Indian Nuclear Policy

by Harsh V Pant

  Once the decision was made by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, all successive governments continued the same trajectory. It had taken a lot of internal debate for India to choose a nuclear path; once decided, it also enjoyed a certain consensus. When in December 1989, V.P. Singh became prime minister, the process continued uninterrupted. Singh also faced growing nuclear threat from Pakistan when, in 1990, a major crisis erupted between India and Pakistan over the latter’s support for terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. The threat of nuclear use by Pakistan during the crisis may be over-exaggerated but given the nuclear overtones, Singh was forced to consider India’s responses in case of a nuclear emergency. A new secret committee—called the Arun Singh Committee—now considered India’s response to a Pakistani nuclear strike (Perkovich 1999: 313–14). Command and control of nuclear assets became important even as provisions were made for storage of delivery vehicles and nuclear warheads, and air force units were pre-designated to carry out nuclear strikes in case of deterrence breakdown. Forced to initiate weaponization of its nuclear option by a threatening nuclear adversary, India could not escape the supplementary steps required to establish a nuclear deterrent.

  By the end of the 1980s, India had exploited all avenues of diplomacy to answer the threat posed by nuclear weapons, both in the region and in the world. In return, India received only failures and disappointments. Indian decision-makers were not starry-eyed idealists. Since Indira Gandhi’s second term, Indian scientists were asked to make preparations for a deliverable nuclear arsenal. The moment of decision came in 1988 after Rajiv Gandhi’s appeal for nuclear disarmament was ignored by the nuclear haves at the UN. India was now free of its moral obligation; and it was now ready to accept nuclear weapons as an important element of its national security strategy. The events in early 1990s further reinforced these trends in India’s nuclear policy.

  Tightening Noose of Non-proliferation

  The dissolution of Soviet Union in 1991 took away India’s most important pillar of external support. Since the 1971 Treaty of Friendship, India had relied upon the Soviet Union for both military and diplomatic support. America’s unipolar moment also became the ‘age of nuclear enlightenment’. For the first time after the NPT process, a great power consensus emerged around making non-proliferation the benchmark of international security. The end of the Cold War also saw further strengthening of the technology denial regimes. By 1987, technologically advanced states had instituted the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) which intended to restrict proliferation of ballistic missile technology.3 Consequently, in 1992, the NSG issued a new set of guidelines (Part 2 of INFRIC/254), adding to the original set of guidelines, on export of dual-use items decided in 1978. This turn towards non-proliferation took a more aggressive turn with the coming of the Clinton administration at the White House in 1993. In a unipolar world where American power reigned supreme, India’s nuclear weapons programme came under intense pressure as South Asia was considered the hotspot of proliferation. The goal for the Clinton administration was to ‘cap, roll back and eliminate’ India and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons programme (Gordon 1994: 570–1).

  This was also a period of immense political and economic uncertainty in India. The fiscal crisis of 1991, and the consequent liberalization of the Indian economy, made the country vulnerable to Western economic pressure because of loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 had made the political situation equally uncertain. It was under these circumstances that P.V. Narasimha Rao came to the centre stage of Indian politics and became prime minister. Rao had one of the most difficult jobs any Indian prime minister had ever faced. He had to balance India’s economic interests with India’s security, while his own position was compromised by both his coalition partners and infighting within the Congress. However, he managed India’s multiple challenges deftly.

