The Pralay Mythology

Interview: Kanti Bajpai
The Pralay Mythology
Tracing it back to Nehru, Kanti Bajpai, while not being entirely dismissive of the arguments of the defence strategists and experts, argues that none of these stand up to close scrutiny.

AMITAV GHOSH

Original Interview: August 1998
Please click here for exclusiveexcerpts  from Countdown. For more writings by and on Amitav Ghosh, please visit his website, amitavghosh.com,where this first appeared

KB: I had done some work at the M.A. level already on economic development, macro-models of the economy andso on. I was quite interested in the whole issue of democracy in the military --- and explored this is anarticle called ‘Generals and Politics in India’ where I argued that there possibly could never be a coupin India.

I began to look at the Pakistan army as well. Steve had already finished his book on the Pakistanarmy, he was also interested in launching a research programme on arms control and disarmanent in South Asia acrossdisciplines. He was the only South Asianist then who was interested in the Military. He however didnot discourage me.

My funding in fact came from the Arms Control Office. I got drawn into issues concerninginternational security— these were Reagan days - it was 1982 - the time when Reagan began this wholeextraordinary business called Star Wars — than there was this whole debate going in the US about a functionaldefence system and Illinois was one of the few places which brought together people from all disciplines —scientists, business people, social scientists. People who were actually involved in making the bomb and I wastherefore drawn into these issues.

So begun a project on South Asian Security. Out of that broadly I learnt a lot about the bomb - And Stephen's first book on the Security of South Asia dealt a fire amount with theissue in 1985. And the debate began with works of K. Subrahmanyam, T.R. Chari, R.R. Subramaniam who began to takethe issue of nuclear weapons quite seriously.

We had a lot of stuff with Steve also on the whole issue ofmilitarization. Alfred Marx's classic book on the Study of Militarism... all that ... I began to see from a moreexpanded field of interest than I had begun initially.

It was clear that the Indian Army had more than a role in the issue of security than I had imagined. Ithink my interest in democracy, the military, my readings on militarism, of John Lynn who had as interest instrategy - he always argued that strategy ended when nuclear bombs arrived.

In that first book in 1984, my friend Rashed Naim playfully began writing on a India Pakistan nuclear warand I had done a course on deterrence and worked through quite a lot of that stuff with him - building upscenarios etc.

AG: About CTBT - I had a feeling that there was absolute consensus on the issue.

KB: There was a near consensus then.

AG: What do you think was wrong with India's stand on it?

KB: The first thing about India's stand was that if felt that the treaty was discriminatory. Countries likethe US principally had the liberty to carry on tests not banned by the CTBT Laboratory tests, computersimulated tests and so called hydrogen or sub-critical tests.

The argument here was that only the five couldcarry out the whole range of tests leading to the development of new weapons. The discriminatory aspect wasthat these five still retained the ability to carry on nuclear research and weapons while the only test thatthe others could carry out were the explosion tests which the CTBT banned.

The second argument was that theCTBT was full of holes so far as verification clauses were concerned. People could [do] things clandestinely -- whatif a country, say, for example, China, simply transferred a known bomb design to a country like Pakistan, thatwould subvert the sprit of the CTBT.

Third, and perhaps the most important objection was that the treaty wasnot bound by any phase or time bound convention of disarmament.

The fourth and final objection that has comeup of late is that the treaty is somehow not commensurate with India's security concerns. Even though nobodywas quite clear about what this meant. I, and some people like me, virtually disagreed with all these objectionsand in fact argued that the treaty was commensurate with India's strategic interest.

All you had to show [was] that if the ban on testing stopped, Pakistan and China (who are supposedly our greateststrategic threats) from testing, then that itself was a security gain. Everyone knew that these countries hadsome sort of a nuclear programme which just required the validation of a live test - and if the Pakistaniswere brought under the treaty and denied that possibility, then that was good.

We tested in 1974 and had avalidated design, and they wouldn't have one - so we could have had a security advantage : China. had a lot ofnuclear weapons but why not stop them in their tracks at least? If you are looking for security arguments thenit seemed that the balance of arguments favoured the stopping of these two powers from testing.

As far as the other arguments are concerned, certain powers have been led into the CTBT in return for thepermanent extension of the NPT. When the 1995 permanent extension took place it was on the understanding thatthe nuclear powers would move towards the comprehensive test ban. That was the tit for tat. So they did have [to]come to the table.

Asking for phased disarmament is all very well, but it is not practical. One had to understand that theyhad a strategic problem - and since the end of the cold war they were doing things which indicated that theywere trying to bring numbers down, for example, START I, START II scrapping of tactical weapons, thoughadmittedly, not as fast as we wanted them to -- but one had to understand their problem as well.

I think to thatextent the CTBT was part of a process and not a isolated thing, and this was genuine disarmament for thefirst time. So stacked up against that, and given the fact that they were dragged into the talks, I think manyof us thought that we were beginning a process.

AG: In America nobody had actually spoken about Complete nuclear disarmament.

KB: That's a goal of course - and the US and others could have gone further in making a gesture towards thatgoal if we had tried harder in Geneva, we could have put a statement in the treaty about the ultimate goal ofnuclear disarmament - but the fact is that we had no intention of going along with CTBT.

If we joined withthe US and 15 to 20 others in the General Assembly and co-sponsored a resolution following the talks in Geneva—but as Mani Dixit who was then Foreign Secretary told us that we wouldn't get a treaty for at least a decade.I suppose they always had it in their minds that they were proceeding towards the tests - they definitelywanted the tests only stopped short.

AG: Why ?

KB: They say that American satellites picked up preparations for the test, also the feeling that the economyin 1995 was still too weak after the crisis of ’94. But rumour was rife in Delhi that it was going tohappen. We had no intention of going along with the CTBT and had to find a way out of it. In fact thescientists, more than anybody else were working at it. The knew the people and how to put their ideas to work.Through people like Subramaniam, Rajamohan.

In the end the GOI was not interested in signing the test ban. In retrospect, I think, because they wanted totest.

AG: In a sense one of the criticisms of the current test was that it was hastily put together. that's onlypartially true then— it's been part of a consistent Indian policy?

KB: Ya, I think so. In 1974 there was a test, in 1982 there is evidence of [a] test being planned at Pokhran, in1995 there were clear signs that they wanted a test and in 1998 they went ahead. If they did a 1974 type testthis time, you could have said that they had arranged it hastily— but they did a range of tests this time - athermonuclear, one of the earlier Pokhran type and two or three sub-criticals. Which means they had beenpreparing this for quite a long time.

AG: How long do you think?

KB: I don't know— I think you'll have to ask some scientific person for that - they may have been ready in’95 and there are sections in the nuclear lobby who have been working on it for a couple of decadesSince about the mid 1980s there were stories appearing which said that India was capable of carrying outthermonuclear tests.

So I think it goes as far back as 1985-86. They might have been ready for the thermonuclear,which means that this stuff had been lying round for quite some which .. just waiting for the right time

Sub-critical tests are more tricky.. Basically you have to stop a series of chain reaction short of fullscale tests and that might have required a lot of work. A sub-critical test publicly came into focus with theCTBT four. Before that we knew little about sub-critical tests and their utility, but I think they may not betechnically very demanding to be very honest.

What you really have to know about sub-critical tests is that doyou have enough data about real tests? And then you can extrapolate from the sub-critical tests in the light ofwhat you already know about the real . Other Governments were very well aware of these and supported theseprograms.

