India-Pakistan Contemplate Testing Nukes Again?

India-Pakistan Contemplate Testing Nukes Again?
Praful Bidwai
Inter Press Service, 18 March 1999

NEW DELHI, Mar 18 (IPS) - Are India and Pakistan likely to conduct another series of nuclear tests before signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which must be ratified by September this year.

Both governments are under domestic pressure to test - in the case of India from political hardliners and sections of the scientific-military establishment. Conducting tests in the near future, and simultaneously announcing adherence to the CTBT like France and China did in early 1996, is for their policy-makers a tempting gamble.

Neither government has admitted to it, but at the end of eight rounds of separate talks with US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in January this year, India is believed to have offered to try to sign the treaty as early as June and Pakistan has said it will follow suit, if India
signs.

The domestic political opposition in India does not favour signing the CTBT. The Congress, India's biggest and oldest party, would like such signature as part of a larger strategic bargain. The Left opposes the CTBT as 'discriminatory'.

A government which signs the CTBT is likely to attract the charge of capitulating to external pressure. The ruling right-wing Hindu party thinks the best way out is to appear to defy the present global nuclear order by conducting tests.

In Pakistan, the domestic pressure for further testing is weaker. The compulsion would be largely reactive: Islamabad must get even with New Delhi in matters nuclear, as it did last May when it claimed to have conducted six tests - to match India's total (one test in 1974 and five that month). The claim about the number and explosive yields of the tests has been widely questioned by scientists. Pakistan may have only conducted two to three tests, with yields lower than officially announced, 20 kilotons.

India's claim of a thermonuclear (hydrogen bomb) test, with a yield of 45 kilotons, has come under a cloud. Independent nuclear weapons designers, analysing seismic data from around the world, say that in all probability, the secondary (fusion) stage of the two-stage device did not go off. The real yield may only have been 12 to 20 kilotons.

A fresh test may be a way of demonstrating nuclear capability. Additionally, they may want to prove and harden the designs developed 10 months ago and convince the potential users - the armed forces - that the bombs are rugged and reliable.

Yet another sources of pressure is the rivalry in India between the Department of Atomic Energy and the Defence Research and Development Organisation. And in Pakistan, between Dr A.Q. Khan Laboratories (which claims the credit for the nuclear and missile programmes), and the Atomic Energy Commission and defence scientists.

Given the limited levels of technology absorption in manufacturing in India, and Pakistan, and the prevalence of sloppy operational practices, it may not be easy to develop accurate battlefield-ready weapons designs that satisfy the military, without adequate testing. This is especially true of second-generation weapons such as the Hydrogen Bomb.

India and Pakistan also plan to develop command and control systems to guide and target their bombs and prevent unauthorised and accidental use. Further nuclear tests may be linked to development of command systems.

Indian and Pakistani policy-makers hope they will get away with further tests by falling in line with the CTBT - just as France and China first outraged the world by testing even while negotiations on the treaty were in progress, and then announced the tests' cessation.

India and Pakistan have attracted economic sanctions and drawn flak not only from the UN Security Council and the G8, but also from the Non-Aligned Movement, and regional bodies such as the ASEAN Regional Forum. They are embarking on a gamble. A new round of tests might lead to a reversal of the process of easing of sanctions, in evidence over the past few months. This could set back the prospect for arms control and disarmament negotiations, although it will make the CTBT's entry into force more likely. The most worrisome consequence of fresh tests would be exacerbation of regional suspicions and rivalries. China is certain to respond with alarm and hostility to India's tests. It has already adopted a much
harder line than the other nuclear powers, especially the US. India's policy-makers today seem to be banking on the new tension that has emerged over the charge that China stole a nuclear warhead design from the US in the 1980s, and the Sinophobia of America's extreme right.

Domestically, a new exchange of militant rhetoric about nuclear prowess may weaken the welcome momentum towards reconciliation that Indian and Pakistani leaders established last month. Their Lahore Declaration commits both to 'abide by their respective unilateral moratorium on conducting further nuclear test explosions'. However, it also contains a rider: 'unless either side, in exercise of its national sovereignty, decides that extraordinary events have jeopardised its supreme interests'. It is hard to see how either sides 'supreme interests' are so threatened by recent 'events'.

Copyright 1999 InterPress Service