  Under Prime Minister Rao, India’s nuclear weapons programme continued apace and from being only an option till mid-1985, it could now better be understood as a posture of ‘recessed deterrence’: to have nuclear weapons without openly declaring possession of such a capability (Perkovich 1993). India would have acquiesced to an undeclared nuclear capability and an undisclosed nuclear arsenal only if its option to do so at a future date could have been maintained. However, the possibility was that India may not have this choice, as was identified by the Rao government just after the prime minister’s meeting with the US President George H.W. Bush in January 1992. Pressure from the US was immense and Rao had agreed to initiate a nuclear dialogue with Washington, DC, in order to reconcile differences over India’s nuclear weapons policy. However, Rao had no intention to submit to America’s diktats on India’s nuclear programme. His strategy was to bide time while India’s nuclear weapons development reached a stage of maturity and the economy recovered to an extent that India could withstand the consequences of openly declaring itself a nuclear weapons power. Just after his parleys with President Bush in the summer of 1992, an informal committee under the PMO was constituted with a mandate to ‘consider all aspects of India’s nuclear and space policies and to recommend the negotiating stance to be adopted by the Government of India’ (Dixit 1996: 373). One of the recommendations of this committee was to ‘ensure the widest possible freedom of options to increase our nuclear, missile and space capabilities as time was running out because of the likelihood of punitive international regimes coming into force by 1996–97’ (Dixit 1996: 373). This recommendation is interesting for two reasons. First, it suggests that negotiations on arms control treaties such as FMCT, CTBT, and the NPT were clearly a strong determinant in India’s post-Cold War nuclear policy. Second, it also suggests a sense of desperation within the decision-makers regarding the acquisition of an effective nuclear and missile capability. Both these factors played a crucial role in India’s nuclear policy.

  The nuclear dialogue with the US made no major headway. By 1994, it was apparent that the goals of Washington, DC, and New Delhi diverged significantly. Furthermore, as more concrete proof of the collusion between China and Pakistan in missile and nuclear proliferation emerged in the public domain, India’s insecurity vis-à-vis its two hostile neighbours only increased. It also underscored the failure of the non-proliferation regime and the US’ inability to restrict the Sino-Pak collusion. When, under these circumstances, the nuclear weapons power pushed for an indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995, India made an impassioned appeal for extracting more concrete disarmament guarantees from the nuclear weapon states. However, in May 1995, more than 170 NNWS agreed to the permanent extension of the NPT without any solid disarmament proposals from the existing nuclear weapon states. Furthermore, to restrict other states from joining the nuclear club, the 1995 Review Conference urged the state parties to conclude a test ban treaty not later than 1996. For long, in New Delhi’s eyes, the NPT symbolized the divide between the nuclear haves and have-nots. An indefinite extension of the NPT legitimized such ‘nuclear apartheid’ permanently.

  This was the context in which Prime Minister Rao ordered the preparation for a nuclear test. This incident, which is now known as India’s ‘near test’, occurred in December 1995 (Ganguly 1999). However, American satellites found the telltale signs of the preparations at the Pokhran test site and diplomatic pressure from Washington followed. The then US ambassador to India, Frank Wisner, urged Rao’s principle secretary, A.N. Varma, not to test. Otherwise, India could incur a range of sanctions under the Glenn Amendment. Clinton also called upon Rao to reiterate his ambassador’s word, receiving a word from the Indian prime minister that India will not ‘act irresponsibly’ (Talbott 2004: 37). Under American pressure, Rao demurred. However, by the middle of 1990s, it was clear that the ‘relevance of measured ambiguity’ in India’s nuclear weapons programme and missile capacity ‘was coming to an end’ (Dixit 1996: 374).

