Why India Went Nuclear

Author(s): PREM SHANKAR JHA

Source: World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues , JULY-SEPTEMBER 1998,
Vol. 2, No. 3 (JULY-SEPTEMBER 1998), pp. 80-96
Published by: Kapur Surya Foundation

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/45064543

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 Why India Went Nuclear

Washington has refused to take India's mounting security concerns

seriously, while turning a deliberate blind eye on Pakistan's increasing
nuclear capability. China's transfer of nuclear technology to Pakistan
will have a negative effect on the balance of power in the region. It is quite
clear, however, that for new geo-strategic reasons - now connected with
the newly independent Central Asian states - the US will always give
priority to its relations with Pakistan over India.

PREM SHANKAR JHA

to burst open the lid that the major powers are trying to put on the
The proliferation to proliferation
burst nuclearofopen
nucleartestsweapons.
of theThis
nuclear
threatbyislidveryIndiareal:thatOn weapons.
the day the and major Pakistan This powers threat in May are is very 1998, trying real: are to On threatening put the on day the
after the first Indian tests, North Korea threatened that it would withdraw
from its agreement with the US over nuclear non-proliferation, as the US
had failed to live up to its commitments. Since then it has repeated this
threat more than once. Pakistan's tests were greeted by celebrations in Iran.
Predictably, the reaction in Iran triggered a wave of concern in Israel. And
earlier, UN weapons inspectors had found documents in Iraq that showed
that Pakistan had offered to supply it with the technology for making
nuclear weapons. No one knows how far a Pakistan bankrupted by economic
sanctions might go to secure hard currency resources. The world therefore
faces the spectre of more and more countries thrusting their way into the
nuclear club.

Predictably, the first reaction of the West has been one of great anger.
The G-8 and the UN security council have condemned the tests, and as the

80 WORLD AFFAIRS JUL- SEP 1998 VOL 2 NO 3

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 PREM SHANKAR JHA

country that went nuclear first, India has attracted most of th

press briefings after Pakistan's nuclear tests, Secretary of State
Defence Secretary Cohen accepted Pakistan's explanation that it
to go in for the tests in order to match India. As for India's re
dismissed Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's explan
letter to President Clinton after the
India
nuclear tests, that India was did
forced not go nuclear
willingly,
to test (and demonstrate) its nuclear but was forced into
weapons because of a sharp doing so by three, largely
deterioration in its security uncoordinated American
environment. Instead, both ascribed
policies launched by the
the Indian government's decision to
Clinton administration after
that most irresponsible of motives
- the desire of a Hindu nationalist the cold war ended, that
Bharatiya Janata Party government acted jointly to put India in
to promote its ideology of a Hindu grave peril.
renaissance, increase its following in
the country, and consolidate its hold on power. So exclusively did the US
focus blame on India, that about a fortnight before President Clinton's visit
to Beijing, Albright denied categorically that China had transferred nuclear
or missile technology to Pakistan "in recent years".
This interpretation of India's motives reflected not only the US well-
grounded fear of the impact India's action might have on non-proliferation,
but a far less comprehensible refusal by Washington to take India's mounting
security concerns seriously. Not only did Washington tum a deliberate blind
eye to the effect that China's transfer of nuclear weapon and missile technology
to Pakistan would have on the balance of power between two countries that
the world knew to be de facto nuclear weapons states, but it also ignored
the impact of its Central Asian policy on the source of the tension between
the two countries - the determination of Pakistan to redraw the map of
India on religious grounds by separating Kashmir from India.
The thesis of this paper is that this was not a product of benign neglect
or oversight. India did not go nuclear willingly, but was forced into doing
so by three, largely uncoordinated American policies launched by the Clinton
administration after the cold war ended, that acted jointly to put India in
grave peril. A substantial number of opinion makers in the US have taken

