Sound Of Fury

FURY, condemnation, disbelief. Washington bristled with these sentiments in the immediate aftermath of India’s nuclear tests. A hint of scorn too. Sample only Assistant Secretary of State Karl Inderfurth’s words to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, at a hearing last Wednesday: "There are reports from the Indian press which cite gleeful claims that India has now become the world’s sixth superpower—a fact which is apparent only to those making the claim. Clearly, the world thinks otherwise."

But amid all this, did the tests also bring a certain grudging respect for New Delhi? Perhaps leverage for a possible seat at the UN Security Council? Perhaps even a bargaining chip at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva?

Not at all, chimes a chorus of US officials, lawmakers, and analysts who claim they will never again trust India, which had claimed all along to be a conscientious objector to the world nuclear regime. And so the "ton of bricks", as one Western European diplomat put it, came hurtling down on New Delhi—an array of stiff economic sanctions, suspension of military cooperation. Envoy Richard Celeste, who happened to be in Hawaii, was recalled for consultations.

Once the US exploded, it was only a matter of time before foot-soldiers reacted with matching zeal. Australia and New Zealand were first off the block—withdrawing their envoys for talks hours after the blasts. Japan, with its own personal history never receding from mind, slapped tough economic sanctions. But world reaction was hardly homogenous. The powerful G-8, meeting at Birmingham, asserted that "there will be no collective sanctions". Of the eight, Japan and the US have slapped sanctions; but the others—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the UK and Russia—opted for restraint. Spokesman Alastair Campbell stressed the G-8 wanted to get India to sign the CTBT but that they didn’t want to "raise the temperature". French ambassador to India Claude Blanchemaison said in Delhi that though France was concerned about the stability of the region, he didn’t think sanctions were the "most appropriate way to help India to join the CTBT".

But the US led the world in condemning India. Dr Gideon Rose, who co-authored the 1997 Independent Task Force report, "A New US Policy Toward India and Pakistan", stated mainstream opinion forcefully. "That India’s current government chose to ignore (US) warnings and move forward in this area is deeply regrettable—not least because it makes those of us who have argued for better US-Indian relations, partly on the basis of past Indian responsibility, look like fools or patsies. That the Indian tests came as a bolt from the blue, moreover—and that a high-level Indian delegation visiting Washington (and New York) mere days before the event never gave the slightest hint of what was in the offing, adds insult to injury. It may be a long time before the words of senior Indian diplomats are taken seriously again as reliable indicators of Indian government policy," he said.

Repudiating the claim that the tests were conducted to demonstrate India’s greatness, US President Bill Clinton said in Berlin, where he was attending the 50th anniversary of the Berlin airlift: "They have to define the greatness of India in 21st century terms, not in terms that everybody else has already decided to reject." Although there has been no word that Clinton’s late ’98 visit to India will be cancelled, official Washington does not expect the plan to go through now.

 To be sure, dissenters to this seemingly all-round American indignation too could be found. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich criticised Clinton’s ‘lopsided’ policy. "I think it’s a very one-sided position. If he’s going to apply that, he ought to apply it as much to China," he said. "China has more nuclear weapons, missiles, and has conducted more tests than India. I’m curious about his (Clinton’s) imbalance, this anti-Indian bias, and this willingness to forgive the Chinese anything. You’ve had a one-sided policy that a Chinese dictatorship is okay, but an Indian democracy isn’t."

"INDIA IS DELUDING ITSELF THAT N-ARMS WILL MAKE IT A SUPERPOWER DESPITE POVERTY, DISEASE, MISERY."

The speed with which Clinton imposed sanctions—without even the 30-day grace period—is an indication of the depth of official US wrath. The fact that America has never before invoked its Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act, 1994, sent US officials scrambling to find out what the legal and political ramifications would be. Apart from the squeeze on millions of dollars in direct aid and billions in credits and guarantees, this could signal "a long-term rift between the US and India," said a White House source.

