What Have Nukes Got To Do With It?

It is interesting to note that North Korea defied the world and joined the nuclear bandwagon the same week that Kanti Bajpai was arguing in Outlook (Fission and No Fizz) that India did not gain anything by going nuclear in 1998. The fact that even a crackpot dictator like King Jong-Il thinks that there is some value in going nuclear should make us re-assess Bajpai's arguments. 

The P-5 states—the US, Russia, China, France, and the UK—as well as Israel, India, and Pakistan are not hanging onto their nuclear weapons because of sheer bloody mindedness or because they just want to show off. They perceive nuclear weapons as having a clear strategic value in the current security environment. Nuclear weapons provide an insurance against an uncertain future, and are a clear deterrent against perceived current and emerging nuclear threats to their security. Nuclear weapons have relevance to these actors. In addition, there is an undeniable perception is that nuclear weapons also confer prestige and influence. The international response to India and Pakistan's nuclear development make this very clear. Finally nuclear weapons mean that a state possessing them can never afford to be made to feel desperate. Once a state has nuclear weapons, other states can no longer afford to back it into a corner, or threaten its very existence. 

North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons for the same reason that the above states retain theirs—specifically for deterrence against perceived external challenges, regime security, and to exploit the enhanced power and influence that comes with being a nuclear power. In all likelihood, North Korea will be unable to really exploit the 'power and influence' aspect because it lacks all the other essential elements—a functioning and stable economy, an ability to engage meaningfully with the international community, including something worthwhile to offer the international system. But with nuclear weapons, Pyongyang will gain a degree of regime security against perceived external challenges that cannot be ignored. That is the perception of the regime, and certainly no one seems to be in a hurry to use military force against North Korea, given the risks that any retaliation by Pyongyang, as bloody and indiscriminate as it would be at the non-nuclear level, could escalate to a WMD level. This is why it is seriously doubtful that North Korea would ever give up its nuclear capabilities through a process of diplomatic negotiations, now that they have them. Iran is also making the same calculations as its partner in Pyongyang. If there is one lesson regimes like North Korea and Iran would have learnt from the invasion of Iraq, it’s that they should acquire nuclear weapons as soon as possible. The difference in the responses of the US towards North Korea and Iraq is there for all to see.

States operating in an anarchic international environment continue to make such "irrational" choices and India has been no exception. While Bajpai offers amono-causal argument (i.e. India's economic success has led to India's current global stature), no one who supported India'snuclearisation claimed that once India comes out of the nuclear closet, all its security problems would be resolved and its stock would rise in the global community. The reason why the BJP government was able to undertake nuclear tests in the first place was because of a stable economic environment bequeathed to it by its predecessors. 

History has shown that as states grow economically their political and strategic ambitions expand. As India has prospered in the last few years, its ambitions to emerge as a major player in the world have also come out into the open. It is now being openly conceded that the emergence of China and India in the early 21st century will be comparable to the rise of Germany in the 19th and America in the 20th, with impacts potentially as dramatic. Whether this reallymaterialises remains to be seen but a state cannot become a major power with just one arrow in its quiver—the economy. If that were the case, Japan would not have been complaining for long that it is not taken seriously and needs military muscle to back up its economic might, with some in Japan even suggesting the acquisition of nuclear weapons. 

A major power needs a range of attributes and military capability is one of them. What India's nuclear capability has given India is the confidence to unambiguously convey to the world that it has the ability to defend itself against nuclear threats from other states. Nothing more and nothing less. But this should not be underestimated given that India is the only country in the world bordering two nuclear powers who have not only been unfriendly to India but have also colluded against Indian interests time and again. Moreover, the pressures from the global arms control regime were at their peak with the CTBT coming to its ratification stage and the NPT coming in for its permanent extension. In many ways, the time had come for Indiato prick the bubble of global non-proliferation regime and it did so by openly demonstrating its nuclear prowess to the world, something that all Indian governments, irrespective of their ideologies, had nurtured and sustained.

Bajpai's piece also highlights that even eight years after India's nuclear tests, the discourse on this issue in India has remained remarkably uni-dimensional, focusing primarily on India's gains and losses after Pokharan II. Important though this debate is, it ignores the far-reaching changes that have taken place and still continue to shake the global security environment. India's nuclear tests changed the contours of the security architecture that was constructed during the Cold War. No doubt, with the end of the Cold War itself this security environment was under stress. But the Indian nuclear tests were the first open challenge, by a "responsible" as opposed to a "rogue" member of international community, to this system. It also brought into the open the details of the nuclearwalmart being run by A.Q. Khan and his accomplices around the world with its headquarters in Pakistan and with the tacit collusion of China.

This was the beginning of the end of the non-proliferation regime, the bedrock of Cold War international security though international community has not yet agreed in an alternative. India's open challenge to the global arms control and disarmament framework has led to its re-evaluation by the other major powers in the international system. Great powers have deftly used various arms control provisions to constrain the strategic autonomy of other states in the international system. Indian nuclear tests were a direct challenge to the great powers and the result has been a gradual overhaul of the international security environment. The demise of international arms control is a small part of that overhaul. 

The US has clearly realized the impotence of the non-proliferation regime in preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and has moved on to an emphasis on counter-proliferation. There is also a grudging acceptance that since nuclear proliferation is difficult to prevent fully, international efforts should be geared towards the so-called "rogue" states. In this calculus, nuclear weapons in India's arsenal and Iran's arsenal are not equally dangerous. Iran and North Korea are dangerous regimes with de-stabilizing foreign policy agendas and so their efforts at nuclear acquisition should be taken seriously. It is indeed a double standard but all global politics is about double standards. At least in this case, the double standard makes some sense. 

For long, India had been crying itself hoarse about the hypocrisy of the nuclear non-proliferation regime but no one was listening. With its nuclear tests, it made it clear that it was right all along and forced the global community to challenge their own assumptions. Overall, India as a nation is indeed more confident today, its relationship with Pakistan and China has indeed improved, and the US and the West are definitely taking India more seriously as a power. To suggest that India's nuclear weaponization has nothing at all to do with them is as fallacious as to suggest that it is the sole reason behind these developments. 

Harsh V. Pant teaches in King's College London.