VOL 2 NO 3 JUL-SEP 199« WORLD AFFAIRS fil

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 WHY INDIA WENT NUCLEAR

note of two of these - that the emerging non

strangle India's nuclear option, and the gro
China's transfer of weapons of mass destructi
continent. But the third, the surreptitious
alliance with Pakistan focused on giving the U
eventual political control of the Central Asian
part of the Soviet Union, has gone almost u
paper is to highlight this neglected aspect of In
a nuclear power.
India's nuclear tests came as a complete sur
off a storm of speculation about why India
appropriate question to have asked then was, '
not to become a demonstrated overt nuclea
Pokharan explosion of 1974? While a numbe
cited, the short answer is that till the early nin
sufficiently insecure to want to take this mom
For a quarter century after its 1974 nuclear
of careful and deliberate restraint. Following
India had used technology supplied by it for
peaceful purposes to make a bomb, and a ch
that brought Moraiji Desai, a staunch opponen
premiership of the country, India suspended it
for more than a decade. Despite a deliberate le
April 1987, by the head of Pakistan's nuclear w
Dr A Q Khan, that Pakistan now had the bom
was resumed only in 1989, two years after Ind
own 200 MW reactor in 1987. In the next
mastered the technology required to develop a
but the government deliberately refrained from t
did not break down despite a spate of CIA re
nuclear weapons technology to Pakistan, and t
the required production facilities through a w
theft and deceit. Nor was this restraint broken when the US President
continued to certify that Pakistan was not developing a bomb, despite
Khan's boast to the contrary in 1987.

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 PREM SHANKAR JHA

In retrospect, the reasons why India did not feel sufficiently th

to forsake its long-standing policy of not developing nuclear w
obvious. Its relations with China had improved sharply after Ra
visit to Beijing in December 1988. Its dispute with Pakistan o
had been dormant for 15 years after the two countries signe
agreement, and relations between the two countries had improv
between 1977 and 1987. Finally, the Soviet Union with whom
a Treaty of Friendship, was still intact.

THE EROSION OF RESTRAINT

India's19901990andand1992security
an insurgency
1992 environment
broke out an
in Kashmir;
insurgencythebegan
Sovietbroke
Unionto out deteriorate in Kashmir; only in the 1990. Soviet Between Union
imploded, and the government received definite information that Pakistan
had, or could put together, a handful of nuclear bombs. On the surface,
India and Pakistan had established a balance of terror based on nuclear
ambiguity. But unlike the US-Soviet stand-off, this led to an increase instead
of a decrease of insecurity. For neither country knew for sure whether the
other really had a deliverable bomb, or was bluffing. Both were therefore
capable, if a conventional war began to go against them, of convincing
themselves that the other was bluffing and unleashing their nukes. Some
Indian analysts therefore urged the government to go overtly nuclear as this
would at least eliminate the risks that inhered in ambiguity. But none of
»

the three Indian governments that were privy to the knowledge of Pakistan's
nuclear capability, were prepared to resume nuclear testing.
The restraint, however, was beginning to erode. By the mid nineties
there were only a handful of scientists left in the Department of Atomic
Energy, who had even been in the organisation in 1074. All the knowledge
the DAE had of the Pokharan bomb was from blueprints, and all the new
research was still only research. Moreover, what was exploded in 1974 was,
strictly speaking, a device, and not a bomb. None of the engineering work
needed to convert it into a bomb that could be delivered by an aircraft,
much less by a missile, had ever been tested. In 1994, therefore, India's
nuclear weapons existed only on paper. This was not sufficient to reassure
the armed forces that the nuclear threat from Pakistan had been neutralised.
Nuclear ambiguity had also put the armed forces in a quandary. Should they