AG: What is the basic impetus behind this long-term policy? Is it a genuine security concern? What is it?

KB: I think you know I'm cynical about what the government says -- they really think they need nuclear weaponsfor security. Surely, there are people around who think there are other spin-offs, more parochial ones, but ,but if you talk to anyone in the armed forces or the MOD to the extent that they understand anything aboutnuclear weapons at all, and commentators like Subramaniam, they genuinely think that nuclear weapons give usdeterrence.

Deterrence against Pakistan which will get nuclear weapons whether or not India has or not andChina which has nuclear weapons for the last thirty years. They believe that there is a serious existentialthreat. They believe that ‘62 could happen all over again. And looked at that way there is something to itand that one just cannot dismiss it and that therefore, I think you should play out some scenarios where thesecurity situation in which nuclear weapons would come into play, when you get down to that you can really testtheir argument.

On the face of it, you have to concede to the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons, so doesChina, there has been a record, a conflict and war, and so under these circumstance which country wouldn't?

AG: So deploy your argument then.

KB: Well, if you were to start building some stories, then you can see that the arguments are flawed.

Takethe Pakistani case. Ever since '72, during the days of Bhutto which predates Pokhran I, just after the shock ofBangladesh, they were determined to go for the nuclear tests. They've never had a civilian nuclear program ofany size. So here military interests were very clear.

The question is: with regard to Pakistan can we be securewithout nuclear weapons? And I think, one can if one takes the military argument seriously. For with Pakistanwe are better off militarily without nuclear weapons along the following logic. If we did not have nuclearweapons, if we hadn't tested in '74, I think Pakistan would have to terminate their program, partly underpressure from the international community and partly from domestic opinion.

So we would have had a situationwhere neither side would have had nuclear weapons and we would have had the advantage of conventional forces-- conventional force superiority.

Now, some people, as soon as you say that, in fact, argued you have pointed thevery reason why Pakistan should have had nuclear weapons whether India had or not, because there's always akind of inequality, and some Pakistanis have made those statements — but I think we would have to accompanyour giving up of the bomb with an offer to negotiate conventional force levels — I mean we've always had tohave more weapons but having more weapons does not always mean that we are at decisive strategic advantage.

You can configure your forces in such a way as not to have a decisive attacking edge, called an offensiveadvantage. We could have sat down with the Pakistanis and had a verifiable agreement where we could have decided on these so that they could have been assured that we did not have the capacity of surprise launcherattacks—this is called non-offensive defence or defensive defence. So if we had tried, we could had stablemilitary relations.

So the argument with Pakistan, simply, is that there was a tricky kind of military problembut if we had been serious about it we could have overcome it.

AG: So, you’re saying that this all goes back to Indira Gandhi’s 1974 testing ?

KB: I think so. Once we tested in ’74, a program that was in its infancy in Pakistan got a certain kind ofpush and there was nothing much you could do about it. Unless we called it off, which we never chose to do.

AG: So we can take it back to Nehru whose initiative lay in starting a nuclear program in ’54?

KB: Yes, I think that is in a sense right. As he wrote, he left open the option of using nuclear energy formilitary purposes. And Pakistanis knew that very well. They followed up their nuclear program soon after that.

AG: So right [from] the very start the Indian State has been committed to the development of nuclear researchand weapons. Why do you think so?

KB: Well if you take the strategic argument, they have been very persuasive. Nuclear weapons for the Indianstate meant a certain profile. It signified really that we were a modern nation. Nehru said that this was onetechnology where India always led ever since independence.

In 1945 itself, Bhabha had already started puttingtogether the evidence of a program here which he could claim to be pretty much up to date with any body else.Bhabhahad deciphered during the war already that the Americans and the Brits were building up a nuclear program. Hewas very well aware of the military applications and had been talking to Nehru throughout and convinced Nehruthat it fitted with Nehru’s "modern temples of science" vision

This was one technology that we had, itwas limitless source of energy, and it gave India a kind of rank that it did not have in any other sphere. Atechnological scientific rank, that enabled it to converse with the best and brightest on the issue.

Here wasa source of energy which only three or four powers had, there were potential spin-offs in all kinds of areaswhich very few countries could boast of. I mean undoubtedly that was bit of an exaggeration -- for example, therewere countries like Sweden, Canada and others who could have caught up very soon.

Even as late as the year before he died, Nehru still thought that India was one of the leading nuclearpowers, that it in effect was like saying we were well ahead of the Chinese, and of course this was one yearbefore they tested at Lop Nor. So I think he bought this idea that nuclearism was some kind of a symbolism ofwhat new India could be.

It is quite deep even now, after the blast, look at all the celebration of thescientists, I mean its 50-60 year old technology. But that mythology of it being a great scientificachievement is amazing—I think our achievements in computer software technology has now taken a lead overthis but the nuclear program runs a close second.

Here's this huge abstruse physics and engineering unleashingthis enormous power and energy. I think it means so many things to so many people. That in a way I think youcan bring an enormous coalition of people into its mythology.

AG: So it is mythology you think?

KB: Yes to an extent that’s what it is. I have had some curious conversations with people which reallyreinforce that impression.

Coming to China for example in a debate at the National Defence College at the timeof the CTBT, there was me, Subramaniam, Rajamohan and Chaired by Matin Zuberi. At some point in response to aquestion for the armed forces by someone from the audience, I laid out an argument as to why we didn’t need abomb vis-à-vis China.

There were three kind scenarios (some of these were drawn up by Subramaniam and I wasbuilding up on those) for example, the problem of India and China over the border, second, the internalproblem of China particularly Tibet i.e. the possibility of a democratic upsurge there which could lead toinstability then Chinese rulers would look for an external scapegoat and India would come in handy as ascapegoat, and you might have a confrontation and the third is that India and China are just kind ofstructural rivals, being the two potential biggest powers in Asia in all kinds of ways, leading to the beliefthat we were always pitted against each other.

Out of that competition there could be military confrontationin which case we would need nuclear weapons. Now if you take the three -- and they are really out there --Subrahmanian just brought them together and argued for them more rigorously. If you look at these then youwould see that nuclear weapons would not be an issue at all.

Take the first one, in 1962 the Chinese won thewar decisively, took Aksai-Chin which was what they really wanted because it linked Xinjiang to Tibet and theysaid they would do some kind of a deal. Aksai-Chin in return for certain territorial claims and counterclaims,So they were the satisfied party on the border issue and so the question was under what situation and whyshould they attack us?

If you’ve got strategically what you want then what on earth would you attack Indiafor? What is the gain of attacking a country of another billion people across enormously hostile plains andmountain passes ? And do what with a billion fractious and poor people? So as far as Aksai-Chin is concernedthey are going to keep it and the only way we can solve the border question is through some hard bargainingand with the passage of time and through generating public opinion and so on and so what is the role ofnuclear weapons in that situation even if we have them?

Unless we propose to take back Aksai-Chin by force -- but even then, how would nuclear weapons help us? Why onearth could we risk a nuclear war for a remote piece of territory? After all Nehru had said that what wasAksai-Chin but a glade of grass?

So I don’t think how nuclear weapons could come into play with respect to borders and we can only hope tonegotiate and bargain our way to a solution and almost certainly we shall have to give up or territorialclaims there because they are not in any way going to give up theirs.

