Envisioning Nuclear Futures

1 When those with recognizably Western names write articles on policy issues, they are not automatically assumed to reflect self-serving national perspectives. Judging by some of the reviewers' comments, this is not the case for those with recognizably Indian names. For the record: I am not Indian by nationality and suspect that, based on reactions to my past writings, most Indian officials and commentators would be horrified to discover that my views are in any way seen to reflect Indian thinking. On this subject I write more as someone who was a member of the Public Advisory Committee on Disarmament and Arms Control in New Zealand (1990-96), a member of the National Consultative Committee on Peace and Disarmament in Australia (1995-98), Head of the Peace Research Centre in Canberra (1995-98), a consultant to the Canberra Commission (1995-96), and joint organizer and co-chair of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) Track Two Seminar on Non-Proliferation held in Jakarta in December 1996, as well as the editor of the papers from that seminar: Ramesh Thakur, ed., Keeping Proliferation at Bay (Jakarta: Centre for Strategic and International Studies in cooperation with the Peace Research Centre, 1998). As an expatriate Indian, if anything I probably subject Indian policy to a harsher analysis than the policies of other countries. See, in particular, Ramesh Thakur, `India in the World: Neither Rich, Powerful, nor Principled', Foreign Affairs, vol. 76, no. 4, July/August 1997, pp. 15-22. Nevertheless, I do have difficulty with the proposition that the only villain in the piece, even with regard to the 1998 tests, is India.

2 My own views on the fallacy of Indian opposition to the NPT and CTBT and on why India should have renounced the nuclear option, published with terrible timing, are detailed in Ramesh Thakur, `The Nuclear Option in India's Security Policy', Asia-Pacific Review, vol. 5, no. 1, Spring/Summer 1998, pp. 39-60.

3 See Ramesh Thakur, `Next to Subcontinent Face-Off, the Cold War Looks Safe', International Herald Tribune, 20 July 1998.

4 At the political level, I find it difficult to respond effectively when, reacting to my thesis about the essential irrelevance of nuclear weapons, Indians ask: if nuclear weapons are so useless, then why has not one of the N5 given them up?

5 Office of the Press Secretary, the White House, 28 May 1998.

6 The larger question of compliance with and enforcement of anti-nuclear regimes is discussed in Ramesh Thakur, `Non-Compliance: Who Decides, and What to Do?', Australian Journal of International Affairs, vol. 53, no. 1, April 1999, pp. 71-81.

7 The normative status of the Court's Advisory Opinion is strengthened by the frequency of its recitation in UN General Assembly resolutions, for example Resolutions 54/54G, preambular para. 6; 54/54K, preambular para. 11; 54/54P, preambular para. 15; and 54/54R, specifically on the follow-up to the World Court's Opinion, which underlined the main conclusions of the Opinion (operative para. 1) and called on all states to fulfil their disarmament obligation by commencing multilateral negotiations in 2000 (operative para. 2); all of 1 December 1999.

8 I commented earlier (note 2 above) that my argument advocating the renunciation of nuclear weapons by India was published with bad timing in the spring/summer of 1998. From another point of view, nonetheless, the nuclear tests of May 1998 vindicated the central thesis of that article: while India's threshold posture had been stable for three decades, after 1995 (NPT extension) and 1996 (CTBT) `the status quo of maintaining the option without proceeding to a program of tests and weaponization has become an unsustainable absurdity'. Thakur (note 2), p. 54. My views on the unsustainability of the NPT status quo were similarly vindicated by the 1998 tests - however much I (and others) might regret the tests.

9 The cases of Argentina and Brazil show that the option can be given up, while that of South Africa proves that nuclear-weapons status is reversible. But the security dynamics of the subcontinent are fundamentally different, and link up inexorably through China via serial bilateralism all the way to Russia and the USA. On this argument, it is easier to visualize Israel some day giving up the nuclear option because of dramatic changes in the local/regional security complex, than to see nuclear disarmament on the subcontinent without dramatic movement on the global front.

10 Willy Wo-lap Lam, `China Takes Turn to the Right', Japan Times, 22 May 1999. Lam is China editor for the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and one of the most respected China-watchers in the region.

11 William Pfaff, `No Nonproliferation Without Nuclear Reduction', International Herald Tribune, 23 August 1999.

12 Rebecca Johnson, `NPT Report', Disarmament Diplomacy, no. 37, May 1999, pp. 8-17, on p. 16.

13 This capability is the product of Japan being a modern technological economy, not of a clandestine pursuit of the nuclear weapons option. The present generation of leadership remains determined to reject the nuclear weapons option.

14 Brad Glosserman, `Growing Scrutiny of Japan's Defense Policy', Japan Times, 14 August 1999.

15 See Ramesh Thakur, ed., Nuclear Weapons-Free Zones (London & New York: Macmillan & St. Martin's Press, 1998).

16 Of course, Pakistan tested because of India, not because of any of the N5. But if Pakistan tested solely because of India (since other proliferation pressures by Pakistan would almost certainly have been contained with India's accession to the NPT), and if India tested because of one or more of the N5, then Pakistan's tests too are directly linked to the N5 through a chain reaction of bilateral linkages.

17 For a fine analysis of the issues involved, see David Malone, `Goodbye UNSCOM: A Sorry Tale in US-UN Relations', Security Dialogue, vol. 30, no. 4, December 1999, pp. 393-411.

18 Camille Grand, `The Current Deadlock in Nuclear Arms Control: A Difficult Mutation to a New Era?', Disarmament Diplomacy, no. 34, February 1999, pp. 10-13, on p. 10.

19 UN General Assembly Resolution 54/54G of 1 December 1999 called on the NWS `to undertake the necessary steps towards the seamless integration of all five nuclear-weapon States into the process leading to the total elimination of nuclear weapons' (operative para. 3).

20 A/RES/54/54G (1 December 1999), preambular para. 2.