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 WHY INDIA WENT NUCLEAR

make operational plans and carry out exercise

had the capacity to checkmate a nuclear threa
escalated its involvement in Kashmir, they be
greater and greater insistence.
By contrast, Pakistan's bomb was develop
eighties. Its progenitor, Dr A Q Khan and his te
were still very much in harness. The bomb
a design that had been tested repeatedly over
fear began to grow, therefore, that Pakistan's
might be more reliable than India's and tha
balance was tilting against India.
In July 1995, India's alarm took a quantum
found out that a number of M-ll missiles s
been moved, in their crates, to Sargodha, Pak
close to the Punjab border. The alarm was
acquisition of missiles, so much as by the evid
China was prepared to go to support its ambit
reasons why Prime Minister Narasimha Rao fi
of tests. Rao's other reason was his governmen
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was extende
that the US, backed by the G-7 was creatin
domestic laws that would soon make the p
have to pay to upgrade its nuclear capability an
against nuclear attack or blackmail. This inv
Glenn Amendment, passed by the US Cong
mandatory economic sanctions on any (non-
nuclear weapons; the indefinite extension of t
Treaty in 1995, and tlje impending Compreh
Clinton promised to push through in 1996.
Together with the impending Fissile Materia
lock India into a permanent and growing mili
a nuclear power, China would be free not only
but to acquire the advanced technology it need
its weapons and missile capability. Forever mo
would depend on its keeping on China's good
with which India had fought a war, and had a

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 PREM SHANKAR JHA

90,000 sq kms of territory. What is more, as it had already sho

had few qualms about passing some of this technology to Pa
this wild card in the pack, no Indian strategic planner could
predict how the nuclear and missile balance would evolve on the s
in the coming years. Worst of all, this intolerable situation was bein
by the world's only super power,
the US. In December 1995, China had few qualms about
passing
therefore, Narasimha Rao ordered some of this technology
the scientific establishment to
to Pakistan. With this wild card
prepare for the resumption of
in the pack, no Indian strategic
nuclear tests at Pokharan.
planner could therefore predict
Even then, however, India's
how the nuclear and missile
perception of threat was not high
balance would evolve on the
enough to make him go through
with it. The US was still putting subcontinent.
a great deal of pressure on China
to stop supplying missile technology to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and it was
also trying to prevent China from supplying nuclear reactors to Iran. The
confrontation over the Taiwan straits was only weeks behind the two states.
The Indian government believed that America would do its level best to
check the supply of missiles and nuclear technology to China. Rao was also
worried that the economic sanctions that would follow a test, would hurt
his party's chances in the elections scheduled for April 1996. As a result
when preparations for the test were spotted by a US spy satellite, and the
American government asked India not to hold them, Narasimha Rao agreed.
India has been equally restrained in its missile development programme.
During Rajiv Gandhi's premiership, India launched a programme to develop
an entire family of short and medium range, battlefield and tactical surface
to air, surface to surface, and air to air missiles. Only two, the 300 km range
Prithvi (Sanskrit for the earth, and not the name of a Hindu ruler of the
twelfth century who fought the Muslims, as Pakistan has claimed), and the
1500 km range Agni (fire) were capable of carrying nuclear warheads. Both,
therefore, aroused Washington's anxiety. India had made it clear that the
Prithvi was intended to carry only a conventional warhead and that the Agni
was only being developed as a "technology demonstrator". But the Clinton
administration was not entirely reassured. As a result, in response to a direct