Second is this "internal-external scapegoat" thing. My position is that there could be such apossibility, but if you knew the Chinese, and were aware of the potential enemies in their cosmology -- theRussian bears, Japanese pretenders, the Mongolians and now of course the Americans -- you will find that Indianever figured anywhere in their threat cosmos and so if there was a problem in Tibet I would think that theywould rain their wrath on some of these people and not India—unless India did something really stupid asenlist the Americans to listen on Tibet—install devices to peek into China from Tibet as they did in the1960s.

So I think you know you can discount that possibility. Unless of course anything is possible. Butwhen you are talking about strategic issues you are always talking about things that are plausible.

The third scenario is the weakest—this idea about a race with China, militarily & economically inAsia and the world is ludicrous of all. There is no race—if there was, then the Chinese are way ahead andthey certainly don’t see India as much of a rival.

In any case what would be the nature of that rivalry overpolitical influence over East Asia -- to compete over markets? But countries do compete over markets and accessto trade and finance and all that, but they don’t have to go to nuclear war! If the Americans compete theydo so quite peacefully even after fighting each other most bitterly. Surely we could look for ways to competefor markets in Asia...

But how do you translate nuclear confrontation into better access to South East Asian markets. So I thinkone can demolish that argument as well.

My contention is not that there can’t be possible confrontations on the border issue for example. Borderpatrols can stray but we have lived with that for 30-35 years. Incidentally, our conventional forces are quitestrong and when have had problems here and there as in ’67 we have given them quite a stiff rap on theknuckles and they know it. So if you had a long term concern on the border then the best thing to do is to seethat our to security forces on the border are adequate...

So when I laid out this argument somebody turned to Subramaniam and said ‘what do you say to that?’ Subsaid, well I think he has got it more or less right. So then somebody said then why do we need nuclear weapons?Then Subramaniam said that when we bargain with China on the border, we must have nuclear weapons asa sign that it was an agreement freely arrived at between equals.. So I said, so you want nuclear weapons pointed at the Indian publicthen?

Which meant that you wanted to signal to the Indian public that you somehow needed nuclear weapons to cometo an agreement or bargain—that was one way one idiom in which Indian Government felt it could effectivelycommunicate with its public—

AG: That sounds too horrifying—

KB: Well, he meant it simply as India and China were co-equal partners without the possibility ofintimidation and that would allow the Indian rulers to sell the bargain to the Indian public. I thoughthowever it went deeper than that. It said something about a particular attitude—suggested that the IndianGovernment lacked a certain credence with its own population that after all the years of confrontation withChina it failed to convince its people that whatever it had done was legitimate and right. It signified a longway to go so far as our policy making and participation of our people was concerned.

AG: In a sense what you are pointing to is that it is not just an Indian fear -- this nuclear technology haspoisoned local imagination. Can you ever imagine an American president trying to sell total disarmament to theAmerican public? No matter how rational that would be—?

KB: Yes that would be very difficult for there is something about the whole idea of nuclear weapons thatruns quite deep—the notion of exterminism.

AG: What is that ?

KB: Something that E.P Thompson was writing about, I think Thompson was trying to say that nuclear research,nuclear technology etc. are not cottage industries—they presume bigness, compartmentalization of Scientific,technological endeavor, they presume great levels of secrecy of arcane ness, and all these put togetherreflects so much the spirit of the age—

AG: Which is....

KB: A social order built around tropes like these, they go deep—we are fascinated by bigness—so much sothat even if there are alternate discourses, we are both attracted and repelled by enormity I mean who isn’tfascinated by bigness, secrecy, there’s a terrible fascination with those things—

AG: What about deterrence ?

KB: There’s a story about deterrence, the story of a man walking down the street and waving his arms inthe air, his head craned at an odd angle, and someone comes up and asks him, excuse me what are you doing? Whyare you waving your arms like this—what’s wrong ?

The man said "its about the pink elephants" so the other said—‘What pink elephants?’ The man wenton ‘Its the pink elephants’. "But I don’t see any pink elephants?" came the reply. So the man turned roundand said, "So you see it works!"

So that’s the first problem with deterrence. It seems to work butnobody can prove that it does—you’re bristling with all those bombs saying that the other side wants toattack you when the fact of the matter is that the other side never intended to attack you in the first place-- there are no pink elephants.

It is really hard to show that deterrence kept the peace. Many in CentralEurope, many would say that it was hard to show that the Soviet Union hardly ever wanted to invade the West ortake over the very productive way of life there and turn it into shambles.

So what kept the peace was defensive—nobody wanted to attack in the first place—

So the whole issue whether deterrence works is still an open question and particularly nuclear deterrence—whetherit has actually kept peace is open to debate there is a kind of inferential logical problem that everyone haspointed to—

The counterpoint is that, do you mean to say that these two alliance systems powered all that money induring all those years without the assurance that this would not ensure peace—this may sound convincing butit is still the job of the historians to tell us so. And until then there is enough ground to disbelieve theissue—

Even if it be granted that deterrence ensured Peace, historical records show us the many instances when itbroke down and the trouble with nuclear deterrence is that it only needs to break down once, not like thebreakdown of conventional deterrence, where you have a short sharp fight but also the option to go back andstart rebuilding your societies all over again and where indeed you might be better -- for example, of phenomenon inGermany and Japan—

But that’s not the case with nuclear deterrence, where if there is a breakdown, societies might bedestroyed forever and in such nuclear war will have such a collapsive effect that every society in the wouldwill suffer some sort of setback to their lives and civilizations. If any of the countries possessing nuclearweapons in any region ... it could lead to a global catastrophe, culturally, economically in every possible way.I would count as a major cultural loss that if China, Russia or Pakistan were destroyed. And there areinevitable fears of the nuclear winter effect.

So on the deterrence issue, it must be pointed out that there have been enough cases relating to the US andthe Soviet Union to show how fragile it is—even when billions and billions of dollars were spent to ensurenothing happened.

AG: But the very fact that it didn’t actually breakdown, do you think makes it a success?

KB: Yes, there is a view favoured in South Asia which is precisely that there were crisis here and there-- for example, the Cuban missile crisis or in 1973 when the American President ordered a national alert during theMiddle Eastern crisis -- but it didn’t in fact provoke a nuclear war. There were bombs thrown here and thereaccidentally but the fact is that the system worked.

I suppose we are the victims of those successes really, butthe point I repeat is that nuclear weapons are not forgiving. You just have to make one mistake for the entiresystem to blow up—somehow that message really hasn’t got across to people, they are quite blithe aboutthis 50 year nuclear history. I think the stuff that’s coming out now will to some extent help to destroythat blitheness about nuclear weapons but certainly it's not coming to South Asia—that history is not gettingpublicity here—

AG: Do you think that there is reason to suspect that India and Pakistan or India and China will be lesscapable of handling a deterrent situation than the USA?

KB: Well, I think lots of people are frightened of saying that’s so. But I think one could generally saythat I could tie the problem with the broad issue of lack of development and use it as a broad metaphor fordescribing the problem.

It's quite conceivable that we would have more difficulty in husbanding these weapons. Afterall in a very commonsensical way, if one looks around, one sees the kinds of inefficiencies in public life andtherefore conclude that there might be greater risks of disaster.

So the Russian case is illustrative. For examplethe record will show that there have been several outright disasters of massive magnitude and it can be tiedto highly centralized systems, which were not up to the task of husbanding these weapons there wasn’tenough pluralism in the system to bring out the problems and therefore develop checks against them even in theUS where there was such a system, they had terrible problems. And the margin for error here in our situationwill be that much more costly.