  By the time Rao exited the political scene in May 1996, New Delhi openly accepted the imperative to have a nu
clear weapons programme for its national security concerns, most evident during its participation in drafting of the CTBT at Geneva. As the draft treaty was being negotiated in the summer of 1996, the nuclear weapon states neither promised any guarantees towards a time-bound disarmament plan nor did they agreed to cap their technological capability in further refining their nuclear arsenals through subcritical testing (MEA 1997: 90–1). India, from the very start of the negotiations, had conditioned its support on these two stipulations. However, for New Delhi, the most troublesome part was the draft treaty’s ‘entry into force’ requirements, which stipulated that 44 specific countries would need to sign and ratify the treaty for its eventual international application. This constituted a clear targeting of India’s threshold nuclear status; India, Israel, and Pakistan were the targeted audience. Perceiving its nuclear option being under attack, the Indian envoy to conference on disarmament (CD) on 20 June 1996 declared that ‘India would not subscribe to CTBT in its existing form as it was not conceived as a measure towards UND and was not in India’s national security interests’ (emphasis added) (Ghosh 1997: 255). This was the first time in its disarmament diplomacy that India had rejected a treaty solely on the pretext of national security. It also underlined that New Delhi considered maintaining its nuclear option as an imperative. The UNGA voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Australian resolution on CTBT in September 1996. All three conditions put forth by India—linking of the CTBT with the overall goal of nuclear disarmament; its opposition to the ‘entry into force’ clause of the negotiated treaty; and disallowance of all kinds of nuclear testing, including simulations and zero-yield tests—were sidelined completely (Ghosh 1997). The CTBT discussion also engendered a massive public debate within for the need to go nuclear. Nuclear nationalism was also forcing the hands of Indian decision-makers. The right-wing BJP was the most emphatic supporter of this nuclear nationalism. It had for long supported an open demonstration of India’s nuclear capability. Beginning in the early 1990s, BJP had made significant gains in India’s political space and in May 1996, it became the single largest party in the Indian Parliament. Under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for the first time, BJP came to power at the centre.4

  The question staring at Indian decision-makers was when and how to declare India as a nuclear weapons power? In May 1996, India again verged on a nuclear test under the Vajpayee-led BJP government. In fact, as soon as Vajpayee took oath as prime minister, he gave the required authorization to the scientists for conducting a nuclear test. However, in the face of a looming crisis of his government’s inability to prove its majority in the Parliament, Vajpayee took a conscious decision to postpone the test, lest the fallout of the events would cripple the next government (Chengappa 2002: 395). In June 1996, H.D. Deve Gowda formed a United Front government, supported by the Indian National Congress from outside. Even when ideologically this particular political dispensation was a left-oriented one, the government continued to support India’s nuclear programme by providing much-needed economic assistance.5 India was not ready to give up its right to nuclear weapons. As the UNGA passed the CTBT in December 1996, the Indian foreign minister stated categorically that ‘India will not give up its nuclear weapons option’ (FBIS 1996).

  The policy enunciated by Rajiv Gandhi was pursued by subsequent political leadership. From Rao till Gujral,6 all successive prime ministers supported the process of nuclear weaponization and even contemplated nuclear tests. For a wide variety of reasons, however, India maintained its ambivalent nuclear status. This ambivalence was finally broken on May 1998 when India conducted a series of nuclear tests at Pokhran. A nuclear India had finally arrived.

  A Normal Nuclear Power

  In March 1998, Vajpayee returned as prime minister to head a BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government. Within two months, the prime minister fulfilled BJP’s long-held promise of making India a nuclear weapons power when, on 11 May 1998, India conducted three nuclear tests at Pokhran, followed by another couple of tests on 13 May. Twenty-four years after it conducted the PNE in May 1974, India’s ‘ambivalent’ nuclear policy had completed a full circle. If domestic reaction to the tests reflected nationalistic pride, external reactions were of shock and regret. Within a few weeks of India’s tests, Pakistan conducted its own nuclear tests. The nuclearization of the subcontinent was now complete. Most of the international community, led by the US, heavily criticized India’s decision. Even though India’s old strategic partners like France and Russia argued for a cautious approach, the US imposed severe economic sanctions.7

  By conducting the tests, India had challenged the global nuclear order. In the aftermath, India tried to reconcile its new status with the non-proliferation regime. India based its post-nuclear tests foreign policy on two assumptions. First, the world would understand that nuclear renunciation was not an option for India; India’s nuclear weapons were a fait accompli. Second, a nuclear India was too important to be ignored. However, it would first require convincing the global hegemon, the US. Vajpayee, therefore, began a process of genuine reconciliation with the US. Within three months of the test, India and the US agreed to initiate a nuclear dialogue. What ensued was the most comprehensive dialogue process between India and the US in the history of their bilateral relations. The two estranged democracies were now engaged in, to use Jaswant Singh’s words, a ‘dialogue of the equals’.8 This process was bolstered immensely by India’s responsible nuclear behaviour in the face of Pakistan’s blatant provocation during the Kargil War. For the first time after Sino-Soviet clashes in 1969, two nuclear-armed countries were involved in a conventional war. Pakistan was clearly the aggressor; yet, India exercised considerable restraint in not expanding the war beyond the Kargil sector even when it sustained major losses of men and material in the process. India’s restraint earned it a recognition of being a responsible nuclear power. It also made the US side fully with India. For the first time since 1971, the US policy in South Asia tilted towards New Delhi. In hindsight, what appeared to be a nuclear flashpoint initially, the Kargil War proved to be a ‘paradigm shift’ for India–US relations (Mohan 2003: 98).