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 WHY INDIA WENT NUCLEAR

request from President Clinton, Prime Min

during his visit to Washington in 1994, not to
by then gone into production) and to stop furt
Both promises were, by and large, kept. H
began shipping Prithvi missiles to the army c
specious grounds that they could not be store
Pakistan raised an alarm, but this too may have
two months later Pakistan unveiled its 600 km Hatf III missile. The Hatf
III was a thinly dressed up version of the Chinese M-9.
Pakistan's nuclear strategy has throughout been in stark contrast to that
of India. Contrary to the common perception, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto took the
decision to develop nuclear weapons in 1972, within weeks of becoming
Pakistan's president, and well before the Pokharan blast. He was reacting to
the dismemberment of Pakistan and his awareness that the new Pakistan
would be no match for India in a conventional war. The Pokharan blast lent
a new urgency to his quest, but he realised that Pakistan could only obtain
the necessary technology and equipment by taking "short cuts". In the
ensuing years successive governments in Pakistan built an extraordinarily
effective network of shell companies abroad to circumvent laws against the
sale to third countries of equipment needed to produce fissile uranium. The
US was unable to express its displeasure till 1990, when it refused to certify
that Pakistan was building nuclear weapons, because Pakistan had become
indispensable for funnelling aid to the Afghan mujahideen. The architect of
this monumental effort was Abdul Qader Khan, once employed by a finn
in Holland, who returned to Pakistan with the stolen designs of the Gas
centrifuge, the critical requirement for separating fissile Uranium 235 from
the inert Uranium 238.

CHINA AND PAKISTAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME

PakistanCapitalising
Capitalisingonalsoitscarefully
border dispute
on its with
borderIndia,
builtitdispute
succeeded
a long-term
in persuading
with military India, it relationship succeeded in with persuading China.
China to transfer the design for the all-important trigger mechanism of the
atom bomb, probably in exchange for the Gas centrifuge technology that
Khan had spirited away from Holland. All Pakistan had to do was buy,
or steal, the designs and components needed to manufacture it.

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 PREM SHANKAR JHA

Pakistan has steadfastly maintained that its nuclear weapons p

is a response to India's, and this has been accepted uncritically b
So, in a sense it is. If one believes the old maxim that diplom
based on an assessment of the adversary's intentions, but defence
be based on its capabilities, then
Pakistan's reasons for acquiring
The dispute over Kashmir had
nuclear capability by hook or by
not been resolved, but the
crook cannot be challenged. But
Simla agreement
in the globally interdependent had given
world that has now formal
emerged, recognition to a de
this
maxim, like nineteenth facto
century
line of division of the old
doctrines of national sovereignty,
princely state that had already
is increasingly coming into
existed for 25 years.
contention. The view is gaining
ground that in the infomiation age
intentions have to be taken into account for, as the Gulf war showed, a
nation's best defence against unprovoked assault by a rogue nation is the
combined weight of public opinion, backed by international sanction.
If intentions are taken into account, Pakistan's decision to acquire nuclear
weapons becomes a lot less easy to understand. In 1974, India and Pakistan
had admittedly fought three wars, but the issues over which these were
fought had been all but resolved. Bangladesh, the cause of the 1971 war, had
seceded from Pakistan with India's help. This had caused a great deal of
anger in Pakistan, but no one in Pakistan wanted to re-conquer it. The
dispute over Kashmir had not been resolved, but the Simla agreement had
given formal recognition to a de facto line of division of the old princely
state that had already existed for 25 years, and both countries had bound
themselves not to try and change it unilaterally, ie, by force. India therefore
had no disputes with Pakistan, and coveted none of its territory.
A part of the reason why Pakistan still felt it had to maintain parity with
India is buried in the bloodstained circumstances of its birth. But to the
extent that there was a rational purpose, it was Pakistan's determination not
to allow its claim to Kashmir to lapse by virtue of its inability to wage war
for want of a nuclear deterrent. Pakistan, in short, never had any intention
of giving up the struggle to annex the whole of Kashmir. Thus from 1972,
the balance upon which peace has rested in the subcontinent has been