The counterargument I hear is that when you are at the edge and have to cope with indignities andcatastrophes everyday in social life, our capacity to bear them is so much greater. I however must admit that that is a view I do not accept even though it might be true—but as a stance in public policy it seemsto methe most perverse thing—

This debate in fact has come to stay. In the US, for example, there’s this book which carries the debatebetween Kenneth Walls and a man called Scott Sagan at Stanford. Sagan argues that it doesn’t really matter,in the end any organization especially these high risk industries prove to breakdown at some point. Ironicallythe redundancies and safety measures that you put in place or operate cause the system to breakdown. Heextends that argument to say that however politically incorrect it is to say, less developed countries whichhave these systems, probabilistically face a more serious hazard, a risk. Even though they are going to try andbuild all those redundancies and safety keys, it is the nature of the system that will cause it to breakdown.Their ability to recoup or ameliorate the consequences are that much less.

AG: When we are talking about these in the US, where these things are known and there is a certain amount ofalertness, there is also is the ideology of determinism of nuclearism etc. which in a sense makes itpolitically almost impossible for the American President persuading the American public to completely renouncenuclear weapons, but it's implicit in your argument that you would like that and expect that of India. In asense therefore aren’t you setting a higher standard for India ?

KB: That’s true—I have said that in public too, in T.V debates etc. where I get the same response.

Iguess I have in a sense a greater ambition for India. And if one talks about India truly being a leader, itseems to me that would be a real ambition for this country. You might say, well, how do you square that withyour own remarks that in a sense around the bomb, India doesn’t seen to show the capacity for any realleadership for anything very innovative.

To that, I say, well, we may not have that now, but Immanuel Kant said that you have to set a vision. if youdon’t have a vision, no human activity is possible. You know that you’re never going to get to the visionthat you’ve set.

And India is in a sense, over the past 40-50 years, has had people who set a vision for themselves.

AG: Who ?

KB: I think Nehru himself, even though he laid the basis for this programme, he fought to articulate a largervision.

AG: He made a pact with the devil—

KB: In that sense however we are all implicated. But I think India is the one third world country which,because it had the capacity, had to wrestle with the issue. It can go through it to the other end and set up ahigher standard. In that sense I think that there is a role for India—as a footnote you can add that the USis not altogether an impossible case. There is a small and growing campaign against nuclear weapons although I’mnot trying to suggest that India is the only country which could do it.

There is a growing transnational groupof people who are quite serious about launching a total disarmament campaign. Sack is the most prominentfigure, though not all his statements have been particularly happy ones. There are a number of organizations.CANDRA COMISSION, THE STARSON PROJECT etc. GENERALS AGAINST NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Some of the public opinionsurveyed in America by former nuclear labs show that there is a quite a section of public opinion -- about 60%-- which feels that it can be done and should be done.

AG: Even though you have basically stuck to the strategic studies language, your objection to nuclearweapons is moral?

KB: Yes, moral and political. Moral in a fairly conventional sense. Nuclear weapons are weapons of massdestruction and therefore do not discriminate. There’s no way you can use them to target combatants.

AG: But all wars are indiscriminate.

KB: Yes increasingly all conventional wars are, but these are on a scale far beyond.

Secondly, nuclearweapons are simply genocidal weapons they have no strategic kind of use that is rational. I mean, if deterrencecannot be shown to be verifiable or stable, then it will be seen as really a pact with disaster and to thatextent while deterrence is no actual use, of weapons, it seems to me that deterrence by itself, is an immoral actbecause you know that you are buying something which could end in catastrophe. So I think that’s a validpoint of view i.e. of deterrence being an immoral act.

Opponents say will you object to a person carrying a gun in self-defence? after all that is all whatdeterrence is—the analogy is not part because a revolve in your pocket is a discriminate weapon but youcannot make such a claim on a nuclear weapons.

I am against it politically because it reflects the kind of military imagination that we have which isabout violence and counter violence and in a sense it's that. It has such a thin notion of politics itself. Asif politics were just a system of threats between countries that’s a very thin notion of political communityfor me. And the fear is that if there is a feeling that nuclear weapons work as deterrence, then why botherabout anything else? Look for other solutions to disputes. Why build a bridge to someone else if you can holdthem at bay?

So the thing that bothers me is that it represents such a thin notion of politics, of thepolitical.

AG: The ideology of nuclearism is there and I have people telling me that it is fundamentally aboutself-esteem. What is your response to that ?

KB: What I think they mean is simply the issue, where does India stand ? In a ranking of nations and Mao isprobably the originator of this idea. He said years ago [that] China has risen in the ranks because of thebomb. That,I think, it really captures what people here mean at [a] level that India somehow has to be "at the table even ifit means initially as a nuisance.

And there is an almost perverse sense of enjoyment at the fact that afterthe tests people are slapping sanctions on us. I have [often] heard that - that well now the Americans can'tignore us any longer, and that the sanctions show that. So at a negative level, it's that being "at the table"even if as international nuisance!

But more sophisticated people argue that nuclear weapons are really a touchstone of other things. Militarypower for one - even though they recognize that this power is not really usable. Some people feel that it's aworld where nuclear weapons are a currency of power -- and in the UN it's not an accident that the five powersare nuclear weapons states. There is the belief that if everybody else's is view is such, then you have to playwithin that structure of cognition even though it is a false set of beliefs.

AG: But the five powers in the Security Council are five victorious power of the Second World war.

KB: That's exactly so - they are there not because they are nuclear weapon powers; they are the victors inwar. There was the judgment that they had a certain responsibility for peace and security and they had theresources to put at the disposal of the international community - and that even without putting them in thatresponsibility they would always without doubt use veto powers outside the system, so it was better to havethem included.

It is quite understandable, therefore, that there is the belief that if you had nuclear weaponsyou could in some sense determine the course of events in the world.

If you take the Chinese case for example, it is quite clear that the status of China has quite little to dowith nuclear weapons. It relates to the massive experience of the revolution, or the sheer shrewdness andsmartness of Mao and Chow En Lai, the way the picked up their society and got it up to some basic level.

Atanother level, just after a year after independence, the way they forced the UN forces led by US and Koreapacking almost. 3m Chinese were thrown against one super-power and it took almost four years of fighting forthe UN forces to get it back some position of parity. And they could do this within one year of independencewith the world's largest conventional force - a force which had nuclear weapons in reserve. They also sent theRussians packing in 1958, fought them again in 1969, and in the last few decades, see their economic growth...

So to ascribe their status purely to nuclear weapons would be ludicrous

AG: So you think there is in India a profound envy of China - of having lost the race etc.

KB: Yes, if you look at the commentary in the Indian press since ’92-’93, when the idea that China isgalloping along this 10-14% per annum growth, that really hurt. In some ways, I was joking to someone about,perhaps something that wasn’t quite a joke, that these nuclear tests in the near term go back really to theend of the Cold War and the image of China just running way ahead. And I shrieked from rooftops to say thatthe real race with China is really civic and economic other than military and nuclear.

In a sense that’s true and the only compensation we have at the moment is that we have the nuclear weapon—

AG: Something that is cheap and easy—

KB: Yes, there’s no prospect anyone can see us catching up with China on the economic front. When onetalks about the "China threat" I think this is the sense that one really gets.

AG: So what is it then ? Is that then India of a particular generation created a way grandiose notion ofwhat India is?

KB: As someone said to me the other day, how are the Chinese better than us? They have no philosophy, they arejust practical lot of people. We are the ones with a philosophy—so I said look where they are so he said, yes,that’s why they are there and we are where we are!

