Commentary/Varsha Bhosle

CTBT or not, our goose could still be nuked...

It's true: though I theoretically admire the peacenik outlook, I'm a rank jingoist. While the bleeding hearts picket against infractions by security forces, this xantippe would rather rally for army widows, which women are the true victims of those actions that enable citizens to stage protests and air their pacific magnanimity. For, no inviolable frontiers: no free country.

I use "inviolable borders" purposefully -- it indicates defence, not aggression. For in these loathsome politically correct times, and thanks to the burn-the-draft-card mentality, "protective" has come to mean "offensive" and "nationalistic" isn't the same as "patriotic."

And why was Bhosle drawn her talwar again? Well, here's a report from The Sunday Observer of March 9: 'While the US was twisting India's arm to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty last year, the Pentagon was busy deploying a new and substantially more destructive nuclear weapon... the (US) Department of Energy claimed that this weapon, with its unique new military characteristics, was not a new weapon but a ''minor modification'' of an existing weapon. But military experts consider the B-61-11 to be a new weapon because it has increased effectiveness compared to the earlier B-61-7 variant.'

The Los Almos-based watch group that originally broke the story ascribes the phased-out B-53 bomb with having had one disadvantage: As a non-penetrating weapon, it had too large a yield to be used in many scenarios; its replacement, our shining, new B-61-11 fixes that nit and penetrates the earth, to boot.

But bear with me while I disgorge bytes of the press: In May 1996, an editorial in The Times, London, had said: 'India is in for a period of confused government, but with luck, it will escape the trap of Hindu militancy... Even graver damage would be inflicted on regional security by the BJP's firm pledge to develop an Indian nuclear bomb.' On the same day, the editorial of The Daily Telegraph had stated: 'The BJP, which advocates the resumption of nuclear tests and restrictions on foreign investment, is obviously hostile to Western interests.'

A week ago, Ms Rebecca Johnson, of the London-based Disarmament Intelligence Review, said that Indians equate the right to conduct a test with Independence, and that India was 'less interested in getting a better treaty than with pandering to an ever more strident sector of domestic opinion that wanted New Delhi to demonstrate its nuclear capability and to keep all of its nuclear options open.'

Last week, The Economist wrote, 'Now another military revolution is dawning. This latest revolution is based on the application of information technology to weapons... These changes favour attack rather than defence: Large, easy-to-hit objects are increasingly vulnerable to weapons such as Cruise missiles steered by satellite beams... The comfort is that, when America uses its gee-whiz new weapons, it will often be in pursuit of objectives that Europe shares. Many of their fundamental interests are similar.'

On March 10, Dawn, Pakistan, reported: 'The US has started destroying its chemical weapons arsenal and has so far destroyed 200,000 such weapons, including rockets, artillery shells and containers carrying mustard gas, nerve gas and other deadly chemicals. But John Holum (director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency) says that the US needs to have ''better tools'' to deal with the danger of chemical weapons that has grown and is much more likely to affect US forces and American people.'

After reading these in conjunction, and noting the righteous use of 'interests', whatever reservations I may have had about India's vetoing the CTBT, vanished. The pieces of the West's hegemony puzzle are beginning to fall into place. So, those who rued my hawkish march against US foreign policy: guys, go wave your star-spangled and leave the tiranga alone please.

As I've said before, the Western nuclear states (US, UK, France and Russia) asked the World Court arbitrating on the nuclear disarmament clause of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to, plainly shove it. And about the fifth nuclear power, the Carnegie Endowment reports that China supplied Pakistan with nuclear-capable HATF-1 and M-11 missiles and is assisting it in building a plutonium production reactor at Khusab and a nuclear power plant at Chasma -- in violation of the NPT. Too, China rejected the site-inspection clause of the CTBT -- to which travesty, the other yielded. And yet, US secretary of state Warren Christopher named India as the 'only country which was creating problems for a test ban treaty by insisting on a time table for total nuclear disarmament.'