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 why india Went nuclear

asymmetrical: India has lacked the desire

subcontinent, while Pakistan has lacked the c
was eventually disturbed by the continued
missile technology by China, and by th
transgression by the US.
During the 31 years that Sino-Indian relat
after the 1962 war, China's support of Pakist
programmes caused little surprise in Indi
mount when technology and missile sales and
and India signed the Agreement on Peace
Regions in 1993. This agreement virtuall
border dispute in a tacit acceptance of th
between the two countries in the Himalayas
disputes. In fact, during Narasimha Rao's vi
Li Peng made a special effort to enrol India
hegemonism. The very next -year China join
at the UN conference on human rights in G
violation of human rights in Kashmir. As tr
two countries and a spate of high-level v
continued supply of nuclear weapons techno
and more inexplicable. In 1993 and 1994 t
that China had sold ring magnets for Pakist
1 1 missiles were discovered at Sargodha. The
Hatf III in August 1997, and finally of the in
on April 6, 1998. China's help was closing
aspirations and its capabilities. For India, t
inaction was becoming insupportable. But ev
a much larger iceberg. A spate of CIA repor
fact signed two separate agreements with
billion dollars, one for a virtually complet
research and development capabilities, and t
of missile technology along with a large n
The timing of these transfers could not ha
taking place at a time when Pakistan had re
with India. Insurgency in Kashmir had bee
pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Libera

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 PREM SHANKAR JHA

and the pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen had fallen apart, and

wings had suffered large-scale desertions from their ranks. In
1996 Kashmir had its first state assembly election in 11 years. A
49.9 per cent voters turned out and voted a pro-India gover
power. A year later, when President Clinton met Pakistan's prim
Nawaz Sharif and India's prime minister Inder Gujral in Ne
made it plain that the US wanted the two countries to settle th
dispute between themselves and did not want to get embro
Clinton also remarked pointedly to Nawaz Sharif that the tw
needed to cut the shackles of the past and look to the future. Fo
in Pakistan's security and State apparatus, the goal of acquiring K
all but lost.
In theory, they could wait in the hope that another insurgen
break out in the valley on some future date. But in practice
capacity to do so had run out. Forty years of trying to maintai
parity with a much larger neighbour had made the country b
1997, interest on the national debt absorbed 71 per cent of feder
and almost the entire balance was needed to meet the cost of the
and the police. Social and economic spending had been reduce
nothing, which, along with the whole of the defence budget, am
just under 30 per cent of federal spending, was being met by
from the public. Such massive borrowing was pushing up the na
faster than the GDP and therefore increasing the ratio of interest
Barring some unforeseen change, Pakistan freed bankruptcy and hyp
in, at most, a decade. Its foreign exchange balances had shrun
1.3 billion dollars and the country had been forced to go to t
help. The IMF insisted that it cut its fiscal deficit, which in effe
military spending. In response to this pressure in 1977 the mili
actually fell by a little over one per cent for the first time since
was bom. The military establishment therefore knew that its days of
India were drawing to a close. Very soon, therefore, Pakistan
to choose between making one final bid to capture Kashmir by
the money ran out, or accepting the status quo. The first sign th
was accepting the status quo in Kashmir would have been a de
infiltration of foreign mercenaries into Indian Kashmir. But in t
since the Kashmir elections, Pakistan had not shown the sligh

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 WHY INDIA WENT NUCLEAR

doing the latter. Instead it had stepped up the infilt

and other mercenaries into Kashmir and Jammu
came at this critical moment.
The Ghauri changed the power equation on the subcontinent. But what
disturbed Indians even more was the overtly hostile intent behind the launch.
Pakistani spokesmen explained that Ghauri was the name of the Afghan
invader who captured Delhi in AD 1193 and established Muslim rule in
northern India. They went on to say that with the development of the
Ghauri, no Indian city was safe any longer from a Pakistani attack. The
creator of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, A Q Khan, proclaimed that Pakistan
now had the capacity to hit 26 Indian cities. A few days later Pakistan
announced that it would soon test a 2,000 km missile, named the "Ghaznavi"
(of Ghazni). The first Afghan raider to invade western India in search of
plunder no less than 18 times in 25 years between 997 AD and 1022 AD
was named Mahmud of Ghazni. The overt aggression revealed by the naming
of the missiles sent shivers of apprehension throughout India. Pakistan's
constant harping on being able to hit cities, and the fact that this particular
threat was being made by the messianic head of Pakistan's nuclear weapons
programme, made people fear the worst.

