Cat and Mouse game over nuclear weapons

The cat and mouse game over the elimination of nuclear weapons must end immediately. The recent UN general assembly where leaders where trading charges to their whims and fancies doesn't strike the required cord with the common public.

The Times of India writes (29 September 2009)

The nuclear move-counter move that took place in New York was not unexpected. Given that disarmament has been US president Barack Obama's pet
foreign policy initiative, a face-off of sorts was always on the cards. It has fallen out largely as expected, although UN Security Council Resolution 1887 calling on all non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to sign on was a surprise. But the rebuttal by Indian external affairs minister S M Krishna was inevitable, as was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's stance. And at the end of the day, nothing has truly changed on the ground when it comes to genuine disarmament initiatives.

Both resolution 1887 and the NPT are self-defeating in their vagueness. The former does not authorise any concrete disarmament measures; it is, in effect, merely a promise to keep talking. And the latter is a fundamentally flawed document in both intent and execution. It lacks the teeth to compel disarmament on the part of the five de jure nuclear powers. In effect, it locks the non-nuclear signatories into a false bargain wherein they have gambled away a strategic option for a promise that was never delivered upon. For India to accede to such a treaty, rolling back its nuclear programme in the process, is simply not feasible.

That said, genuine global disarmament is a worthy goal, however distant, that New Delhi must continue to work towards. Rajiv Gandhi's 1988 action plan provides a template, entailing verifiable, time-bound waypoints towards disarmament for the existing nuclear powers. And controversial though it is bound to be domestically, New Delhi should not completely rule out signing on to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). Neither is completely inconsistent with India's declared nuclear doctrine of credible deterrence. If, for instance, the government is confident of the existing arsenals and technology's effectiveness and of the capability to conduct computer-simulated tests it would lose little by acceding to CTBT. In the process, it may even be able to win concessions from the US such as data and technology to aid with simulations. Using the same logic, once a minimum credible deterrent has been achieved in terms of size of the arsenal, the FMCT becomes a possibility. But these remain hypothetical scenarios for now, given that the US itself has not ratified either treaty.

It is a fine line that New Delhi must walk, safeguarding India's strategic interests in a difficult neighbourhood while not being seen to be obstructionist when it comes to genuine disarmament efforts. As A Q Khan's clandestine network has shown the world, proliferation intrinsically linked to disarmament continues to be a serious threat. And India has more to lose than most.