Not surprisingly, given India’s own nuclear weapon status, five of these seven measures did not address the elimination of nuclear weapons, but their responsible possession by states. Although much more in line with the reality on the ground, this was a marked departure from India’s earlier principled stand toward unqualified complete nuclear disarmament. Increasingly, India is unlikely to lead but is more likely to follow the lead of other nuclear weapon states, and “a serious initiative for elimination by leading nuclear weapons states, with the United States taking the lead, would be welcomed by India.”31
For its part, India is well content to continue the slow-paced modernization of its nuclear arsenal as well as its nuclear-use doctrine, while seeking to convince other nuclear weapon states to first devalue and then discard their nuclear weapons. Indian scholars have elaborated the necessary steps to ensure “attitudinal devaluation” (by targeting the belief of nuclear deterrence; redrafting nuclear doctrines to restrict the role of nuclear weapons; and reinvigorating multilateral measures); “actual devaluation” (through a no-first-use policy; banning the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons; halting nuclear modernization; and restricting delivery systems); and “accessorial devaluation” (including building a safeguards regime and related verification technologies and dealing with delinquents).32 This approach also indicates that India no longer expects a rapid path to nuclear disarmament (as envisaged in the Rajiv Gandhi plan, which sought the complete elimination of all nuclear weapons within a twenty-two-year time frame) and sees instead a slow, step-by-step approach.
While promoting a devalue and discard approach for nuclear weapons held by states, India, given its own experience with transnational terrorism, has taken a more strident stance on the issue of nuclear weapons and nonstate actors, especially terrorist groups. Following the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1540 in 2004, India enacted the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Act in June 2005 to strengthen the existing legislative and regulatory mechanisms for exercising controls over WMDs and to ensure that they do not fall into the hands of terrorist groups. India has also offered its assistance to other countries in implementing Resolution 1540.33 Primarily because of its concerns over the use of nuclear weapons and materials by terrorist groups, India also actively participated in the first nuclear security summit hosted by President Barack Obama in April 2010 and strongly endorsed both the communiqué and the work plan. Another reason for India’s participation in the summit was that it makes no reference to the NPT and is considered to be the start of an effort to establish a new nuclear order.34
India has approached the issue of nuclear disarmament only at the multilateral level, while rejecting regional measures. The only exception to this is the Bangkok Treaty, which calls for a Southeast Asian nuclear weapons–free zone. Perhaps New Delhi supports this treaty because it acknowledges India’s nuclear weapon status and also reassures key allies in a critical region. At the bilateral level, India has undertaken a series of nuclear confidence-building measures since its covert weaponization in the mid-1980s which, strictly speaking, are not arms control or disarmament measures, although they do address India’s nuclear capability.
Prominent among them are the following three agreements with Pakistan:
• The 1991 non-attack on nuclear facilities agreement, which calls for the two countries to exchange a list of nuclear facilities annually on the understanding that all the facilities listed will not be attacked by the other side. In doing so the two countries are sharing with each other the most sensitive information, information that they are unwilling to share even with their own people.
• The 1999 and 2005 prenotification of ballistic missile tests agreement under which each side is obliged to inform the other side before conducting a test. India and Pakistan are only the second pair of countries (after the United States and Russia) to have such an agreement.
• The 2007 agreement on reducing the risk from nuclear weapon accidents.
India also has one similar agreement with China. The 1996 Sino-India Confidence-Building Measures in the Military Field along the Line of Actual Control calls on the two sides to take a series of steps to reduce tensions and the prospect of accidental conflict. The steps include: the reduction of specific categories of armaments (including missiles); prohibition of exercises involving a division (15,000 or more); a no-fly zone for combat aircraft; and exchange of information on natural disasters and diseases.
