India's CTBT debate: Conviction or Con"fusion"

by Raja Karthikeya

The U.S.-sponsored Security Council resolution on non-proliferation that was passed last week has enraged India. The resolution called on all non-signatories to the NPT to join the treaty as "non-nuclear weapons states." India sent the President of the General Assembly a strongly worded letter saying it would not accept externally prescribed norms on issues that conflicted with its sovereignty.

The moot points of India's objections were that: The U.S.-backed resolution focused on non-proliferation rather than disarmament, a cause that India has always championed; India was a declared nuclear weapons state with a clean non-proliferation record, and would not join the NPT as a "non-nuclear weapons state;" and India already followed the objectives of the NPT in their full spirit, with a unilateral moratorium on testing and with a declared "no first-use policy." In contrast, both of India's strategic rivals - China and Pakistan have a much-doubted and a non-existent "no first-use" policy respectively.

While India's protest at the UN was essentially reactive, it also reflected domestic debates of the past few months that have centered on whether India should sign the CTBT. The debates started when a retired scientist, Dr K. Santhanam, who had been one of the leading figures of the 1998 tests, said that the thermonuclear device test had been a failure with a below-expectation yield. Dr Santhanam followed up with accusations that the tests had been declared a total success by the then Indian National Security Advisor on the basis of a "show of hands" rather than hard scientific data.

Dr Santhanam's conclusion was that in light of the above, India should keep its options for testing open and not be pressured into signing the CTBT.

Dr Santhanam's allegations created a furore which split India's nuclear science community. Many retired and a few serving scientists from across the atomic energy establishment either took Dr Santhanam's side or that of the government, which defended the tests as a success. When Dr Abdul Kalam, who as scientific advisor to then Prime Minister Vajpayee, oversaw the 1998 tests and later went on to become President of India, stepped in to defend the tests, the incriminations turned dirty. Some in the opposite camp questioned Dr Kalam's scientific credentials in commenting on yields of nuclear explosions given that he was actually a rocket scientist by training. Indeed, more than anything, the debate exposed inter-agency rivalry in the Indian nuclear establishment and the predominant role of the scientific community in shaping India's nuclear policy. Also, one must note that the tests' critics may have also been representative of that section of India's scientific community which has resented the U.S.'s technology transfer restrictions and pressure on other exporters, which dented India's nuclear R&D for decades. To these scientists, the 1998 nuclear tests were thus a vindication of India's indigenous capability, achieved in the face of overwhelming odds and the obstructions emplaced by the U.S. Thus, any dilution of stance on the nuclear program, least of all at perceived hint from the U.S., amounted to a "sell-out."

But the scientists' debate also threw up some important questions. Some commentators asked why scientists were commenting about signing the CTBT - something that is essentially a political decision and is beyond the mandate of men of science. Others criticised why these allegations about the fusion device were being made now, eleven years after the tests and were not done before.

Indeed, it is hard to understand the furore over the fusion device. Even if the thermonuclear test were a "fizzle", India still retains a credible fission-based nuclear deterrent (something even the doubting scientists have confirmed). Nor is there great momentum in Delhi to sign the CTBT that needed to be derailed through such allegations.

The underlying cause of the controversy may thus boil down to the testy state of India-U.S. relations in the nuclear realm. Since the Obama administration took over, India's nuclear interests have been badly affected. First, the new administration dragged its feet on implementing the civilian nuclear accord. For a moment, Secy. Clinton seemed to have brought the deal back to life when during her visit to India in July agreement was reached on sites for nuclear reactors to be sold by the U.S. to India. But an impasse in negotiations related to compensation for potential nuclear accidents ensured that the gloom on the accord is not yet lifted.

India's intransigence on some issues has not helped either.

As it is, Obama's appointment of well known liberal opponents of the U.S.-India nuclear accord to lead non-proliferation policy in the administration was also uncomfortable to New Delhi. India felt more betrayed when the G-8 passed a resolution out of the blue, calling on stopping transfer of enrichment and reprocessing technologies to all non-NPT states. Given that there are only 3 non-NPT signatories- Pakistan, Israel and India, and given that Pakistan with its proliferation record and Israel with its "strategic ambivalence" would never get ENR technologies, the resolution was seen as the Obama administration's effort to renege on the U.S.'s ENR transfer commitments enshrined in the civilian nuclear accord.

And while India welcomed Obama's Prague speech and subsequent arms reductions discussions with Russia, India found China's silence on disarmament disconcerting. Strangely enough, the seemingly sole point of congruence between Delhi and Washington in this domain in recent months was with regards to the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Despite increasing international worries about the safety of Pakistan's nukes, both India and the U.S. have cautiously expressed their belief that the weapons are safe. This indicates some amount of information sharing on this issue between the two governments.

But the larger differences between India and the U.S. on nuclear issues persist. It is important to stress that while some of these bilateral differences are undeniably genuine, the majority seem to be a result of misunderstanding. These are, however, major misunderstandings which if left unresolved could be a major setback to one of history's most promising strategic partnerships. For now, the U.S. has to take pro-active steps to clear perceptions in India about its non-proliferation agenda. Beyond the legal strictures of the CTBT, FMCT, and the NPT, India can be a valuable ally in setting normative non-proliferation precedents and in achieving the vision of "Global Zero."

Raja Karthikeya is a Researcher in the Hills Program on Governance at CSIS and a member of the PONI Nuclear Scholars Initiative for 2008-09