THE ROLE OF THE USA

If nuclearisation
nuclearisationany country
of the of couldandthepossible
subcontinent subcontinent
war, it have stopped
was the and the possible slow war, drift it towards was the an US. overt But
US. But
the US had its own irons in the fire. In the immediate aftermath of the cold
war mâny Indians had hoped that the two countries would rediscover the
warmth that had marked the Kennedy and Roosevelt years (when the US
had consistently championed India's freedom). But that was not to be.
Deprived of its central focus, American foreign policy splintered into a series
of uncoordinated initiatives pushed by the territorial and functional bureaus
of the State Department, which as often as not, saw themselves in competition
with each other. At the Indian end, political instability conspired with the
persistence in the foreign office of suspicions inherited from the cold war,
to make new Delhi incapable of grasping the opportunities that arose for
establishing a co-operative relationship.

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 PREM SHANKAR JHA

Immediately after the cold war ended, India found itself at the
end of four American initiatives. These were nuclear non-prol
human rights, the thrust for constructive engagement with Chin
thrust for economic and political influence in Central Asia. Check
proliferation of nuclear weapons and reducing existing stockpiles
in the former Soviet Union,
If any country could have
clearly ranked first in the US
priorities. The Congress stopped the slow drift towards
an overt nuclearisation of the
government under Narasimha
Rao was aware of this, and was subcontinent and possible war,
prepared to meet the US halfway it was the US. But the US had its
if the US showed a matching own irons in the fire.
sensitivity to India's security
concerns. Since India's immediate concern was not China, with whom
relations were steadily improving, but Pakistan, whose desire to annex Kashmir
remained undiminished, Rao in effect offered to exercise restraint on the
development of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems in exchange
for US disengagement from the Kashmir issue. India therefore avoided
testing any nuclear weapons, and halted the development and the deployment
of the Agni and the Prithvi. On its part, after an uncertain start in 1993, the
Clinton administration took the position that the Kashmir dispute had to be
settled by India and Pakistan bilaterally, although it would like both countries
to keep in mind the wishes of the people of the state.
This mutual sensitivity and accommodation led to a rapid warming of
relations between the two countries. Unfortunately, there were other foreign
policy initiatives being pursued simultaneously by the US which negated
this trend and progressively increased India's sense of isolation. The first was
the policy, pushed aggressively by the Clinton administration in 1 996, shortly
after the confrontation in the Taiwan straits, of engaging China
"constructively" in global trade and investment. One side effect of this
engagement was a rush of American companies to China. These transferred
not only capital but, frequently at China's insistence, a host of sophisticated
technologies to that country. Indian policy-makers watched the turnabout
with mild apprehension. They had no immediate reason to fear China, but
the contrast between the freedom with which the US was allowing its
companies to sell or transfer supercomputers, nuclear power plants and

