Why We Must Sign The CTBT

OVER the past three weeks the Americans and, possibly at their instigation, non-White world leaders like Nelson Mandela and KofiAnnan, have given India every reason to draw back from signing the CTBT. Predictably, Indians have risen to the bait. At its Jaipur meeting, the BJP national executive cautioned its own government against signing the CTBT. At Panchmarhi, the Congress too decided that the CTBT could wait.

These reactions reflect, at least in part, Indian annoyance with some of the conflicting statements from, and actions by, Washington in the past three weeks. Even while deputy US secretary of state Strobe Talbott has explicitly conceded the legitimacy of India's security concerns, and asked India to recognise the legitimacy of America's desire to protect the global non-proliferation regime, the state department, and President Clinton, have been leaving no stone unturned to isolate India from the rest of the world. Following his phonecall to Tony Blair to initiate sanctions against India during the May meeting of the European Union, the joint resolution with China condemning India and Pakistan's N-tests, and his by and large unsuccessful effort to get President Yeltsin to include a strong condemnation of the tests in their joint statement in Moscow last week, one can be excused for wondering whether parts of President Mandela's speech and Kofi Annan's report to the UN on the threat to security posed by the tests, were also drafted in Washington.

Nor is that all: Indian scientists are being denied visas to the US to attend conferences in areas that have little to do with defence, or being sent packing in the middle of their assignments there. The White House staff has been pumping phones day and night to discourage banks and companies from investing in India, or to pull out if they are not already committed. And faceless bureaucrats in the European Union secretariat have been working with their US commerce department counterparts to unearth rules that they can use to impose unilateral sanctions on Indian imports to their countries.

What was galling about both the Mandela and Annan speeches was not the sentiment the speakers voiced against nuclear proliferation, or the desire to see a resolution of the Kashmir dispute that they both contained, but their failure to say a single word of criticism against China. China has done for Pakistan in the past six years what US refused to do even for Britain in the middle of World War II. That was, to quote an American strategic expert, to transfer the complete technology for nuclear weapons and delivery systems to Pakistan. And it did all this in contravention of the NPT, which it has signed as a nuclear power.

Nor is there a single word of condemnation in either speech of the terrorism unleashed on Kashmir from across the border in the last six years. What difference is there, then, between Mandela and Annan, and the US deputy under secretary of state, Thomas Pickering, who tells an American audience after the Afghan missile attacks, that 'American lives are not expendable'?

Their failure to make even a token acknowledgement of the pressure that these developments placed on India, and the role they played in pushing it over the brink, strongly reinforces the suspicion that despite all of Mr Talbott's emphatic assertions to the contrary, the US and its camp followers have not accepted India's security concerns as being legitimate. For them China has done no wrong, and when zealots trained in Pakistani and Afghan camps head east from Peshawar, it is not terrorism but a legitimate holy war. India would therefore be well within its rights if it refused to go any further in its talks with the US without an unambiguous signal that these suspicions are unfounded, and a commitment to withdraw the covert sanctions (as distinct from the overt ones) that it has set in motion all over the world.

And yet that would be the wrong thing to do. Maturity as a nation and the highest level of patriotism demand that we resist the temptation to lash out at the injustice of these actions, swallow the implied insults and work to make our nation strong. And that requires that we sign the CTBT without any further delay. Signature of the CTBT should not even be linked to an agreement on any other thorny aspect of the negotiations that may remain, straightaway. The reason is that it is hard to think of a single country that does not fear the disintegration of the non-proliferation regime. And with every day India stays out, the danger of the entire shaky edifice crumbling becomes greater.

ASEAN, Japan and South Korea are deeply worried by the possibility that North Korea might use the pretext provided by the South Asian tests to go nuclear too. Its launch of a satellite whose third stage travelled a mere 1,630 kms has heightened these anxieties. Japan is reconsidering its nuclear option. Indeed this has never been far from the surface of public debate in that country, and successive governments have kept the lid on only with some difficulty. That accounts for its anger with India and the fact that it too is putting pressure on its businessmen to stay out of India.

Germany also found the decision to forswear nuclear weapons a hard one to take, given its proximity to Russia and its grim history of conflict with that country. Its government too has come under pressure to reconsider its decision. This would account for Yeltsin's sudden and emphatic assertion that Russia will not consider any additions to the nuclear club. Most serious of all is the possibility that Pakistan might pass on missile technology not only to other Muslim states but also 'lose' it to the Taliban. Even the CTBT is under threat, ironically in the US, where some Republicans are expressing reservations about ratifying the treaty at this time, and have teamed up with elements in the armed forces that want an increase in allocations for the star wars programme.

India does not stand to gain from these developments. On the contrary, not only is there a likelihood of a serious deterioration in its security, but if the global NPT regime does disintegrate, it and not Pakistan will be held responsible. It will not then be forgiven and its isolation will be complete. In an economically interdependent world the consequences of isolation does not bear thinking about.

India should sign the CTBT not because it is afraid of the consequences of not doing so but because it believes in, and stands to gain from, the maintenance and strengthening of the global nonproliferation regime. It should sign because this is the debt it owes to the world in which it lives. Nor does it matter that there may be elements in the CTBT agreement to which it could conceivably take objection. For the treaty has an escape clause that the country can activate if it senses a genuine deterioration in its security that the world refuses to take cognisance of.