We are so ridden with philosophy that we can’t see ourway out of anything. But I think it's Nehru himself who had these hideous pejorative judgments about theChinese people.

I was saying this to Subramaniam the other day, and many people who are in track with Nehru on the Chinaissue. To say that Nehru was a lover of the Chinese people is bizarre. It is well encapsulated in his verywesternized view of the Chinese as yellow hordes, all worker bees and ants etc. There are very negativeviews of China I think—

And in fact there’s a kind of split when we are talking about the bomb. Most of the time we say Pakistanis not the problem, China is, but the fact remains that far greater attention is focused on the Pakistaninuclear programme and not a whit to the Chinese.

It's a funny split when it is believed that Pakistan is thereal military problem and could harm us. But the animus is against China.

AG: Once again let me revert back to the American success in the Cold War and ask that is there a similarright wing opinion in the country which believes that if the some sort of pressure could be applied toPakistan, it would ultimately break down?

KB: There’s a feeling within the BJP and which perhaps can go far beyond -- which is that they’ve gained ita little bit already. They’ve realized that this would force the Pakistanis to test, that there would besanctions, which would fall harder on Pakistan, would deepen its economic and geopolitical problems, and thatit would go bankrupt and might in effect become "a failed state."

As sensible a person as (Naipaul)? said that a Pakistan in chaos was in our interest—

That image of Pakistan as a "failed state" would make good strategic sense—that would be the end of ourstrategic problem without firing a single shot, with no responsibility to reconstruct Pakistan. What on earthcould be better than that?

People have said although that a collapse there could mean problems for us in the border areas, ofrefugees, but more to the point is that the extent of our ambition as neighbors. What does it say about us?

But for many I think the tests were a jolly good thing -- the only worry being how we would handle thediplomatic fall out.

The answer to that from BJP-wallahs is what’s the problem? Now that we have the bomb, people willstart coming to us, though they might take their time to do so. But they know that they have to deal with us.It's a kind of Lamarckian view of the world—in the end we all do the right thing because we must do the rightthing that means our opponents will do well just as us.

AG: Why are the Indian people so complacent about the dangers of the nuclear bomb? is it because India hasn’treally known war?

KB: Yes, I think that’s a good point. And I’ve said this at a conference recently that there is one thingabout the security question in South Asia that the region has not known ‘total war’ in its recentmemory -- either internal total war or external total war and therefore we have no notion of what war could belike.

AG: We have not known war nor revolution ?

KB: Yes, any kind of total social upheaval or catastrophe, so there’s kind of an attachment towar. Notas something pleasurable but as an attitude that it cannot happen here—it happens to other people. Ifhowever you talk about it, people will actually say, look at our own wars, the insurgencies in Kashmir. We lostmore people there than all our wars combined, some people affirm it as a virtue of South Asians—and use thatas an argument related to the bomb—we are somehow experientially or spiritually superior etc.

But on the other hand it makes us, more blind in fact to war.

Even if one talks of Partition, to most Indians that sort of experience today is remote—there might bememories of violence and mass killings but not war—therefore the absence of total war in the South Asianimagination—

AG: So what are the real dangers of war?

KB: Well, the one that would be top on my list is Kashmir.

It is unspeakable or unsayable because it's ... actually, people think it is a tactic in the hands of the West, that it is part of Pakistani propaganda. But Idon’t see why should we see it as being as impossible after all the wars of 47’, 48’, 65 were all overKashmir and 71’ saw operations in Kashmir.

We’ve had since then the crisis of 1990 which everyone denied sovehemently at that time, but of which we are now hearing. There was a real crisis in 1990, the threat of apotential nuclear war—described in the Hirsh article ‘On the Edge’. Well, what happened actually wasthat the Pakistanis had an exercise going in Punjab and this they prolonged on the excuse that Indian forceswere building up in Kashmir and Northern India and therefore they were taking precautions

Then there was theBrass Tacks crisis, also over Indian army exercise. So there was a kind of deja vu working here and so a buildup of forces on either side and Robert Gates was sent by the Bush administration to see, because earlierAmerican intelligence had seen Pakistanis F-16s taxiing out on the runways in a configuration which seemedthat they might have been carrying nuclear weapons.

So there was a worry that nuclear war was around and thatGates helped defuse the crisis by some very hard talking. And it seems that the Indian Government saw enoughfrom the American evidence or from their own readings of the situation to take up the issue and set up a highpowered body under Air Marshall Mehra to see the nuclear dimension to the problem.

I’m convinced that there was a crisis—in fact there have been a series of crisis near-war situationsin and around Kashmir and therefore it's not fantastic to think that something could [happen]. A seriousinsurgency, for example, which could force the Indian army to step up counter insurgency activities not just in theareas in the Kashmir valley, but as Advani once said in exasperation, well into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

Thereis some evidence that the Indian army already does that. It hasn’t escalated beyond a certain point probablybecause nuclear weapons are around, but the trouble is when will a hot pursuit stop looking like a hot pursuit?Whenwould someone at the receiving end of the hot pursuit see something beyond—that behind the guise of the hotpursuit there might be something closer to a larger strike and there may be some lopping off of territory asan indication to the other side that your patience has reached an end. And then the other side may turn tosome brinkmanship as well.

Then you are in a very dangerous situation. One side will begin to fear that theother side will resort to nuclear weapons. Today we have battle size tactical weapons and very quickly we’llbe into a war fighting scenario of the kind NATO and the Warsaw Pact had to worry about.

But the feeling is that could never happen in South Asia. We are "more responsible". But if ourexperience is of the kind we are having in the Punjab, Kashmir, it may make sense in contemplating abattlefield nuclear weapons. Weapons which you can use in a local area without having to engage in full-scalenuclear war.

AG: But first use almost automatically leads to.....

KB: Yes, that’s right, You know the kind of second guessing and triple guessing that will go on is quitedangerous.

You may feel that the other is going to use a tactical bomb, then you may feel that you better pre-empt it—theother side may then want to preempt your pre-emption. There is a logic that goes like this, but there arecounter arguments to this and the issue is not too simple—but there is evidence of things like this alreadyhappening in South Asia. We can’t afford to be complacent.

AG: So that’s one scenario.

KB: Yes I think there is this Kashmir scenario where people have spun many variations around it. India’scoalition party, weak government at the center, insurrection in Kashmir going out of control, Pakistan cashingout of it, miscalculating that it might be a cheap, quick victory showing in troops in disguise.

That one thinking another is perhaps via the logic of nuclear weapons themselves. At the moment there isdefensive use of the weapon i.e. deterrence but what if, as with the other nuclear powers, we move towardslarger nuclear forces—there will be the fear on one side that the other will steal a fairly decisive marchover it.

One can see this particularly perhaps on the Pakistani side: they are much bigger, the technologicalestablishment is much bigger and you should be capable of grinding out these weapons in more sophisticatedversions. If the asymmetry got beyond a certain point, Pakistani rulers may well begin to worry that it’sfeasible for the Indians to go on first strike.

Those kinds of numbers they may well be able to calculate andthere might develop a context where the Indians might be tempted to go. If so again a) Pakistan will try buildfaster and catch up and b) they might say, why not go sooner, why later? All this sounds rather fantastic,nuclear weapons being such. But that’s a distinct possibility especially when one sees that the game inSouth Asia is triangular.