In all honesty, I have no problems with the big boys acting upon what they see as correct management of their arms resources; whatever turns them on. OTOH, while the West frolics about in the nuclear pool, why is the Third World being denied even a dip in it? Obviously, they think we simply aren't adult enough to play with naughty toys or boys. (And they could be right, going by the number of anti-nuclear pressure groups in India.)

Before lighting your peace pipes, the thing to remember is that the nuclear powers practice, not disarmament but arms control. By trimming 30,000 warheads to 6,000, the threat of nuclear blackmail is not even diluted, let alone removed (unless one has forgotten the devastation wrought by the solitary mushroom over Hiroshima). More significantly, what's dumped is outdated arsenal: The deadly hi-tech warheads are alive and kickin' -- and now, even updated.

But the most alarming feature of the double-talk is that no nuclear power has agreed to a 'no-first-use' guarantee in case of conflict with a non-nuclear state. The only assurance we've been allowed is that they will not use nuclear arms as long as their terrains are not attacked. Though this seems reasonable enough, what it really means is that if China attacks us first, and we counter-attack, our goose could still be nuked.

To ponder over whether China is in league with Pakistan or not, whether Pakistan has reached its nuclear goals or not, is immaterial. We must assume the worst of our neighbors -- with one Chinese and three Pakistan wars behind us, we can't afford not to. Besides, such assumption is OK in the international security field: Isn't it the basis on which Bill Clinton bombed Iraq? If we don't go nuclear, we may as well do a Saudi Arabia-US fleets in the Gulf, bases in the desert, Big Macs on the streets, Big Brother over the shoulder -- and depend on the whims of the West.

Ideally, the world should be nuclear weapon-free. Hell, it should be all-weapons-free! But that's high Utopia: As a State Department official himself said during the CTBT parleys, 'it is not practical to commit oneself to destroy all nuclear weapons when that is clearly not going to happen.' Meaning, a poor nation like ours has no right to question the time-frame of what it's being forced to sign, regardless of the flouting by its coercers. They may use treaties as tools for Western propaganda and witch hunts, but we may not aspire to what the sahibs possess. Plain old colonial imperialism, if you ask me.

Thus, isn't fitting that the 'entry-into-force' clause (i e, the date on which the treaty goes into effect) targeting India should have been introduced and insisted upon by none other than Her Majesty's government...? When the Tories didn't wish to cede control to the EEC, they stirred the Pound/ECU dispute; whey they wanted time against the CTBT, they made India the goat. As things stand, if we do not ratify the treaty after three years, the powers will decide 'what measures may be undertaken,'. Meaning, white teacher is all set to spank our brown bottoms.

As I see it, India's present dilemma has been created by the post-Indira Congress (her, I admire immensely, despite the harm she wrought). After the NPT farce, and with the CTBT looming, why wasn't national security given highest priority and the nuclear option exercised? Why didn't we present the world with at least two nuclear fait accomplis in the last 23 years? Probably because, apart from following the policy of appeasement even on the global stage, large shares of defence budgets went into private Swiss accounts, leaving little for expensive tests.

It's all very well to chant peace and goodwill and want funds to be diverted to more vital areas -- but the fact remains that the international status quo must be maintained. Think of it this way: if all the 'belligerent' nations went nuclear, wouldn't the end-result be the same as disarmament? Pakistan and India, or Israel and Syria, wouldn't dare attack each other unless they wished to be nuked out of existence. For, even taking into account Islamic fundamentalist imbecility, I really can't believe that the human race has survived so long by being that witless and self-destructive. But just in case it is, aren't we better off being fried?

'Course we're in a right royal soup now: The mighty West has many ways to bring to us to heel. If we hold out for national security and sovereign equality, there certainly will be reprisals and hard times ahead. But frankly, in my Marhatta tradition, I'd rather go down poor but fighting.

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