V. Ramana
Two
summers ago, when India and Pakistan tested their nuclear weapons—Pakistan
for the first time and India, after a gap of 24 years, for the second
time—the U.S. government suddenly discovered the dangers of nuclear weapons.
President Bill Clinton, for example, stated: “I cannot believe that we are
about to start the 21st
century by having the Indian subcontinent repeat the worst mistakes of the 20th
century, when we know it is not necessary to peace, to security, to
prosperity, to national greatness or personal fulfillment.” The same
President Clinton who signed the Presidential Decision Directive 60 (PDD 60)
in December 1997, which recommits the United States to policies of threatened
first use and affirms that the U.S. will continue to rely on nuclear arms as a
cornerstone of its national security for the “indefinite future.” And
whose administration has assured Russia in secret talks earlier this year that
the two will continue to possess thousands of nuclear weapons under any
possible future arms control agreement.
In their book New
Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament, Praful Bidwai and
Achin Vanaik document not just how nuclear weapons are unnecessary “to
peace, to security, [and] to prosperity” but the various ways in which they
are positively detrimental to all of these. The authors are two of India’s
leading journalists and long-time nuclear policy analysts and peace activists.
Bidwai and Vanaik’s deep commitment and long years of thinking about nuclear
weapons and following nuclear developments in India and the rest of the world
are apparent throughout the book. Not just through the wealth of detail
(resulting in part from their journalistic access) and profusion of arguments
against nuclear weapons, but also through their strong political sense that
results from being active on a number of struggles focused on a range of
issues.
Bidwai and
Vanaik attack not only the relatively obviously weak links in the rationales
given for the acquisition and maintenance of nuclear arsenals, but also the
strongest link in nuclear theology, namely deterrence theory. Examining the
efficacy of deterrence is extremely important. As Bidwai and Vanaik put it,
“the case for nuclear weapons…stands or falls with the strengths or
weaknesses of the arguments for or against deterrence.” To do this, they
start with a critique of the system of International Relations thinking called
realism. For realists, the state is a unitary and rational actor whose
objective is to maximize “national security.” In their conceptual world,
the fact that the state and its policies are the result of domestic political
battles is of little importance. In the real world, however, these battles are
of great importance.
It is these
domestic political battles that make deterrence unstable. As Patrick Morgan
points out, the multiplicity of individuals, institutions, and interests that
shape decision-making could lead to outcomes that would be termed irrational
(Patrick Morgan, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis, Sage, 1977).
Starting from a general critique of realism and the basis of deterrence,
Bidwai and Vanaik also list several reasons for why nuclear deterrence is at
best an unstable equilibrium and why there are multiple possibilities of
failure.
Bidwai and
Vanaik’s arguments against deterrence form one major component of what must
really be described as several books rolled into one. Some of the other
components deal with the global history of nuclear weapons, the Indian and
Pakistani nuclear programs, the special dangers and specific impacts in the
South Asian situation, the immorality of nuclear weapons, and the history and
the future of the peace movement. Though at one level this profusion gets a
little confusing, it is important to see the arguments against nuclearism as
one inter-related package.
Not
surprisingly Bidwai and Vanaik focus a lot of attention on the Indian path to
the 1998 tests and the dangers specific to nuclear weapons in that region. But
their position, needless to say, is not that the brown finger on the trigger
is somehow more dangerous than the white finger—a position articulated in
subtle or not-so-subtle ways by many U.S. policy makers in this post-cold-war
era where “rogue states” and “terrorists” are the new threats that
allow for continued funneling of billions of dollars to the military
industrial complex. Instead, and quite correctly, Bidwai and Vanaik stress the
dangers inherent in anyone possessing nuclear weapons.
In discussing
the causes for India going nuclear, the authors correctly stress the
importance of the new brand of Hindu nationalism that the rise of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the last 15 years or so has bestowed the
country. Drawing on Vanaik’s earlier book, The Furies of Indian
Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization (Verso, 1997), the
authors explore the wider social factors underlying this phenomenon and the
corrosive effects of this force. With respect to the nuclear question, the
family of Hindu nationalist organizations acts in many ways. To start with,
the rise of Hindu nationalism has resulted in a wide-ranging assault on the
fundamental principles that underlay Indian foreign policy. Then, with no
respect for democracy, the ruling Hindu nationalist government secretly
decides to test nuclear weapons in 1998. Following the tests, the goon squads
belonging to the family of Hindu nationalist organizations take the lead in
violently attacking those opposing nuclear and military programs. This
twin-attack pattern is repeated in other arenas of struggle as
well—illustrating Bidwai and Vanaik’s point that to struggle for the
abolition of nuclear weapons, you have to struggle for much more than that.
But the strong
emphasis on the role of the BJP obscures to some extent the collusion of
different parties in building the infrastructure needed to manufacture nuclear
weapons. In his book, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb (St.
Martin’s Press, 1998), Itty Abraham has argued that the 1974 nuclear test
conducted by India was inherent, though mediated by specific conjectures, in
the particular brand of nationalism followed ever since independence by the
ruling Indian elite. More recently, George Perkovich, in India’s Nuclear
Bomb (University of California, 1999), has documented the role of all
Indian governments since 1974 in maintaining and advancing the nuclear and
missile programs. Rather than the continuity and break dichotomy that Bidwai
and Vanaik pose, it may be more appropriate to think of the process as
resembling a ratchet. At each point in time, there is no possibility of going
back but the forward movements are often small steps, each bringing the
country closer to weaponization. The BJP, then, would not take the whole
blame. To be fair, Bidwai and Vanaik realize this. Their account of how India
turned from being a proponent of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty way back in
1954 to voting against it when it finally came up for signature in 1996 is
proof that other governments have played a role in this ratcheting process.
The questions that one is left with are: could one conceive of circumstances
where other parties may have proceeded to order a nuclear test? And what would
the response of the fledgling peace and anti-nuclear movements have been?
Bidwai and
Vanaik’s book is unusual among books related to nuclear weapons in that it
grapples with the hard problems of how to build a peace and anti-nuclear
movement. The lessons and suggestions that Bidwai and Vanaik offer are as
relevant for the U.S. as they are for India. This is something that
progressives, activists, and concerned citizens in this country should pay
attention to. With Russia on the verge of economic collapse and the much
smaller arsenals possessed by other nuclear weapon states, the only country
that is capable of rapid strides towards the abolition of nuclear weapons is
the United States. Given the nature of the rulers of this country, their
enormous attraction for these weapons of terror, and the extent of the
military-industrial complex in the country, it must be obvious to any thinking
person that simply offering arguments for why nuclear weapons are bad alone
will not do. There is no magic wand that can be waved so as to make nuclear
weapons disappear from here. What is needed is to build a social movement that
can challenge the very nature of power in this country and the exercise of
military force around the globe. As the authors conclude, “if it succeeds
there is everything, indeed literally a whole world, to be gained.”
M. V.
Ramana is a research associate at the Center for Energy and Environmental
Studies, Princeton University and the author of Bombing Bombay: Effects of
Nuclear Weapons and a Case Study of a Hypothetical Explosion (International
Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, 1999).