So the triangular nature of the buildup if the Chinese go ahead and if we areserious about building a credible deterrent against the Chinese, we will have to have enough forces to absorbboth a Chinese and a Pakistani first strike and still have something to throw back to others because this ishow deterrence works. The trouble is that if you buildup a force of that size, to the Pakistanis it willappear as a very big force is too big for comfort.

So there is something -- and I don’t want to exaggerate when I say this -- a particular kind of build-up at acritical moment could lead to a crisis and perhaps war.

These are real enough possibilities which our governments should take account of.

AG: What about breakdown in command and control ?

KB: Yes, there are a whole set of problems surrounding command and control—there are various scenariosthere and the favorite you can think of are a situation where an out-of-control commander sets off a bomb toprecipitate the problem. He is mentally deranged -- that’s one of the favorites but historically there haven’tbeen many of these.

Far more important has been the problem of mechanical breakdowns and miscalculations. Radars that havepicked up a flock of geese as incoming missiles. Something which happened during the Cuban missile crisis.

AG: I think in our circumstances we don’t have command and control.

KB: We don’t have at the moment but are trying to build one—The point is that in India we have a systemof enough time buffers so that we do not do anything precipitate and [also] precisely because we don’t havethe kind of automatized technology and so on, we’ll have a system which is much more slow and cumbersome andsince we are really not talking about war fighting scenarios but second strikes, we will split the command andcontrol system.

There will be a civilian team which will actually control the pit of the nuclear weapon. Pitshave to be fitted into warheads and warheads have to be loaded onto delivery systems—these pits will beunder the control of scientists from BARC, and aero planes, warheads and missiles will be under the control ofthe armed forces. These will have to be noted pits to the warheads to the delivery systems during the time ofwar presumably after the first strike has occurred, and so there are some signs as to how that system willwork.

Basically these pits would be dispersed all over India, at the moment I believe they are all in BARC. Sothey are very susceptible to a first strike. But I suppose they will have to be dispersed fairly close to someairports so that they can be hastily transferred and made ready for launch.

But in any case this issue of picking up signs of a first strike, of warning and launching and thereforegetting into a situation where a total disaster may occur if we mistake a first strike that’s not reallygoing to happen -- the thinking here is that we will actually absorb the first strike and then see.

Since nothing's really available on what our posture is, in fact we have not thought about it very much. Butit seems to me that an adversary looking at the system or proto system we have now could make many dangerouscalculations about Indian preparedness. And so if the government doesn’t do something very quickly, we willbe in a rather unprepared state.

In any case, it's just imagin[ation] of the logistics of the system. You have a bunchof scientists in various places all over India—they would have to be in some very lightly protected facility.They must, in a time of great crisis and uncertainty, assemble transport a facility to a launcher.

And if you are expecting them to do this in time, you are expecting the first strike i.e. before it hashappened. If enemy intelligence picks it up. Now how do they interpret it? They interpret it strictly as adefensive preparation against them, for deterrence purposes, as a signal to them or if you make the mistakethat they are not really preparing for their own first strike — they see you busily setting up all these teamsand starting to make these things—the miasma and tension surrounding the issue -- could they not in factcalculate that Indians are preparing for a first strike? In fact they are going to launch first?

The important [thing] is that at what point you are sending out these teams and how are these signals read?If yousend out the teams after the first strike has occurred, then will the system work? After all even when you haveabsorbed ten strikes, with cities and populations destroyed...

AG: There’s only one city in India which was bombed once, that is Calcutta in 1942.

KB: So if your opponent is looking into this kind of system which is slow, cumbersome but perhaps safe—thatvery virtue might turn out to be a vice in a crisis. It might make it, in a crisis situation, clearlyvulnerable. Itmay set off a chain of events hard to interpret and possible for the other party to get very alarmed.

So the command and control problem is quite a serious one. What would be a safe posture? What would bea strong command system with explicit instructions, well rehearsed procedures? You need a certain kind of casewith these weapons as well as procedures. You will have to devise a system which will appear to be in controlof the system, practice procedures without showing vulnerability to the other side, without sending the wrongsignals that the system is geared up to perform.

AG: I would have thought that one of the most scary scenarios would be that of Pakistan unwinding—

KB: Well that is sort of ‘loose nuke’ problem that the Americans talk about—where you have nuclear weapons,the status authority collapsing, then who has control over the weapons if you’re an Indian decision-makerfor instance and you’re not sure of the Pakistani government and army in-charge, then what do you do? What’syour insurance?

In normal times however you wouldn’t expect anyone to do anything foolish and precipitate but you can’tforget the ‘loose nuke’ problem. Would Pakistan’s losing control manufacture a crisis?

AG: So the situation as you are describing, and as many hawks desire, that of Pakistan slipping intochaos and anarchy, would be the moment of the greatest possible danger to India?

KB: The hawks, I don’t think, worry about this scenario too much—I’m not clear why they don’t. I thinkhowever they would advance four arguments.

1. This is an American fear and fantasy that what appears to them as chaos from Washington is probably thenormal state of things in Pakistan—that the military is still the spine of Pakistan and whatever elsehappens it won’t spin out of control—that these are just scare tactics on the part of the West—theyshouldn’t worry us too much and it amounts to suggesting that somehow Pakistan is irresponsible, irrationaland the so-called ethno-centricism that goes with it.

Curious though, because they themselves have often suggested that Pakistan is an irresponsible actor, andcan’t be tested under any circumstances. So I think that contradiction is there but I don’t think anyonehas really seriously thought through the problem of what one would do in that situation.

I would say, don’t exaggerate the problem. After all, if there is a loose nuke problem, one has to thinkthat suppose Pakistan is collapsing, and there's this renegade, but unless the person is totally mad, which interms of sheer statistics is always possible...

AG: No, no it's not a question of totally mad. Suppose you were a person who's spent all your life in an idealistic way dreaming of a particular state and political entity and then your life’s work collapses...

KB: This reminds me of some of the evidence that is coming out about the Cuban missile crisis. It now turns outhow Castro was willing to go. Castro, at one point, was in league with, he had even persuaded the, Sovietcommander in Cuba, to tell Moscow to go to hell and say, look, it was time for them to face down theAmerican imperialists once and for all and if Cuba had to go on a final stand off with the US, Castro waswilling to countenance it.

I suppose one could draw up a situation like that in Pakistan.

In deterrence literature, they often make a distinction between opportunity and need deterrence -- ifcan do it right can deny the other the opportunity to attack. But if you are willing to pay almost any price,then there’s not much that deterrence can do for you.

And there’s a worrying strategic logic as well -- that is that one can argue that someone could fairlyrationally take the following risk—what if I launch a first strike, knowing full well that your have apretty good second strike on the logic that surely I won’t take all your weapons because you have a fairlygood retaliatory capacity against me, but the sheer stunning blow will disorient you, the fact that ten ofyour cities have disappeared from the face of the earth. You might just be psychologically stunned intosubmission.

Other than that, once you’ve absorbed a first strike, ten cities have gone, then this is really a moment-- if you are rational you’ll have to think: so now what’s the point in sending a second strike?

So the attacker may begin to count on you thinking that way and if he has gauged you well enough, that if Ihit him first, hard and fast enough, he will wake up just for a while and say we are defeated, but let’s atleast salvage what we are left with what’s the point of striking back.

Actually the most human reason will say what is the point of striking back and counting on that there is amoment during which you can attack—this is often called the ‘self deterrence problem’ you areself-deterred. This is what is being said in the Indian press recently that there has got to be a systemwhereby India’s second-strike is not delayed by more than 24 hours under any circumstance. There shouldn’tbe any time for human reason to assert itself—that’s the unsaid implication.—

There’s a pretty good recognition of that, so the game then is that if I can count on your being a humanbeing in a certain sense, I might then launch a first attack and count on your being self-deterred.