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 WHY INDIA WENT NUCLEAR

satellite launch and guidance technology to Ch

such sales to India, became more and more g
This was not a product of affronted nationa
technology is the source of power in the gl
its free sale to China and denial to India wa
power between the two countries almost we
Indian border dispute still not resolved, Cli
unintended effect of making India more and
whims and fancies.
One can only speculate on how India would have tried to rectify this
growing imbalance. But by itself it would not have sufficed to push India
over the brink. The core group formed by the prime minister, which took
the decision to carry out the nuclear tests, knew perfectly well that under
US law, the nuclear tests would cut off even the limited flow of technology
that existed till then. This meant that without a direct and immediate threat
from China, India stood to lose far more than it gained from the tests. The
final straw, for India, was not therefore Clinton's 'engagement' with China,
but its realisation that his administration had developed ambitions in Central
Asia that were an echo of those the British had entertained in the nineteenth
century. The Great Game was being resumed, and India would be its
unintended victim. For as India had learned to its cost over fifty years, eVer
since it took the Pakistani invasion of Kashmir to the UN in October 1947,
this would mean sacrificing India's interests to those of a Pakistan now being
nuclearised at full speed by China.
Unlike the Administration's engagement with China, the resumption of
the Great Game took place surreptitiously, in the bowels of the state and
defence departments. The Bush administration virtually lost interest in
Afghanistan once the Russians withdrew from the country. It was- keen to
see a return of peace and to ensure that the new regime in Afghanistan
would be a democratic one, but was willing to leave the task of brokering
an agreement between the Mujahideen groups that had fought the war, and
creating the conditions for a general election, to the United Nations. It was
the Democrats who found a new justification for getting involved in
Afghanistan once more. The overt reasons of the Clinton State Department
were its anxiety to stem the flow of drugs out of Afghanistan and to help
American companies like UNOCAL find a way into the CIS states,

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 PREM SHANKAR JHA

particularly oil-rich Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. But there w

largely unstated, purpose. This was to establish western control o
part of what Sir Haiford Mackinder, the Edwardian pioneer of g
theory, regarded as the "pivot of history".
With the end of the cold war and the disintegration of t
Union, the CIS states had literally
The break
lost their economic moorings. up of the Soviet
Under the Soviet planning Union and the delinking of
system,
their economies had been currencies and Central Banks
intermeshed with that of Russia of the CIS states from Moscow
to an extent that is hard to imagine in the autumn of 1992,
in any market-driven economy.
The breakup of the Soviet Union
snapped these economic links
with a brutal suddenness.
and the delinking of currencies and
Central Banks of the CIS states
from Moscow in the autumn of 1992, snapped these economic links with
a brutal suddenness. Consumers in these countries found themselves without
products they used to take for granted, and raw materials and intermediate
goods producers found themselves without buyers. All turned in desperation
to the world market. The result was hyperinflation, which fed into a collapse
of the exchange rate, which fed back into hyperinflation. Central Asia thus
reverted more or less to what it used to be in the nineteenth century - a
volatile region of inestimable strategic importance. Control of Muslim CIS
states would not only deny control of this region to the only other potential
contenders for global dominance, China and Russia, but would in effect
drive a wedge between them. The spectre of a single hostile land mass,
stretching from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan, which had haunted British
strategists in the nineteenth century, and the US during the early years of
the cold war, would be banished, possibly forever.
One school of thought in the US policy establishment therefore urged
that the CIS states should be weaned away from Russia by providing them
the economic links with world markets that they so desperately needed. But
that would only be possible if these countries were guaranteed a cheap and
safe access to the sea. If access through Iran were ruled out, the only
alternative route was through Afghanistan and Pakistan. But this required
the restoration of peace in the former. Once the UN-brokered, moderate