  This responsible nature of India’s nuclear behaviour was also displayed in its nuclear doctrine. Four broad principles explained India’s nuclear philosophy. First, at the declaratory level, India articulated a vision where nuclear weapons were ‘more an instrument of politics rather than a military instrument of war-fighting’ (Singh 1998: 11). Nuclear weapons were a political tool geared towards one single objective: to avert the threat of use or actual use of nuclear weapons against it by its adversaries. Second, New Delhi announced that it will follow a policy of ‘no first use’ (NFU) against nuclear weapon states and of ‘non-use’ of nuclear weapons against NNWS. Third, India declared its intentions not to enter into an arms race with any of its nuclear adversaries. To this end, it declared a voluntary moratorium on further nuclear testing. Fourth, New Delhi declined to follow the nuclear trajectory of great powers during the Cold War which entailed hair-trigger nuclear alerts and launch-on-warning nuclear posture. Instead, India adopted a purely retaliatory posture which privileged delayed response to a nuclear attack, minimizing the dangers associated with miscalculations and misperceptions. Such nuclear thinking reflected an image of a responsible and restrained nuclear power.

  In the aftermath of the tests, India also aligned itself more openly with the non-proliferation regime.9 For long India had been a ‘nuclear outlier’; it now poised itself to support the same non-proliferation regime it had once accused of being discriminatory. India’s behaviour was guided by its self-interests of being a nuclear power; or as the government argued in the Parliament, by the ‘responsibility and obligation of power’ accrued by its nuclear weapons acquisition (Press Information Bureau 1998). New Delhi declared its open ‘commitment to non-proliferation’ and took on the responsibility to ‘maintain stringent export controls’ over its nuclear know-how (Press Information Bureau 1998). It even accepted the logic of
the NPT and its foreign minister argued in the Parliament that ‘though not a party, India’s policies have been consistent with key provision of the NPT that apply to nuclear weapon states’ (Press Information Bureau 2000). India also withdrew its reservations to arms control treaties such as the CTBT and the FMCT; being a nuclear power, arms control now became an important policy goal. General and complete disarmament, a long-held Indian position, lost its relative weight in India’s nuclear policy. It was easier for India to fight for principles of nuclear disarmament when it was not a nuclear power; harder to live up to them after being one. India had now become a normal nuclear power.

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  India’s long nuclear journey ended with the tests of 1998. The necessity of having a nuclear deterrent was apparent to Indian decision-makers since the early 1980s. All prime ministers since Indira Gandhi therefore supported the process of nuclearization. Yet, India remained reluctant to openly declare itself as a nuclear weapon state. Only upon a firm rejection of India’s appeals for nuclear disarmament in 1988, the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi asked India’s nuclear scientists to prepare a deliverable nuclear arsenal. Pakistan’s nuclear coercion also made Indian decision-makers focus on the ‘software’ required for projecting deterrence.10 Only after the Indo-Pak military crisis of 1990, issues like nuclear command and control took centre stage in Indian nuclear thinking. As the noose of non-proliferation tightened around India with the indefinite extension of the NPT and the CTBT negotiations, Indian policy-makers veered towards nuclear tests. This gradual discourse towards overt nuclearization was given its final shape by Prime Minister Vajpayee in 1998. Twenty-four years after its first nuclear test, India declared itself a nuclear weapon state. Since then, its nuclear trajectory has been extensive; it now stands at the cusp of becoming a major nuclear power. This is elaborated in the next chapter.