Sign the CTBT

Sign the CTBT
Achin Vanaik
The Hindu, 29 June 1998

FOR a long time only a handful of anti-nuclearists in
India were arguing that the country should sign the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Their numbers may
now increase substantially but the swelling can come
from two different groups. The first group is not
concerned, apart from lip service, with any serious
striving for global disarmament. They support the tests
and India going nuclear but want to limit the damage
that has been done internationally which they recognise
is grave. Although there is no unanimity about the
imposition of sanctions on India (and Pakistan), not
only the nuclear weapon States (NWSs) but the
overwhelming majority of the non-nuclear weapon States
(NNWSs) are insistent that both countries sign the CTBT
and participate in the fissiles materials cut-off treaty
(FMCT) negotiations. India cannot continue to buck this
international consensus without the most serious
repercussions for itself. Hence the various
rationalisations of why India can now join the CTBT
regime (because the context has changed) when it could
not earlier.

Those in the second catchment area of potential support
are differently motivated. These people want a permanent
end to testing by India and are opposed to further
weaponisation and deployment. But very large sections
here (which includes most of the Indian Left) continue
to believe, falsely, that the CTBT is discriminatory as
well as being an American plot, etc. Unfortunately, they
have so strongly staked their public reputations on this
that it has become difficult for them to retract. But
retract they must. If one is serious about getting a
permanent end to testing by India (and Pakistan), then
there is no substitute for the CTBT. Do not for a moment
think that this Government or any future non-Left
Government will unilaterally declare a permanent end to
such tests. A strong lobby is well aware that further
tests are needed if India wants to build a
significant-sized nuclear arsenal in the name of their
understanding of what would constitute a ''minimal
deterrence capacity'' against China.

Nor should there be any illusion that this Government
will ever give a commitment of no future weaponisation.
The most it will concede under pressure is no
weaponisation for the moment - a no- cost policy
pronouncement because it will anyway take India a year
or two to technically equip itself for final
weaponisation/deployment of delivery vehicles. But the
issue of the CTBT will not wait that long. It is going
to be forced upon India by international pressure and
the existence of an all- party consensus opposing the
Treaty will play into the hands of the nuclear
rightwing. There is a real chance that the Government
can accede to the CTBT especially since such accession
does not prevent future weaponisation. Nevertheless, a
permanent end to testing worldwide is an important gain.
If India and Pakistan test in the future or keep this
option open, then the whole CTBT norm can unravel. The
Chinese have already indicated they may have to
reconsider their commitment to end testing and the
American rightwing led by the not uninfluential Senator,
Mr. Jesse Helms, is already opposing CTBT ratification
and calling for the US to resume explosive testing.
Such a breakdown would spell disaster.

Nor can one trust a purely national regime of monitoring
to verify Indian compliance in the unlikely event of a
permanent renunciation of tests ever being declared. In
short, there is no practicable and reliable substitute
monitoring mechanism to the CTBT regime. Those who
oppose the CTBT on so-called principled grounds had
better rethink, either subordinating their earlier
objection to a larger good or principle or, preferably,
realising that their opposition was wrong to begin with.
They might just reconsider whether the support (with
varying degrees of enthusiasm and qualifications) by
virtually the whole of the international anti-nuclear
peace movement and groups, of virtually the whole of the
international Left, and of virtually all the NNWSs does
not indicate that it was India which got it wrong and
not the rest of the world. They should also recognise
that it was precisely the outcome of the discourse over
the CTBT earlier that decisively shifted the centre of
gravity on this issue dramatically to the right, paving
the way for what eventually happened. Similarly, another
debate (which can neither be avoided nor put off for a
year or two) over signing the Treaty if it is lost to
the anti-CTBTers will again significantly shift the
terms of Indian discourse on the nuclear issue to the
right. This will greatly weaken not only
anti-nuclearists but even those pro-nuclearists who see
themselves as advocating a more cautious, responsible
and sober form of Indian nuclearism which sees the
importance of a strong arms control orientation,
regionally and internationally.

There were three main criticisms made of the CTBT in
India. The CTBT had to be linked to a timebound schedule
for global disarmament otherwise it was pointless. The
treaty was discriminatory. And in another related but
distinct line of argument, the treaty was held to be
fatally flawed because it allowed sub-critical testing
and computer simulation. None of these criticisms holds
water. Take the first one. A few of us repeatedly
insisted to no avail that this linkage by India was
simply an excuse to justify its objections to the treaty
on grounds other than ''national security
considerations'' although these were cited as well. Does
anyone doubt now that this was in fact the case? India
was close to testing in mid-1995 when the key issues in
the draft treaty had yet to be seriously negotiated.

Time and again, this technique of argument has been used
by cynical nuclear elites everywhere. One postulates
one's commitment to a grand final goal which all can
agree with but it is done in order to block a step in
the process by which that ultimate goal can be reached.
Because of the moral capital that India had built
internationally in the past, many NNWSs gave some
benefit of the doubt to Indian intentions. But the
overwhelming majority of the NNWSs did not follow India
rightly feeling that this CTBT was better than none and
should not be sacrificed at the altar of a demand for a
grand renunciatory commitment by the NWSs unattainable
for a long time to come.

Moreover, this demand was a case of putting the cart
before the horse. You first have to get
institutionalised a multilateral body empowered to
negotiate complete global disarmament to which the NWSs
will accede. Only after this does it become sensible to
talk of a timebound schedule. This is what, for example,
an ad hoc Committee on nuclear disarmament in the
Conference on Disarmament (CD) (which is what the NNWSs
were angling for in the CTBT) or a Nuclear Weapons
Convention (NWC) amount to. Getting the NWSs to agree to
either of these mechanisms is going to take years. To
insist that a NWC, for example must from its very
inception have a timebound schedule for global
disarmament is to greatly weaken, not strengthen, the
chances of getting such a body institutionalised.

As for the CTBT being discriminatory this is just plain
wrong. The NPT has different treaty obligations for the
NWSs and the NNWSs legally enshrined. The CTBT has no
such discrimination having the same obligation for all
member signatories. One can claim that behind this legal
non-discrimination lies a ground situation of inequality
and discrimination which the treaty does not adequately
address. But this is a qualitatively different kind of
criticism than the morally charged and deeply misleading
accusation of the CTBT itself being discriminatory. At
best, one can claim that the CTBT is seriously flawed
because one set of signatories, the NWSs, is not
adequately restrained while the NNWSs or threshold
nuclear states are. This line of criticism thus connects
with the issue of sub-criticals and computer simulation.
But even here the popular Indian claims were misleading.
Despite the freedom to carry these out, the CTBT is a
powerful restraint on all signatories.

Though the scientific evidence against exaggerating the
value of sub-criticals, simulation and such facilities
as the National Ignition Facility (US) and Laser
Megajoule (France) is overwhelming, one does not have to
be a nuclear physicist to realise that the CTBT is a
genuine and powerful restraint measure on all the NWSs.
One only has to use one's common sense. The Republican
party, numerous former top bureaucrats, the weapons
laboratories, sections of the military, etc., would
never have opposed the CTBT in the US if this was not
the case. Senate ratifaction is still uncertain. Nor is
there any way that Russia and China would have gone
along with the treaty if their scientific establishments
believed the US because of its technological lead,
would not be significantly restrained by its provisions.
Yet some Indian critics claimed both that the US
wanted the CTBT because it alone could monopolise the
benefits of its 'loophole', and also, that the US so
badly wanted the treaty it was willing to forego its
monopoly by eliminating its technological lead through
extension to the other NWSs!

Copyright 1988 The Hindu