AG: What about accidents—

KB: One accident scenario is that in and around some missile silo, or one if those dispersed nuclear weaponsites, or even, say, a reactor, if there is an explosion, the problem there is in the moment depending onwhere it happens -- you might not be able to distinguish between an accident from a strike by someoneelse.

You might feel this to be a fanciful scenario, but again there have to [contexts] in which these thingshappen. May [be] at a time when there are preparations being made and in the midst of these something may gowrong—you might drop a bomb or something—how you read it internally might lead to certain spiralingdifficulties.

This has happened and happened to the Americans. The other accident of course is related to the whole issueof missiles. In the US-Soviet case, you would have a 20-25 minute warning time. So that you didn’t have tomove into these automated warning postures. But in South Asia, say for example, in India and Pakistan, thewarning time would be 3 or 4 minutes which means that the temptation to go into warning postures is muchgreater.

If that’s so, meaning if something goes wrong with your warning system, there's very little time [for]self-correction. So probably the favourite accident scenario would be something in and around a missile and alaunch posture is what would be the most difficult thing to take account of.

If we went to a tread, which is when you have sea launched and air-launched missiles as well, then it'sconceivable, may have a problem with submarines. The reason I say that is because usually submarines are outon patrol for very long periods of time, they are deep under the sea and very hard to track by an enemy, butbecause they are so far away from your command authority and because communication with them might be the mostdifficult in a critical moment, the US and the Russians had to give them the highest degree of delegatedpower.

In the case of Sub-marine launched missile, then, we would have to some pre-delegated authority tellingthem to act when a particular message goes. Now suppose this wretched signal goes off by mistake and you haveany difficulty in clarifying whether that’s the real signal or not or somebody has set off a kind of trialrun in Delhi, you can then see that someone with the best of intention might set the whole thing off.

So the accidental posture and its dangers is greatest with the missiles.

AG: So if a place were to be hit in India—which would be the first?

KB: Probably it will be no single place—a number of cities perhaps simultaneously. And it depends on who itwas, whether the Chinese or Pakistanis, just to take those two. But surely Delhi, Mumbai, for Pakistan ourcities on the Western border would be favorites -- industrial basis and certain conventional concentrations inand around Punjab and Rajasthan.

There are some ambiguities, though classically one problem that faces the one who launches the strike firststrike is: do you want to hit the national command centers or authority centres, because unless you’relooking for total annihilation, one thing you may want to press for is someone to be with, which meanspreserving some kind of national command structure, then you’ve got to think, should I want to bomb Delhi ornot.

That’s sensible because if you want a nice clear victory, you can stun the other side, have someone tonegotiate with. On the other hand its precisely that central command might not have the same centralizedauthority to launch the second strike.

Much may depend on the kind of model you have of the government and how they were to react.

I would think that anyone would invest in taking out Delhi, Bombay, Ahmedabad, Poona, Wherever there arelarge-scale conventional formations near the border with Pakistan.

And if you do 4-5 of these I -- mean the premium is on where the nuclear forces are -- that’s whatyou want to take out, that would depend on where India has dispensed them. I would think probably the firststrike, 3 or 4 cities perhaps, which house the command structures.

You may not want to take them out as punishments but you may want to stun them, leave them enoughleadership to bargain with you and then you want to hit at the many nuclear weapon sites major air-forcebases, missile sites etc.

Delhi could be hit by several bombs. One bomb might be an air-burst fairly high up the surface to send upEMPs—Electro Magnetic Poncers. These shut down all your electricals basically and unless you're wired toprotect yourself against Electro-magnetic Ponce, all your communications go out of gear.

So one might be an air-burst fairly well above the city which could also have fairly devastating effect onthe ground. There would be enormous blast effects -- huge winds that would circulate in the epicenter inthat mushroom cloud. And these come in waves -- essentially this, the primary blast effect and then, within afew seconds, there’s the secondary blast, which is actually more powerful, and that will set up velocitiesof wind several hundred miles per hour, produced by the sucking effect of the ‘mushroom phenomena’.

And it is really the secondary blast effect which will pulverize buildings and all standing structures. Soin a certain radius around the effects of the primary and secondary blasts will be massive of an air blast.And given the structures that you have below it, in Delhi these may not able to stand up to the over pressuresproduced. Most of the houses here are old, made of brick -- many are just shanty-type structures. Unless youhave reinforced concrete of a certain kind or high-rises made to withstand fairly massive shocks, earth quakesetc. they won’t be able to take these over-pressures.

While they may not altogether collapse—there’ll be enormous damage and glass, movable objects will bepicked up and tossed around at an enormous velocity. Human beings themselves will become projectiles. If you’vein and around this area and if you are not incinerated immediately, you could be thrown at velocities of 200km yourself. You would in effect become a bullet or a cannon-shell. So in the area beneath the air blastthere would be tremendous destruction.

The other main effect would obviously be the heat effects i.e. the enormous temperatures that will begenerated in the epicenter -- temperatures like the sun—when virtually any material will catch fire. Withinabout 20 minutes there will be a secondary heat effect where there will be a fire-storm, the kind that you hadin Dresden and Hamburg, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Within 20 or 25 minutes the air almost is set on fire and virtually anything will catch fire and these willbecome raging fire storms. And you die not only from chemical poisoning though CO and CO2 but the sheer heatof the air. The air is almost sucked out from your system and lungs burst from the vacuum effect produced. Theair is sucked out in and around you and the internal pressure of your body leads to the collapse of your lungs-- your lungs would burst. So that you wouldn’t necessarily die of burns or poisoning, essentially yourinternal organs would rupture.

This will result from the fire storms even if you survive the initial blast and flying objects.

The third of course are the radiation effects. One shouldn’t imagine that these are longer term becauseeven if you survive the heat and blast effects the radiation could kill you within [seconds].

AG: Now we are going across the Jamuna and here are all the power installations, and there is thisBadarpur thermal station—What would happen to that—

KB: They will all comedown I’m sure.

AG: From the wind of the blast?

KB: Yes, subsequently from the fire-storm, the high velocity winds—that means a large part of Delhi will be intotal darkness. And it's not a matter of a local blackout. When and how will they restore power and who willdo it?

You know, if it's a single bomb or a couple of them, Delhi will still have some municipality but I wouldthink that many areas of Delhi will be without power for weeks because the priority areas will start to berestored at first. Entire sub-stations may be out of the loop which means reconstructing them. So many areaswould not have lights for a very long time.

Many of our residential area need power not only for reading purposes, but power to pump up water --[which] means that the problem will be far more serious. So the general sense of deprivation will be farlarger.

Delhi is 9 million people so I am not saying that the entire city will come to a grinding halt unlessit is a series of massive and multiple attacks on Delhi. The city will continue to function in some way, butcertainly its municipal medical police service will be stretched. There’ll be man areas where there will betotal chaos. So it will take a very large effect to get this city back in shape. And if this happens to 7 or 8other cities it will take a very long time to resurrect our normal, national life.

AG: What you said about the archives is interesting. The recorded basis of government will disappear....how will you allocate rights.

KB: Many of these central government offices, which deal with taxation and records of land and property will allgo up in flames.

AG: And those are all in that center of Delhi, aren’t they?