All of these bilateral agreements are compatible with India’s multilateral approach to disarmament in that they do not contradict each other but, in fact, complement each other. However, the 2005 Indo-U.S. civil nuclear agreement, which came to fruition in 2008, is the exception and contradicts India’s multilateral approach. The Indo-U.S. agreement calls, in the first instance, for a separation of the Indian civilian and military nuclear programs. This was followed by an agreement between New Delhi and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which would put all fourteen Indian civilian nuclear reactors under IAEA safeguards, followed by another special arrangement with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) to allow its members to supply nuclear fuel for India’s civilian reactors. Predictably, this effort to establish Indian exceptionalism proved to be contentious both within India and outside. One school, pejoratively referred to as the “nonproliferation ayatollahs,” argues that such a deal, which rewards actions that blatantly challenge the nonproliferation norm, would not only allow India to expand its nuclear arsenal but further undermine the already battered NPT regime.35 Another equally vocal school asserts that the Indo-U.S. deal is not only essential to facilitate India’s participation in the global nonproliferation regime, but is also essential to ensure the relevance of the existing regime and to strengthen it further.36 In either case, it is evident that ad hoc approaches, which promote the exceptional rather than the universal, are likely to be regarded with great suspicion and, consequently, unlikely to be smoothly integrated with the global regime.
India’s approach to nuclear disarmament in general and nuclear zero in particular has evolved over a period of time, and has been closely linked to its own nuclear weapon program. When New Delhi was not pursuing nuclear weapons its approach was earnest, devoted, and unequivocal. However, once it began its nuclear weapon program in the run-up to the NPT negotiations, India’s approach became much more cautious, considered, and equivocal. This pattern became even more evident in the run up to the CTBT. Noted Indian scholar Rajesh Rajagopalan observes: “As the non-proliferation order tightened, with the NPT being extended indefinitely and the CTBT threatening to eliminate an Indian nuclear option, various Indian governments sought to slip the noose by conducting nuclear tests.”37 Since the nuclear tests of 1998 India’s approach has shifted priority from disarmament per se to devaluing the weapons, with disarmament becoming an increasingly distant goal. More recently, in the wake of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, which establishes Indian exceptionalism through positive discrimination rather than a universal, nondiscriminatory approach, New Delhi’s credentials as a champion of multilateralism are likely to be increasingly questioned.
The pessimistic explanation for this evolution is that India was never serious about disarmament and that this was merely a hypocritical ploy to divert attention from its desire to stay outside the NPT regime while building its nuclear arsenal. Another, slightly more charitable, explanation argues that India’s approach was “because no serious cost-benefit analysis has been undertaken by the government of the implications of nuclear disarmament on India’s security interest.”38 Consequently, India has consistently miscalculated on disarmament.
Whatever the explanation, as the revived debate on the credibility of India’s nuclear arsenal (especially the hydrogen bomb) has shown,39 there is a very narrow window of opportunity to effectively engage New Delhi on the benefits of supporting nuclear zero. Pressure is growing to resume testing. Once the window closes, India will have earned the dubious distinction of having uninvented zero.
1. See Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, “Evolution of India’s Nuclear Doctrine,” Centre for Policy Research, Occasional Paper No. 9 (April 2004). These phases are slightly different than the three phases suggested by George Perkovich, indicating that such “phaseology” is likely to remain arbitrary and divergent, although with some overlap. Perkovich’s first phase begins in 1948 and ends in 1974, while his second phase runs from 1975 to 1995 “and was marked by singular self-restraint in not conducting further nuclear tests and deploying a nuclear arsenal.” The third phase starts from 1995 and “led to the 1998 nuclear tests.” Perkovich does not designate a new phase for the post–May 1998 period, but simply notes that the “trajectory of Indian nuclear policy remains uncertain.” See George Perkovich, “What Makes the Indian Bomb Tick,” in Nuclear India in the 21st Century, ed. D. R. Sar Desai and Raju G. C. Thomas (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 26.
2. See Bharat Karnad, Nuclear Weapons & Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy (New Delhi: Macmillan, 2002); George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California, 1999); Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (London: Zed Books, 1998); Peter R. Lavoy, “Learning to Live with the Bomb: India and Nuclear Weapons 1947–1974,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1997; Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, “The Development of an Indian Nuclear Doctrine since 1980,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, February 1997; and Zafar Iqbal Cheema, “Indian Nuclear Strategy 1947–1991,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1991.
