India, the Rogue Democracy

It should not have come as a surprise, even to a capital obsessed with presidential peccadilloes. After all, India has been nuclear-capable for 24 years, and deploying nuclear weapons was a major campaign pledge of the newly elected Hindu nationalist government. Yet, somehow, it was a stunner, not least to the CIA, when Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee announced that India had conducted a series of underground nuclear tests, its first since 1974. Just when former Cold War adversaries are dismantling their arsenals and the world debates putting the nuclear genie back in the bottle, India lets its genie out.

The fallout is unmistakable. U.S. policy toward South Asia is shattered. The probability of a regional arms race--and the corresponding likelihood of a nuclear war with Pakistan--have escalated. Ratification of the 149-nation Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is at risk. The entire system of nonproliferation is imperiled. As if on cue, North Korea threatens to restart its nuclear-weapons program, complaining that the United States reneged on a commitment. Iran’s top nuclear official shows up in Moscow asking for more atomic cooperation. President Bill Clinton’s planned visit to India this fall is in jeopardy. And, most disturbing of all, the Indian bomb is enormously popular in the world’s largest democracy, with one poll showing 91% approval.

A tough new law left Clinton no choice but to impose sweeping sanctions on India for its nuclear defiance. All $142 million in U.S. aid and $1.3 billion in government loans or guarantees have been cut off. The law also obligates Washington to oppose all World Bank and International Monetary Fund loans to India, and even bans U.S. private banks from lending to the Indian government.

Usually, such laws include an escape hatch allowing a presidential waiver for national-security reasons. But the 1994 Nuclear Nonproliferation Prevention Act brooks no such flexibility. In the eyes of U.S. law, India is now a “rogue” democracy in perpetuity.

Unfortunately, while the international community has rightly condemned India’s nuclear misadventure, few nations will follow the U.S. lead and slap harsh sanctions on New Delhi. France and Russia oppose sanctions. India’s two largest aid donors, Japan and Britain, have refused to make more than symbolic cuts.

Maybe India’s new leaders figured as much when deciding to undertake the tests, since the more obvious reason for going nuclear is absent: an imminent threat to India’s security. True, the Indian defense minister, a week before the tests, called China “potential threat No. 1,” but the reality is, Sino-Indian relations have improved greatly over the past several years. Border disputes are being resolved and trade has expanded. While there was a Sino-Indian border war in 1962, it is difficult to envision a dispute grave enough to escalate into nuclear exchanges between China and India.

But India has reason to be anxious because Pakistan, its chief rival, is China’s strategic ally. China has aided Pakistan in the latter’s development of a nuclear capability and missiles that can ferry nuclear warheads. India’s conventional military forces are far superior to Pakistan’s. Why, then, would India give Pakistan an excuse to begin its own nuclear-testing program? Isn’t a non-nuclear South Asia in New Delhi’s national interest?

The real answer to India’s moment of atomic vainglory may have more to do with India’s national psychology than with geopolitical calculations. India has a Rodney Dangerfield problem: It can’t get no respect. Keep in mind that openly going nuclear is enormously popular in India. Last week, Indian commentators spoke of “freeing India’s dormant spirit.” India, furthermore, never signed the 185-member Nonproliferation Treaty, completed in 1968. It rejects the treaty’s nuclear bargain, which, to New Delhi’s mind, sets up a discriminatory system of declared-weapons states--the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China--and nonnuclear ones in exchange for a commitment by the nuclear haves to move toward disarmament while helping the nuclear have-nots obtain nuclear power for civilian purposes.

But self-esteem problems, whatever their justification, are one thing; an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war is of an entirely different--and lethal--order. The dispute over Kashmir, the geography at the heart of 50 years of antagonism, has led to three wars. Yet, the deeper--and more troubling--issue is existential. Pakistan fears India has never accepted its existence since the British partition in 1948; India fears Pakistan seeks to dismember it.

There may be a kernel of truth in both sides’ fears, which makes the India-Pakistan arms race all the more chilling. It is no coincidence that India’s nuclear experiments occurred on the heels of Pakistan’s test of a new 930-mile-range Ghauri missile. Ghauri is named after a Muslim warrior who defeated Prithvi, a Hindu leader. India’s comparable missile is named--yes--Prithvi, which is stored near the Pakistani border and ready for deployment. Since India’s tests were designed to develop warheads capable of riding the Prithvi and the new Agni 1,500-mile-range missile, Pakistan will almost certainly respond with its own nuclear tests in the coming days.

So where do we go from here? First, it must be remembered that India and Pakistan have had a nuclear-weapons capability for many years. Despite international outrage and stringent U.S. laws, India’s testing thus does not necessarily represent a major departure: Neither side has built or deployed a nuclear arsenal. Though we tend to view nonproliferation as a moral absolute, India can point to our 8,000 nuclear warheads and no enemy and legitimately contend that it’s all relative. This poses a dilemma for the West: You don’t want to turn India into a Libya, which U.S. law has, in effect, done; but, at the same time, you want to keep the heat of outrage focused on India, lest the nonproliferation regime and the test-ban treaty unravel. For its part, India must be made to realize that it is more likely to attain the international prestige it covets by growing its economy 9% a year for a decade than by flaunting nukes.

If there is a silver lining, it is India’s assertion that it may now have all the test data it needs and might be willing to sign on to some aspects of the test-ban treaty and consider another treaty that would end production of bomb materials. Sure, the Indian statements were ambiguous, but the United States cannot afford to let any opportunity slip away. It should immediately begin talks with India to persuade New Delhi--and Pakistan, even if it tests--to sign both treaties. Success would enable Clinton to ask Congress for new legislation exempting India from sanctions.

Meantime, Clinton’s planned visit to India should not be canceled but used to explore additional ways to bottle up nuclear proliferation in South Asia. We must resist the temptation to demonize India but recognize that New Dehli cannot continue along its chosen nuclear path without paying a stiff price.