Clinton’s alacrity probably had as much to do with trying to head off Islamabad from conducting its own retaliatory tests as to punish India, said a senior Congressional aide. The team of officials headed by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott was despatched to Islamabad with the message that an N-test would invite "the same punitive sanctions on Pakistan". The carrot is that restraint could help repeal the Pressler Amendment—a proposal to the effect was tabled in the Senate on May 15—which bars US military sales to Pakistan because of its N-programme.

Capitol Hill, meanwhile, overflowed with wholesale opprobrium for India. Republican Sen. Jesse Helms waxed derisive: "India has deluded itself into the absurd assumption that the possession of N-weapons will make it a ‘superpower’, at a time when hundreds of millions of its people are in poverty. The fact is India is tangled in economic knots; disease and misery are rampant—hence the absurd assumption that a big boom will make them a big power."

Washington is also concerned about the domino effect. "As India puts its finger on the nuclear trigger, how many will follow suit?" asked Ted Koppel on ABC TV’s Nightline. Besides Pakistan, the US is also watching closely the effect on North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and to a lesser extent, on Israel. The same programme also drew a half-serious scenario of Indian nuclear-powered submarines being able to target US cities. Not to be outdone, a guest on one of the late-night talk shows, Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, wondered whether Clinton himself had set off the nuclear device in India to divert attention from domestic scandals.

THE US BRISTLED WITH IRE INITIALLY, BUT EXPERTS SEE HOPE IN INDIA’S SOFTNESS ON THE FMCT—IT COULD SIGNAL "A SERIES OF TRADE-OFFS".

AS for countries in the European Union, the British expressed "shock and dismay" over the tests. On May 13, deputy high commissioner P.K. Singh was summoned to the Foreign Office in London and told that the British government was "deeply disturbed" by the tests. Yet, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman clarified there would be no sanctions. Sweden and Denmark talked sanctions and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said it would continue all existing development projects, but that $6 billion worth of fresh aid commitment for 1998 would be put on hold.

But not so with Japan. After cancelling $30 million worth of grants soon after the first test, it suspended $1 billion worth of annual loans to India after the second round of tests. In Moscow, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said "India had let us down", but foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov clarified that Russia would not support an international cartel of sanctions against India.

So, what can be done to lift US sanctions? A Congressional source told Outlook that though "the US-India relationship had been derailed and a rocky period lay ahead", he was "not unhopeful". It was "not in US interests to treat India as an adversary or rogue state". What he thought would happen now was for "the Administration and Congress to begin consultations about the realities in South Asia and try to mesh them with our global non-proliferation objectives. To lift sanctions, what do we need India to do? The Administration has to have an accurate road map to do this."

Did the Administration have such a road map? They were working on it, confirmed a State Department official. The only way they could be lifted was "for Congress to pass another law", he said. Under what circumstances would Congress lift sanctions? Proliferation expert Selig Harrison—who in a remarkably prescient paper suggested two months ago that India would go the China way and conduct several tests before signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty—told Outlook that "it was possible for India and Washington to come to an understanding regarding India’s access to civilian missile technology, which the US is making available to China but not to India." The fact that the Indian government "was now talking about signing the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty was a big step forward" and could be part of a "series of trade-offs" by India.

As far as the CTBT was concerned, he felt that if India was prepared to terminate testing but was still reluctant to sign, the US (in lieu of India signing) might accept a firm commitment from India, perhaps made at the UN, that it would no longer test.

Most important, is Indian diplomacy equal to the task of limiting damage, if not actually wresting advantages, from the crisis? Earlier last week, Indian Ambassador to the US Naresh Chandra came across as lame and inarticulate in a TV interview with PBS’ Jim Lehrer. Says one source: If New Delhi wants to influence American public opinion, they will need persuasive and better-briefed speakers.
with Sanjay Suri in London and Janaki Kremmer in Delhi