KB: The supreme Court, all the main government offices, taxation too are right here in the I.T.O area.

Islamabad on the other hand is a fairly new city and relatively small. It's like Chandigarh, and doesn’thave that kind of place in Pakistan’s national life even now. An equivalent city in Pakistan would be Lahoreand Karachi -- there Bombay—Rawalpindi, the twin city of Islamabad, will be much more the city to be hit—thearmy, the cantonment areas, the commercial centers, too, are there. And it'ss a much older city with ahistory. The impact of hitting Delhi which is not like Islamabad will be far worse for Indian national life.

AG: And their leadership, i.e. in Pakistan, is much more dispersed in some peculiar way...

KB: I don’t know about that—Islamabad, unlike Delhi, is certainly an elite city. Elite in the sense that thereare just housing colonies in Islamabad. There are no slum areas or low income areas—it's like a better kept,richer Chandigarh. Almost anyone who is anyone in Pakistan has some sort of property in Islamabad. In thatsense it will have a certain national impact.

It's just smaller. It's however not the same as Lahore which has an old political history and probablystill one of the best cities in South Asia, best kept and the pride of many Pakistanis especially Punjabis. Soit would devastate a lot of the super-rich and influential, but may be the emotional casualty of it may not beas great as Delhi.

The problem of heat, winds and poisoning effects will be devastating.

In fact you’ll be lucky if you’re just incinerated. If it's a slightly windy day, it's so much theworse because it will sweep the fires even further out. Afterwards there will be the black rain which willcome down. The oily, black rain which will come from the fire-ball up there and that contains a lot of theradio active material as well—that will stick to your clothing, your skin, seep into the soil contaminatingit.

That will affect fairly large parts of the city. Even if 6-7 km out of the city, you may not experience theeffects of a 20 KT blast but you will experience massive dust in the air thrown up by buildings that have beensmashed. The sun would be blocked out for quite a long time and then this black sticky rain that will comedown, full of contaminants which will add to the general dangers, gloom and demoralization everywhere.

So there are a number of longer term collateral effects. People who’ve got radiation sickness will keepcoming in and coming in.

AG: And then of course epidemics will start.

KB: Because of the difficulties in disposing the dead, sewage altogether. There will be massive epidemics—therealways have been in wartime situations and particularly here where there will be no stockpiling of anti-biotics.

AG: People think that the bomb in India and Pakistan will be different...

KB: Yes, that we are more responsible we will learn from the follies of the West etc. We are almost morally betterin some ways that there are some different rules of strategic engagement and for all these reasons there is acompletely different way of thinking about the problem of nuclear weapons in India.

So that as soon as you begin to draw analogies from other cases, you’re immediately branded as someonetrying to import ideas that are inappropriate. That your employing scare tactics in the service of foreigners.

People may see merit in some of the arguments I may lay out but very few people have come out openly andsaid or admit that I have a point and that one can use some of the tools on deterrence theory or the uses ofnuclear weapons and lessons learnt from these, nobody wants to publicity admit that because...

AG: What’s wrong with this belief that there’s some different kind of technology in SouthAsia?

KB: What’s wrong is that in many ways this technology in a sense leads you down one sort of track of analysis.The logic of deterrence is quite simple to the extent that you buy it. Things that can go wrong with it areprobably finite and given the fact that this is a kind of modern, centralized society, it won’t be prone tothe same kind of pathologies, difficulties and temptations and, I think, it's not just a matter of sometechnological imperative.

In a sense, deep down, we have learnt the same language, strategy and defence and so on and the very peoplewho criticize deterrence thinking have still read all the classics and internalized their arguments and theyare puzzled by the charge that all that work and thinking are totally useless. And it's never been shown to mevery conclusively anyway.

What’s so different here? What would be so different about the nuclear game that demands a completelydifferent logic and doesn’t allow you to borrow anything from other people's experience? All situations areunique in some respect but the way human knowledge and interest operate is though some models and comparisons.

And we have been discussing certain consequences and effects which will be different but the broad logic ofdeterrence and nuclear weapons will certainly operate here. Therefore we have some thing to learn from theexperience of others and so the reaction of people to things I say is odd.

At one level I’m often fold that you have a point but nobody wants to admit the totality of it somehow—theyare uncomfortable with it.

AG: What nobody—there are people who agree. But there has been a significant shift in thinkingin the last few months.

KB: Yes that’s true—figures show that there might be a 30% shift and some quite unexpected people have comeout against the bomb like, Admiral Ram Das, at various points, the Congress party, the Left though initiallystunned by the whole thing came out against it, the scientists—which was more of surprise than anyoneexpected. Well, people like Kuldip Nayar are fairly predictable and some newspapers like the Hindu have airedenough of this view.

One thing that seems to be true enough is that in a way that everyone knows that Pakistan had the bomb, thetests however certainly took many people aback—may be even the Indian Scientific community because Iremember P.R. Chari telling me that he had carefully looked into statements of our Atomic Energy commissionand for years each head of the AEC said that they doubted very much that Pakistan had the nuclear capability,that the whole thing was a big fraud.

I think probably people in political circles, in the bureaucracy, or even the military who really doubtedthat they could test, still doubt that they carried out 6 tests. They certainly seemed to have carried out 2or 3. But there’s no doubt that they have something and now may be they’re got the place from the Chinese

I think that kind of faulted actually everyone—Pakistani capabilities were an open secret in thestrategic community somehow. I feel that even people with knowledge in the strategic community were a littletaken aback. And that’s had an effect in India. I mean at the very moment that we were celebrating in thestreets,. talking about ourselves as a great power, Pakistan had the capability in the next moment that seemedto cut the achievements and celebrations to size.

AG: What do you think about this ‘Great Power argument? Is India going to be seen as a great power?

KB: I don’t think so if you look at the ARF meeting, the ASEAN REGIONAL FORUM which brings together the SouthEast Asian Countries and Japan and Korea and the United States—India lately, I don’t think the meetingthat was held we got the kind of respectful hearing that a great power does.

At ASEAN there was a move to condemn us for the tests. In fact, the Pakistanis were asked to be members ofthe ARF and Jaswant Singh and Indian diplomats tabled a head off. It was almost a question of pleading theASEAN states particularly the Indoneseas, Singapores and Malaysias to head off an outright condemnation ofus.

I don’t think that today countries really -- whether we have nuclear weapons or not -- still see us as alimbering giant. The language of economics talks in most of the areas where the Asian great powers are today.When I go to these meetings, South-East Asia and East Asia, I still hear of people saying that first of allyou have to get your domestic situation or house in order before you can be considered a great power.

Until you do that, they don’t even believe in our democracy as any kind of accomplishment. Even thoughthis is one thing that we think is. After all great power status comes from the recognition of others—youjust can’t go on calling yourself a great power. They don’t hand out the great power cheques to you—theyare mostly poking fun at you -- bewildered by you and annoyed by your posting.

About the weapons the Pakistanis chose to have it and so did a dozen others, so what's the big thing? TheNorth Koreas have it, the South Koreans are going to have it tomorrow—Australia could have it tomorrow if itwanted to; Japan of course—Japan is a great power anyway—Taiwan could.

There’s quite a lot of talk -- from people like K. Subrahmaniam—I think I’ve heard him say we shouldn’tthink of ourselves as a great power just because we have exploded a nuclear bomb. The response of theinternational community in days and weeks after the tests indicated to even people who were trumpeting thecause of nuclear weapons [for] great power-dom—that it's not there—nobody is willing to grant it