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US planned to arm India, Pakistan with Nuclear weapons
WASHINGTON, Oct 28: Seeking to offset the power of China and the Soviet Union, the
United States considered arming India and other Asian states with nuclear weapons at the
height of the Cold War, according to a new book.
The book, "India's Nuclear Bomb" by George Perkovich due out next month, provides the
most detailed glimpse yet of high-level US debate on such "nuclear sharing" in the mid- 1960s
to counter growing Communist might.
China changed the international balance of power when it carried out its maiden nuclear test
blast on Oct 16, 1964. India, at odds with China over territorial disputes in their borderlands,
already was debating building a bomb of its own.
Citing declassified US records and interviews with Indian scientists and government officials,
Perkovich documents a persistent proposal to help India, first and foremost, acquire a nuclear
capability.
"The basic idea was to make arrangements for friendly Asian countries to receive and militarily
deliver low-yield tactical nuclear weapons that the United States would provide to them in the
event of Chinese aggression," wrote Perkovich, director of the Secure World Programme for
the W. Alton Jones Foundation, a Charlottesville, Virginia, philanthropy.
A declassified 1964 US Defence Department study, for instance, suggested the possibility of
making nuclear weapons available to India, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines,
Taiwan, Pakistan, Thailand and South Korea.
The study, forwarded to Secretary of State Dean Rusk on Dec 4, 1964, paid special attention
to India, said by its authors to be capable of producing and testing a nuclear device in one to
three years of a decision to do so.
TWO KEY GOALS: The United States had two key goals at the time, according to
Perkovich. One was to head off an independent Indian nuclear weapons programme in a
foreshadowing of current US non-proliferation concerns.
The second was to give Washington the option of "controlled use of nuclear weapons" against
the Communist government in Beijing, while supposedly limiting the risk of touching off a
global conflict, Perkovich wrote.
Arming possible US proxies with nuclear weapons could perhaps have avoided a direct clash
with the Soviet Union if it went to China's aid in an Asian regional conflict, said the Pentagon
study carried out by John McNaughton, then an assistant secretary of defence for international
security affairs.
The idea was to try to prevent any future nuclear exchanges from spilling over to US soil,
Perkovich said.
"This possibility - as much as the aim of stemming proliferation in India or other states -
motivated the Pentagon's approach to the problem," according to the book, which is subtitled,
"The Impact on Global Proliferation."
The Pentagon study envisaged helping modify India's bomber fleet, training flight crews,
providing dummy weapons for drills and passing on "weapons effect data for planning and
necessary target data to support the feasibility and desirability of weapon use."
PARALLEL TREATMENT FOR PAKISTAN: Washington would have provided parallel
treatment to Pakistan, India's traditional rival, partly to head off any backlash from Islamabad,
the book said.
India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947,
went on to carry out tit-for-tat nuclear tests in May 1998.
The book said the nuclear-sharing proposal - eventually rejected at the highest levels of US
government as too problematic - called for developing facilities in partner states "to handle
weapons if and when they were needed."
The proposal to equip others to deliver US atomic bombs lived on for another two years.
According to a 1966 study prepared for President Lyndon Johnson by the State Department,
British officials were briefed and "indicated they wished |