3. The “CIRUS” reactor is a Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) based on the Canadian Deuterium Uranium (CANDU) design and is an acronym for Canada-India Reactor. The “US” was added when the United States provided the initial supply of heavy water for the reactor. This reactor “went critical” in July 1960. The Bhabha Atomic Research Centre’s plutonium plant began reprocessing fuel from the CIRUS research reactor in 1964 with a 30 tons/year operating capacity. See “India” country profile on the Nuclear Threat Initiative website, at http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/India/ Nuclear/2103_2603.html. See also Perkovich, “What Makes the Indian Bomb Tick,” p. 29.
4. Ministry of Defence (MOD) Annual Report 1970–71 (New Delhi: Government of India, 1971), pp. 1–2. Curiously, the report discounted the possibility that Chinese nuclear weapons were “an effective means of political blackmail.”
5. Author’s interview with a nuclear scientist associated with the 1974 nuclear test.
6. David Albright and Mark Hibbs, “India’s Silent Bomb,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (September 1992), at http://www.thebulletin.org/14. Another account indicates that the preliminary planning phase for this new reactor began in 1973.
7. The Prithvi was a single-stage, liquid-fueled missile with a 1-ton throw-weight and a range of 40 to 150 kilometers. Subsequently, a 250-kilometer version was also developed. The original two-stage Agni was designated a “technology demonstrator” and used both solid and liquid fuel. It was designed to carry a 1-ton payload to targets up to 2,500 kilometers away, although its first tests did not reach beyond 1,500 kilometers. See Andrew Koch and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, “Subcontinental Missiles,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (July/August 1998), at http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1998/ja98/ ja98koch.html; and Anand Parthasarathy, “For a Weapons Delivery System,” Frontline (6–19 June 1998), at http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1512/15120340.htm.
8. At a seminar on “India’s Nuclear Doctrine” held at the Centre for Policy Research on 5 May 2003, the Director of the Institute for Defence and Strategic Analyses, K. Santhanam, hinted that the formal decision to weaponize India ’s nuclear capability was taken some years before 1988, which had come to be regarded as the year of weaponization.
9. For “recessed deterrence,” see Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, “Prospects for Nuclear Proliferation,” in Nuclear Deterrence: Problems and Perspectives in the 1990s, ed. Serge Sur (New York: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 1993), p. 66; for “nonweaponized deterrence,” see George Perkovich, “A Nuclear Third Way in South Asia,” Foreign Policy 91 (Summer 1993): 86; for “existential deterrence,” see Devin Hagerty, “Nuclear Deterrence in South Asia: The 1990 Indo-Pakistani Crisis,” International Security 20, no. 3 (Winter 1995/96): 87.
10. During the late July 1999 Singapore meeting of foreign ministers of ASEAN, China announced that it had decided to sign the protocol to the SEANWFZ (Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone) Treaty (Treaty of Bangkok). India, too, announced that it would “endorse” the treaty and was ready to sign the protocol, but it was noted that, according to Article 3 of that instrument, this is open to signature only by the five recognized nuclear-weapon states. See “Non-Proliferation Developments,” PPNN News-brief 47 (3rd Quarter 1999): 1.22.
11. General Pervez Musharraf’s coup against Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was to some extent the result of the differences between the two over the Kargil conflict. See Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, “In the Shadow of Kargil: Keeping Peace in Nuclear South Asia,”International Peacekeeping 7, no. 4, Special Issue on Managing Armed Conflict in the 21st Century (Winter 2000): 189–206.
12. See “Draft Report of the National Security Advisory Board on the Indian Nuclear Doctrine,” at http://www.meadev.gov.in/govt/indnucld.htm.
13. See Vishal Thapar, “India’s N-Command in Place,” Hindustan Times, 5 January 2003; Rajat Pandit, “Nuke Command Set Up, N-Button in PM’s Hand,” Sunday Times (India), 5 January 2003; and Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, “A Strategic Mis-step?” The Hindu, 13 January 2003.
14. See “Draft Report of the National Security Advisory Board on the Indian Nuclear Doctrine”; and Thapar, “India’s N-Command in Place.”
15. See W. P. S. Sidhu, “This Doctrine Is Full of Holes,” Indian Express, 8 September 1999; “PM Launches INS Arihant in Vishakapatnam,” and “INS Arihant to Take Long Time to Become Operational: Experts,” Press Trust of India, 26 July 2009.