VOL 1 NO 3 JUL- SEP 1998 WORLD AFFAIRS 93

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 WHY INDIA WENT NUCLEAR

Rabbani government failed to establish peace (

given by Pakistan to attempts by the fundame
seize power by force) the Clinton administrati
requirement of democracy in favour of pe
hard-core Wahaby fundamentalists schooled in ma
with Saudi Arabian money, and armed and o
regulars, emerged as the formation most likely to
emerged as a key ally both for the restoration
the provision of access to the Indian Ocean.
Pakistan's strategists had been harping on the
as a bridge to Central Asia for the West ever
it began to look as if the US had no more us
first actual overtures for forging a new relatio
the Clinton administration. Only that can ex
to talk from what seemed to be a position o
would do no business with the US until it either released the amis that
Pakistan had already paid for before 1990, or returned the money.
After the Taliban captured Kabul and virtually the whole of Afghanistan
south of the Hindu Kush mountains, the vision of a peaceful Afghanistan
as a highway to Central Asia became irresistible. The US goal was to broker
an agreement between the various Afghan factions to form a de facto
confederation, with some kind of power sharing arrangement for Kabul. In
1996 and early 1997 the US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Robin
Raphel, visited Afghanistan several times and met not only the leaders of the
Taliban but also Ahmad Shah Massoud and Rachid Dostam. She even got
the Taliban leaders to agree to withdraw 12 kms south of Kabul as a gesture
of their support for a confederal arrangement, but the arrangement proved
unattainable. Two years later, the US Ambassador to the UN, Bill Richardson,
visited Afghanistan and Pakistan with the same mission. This time the US
came closer to success. Richardson managed to broker a series of meetings
in Islamabad, the first of which lasted for five hours and ended with a short-
lived agreement to honour terms for a ceasefire.
Had India and Pakistan been two ordinary countries, the rapid
development of a new US-Pakistan axis would not have affected Washington's
ties with New Delhi. But the Kashmir dispute made that impossible. The
Clinton administration was forced to choose, and gradually came down in

94 WORLD AFFAIRS JUL-SEP 1998 VOL 2 NO J

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 PREM SHANKAR JHA

favour of Pakistan once more. The reason was that while it sough
its post-cold war ties with India on the base of shared ideals
commitment to democracy and the creation of an open marke
economy, it was building its relations with Pakistan on realpoliti
but surely realpolitik won out.

US TILT TOWARDS PAKISTAN

Indiainin1993,
1993,when the when
received Clinton
its administration
the first Clintonremoved Pakistan from
overt intimation the of the removed change Pakistan in the US from policies the
administration
watch Ust of countries sponsoring terrorism on which it had been put by the
Bush administration a year earlier. To Indians the reason it gave was
suspiciously familiar: the evidence did not meet the standard of proof that
had been set down in the relevant Congressional Act. This was precisely
what the Reagan and Bush administrations had used, to continue supplying
miUtary and economic aid to Pakistan in the face of mounting evidence
collected by the CIA of the crucial nuclear weapons technology received by
Pakistan from China as far back as 1986, of the theft of gas centrifuge
technology from a Dutch firm by a Pakistani employee later identified as Dr
A Q Khan himself, and the interception of dozens of clandestine nuclear
weapons related equipment and materials destined for Pakistan.
The Indian government received another jolt when, only months later,
the newly appointed assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Robin Raphel,
made remarks during a background briefing to Indian journalists in
Washington that seemed to reject the legal validity of the Instrument
of Accession signed by the ruler of Kashmir in 1947, and also belittled
the importance of the Simla agreement, signed by India and Pakistan in
1972.
India received its third and most severe shock when, in the midst of the
kidnapping of five American, British, German and Norwegian hostages by
a newly formed terrorist group in Kashmir, caUed the Al Faran, Senator
Hank Brown moved a State Department-sponsored resolution in the senate
in August 1995, for a one-time waiver of the Pressler amendment, to
permit the supply of arms to Pakistan equivalent to the money it had earlier
paid.

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 WHY INDIA WENT NUCLEAR

THE LAST STRAW

For US-Pakistan-China the Indian decision-makers

US-Pakistan-China entente was
entente wasthe the
thelast launch
launchstraw ofofin the
thethis Ghauri.
Ghauri. ongoingPakistan
Pakistan processhad
had of
cleverly timed it to take place only days before Bill Richardson was to visit
Afghanistan, where he needed its mediation to bring peace and open the
gateway to Central Asia. When the US responded by expressing the mildest
of possible regret at Pakistan's action, India realised that the end of the cold
war had not really changed anything. For geo-strategic reasons, the US
would always give priority to its relations with Pakistan over those with
India. For the foreseeable future, therefore, India was truly alone. Five days
after receiving news of the Ghauri, Prime Minister Vajpayee signed the
order to go ahead with the tests. @

96 WORLD AFFAIRS JUL- SEP I»»8 VOL 2 NO J

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