'Fearful Symmetry' or "do as I say, not what I do".- Oh yeah right.
gunther and everyone:
Here are some thoughts on the recent developments in the subcontinent,from Financial Times London. I am just going to post a few excerpts which I thought are interesting.
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NUCLEAR TESTS: That fearful symmetry
There may be only one superpower, but its reach is limited. A midnight telephone call on Thursday from Bill Clinton, US president, failed to deter Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, from detonating the first nuclear tests by an Islamic state.
After India's nuclear explosions two weeks earlier, there exists in south Asia a "fearful symmetry", says a US official, echoing the poet William Blake.
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Already, the reduced anxiety about nuclear war that has followed the end of the cold war looks but a brief holiday. Now that on the eve of the 21st century the nuclear threat has been revived, it is potentially in an even more dangerous form.
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The tests have thrown US policy in the region into confusion and have thrown into doubt the effectiveness of the entire multilateral effort to curb the spread of nuclear weaponry.
The world only recognises five members of the world nuclear club - the US, Russia, France, the UK and China - but now there are seven de facto nuclear powers, and others waiting in the wings. The question is how the world engages the two new members of the club to prevent a nuclear war, while making clear that developing nuclear weaponry entails heavy costs.
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But according to senior strategic advisers to the BJP, India's tests are aimed elsewhere: China and the US.
At one level, the tests were an attempt to demonstrate to the world, and the US in particular, that India would not allow a continuation of what it calls "nuclear apartheid" - the club of five nuclear powers - and that it would not be cowed into signing up to non-proliferation or test ban treaties which it sees as constraining its own security needs.
"We will not accept an unequal system," says Mohan Guruswamy, head of the BJP's defence cell. "We do not accept that you in the west should have the right and power to shape the world system in the manner of your liking, we don't accept the notion of a unipolar or bipolar world. We think we are a country which will eventually have a stable population of 1.4bn, which has long-term interests and long-term strategic concerns and you should be sensitive to this."
The strategic concern, as Mr Guruswamy, other BJP leaders and India's military establishment see it, is China, which India believes is aiming to "contain" India's rightful political and strategic role in Asia. When George Fernandes, India's defence minister, said publicly before the tests that China was India's chief strategic threat, he was merely voicing what the foreign ministry has long said privately and the military has been saying increasingly publicly. He accused China of "threatening" India through a military "encirclement", including through its supply of missile and nuclear technology to Pakistan (officially denied by China).
Mr Guruswamy suggests that once the furore - which was fully expected by the BJP - over India's tests dies down, the US and other western democratic powers will eventually find that their own strategic interest lies in allying broadly with India, a democracy and huge liberalising market, rather than with China. "The long-term alignment would be the democratic countries of the world versus the totalitarian, the fundamentalist countries - that will be the line-up," says Mr Guruswamy. "And the US is central to this."
Given this backdrop, say diplomats in Beijing, China is faced with the prospect of trying to ease tensions but remain sufficiently unobtrusive so as not to inflame Indian passions. Diplomats suggest China will aim to resist any attempts to cast it as a source of tension in south Asia. By depicting itself as a responsible nuclear power, it also hopes to win support from the US, ahead of a summit between US and Chinese leaders next month.
However, its ability to assuage tensions is constrained by its alliance with Pakistan, which went ahead with its tests in the face of the threat of economically damaging US sanctions - and the possibility of increased US aid if it decided not to test.
The Pakistani response, says Mr Cronin of the US Institute of Peace, "is a dose of reality for the US. Interests, not norms, will always drive policy." Preaching non-proliferation has therefore been a weak basis for policy. Moreover, since security concerns would always outweigh economic matters in government decision-making, economic sanctions are always unlikely to prove effective.
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Beyond that, the present multilateral approach emphasises the ambiguous positions of the five established nuclear powers. Non- proliferation efforts are directed towards maintaining a status quo. This, says Daniel Plesch of the British American Security Information Council, which seeks an end to nuclear weapons, is essentially a matter of "do as I say, not what I do".
For example, while urging India and Pakistan to sign on to the CTBT, the US has yet to ratify it. The head of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms, has said he is even less likely to back its ratification now, because it would threaten US security.
In addition, the fissile material negotiations are making little progress, in part because of French objections. The budget of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has a nuclear safeguards programme, has been frozen at $100m for the past 15 years, while billions are spent on nuclear defence.
With the status quo shattered, support may grow for a multilateral approach that has as one of its long-term objectives an agreement on a substantial nuclear disarmament by established nuclear powers. Such an approach would confront huge objections in military and political establishments among the nuclear powers.
But India backs the idea and it would be supported by most governments around the world. Perhaps almost as an important, in the US a large majority of public opinion is still frightened by the prospect of nuclear war and supports disarmament, according to opinion polls. "These events will renew the debate about a minimum nuclear deterrent. People do not want to go back to the days of 'Duck and Cover' drills," says Mr Cronin.
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