16. K. D. Kapur, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Diplomacy: Nuclear Power Programmes in the Third World (New Delhi: Lancer Books, 1993), p. 292.
17. Nuclear Explosions and Their Effects (Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India, 1956).
18. Lok Sabha Debates, vol. III, no. 8 (24 July 1957): 4954.
19. G. G. Mirchandani, India’s Nuclear Dilemma (New Delhi: Popular Book Services, 1968), p. 23.
20. Kapur, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Diplomacy, p. 296.
21. Ibid., p. 303.
22. Ibid., p. 299.
23. U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, Airgram A-540 to Department of State, “Canadians Warm GOI on NPT” (12 December 1967), Secret, National Security Archives.
24. K. Subrahmanyan, “India’s Attitudes towards the NPT,” SIPRI Nuclear Proliferation Problems (Stockholm: MIT Press, 1974), pp. 259–60.
25. See B. M. Udgaonkar, “India’s Nuclear Capability, Her Security Concerns and the Recent Tests,” Current Science (Bangalore), 1999, at http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jan25/ articles20.htm.
26. See “1986: Reykjavik Summit Ends in Failure,” at http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/12/newsid_3732000/3732902.stm.
27. See Sergio Duarte, “Keynote Address,” in Towards a Nuclear Weapon Free World, ed. Manpreet Sethi (New Delhi: Knowledge World, 2009), p. 9.
28. For details of the plan, see Rajiv Gandhi, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” in Towards a Nuclear Weapon Free World, pp. 141–49.
29. Ibid.
30. See introduction of the resolution “Reducing Nuclear Danger,” statement by Mr. Rakesh Sood, PR to Conference on Disarmament, on 19 October 2000, at http://www.un.int/india/ind341.htm, and introduction of the resolution “Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Nuclear Weapons,” statement by Mr. Rakesh Sood, PR to Conference on Disarmament, on 17 October 2000, at http://www.un.int/india/ind342.htm.
31. See Rajesh M. Basrur, “Indian Perspectives on the Global Elimination of Nuclear Weapons,” in Unblocking the Road to Zero, ed. Barry Blechman (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, March 2009), p. 18.
32. See Manpreet Sethi, “Approach to Nuclear Disarmament: Devalue to Discard,” in Towards a Nuclear Weapon Free World, pp. 88–97.
33. See the statement by Ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri, Deputy Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, at the open debate on the agenda item “Briefings by Chairs of the Subsidiary Bodies of the Security Council” in the chamber of the UN Security Council in New York on 13 November 2009.
34. See W. Pal Sidhu, “Towards a New Nuclear World Order,” Mint, 3 May 2010.
35. See Kaushik Kapistalam, “Nuclear Hypocrisy and Hot Air Proliferation,” Bharat Rakshak Monitor 6, no. 6 (May–July 2004); Praful Bidwai, “The ‘Ayatollahs’ Are Here,”Frontline 22, no. 23 (5–18 November 2005); and A. Vinod Kumar, “Nobel Laureates Pitch In against the Indo-US Nuclear Deal,” IDSA Strategic Comments (19 June 2006).
36. Ashley Tellis, “Atoms for War? U.S.-Indian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and India’s Nuclear Arsenal,” Carnegie Report, June 2006; C Raja Mohan, “As Complicated as 1, 2, 3,” Indian Express, 13 July 2007; and K. Subrahmanyam, “To PM, Sonia, Advani,” Indian Express, 10 May 2008.
37. Rajesh Rajagopalan, “Nuclear Non-Proliferation: An Indian Perspective,” Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Briefing Paper 10, October 2008, p. 3.
38. Ibid., pp. 4–5.
39. See K. Santhanam, “On the Yield of the Thermonuclear Device Tested in May 1998,” South Asian Strategic Forum, 18 September 2009; Siddhartha Varadarajan, “‘Fizzle’ Claim for Thermonuclear Test Refuted,” The Hindu, 28 August 2009; and W. Pal Sidhu, “Does India Really Need the H-bomb?’ Mint, 8 September 2009.